The Ferryman
The Ferryman
By: Justin Cronin
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2023]
[This book was nominated for the ‘Best Science Fiction’ category of the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge ]
“Farewell, birds and trees and long, unhurried days, and while I’m at it, farewell to all the lies I’ve had to tell.”
“The mind works wondrously; it is capable of astonishing feats. It is the only machine in nature capable of thinking one thing while knowing its opposite.”
The Ferryman is a mixture of Inception, The Matrix, Total Recall, and Passengers (the one with Chris Pratt and J-Law). It is a long book with layers. Every time you think you know what’s going on, you peel back another layer.
I think I might have preferred a bit shorter tale, but I’m not sure it would have been possible with the complexity of the story. And I stayed pretty invested in the story to know what was going on!
Plus I read a pretty good chunk of it on an airplane in which I was very uncomfortable and nauseous so part of me was becoming disengaged as I was nearing the end which I don’t believe is a fault of the book as much as my circumstances.
It’s a thought-provoking, dystopian-type, sci-fi thriller that bends reality and takes you for a ride.
There are a few themes throughout the book: People ruining the earth. The selfishness of humans when faced with devastation. The love of a parent for a child and child loss. The politics of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ The idea that meaning comes from a designer.
The formatting of the book are chapters from Proctor Bennett’s POV (first person) and Thea’s POV (third person).
I’ll give you some plot points, comments, and then I’ll have a SPOILER section so make sure to scroll past that if you don’t want to spoil the surprises. Then I’ll end with my ultimate recommendation.
Plot Summary
Proctor Bennett lives on the island of Prospera.
“Prospera exists in splendid isolation, hidden from the world.” (Guarded by an electromagnetic Veil to shield them from the outside world.)
“the whole point of Prospera: to shelter the best of humanity from the worst of it.”
Prospera is the island for the Prosperan residents (the well-off). The nearby island, the Annex, “is home to the support staff— men and women of lesser biological and social endowments who nevertheless are, in my experience, wholly pleasant to be around.”
The third island is called the Nursery. It’s an enigma. No one knows what goes on there exactly except that it is essential to “the regenerative process that serves as the foundation for our way of life.”
“One might say that Prospera itself is a work of art, a canvas upon which each of our citizens brings to bear a single, exquisitely rendered brushstroke.”
People live as long as they want basically. No one truly knows anyone’s age. But once someone’s monitor percentage falls below a certain number or a person decides they’ve lived long enough and wish to retire, they take a ride on the Ferry. The Ferry takes them to the Nursery where they will be ‘reborn’— as a teenager— to live a whole new life on Prospera again.
Proctor’s occupation is Ferryman. He helps people go through the ‘retirement’ process and escorts them to the Ferry and the start of their ‘new life.’
Everything is just ideal.
Except Proctor’s given mother, cuts out her monitor, goes out to sea clutching an anchor, and her body is never found. And then years later Proctor’s estranged given father has decided to retire. Proctor is his Ferryman.
Right before his father is to board, he starts to run away, other guards take him down and he utters these shocking words- “There were things about your mother, son, things you didn’t know… The world is not the world. You’re not you. It’s all Oranios.”
This is the catalyst that sends Proctor on an existential journey as he questions his very existence, the inter-workings of Prospera, and what is beyond the sea. But to question the status quo is not an acceptable behavior and he finds himself at odds with the city’s leadership, sent on the Ferry against his will.
Caeli, teenager and “a master of shrugging,” has also entered his life in a mysterious way and he can’t find out anything about her. If he can figure out who she is, he may just find the key to everything.
Meanwhile, we are privy to the life of Thea, resident of Prospera but cohorts with a resistance movement on the Annex. She crosses paths with Proctor, not so accidentally, and together they embark on a mission much larger and deeper than either of them ever imagined.
Comments
By the time you peel back the deepest layer, you will be 78% finished with the book, but still over an hour and a half of reading left.
I liked Proctor’s relationship to Jason Kim and wish there would have been more of it.
I don’t like books with a lot of swearing anway, but the swearing seems out of place for the setting of this book.
I looked up if this was going to become a movie (it’s not… yet) but instead stumbled across an article in which Cronin listed the influences he had for writing this book. They weren’t the ones I listed already… haha. They were: Planet of the Apes, The Tempest, Never Let Me Go, Lost (definitely), and 2001: A Space Odyssey. So if you can imagine a book with all of those combined and it intrigues you, you should read this book.
One thing worth pondering further is the significance of ‘the ferryman’ job. Cronin could have written Proctor to have had any occupation on Prospera, but he was a ferryman, escorting people to their ‘rebirth.’ And I wonder what underlying significance this has after finishing the book and seeing Cronin’s role in the last 10% of the book. He is still escorting people to the next part of their ‘life,’ isn’t he?
