Ancillary Justice
Firstly: OMG I loved this book so very much.
Secondly: a real review. There are some spoilers, but nothing too major. I promise you will still have your breath stolen by many of the events in the book.
So, let me get “the gender thing” out of the way first. I debated leaving this ’til last, because it’s what a lot of other people are apparently fixated on… but for that very reason, it seemed disingenuous of me not to engage. Thus: the narrator of the story, Breq, is from a culture that does not use gendered pronouns. When Breq is dealing with cultures that do use gendered pronouns, there are language problems – troubling enough that it causes Breq quite some stress. And when Breq is thinking/speaking to the audience, rather than rendering pronouns as ‘it’, Leckie has opted for ‘she’. This, obviously, presents some rather intriguing aspects. Except for a few times when Breq is corrected, the reader actually has no idea whether the other characters presented are male or female. I don’t actually think we know whether Breq‘s body is female or male, hence my hesitance to use a pronoun (Breq would use ‘she’ and roll her eyes at me). Why is this interesting? Well, we don’t know whether the leaders have boobs or balls. We don’t know whether the soldiers dying having tits or testes, and we don’t know which the person who ordered those deaths has, either.* And I think this probably changes the way the reader reacts, at least in some instances. More intimately, we have no idea whether the physical and otherwise personal relationships presented are hetero or homo, which is relevant if it matters to you; at any rate the lack of knowledge is surprising, occasionally frustrating, always intriguing. And when any or all of the people might be women, you’re left with the conclusion that women are actually capable of doing/being all of the positions presented – up to and including leading a galaxy-spanning society. Who knew? In the lack of gendered pronouns Leckie is making a call that gender doesn’t matter – except that in choosing ‘she’, this is somewhat undercut.
Look, I’m not actually a gender studies scholar. Probably there are other things that Leckie is doing that I didn’t really pick up on. But as a way of unbalancing the reader that works perfectly within the context of the novel, it’s a brilliant choice; and it also does that thing that great SF should do: it forced me to reconsider my own world.
On to other things: and speaking of unbalancing the reader that works perfectly within the context of the novel, what is with the gloves?? This is a brilliantly clever, and devastating, move on Leckie’s part. Breq comes from the Radchaai, and within the Radchaai everyone wears gloves. If you don’t wear gloves, you are regarded with horror. Why? It’s never explained. It’s like a man getting around in a Jane Austen novel not wearing a shirt; it’s clearly the wrong thing to do, but it’s not going to get him arrested – and Austen wouldn’t bother to explain why it’s a problem because surely you understand? Sheer. Brilliance.
Ancillary Justice does not follow a neat linear narrative. There is a chronological thread – it follows Breq as she (all right, I give up; it’s just easier, ok? and it’s what she would use) searches for something she needs, in an effort to right a wrong. Along the way she encounters someone rather unexpected, who brings a whole pile of unlooked for problems. Alongside and around that thread, the reader lives through the memories of what has brought Breq to this path. The main thing to know, in order to understand what’s going on (and this is on the back cover, so it’s not a spoiler), is that Breq wasn’t always Breq. Until twenty years ago, the body known as Breq was an ancillary of the AI controlling the Justice of Toren, a massive ship of the Radchaai involved in annexing and subduing planets – ostensibly for their own, but mostly for the Radchaai, good. Thus Breq’s memories are mostly those of a few-thousand-year-old artificial intelligence. And being an ancillary means that her body is human, and was co-opted for… duty? inhabitation? use? by the AI.
