People who have never—on principle—read a reader commentary on a novel have denied themselves the fun of reading how very differently two people who have read the exact same work of literature can reach for pop culture referencing as a nexus of comparison.
For instance, there seems to be quite a divergence of opinion on the level of quality to which The Ninth Metal presents its story of corporate intrigue between companies warring over the creation of a brand-new precious resource previously unknown and unavailable to mankind. Some of these reader reviews compare this aspect of the story to the brilliantly conceived factional gangsterism of Francis Coppola’s The Godfather. Others see it more like the cheesy prime time soap opera shenanigans of the late 70’s/early 80’s TV drama Dallas. Any way you slice it, that is a pretty big chasm.
But, in the end, the comparisons—no matter how much they may be apples to oranges when closely scrutinized—is useful. Mainly, of course, because The Ninth Metal is certainly not The Godfather, but then again it is also not at the level of Dallas. The value of the comparison of the corporate infighting between Frontier and Black Dog once again reveals that the divergence between the ethics of organized crime and Big Business is razor thin. The Ninth Metal is essentially speculative science fiction that asks the question of what might happen if an unforeseen astronomical event produced paradigm-shifting new resource on the planet that just might have the potential to improve life on a massive scale. And though the story shrinks the focus of this epochal event down to just one tiny bit of geographical space, the answer it provides seems painfully on the mark. What would inevitably happen under these amazing circumstances would be the same old corporate gangsterism that has taken every resource the planet has to offer and charged people to use it instead of even considering the potential good that might come from just once being willing to make a profit that allows executive to buy just one house instead of multiple houses they rarely even visit.
The raw material in this story is called omnimetal and it only exists because of the unlikely convergence of events involving the intersection between the revolution of Earth around the sun and the arrival of a comet. These are not actually rare events: a mind-boggling cosmological event was also responsible for creating the gold forged into your wedding band or wristwatch or chain around your neck. But omnimetal carries the promise of doing things that neither gold nor any of the other raw material created from ancient cataclysmic events are capable of doing. It is, in the parlance of the times, a game changer. But just heroin and crack cocaine and meth were game changers and just coal and oil and electricity were game changers, omnimetal is seen first and foremost as product.
It is a product capable of transforming a boomtown gone bust into a boomtown all over again. And it is this focus narrowed through the perspective an aperture opening capable of only snapping a portrait of Northfall, Minnesota that creates the showdown between Frontier and Black Dog. It is not quite the Corleone Family versus the Barzini Family, but it is definitely capable of holding your interest longer than wondering who shot J.R.