A character says ‘That’ll Work!’ in Chapter 9, and I was shocked to know that they were aware of the awesome YouTube channel by that very name…
I like this quote:
“‘Want to hear my philosophy about situations like this?’
’Not especially.’
’It’s pretty straightforward. Something will happen, then something else will happen. Sounds dumb until you think about it.’”
And I guess that’s a good summary of the book. Stuff happens.
It was heart-wrenching to read of Proctor and Elise’s relationship with their daughter.
“within this complexity lies the true essence of loving a child: a joy so intense that it can feel like sadness.”
As a mother of four littles, I know the ups and downs and I know the intensity of a love that you never knew you were capable of having until you stare your child in the face.
A discussion of Prospera’s life philosophy:
The regenerative process is chilling to think about as it pertains to reality because it really feels like much of the world would prefer this.
Prosperans can’t have children because of the whole process. But they can choose when they would like to obtain a ward— a 16 year-old— to parent.
“it allows for consequence-free sexual exploration while also sparing women the dangerous and disfiguring ordeal of childbirth.”
But the commitment is low. If the ward is disfigured or disabled in any way, they can return them to the nursery to ‘try again.’ Or if the ward is too much for them and they change their mind.
“The guardians, it seemed, had simply tired of parenting… in the end, he had to be carried onto the ferry like the burden he’d been told he was.”
In today’s sexual revolution the idea of consequence-free sex is considered a human right. Pregnancy and child-bearing and child-rearing are treated like burdens and disadvantages to women. It’s sad. I fear if we were to ever get the technology to replicate Prospera’s regenerative system, the culture would be totally on-board for that. Because humans are selfish and they want what they want when they want it, how they want it, without any negative consequences or results.
Perhaps this scenario can shock people into recognizing how close their own life philosophy gets to this heartbreaking fictional one.
We are not designed for a ‘perfect life’ without pain or sacrifice. Child-bearing is a gift. Sacrifice is love. Children are a blessing.
I just can’t imagine life without children in the world. We need them. They spur us to love, to sacrifice, to teach.
If you don’t believe me that Prospera is not too far off from our reality, read this:
“Prosperans don’t just meet the new day; they storm it like an enemy trench. ‘Live Exceptionally!’ The messages are everywhere— on billboards, in the pages of magazines, between programs on TV. ‘Express Your Potential!’ ‘Be Your Best Self Today.’”
Culture’s message to be your best self and to remove any obstacles to being your authentic self and living your dreams is today’s message. Feel free to be alarmed by this.
SPOILER SECTION
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Okay let’s talk about the deepest layer.
The truth is this:
In the ‘real world’ the planet is becoming uninhabitable. Proctor Bennett and his wife Elise have discovered an exoplanet far far away that seems to be able to harbor life.
“Caelus is the first exoplanet that we can confidently say is capable of supporting human life, possessing both liquid water on the surface and a breathable atmosphere.”
But the journey will take them 230 years. 230 years of cryo-sleep. Humans (supposedly) can’t healthily survive that much time in cryo-sleep because we will run out of dreams, or rather, run out of source material for dreams. And our dreams would become our nightmares played on repeat for hundreds of years. People would wake up with all sorts of mental problems, paranoia, etc.
The solution?
Consciousness integration.
“We call that person the ‘Designer.’ The minds of the sleepers aboard Oranios, all eighty thousand of them, will be joined in what is effectively a collective dream, with a single dreamer, the Designer, acting as the organizing mind.”
The designer: Elise, Proctor’s wife.
“the mind is what gives it the sense of deep order and purpose. You may not see it, but you can sense its presence, and that’s what makes life not merely endurable but also worth living.”
Prospera was the designed world they could continue to build off of in their dreams. The regenerative process part of the design accounts for people’s consciousness figuring out what was going on in reality and being ‘put back into’ the dream so they wouldn’t remember.
The other problems…
Everything would have been fine except Proctor and Elise lost their four-year-old little girl to a drowning accident right before the ship’s rushed departure from Earth. Elise, the mind everyone would be leashed to for a couple hundred years, was emotionally broken and Proctor didn’t have time to account for it. They were forced to hope for the best, hope that what her mind generated for everyone to live in wasn’t chaos.
Which became a world without children.
Added to that, a police state, which was not in the original design. How did this happen? Well a few of the leadership team for this mission woke up from cryo-sleep on time only to discover Caelus was covered in ice- seemingly unlivable. Instead of solving the problem, they opted to go back into the dream and not wake anyone else up. They would rather live in a happy dream they knew wasn’t real than deal with reality that was potentially devastating.
Proctor awakens on the ship after layers of discovery only to realize the only way to save the people on the ship from an eternal cryo-sleep to their death requires him to go back into the dream.