This issue of ancillaries is one that the book is not obsessed by, but does deal with seriously via several of the characters who respond poorly to the very idea of them. I liked that the story didn’t develop into something too preachy, but I also appreciated that having raised such a frankly horrifying idea, Leckie did not simply leave it as a necessary-but-evil, or evidence-the-Radchaai-are-dreadful, sign. Instead, it’s as complicated an issue as the annexations themselves, because they really do bring benefits to the planets colonised – as other colonisations have – but whether that’s worth all the pain and bloodshed… well. That’s something we’re still processing, to some extent.**
The blurb of my copy paints this as predominantly a revenge story, and I get where that’s coming from. But it lacks nuance, too. Breq is indeed looking for revenge. But she’s also looking for answers – to questions about events in her past, questions about the Radchaai itself, questions about how she can, should, exist as this solitary body rather than as a near-omnipotent (in a constrained space) being. Therefore even if the novel were purely focussed around her, it’s more complicated than just “rargh I get you for what you done to me!” But, of course, as the above demonstrates this is a far more nuanced and complex novel than that. It touches on issues of colonisation, and of gender; it looks at what it means to inhabit a body, as well as to inhabit a planet. And it looks at how religion is co-opted for different purposes, too.
The inclusion of religion startled me, and – when I got over that – made me very happy. It’s something I’ve complained about in the past, here and on Galactic Suburbia: the lack of religion, treated seriously, in science fiction. Seriously people: do you think that just because humanity lives beyond the Earth, they’re going to somehow move beyond a desire for an explanation beyond what science can provide? I don’t think so. Leckie’s inclusion of religion, and the exploration of how religion and colonisation work together, was welcome and clever and shows how much thought she has put into this universe.
This next bit is for those who’ve read Iain M Banks’ Culture novels. I can’t help but assume that at least part of this novel is in dialogue with the Culture. There’s the fact that AIs are in charge of ships and stations, and interact with their human inhabitants. I know that this happens in other stories, but there was something that made me feel a distinct connection to the Culture Minds. That said, these AIs are not really like the Culture Minds. For a start, they’re not meant to have personalities at all. And there’s a very clear point in the story where Breq reflects on the fact that the ships don’t really talk to each other any more; they’re too old, and they’re bored by each other. This is in complete contrast to Banks’ positively verbose Minds, who can usually hardly keep their traps shut. Then, of course, there’s the use of ancillaries – actual bodies – instead of drones, which is… interesting. And reflective of the fact that the Radchaai is a far more problematic society than the Culture, and possibly reflective of the way such a human society is more likely to act (aggressively, rather than with the amused benevolence characteristic of the Culture). It’s entirely possible that Leckie has never read Banks, I guess, but for me this works really nicely in conversation with a series of books that I also adore.
Finally, then: this is what I want my SF to be like from now on. Smart; fast-paced; intriguing characters; believable world. And intellectual depth for added joy.
*I do understand this is reductionist; I’m going for effect here. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be an indication of these societies going in for large-scale, Culture-esque body shaping, so it seems to me that these crude indicators would still be considered relevant by Breq’s contemporaries.
**I mean on a global scale, not an individual scale. Please don’t yell at me for defending colonisation, because I’m certainly not; I’m an historian, I know and agree with most of your points.
You can get Ancillary Justice from Fishpond. This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
Menial: Skilled Labor in SF
Reviewing an anthology is always a bit more difficult than reviewing a novel. So is rating it. Does one poor story deserve to bring down the entire anthology? Should I mention every single story?
I gave this anthology a 5-star rating on Goodreads. I did not do this because every single story blew me away; they didn’t, although I don’t remember any story that I loathed, which is impressive in its own right. Partly I was predisposed to being impressed by the anthology because of the theme: the menial. That is, no heirs-misplaced-at-birth, no admirals or planetary governors or princesses starring here; instead, it’s the miners, the sewerage workers, the grunts who feature. Not to say that the stories don’t feature action or adventure – they do – but largely it’s action that happens in the course of everyday work, and often because of accidents: the sorts of things that you’d really rather didn’t happen. The anthology points out the dignity in the menial tasks, as well as acknowledging the sheer back-breaking work that’s likely to still be necessary in the future; it points out the importance of the menial while remembering the danger. And even though the menial workers shine in the stories, it’s clear that for most of them, this isn’t going to lead to a huge change in fortunes. It’s part of a day’s work, or it’s not but it’s not enough to propel them out of drudgery – or indeed it’s something that leads to them getting fired and the consequent uncertainty of unemployment.
This anthology shows that good SF can be escapist in letting the reader escape from their own immediate situation, but can simultaneously speak to the reader who is unlikely to be a spaceship pilot or lead an army, but may well have a dead-end job that they hate. It can provide ways to imagine a different world but also reassure and comfort that even people in crappy jobs can actually have interesting lives, and do interesting things – something much SF ignores.
This anthology imagines a range of possible futures. They’re mostly fairly far future, and involve space travel of some sort; some have humanity spread far and wide, others are a bit more restricted. Because of its focus on the working class, there is less emphasis on the political or military than one often finds in SF, because really, when you’re scraping to get food on the table who has time to worry about the expansion of the empire? Many of these stories are united in their focus on the nitty-gritty details, those details that make up the everyday. Some of them are very familiar, some are familiar but in foreign contexts, whilst others are utterly alien. And the best stories make this work in clever and occasionally utterly bemusing ways.
I was initially dubious about the possibility of making an entire anthology based on the concept of skilled labour; not because I thought the concept was boring but because I wasn’t sure how there could be enough variety within that to keep having different stories. This is because I am not an author. There is, of course, infinite variety in the stories you can tell from the menial perspective – because there’s an infinite variety of stories to tell about humanity.
You can get Menial from Fishpond.
On Ragnarok
I have been wanting to read Byatt for a long time now and somehow have never got around to it. Shame on me. So when I saw this little book for sale for about $6 in a dinky little newsagent in a dinky little town – SNAP. MINE.
It’s part of the Canongate Myths series, which I had heard of and thought I had read a few… but if you click on that link (don’t do it, Tansy, it’s a rabbit hole!) you’ll see there’s HEAPS and most of them I hadn’t heard of! Although I was right, and it is the same series as The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood, swooooon – I love that book so much; it’s Penelope’s side of The Odyssey… thus the Greek version of Ursula le Guin’s Lavinia, I guess) and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight (about Hercules and Atlas, and also excellent). Thing with these books – those I’ve read – is that they’re retellings of myths. So when I saw that this was Ragnarok, the Norse myth of The End of Days, and that it involved WW2 – well, I assumed that the two were going to be mashed in a glorious Armageddon. That is, however, not what happened.
There are two parallel stories in this volume. One is a rough outline of Norse mythology from creation to the end of times, mostly following the antics of Loki, which is fair enough since he may have been around from the start and was largely responsible for the end. It’s a pretty straight retelling, as far as I can tell; Byatt has added in motivation and dialogue and the sorts of things that modern readers expect, but there’s no wild deviation into really exploring Loki or giving Loki and Baldur a steamy romance that explains the mistletoe episode. So while I enjoyed that, because they’re good stories and there were some details (like Loki’s parenting of the monsters) that had never clicked in my head before, it wasn’t really what I was expecting.
The second story is that of the thin child – as she is always referenced – as she is evacuated to the countryside during WW2, and is given a book of Norse mythology. It’s the thin child’s experiences of life during wartime, and of discovering mythology and literature – there’s a strong suggestion I think that this is heavily autobiographical. There’s certainly a sense that it is the thin child telling the Norse stories to the reader. This aspect was also quite enjoyable, although frustrating because it felt to me like it lacked depth. I think mostly I was disappointed that the connections between the war and Ragnarok were not made explicit. Byatt goes to the point of saying that the thin child’s father, a pilot away at war, has “red-gold hair” and is “like a god”… but makes no further connection to the idea that he, or the airforce, could be connected to Thor or some other aspect of mythology.
It’s definitely a good read, and I am definitely going to just down more Byatt. If you know nothing about Norse mythology this is a very good, and entertaining, place to start. If you’re looking for a Norse equivalent of The Penelopiad, this is not it.