See… complex right! I was pretty surprised when I peeled back that last layer. I thought just realizing the truth was going to be the end of it, but Cronin took it one step further— he had to go back into the false reality.
I think it’s really interesting that they recognized what gave someone purpose, which is essential to a fulfilling and happy life, is understood only through the lens of a Designer.
“A world without a living intelligence behind it— a soul, in other words— isn’t actually a world at all. It’s merely a place. The result is emptiness and despair...”
The character did not go so far to say he had proven the existence of God, but I think this is a compelling train of thought. If there is no Designer, then where do we derive meaning and purpose? Are we even capable of knowing what is meaningful? An arbitrary existence, a randomness to life— where is the purpose? It would definitely feel empty.
I think a Designer makes sense to us because we understand in the deepest parts of us that there must be something more out there, a Creator with a purpose and a plan. It’s not wishful thinking… it just makes sense.
One of the political aspects to the story is that this mission needed funding. So 15% of the ship’s population were investors— the wealthy. In the dream, they became the Prosperans. The rest of the population became the support staff living on the Annex.
But apparently Proctor designed this this way. His intention was to use the investors to get them there, but they didn’t get to stay. They kept them in cryo-sleep and only woke up the others.
Proctor’s justification:
“To the colonists I say: I gave you what you needed, which was a weight to push against. A life you would be glad to leave, and a life to make you ready.”
Proctor ultimately decides to stay on the ship, leave the colony behind and take the investors back to Earth (I think?). He says this, then:
“To you, the sleepers in my keeping: you have lived for countless lifetimes; you shall live for countless more. They will be different from the ones you’ve always known; your days of idleness and ease are gone. This is not a punishment— far from it. It is my gift to you, that you should be redeemed. I will give you childhood, so that you might know innocence. Age, so you will know the prize of youth. Children, so that you will care for the future. Toil, so that you will know the value of a day. The body’s failings, so that you will know its worth. Death, so that you will cherish the bittersweet beauty of life.”
And I don’t know how I feel about this. I think it’s pretty unethical to use the investors’ money, bring them to a colony they think they get to be part of, and then not allow them to be because you believe it’s your job to make them better people in the way you believe they need. They get no choice in the matter.
It also implies that people with money have no values, principles, or morals. It can be true, but these days it’s pretty popular to hate people with money and assume things about anyone in a certain tax bracket. We have to stop making sweeping statements even if they make us friends.
As for the colonists, I guess I understand that it would be best if the dream was a life they wanted to leave. Because would we, as people, rather live an amazing lie or an unpredictable or painful truth? Our relentless pursuit and demand of pleasure and happiness would seem to suggest, if given the opportunity, a lot of us would choose the lie.
The colonists’ experience in the dream state galvanized them to step up into a tough job of colonizing a new planet but with a sense of pursuing justice and equality for their new settlement. Do you think it would work in the long-term?
So yeah, the ending definitely made me ponder and I haven’t decided if I like it completely. I tend to prefer happy endings so I’m glad that everyone didn’t all die and that a colony was actually possible, but the part where Proctor goes back on the ship with the investors gives me pause. Of course, I do feel for the idea of Proctor and Elise being in a world where their daughter is alive, but again, should we trade reality for self-serving lie?
An interviewer posed this question (“live in a world of happy misperception or the cold, hard real?”) to Cronin and he answered: “Oh, give me an analog world. I’d be happier in it I think. Actually, no, I’m quite sure I would. I’ve reached a point in life where capitalism is interested only in my ability to buy pharmaceuticals and financial products, so I’m just going to lean in.”
I think it’s tongue-in-cheek(?) but decipher this quote how you would. I think it surprises me a little and then a little not.
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SPOILERS OVER
Recommendation
If you’re willing to put in the time commitment for such a long book, I think I would recommend this one. As I stated at the beginning of the review it’s a mixture of Inception, The Matrix, Total Recall, and Passengers, so there is some mystery and a questioning of reality that makes for an interesting plot.
It keeps you engaged wondering what is real and what is not.
I think this would make a good movie, but it’s not in the works yet. It’s just written in a way where you can really visualize the ‘reveal’ moments.
Cronin said in an interview that the emotion he wanted readers to feel while reading this book was ‘awe.’ I suppose there were moments where I felt that. The kind of awe I felt after watching Inception where your mind is being blown and the thought of what is real and what is not is causing your brain to short-circuit. That kind of awe.
Not the ‘look at that majestic beautiful thing, I’m going to worship it’ kind of awe.
In conclusion: The Ferryman is a fun, mind-bending ride!
[Content Advisory: 73 f-words, 25 s-words; no sexual content that I can remember, but I’m writing this review a week after I finished it and after reading 4 other books so my memory is tainted.]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book released May, 2023. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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