Han Solo
What can I say, I’m one of those people who thinks that Solo is really the star of the Star Wars movies; I was very annoyed that eps1-3 didn’t make a reference to him, even something as small as ‘here’s this kid I’m teaching to be a smuggler…’.
Anyway, a friend was cleaning out her house of books and I became the recipient of a Rather Large Bag of Star Wars novels… and I have finally dipped my toe in. I started here partly because SOLO, and partly because of this article about the author, AC Crispin, having recently died. And I had no idea that AC = Ann.
So. Solo.
Look, this is not a novel that was ever going to win literary prizes. The prose is a bit clunky, some of the characters are a bit stock, and yes the overall plot is a bit hackneyed. BUT! But.
a) It’s SOLO. Who doesn’t want to know how the galaxy’s most loveable rogue got to where he is? Who doesn’t want to know why someone so rough on the outside actually has such a soft smooshy inside? (Much like a tauntaun…). Plus, how did he GET that tough exterior? How did he and Chewbacca find each other, and what about the Millennium Falcon? These are questions I really want an answer to. So, I’ll read the novels.
b) It expands the Star Wars universe. I think one reason why I really like the idea of the enormous number of tie-in novels is that they’re all set in the same universe, but they don’t concentrate on just one bit. The Zahn novels didn’t; this one novel takes the reader to a few different planets, and while most of them are (as far as I recall) referenced in the original movies, this book looks at them from a rather different perspective – and it still works. It’s a lot grubbier, mostly. Yes Solo is a smuggler in the movies, yes Tatooine is the planet-futherest-from-the-bright-centre-of-the-galaxy – but really you don’t see much of the seamier side of the planets, let alone of the empire as an Evil Empire. Contrariwise, Crispin sets a lot of her story in the criminal underground, or on a slave plantation. Some people are nice, some are downright rotters.
c) Gratuitous Star Wars references. Sure Solo’s miff-ed-ness at being called scruffy got a bit tired after a while, but still – funny.
d) It takes Star Wars stuff but it makes it different. There’s an elderly Wookee woman that Solo’s friends with, and there are clear parallels to Chewbacca (also with his non-human companion Muuurgh) – but it’s not identical. There’s a romantic interest and again, parallels to Leia but by no means identical, and indeed provides some rather thought-provoking points on why Solo reacts the way he does to Leia (abandonment issues). Links to the Hutts, being a pilot, etc – all of these essential elements are there, but Crispin does interesting enough things with them that it’s by no means ‘young Solo just imitates old Solo.’ And that’s cool.
Thus this novel was definitely light entertainment. It’s light because it doesn’t require an enormous investment of time or thought-process from the reader – although it does raise genuine issues and does not simply ignore them. It’s entertainment because there are pirates, and smugglers, and chases, and Han Solo.
Galactic Suburbia 90!
Listen to us via iTunes or over at Galactic Suburbia!
In which we present The Subgenre Report. Is the concept of subgenres meaningful to readers and writers, or just a marketing trick?
Which subgenres are OMG so hot right now, and which genre is doing subgenres better than spec fic?
In other news, Alisa hurls herself into crowdfunding with the baby clock ticking down to midnight…
Grimdark as a Young Man’s Genre? (do read the comments, seriously, that’s where all the crunchy discussion/challenge is)
The Rise and Fall of Grimpink
Culture Consumed:
Alisa: Continuum S1, crimeScene convention, plug for Kaleidoscope, Coode St Podcast ep 162 with Rachel Swirsky; Report from Planet Midnight, Nalo Hopkinson
Tansy: BBC Radio Neverwhere; Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, The Almighty Johnsons
Alex: Agents of SHIELD; Star Wars: The Paradise Snare, AC Crispin; Ragnarok, AS Byatt
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Bogarde
Once upon a time, I was 16. One 16-year-old Saturday afternoon, I switched on the television to discover a black-and-white Dirk Bogarde being sentenced to death by He-Who-Would-Be Rumpole (Leo McKern). I was horrified and mesmerised. And then when Bogarde declaimed “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” … well, there was definitely Something In My Eye. Such that my mother had to ask what the problem was, and when I told her Dr Simon Sparrow was on a tumbrel, headingfor the guillotine… she just shook her head.
I am of an age to remember when Friday nights were a Great Night for movies. My dad stayed up super-late with me once, to watch Breaker Morant, and had to almost physically prevent me from ranting and raving about the injustice of it all, because who does high-horse morality better than a 15 year old? Anyway, the ABC went through a period of classic British films, whence my introduction to Carry On. And after Carry On came the Doctor films. And Dr Simon Sparrow just stole my heart. (Seriously! Look at those eyes!)
All of this is the long-way-around way of saying that a few years after all this, my mother bought me a biography of Bogarde. That was quite a long time ago now. I have an unfortunate habit of appreciating the books she buys me but not reading them for ages. In my defence this is a BIG book – like 700 pages big – and somehow 700 pages of biography is different from 700 pages of space opera. Because I finally, finally read it. Hooray! And it took me quite a long time (like over a week).
I vaguely remember Mum breaking it to me that he was gay; I had no idea that he went on to have such a successful career as an author, nor that his film career was quite as… fraught.
The bio had some excellent bits in it. I was fascinated by the discussion of film-making in Britain in the 50s and 60s (and a bit horrified); the idea of Judy Garland and other such bright lights going over to Bogarde’s place for Sunday lunch kinda blew my mind. But there are some problems here as well. Firstly, and most annoyingly, Coldstream makes quite a deal of the fact that in his memoirs, Tony Forwood often appears as entirely marginal, sometimes only as a manager vaguely hanging around. The reality is that they lived together for something like 50 years. Coldstream makes this part of Bogarde’s fear of being outed as gay (totally reasonable in the 50s when Britain still had its laws making homosexuality illegal), but also part of his rewriting of his personal history. My main beef with this, though, is that Coldstream doesn’t actually interrogate Bogarde and Forwood’s relationship himself. I don’t mean that I wanted to read an expose of their sex life; I mean that I was left wondering whether they actually were lovers, or had an entirely platonic relationship or… what. Coldstream fell into the same problem – not entirely ignoring Forwood, but not properly considering his significance – that he accused Bogarde of. Which means there’s this huge part of Bogarde’s life – was he gay? Was he asexual? – that is ignored. And if you’re writing a bio, that should (I feel) be either part of the discussion, or completely left out, and if the latter then that needs to be spelled out for the reader. Especially in Bogarde’s case where his drop-dead-beauty was part of his appeal as a film star, and where his sexuality has been cause for discussion for a very long time.
My other gripe with this book concerns two really weird bits. One: Coldstream sent off samples of Bogarde’s handwriting to a graphologist. That’s someone who analyses handwriting and tells you about your personality. Um, weird. Two: the biography ends with a totally bizarre story of the people who bought Bogarde and Forwood’s estate in France being superstitious about a possession of Bogarde’s bringing them bad luck. Also, um, weird.
If you’re interested in film history, this is awesome. I’ve left it with my mum and I think she’ll get more out of it because she’ll know more about the people being mentioned. If you’re interested in biography generally this actually is quite a good one – it’s perfectly readable and Bogarde really did have a fascinating life, serving in WW2 then acting in theatre and films – and oh the drama (heh) around that – then going on to writing and public appearances.
Galactic Suburbia 89
In which we recommend books to buy as presents, books we love, books we made, and basically BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
Alisa’s picks: 2012; Trucksong; A Trifle Dead; Rosaleen Love’s Twelve Planets collection; the entire Twelve Planets suite (get them while they look the same! especially Love & Romanpunk)
Alex’s picks: Temeraire by Naomi Novik; Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal; Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin; House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds
Tansy’s picks: Glitter and Mayhem; Chicks Unravel Time; The Wife in Space; The Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy; Creature Court trilogy (Power and Majesty)
Culture Consumed:
Alex: Reap the Wild Wind, Julie Czerneda; Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
Tansy: Flying Higher eds by Michael Damian Thomas & Shira Lipkin [download free from Smashwords], Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time 1-4, Supurbia by Grace Randolph, Elizabeth Sladen the Autobiography, The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta
Alisa: Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal
BLATANT PLUG: Songs For Europe, two short plays about Eurovision & war by John Richards of Splendid Chaps & Lee Zachariah of the Bazura Project on this week only as part of the Melbourne Fringe.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Reap the Wild Wind
I read this thanks to a recommendation from Helen Merrick, who I seem to recall being a massive Czerneda fan. I understand that this is a prequel series, written after the world in question becomes part of a wider galactic network. Not having read the later books, I can’t say how an already-fan would respond; but I imagine there are some awesome moments of filling-in-gaps. Because it is indeed a wonderful novel, and I do fully intend to go and find the rest of the trilogy, and probably the later series as well.
Told mostly from the adolescent (unChosen, in the parlance of her people) Aryl’s point of view, this is a story of a world that – as far as Aryl is concerned – is entirely static, as it should be. One of the characters comments on Aryl and her people living in an eternal ‘now’ – and although that’s not entirely fair, because their lives do revolve around the season of harvest, it does make sense because their knowledge of history and their expectations for the future are exceptionally limited. But this is not, overall, a bad thing: Aryl’s family and friends live full, rich and generally rewarding lives. Without interference – and of course you know there’s going to be interference – the Yena live.
Aryl lives on Cersi, a world that is home to three different sentient species. Aryl is of the Om’ray, human-types who live in Clans in disparate parts of the world and who rarely interact with each other except when one of the boys leaves on Passage, drawn by a woman who has become sexually mature (there’s some mental communication stuff which makes this basically make sense). The Oud and the Tikitik are not humaniform, and they are more technologically advanced than the Om’ray – they swap the Om’ray for some things in exchange for technology. The Agreement is meant to guarantee stability (if not stagnation) between the three. But then things change – strangers come. And strangers are not accommodated within the Agreement, which sets off all sorts of problems between the species, and within them as well.
There’s a lot of things going on within this book. Biological sexuality is not something that develops in Om’ray but seems to basically be on or off, which is intriguing and means that sexual tension isn’t really an issue (well, it is at one point, but it doesn’t overwhelm the whole story); issues of difference, and allowances for degrees of difference, are central to the Om’ray story and whether Aryl can be truly part of her Clan. In sweeping terms this is both a coming-of-age story, for Aryl, and also a first-contact story – and that part I think is done very well done, because it’s neither entirely positive nor entirely negative. Part of the story is told from the perspective of a boy from a different Clan, and this allows Czerneda to show the different perspectives of the Om’ray themselves, within their general similarities.
I think this counts as science fiction, because the strangers are aliens and there are issues of technology etc. It includes elements of fantasy, too, which I think work nicely within the story as a whole.
Reap the Wild Wind is well-paced, with an intriguing world and winsome POV characters. Very enjoyable.
You can get Reap the Wild Wind from Fishpond.
Galactic Suburbia 88: Hugos
In which, Hugos. Get us at Galactic Suburbia or iTunes.
Tansy, Alisa and Alex gather only minutes after the Hugo ceremony to discuss the results! Because, HELLO: Tansy won one!!
Hugo winners
The Stats, Statbadgers!
Tansy’s Hugo Post
Culture Consumed:
Alex: The Adventures of Alyx, Joanna Russ; BSG rewatch yet again; The Memcordist, Lavie Tidhar; Firebugs, Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Alisa: KickAss 2; Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones; Ugly, Robert Hoge
Tansy: Fringe Season 1, Dorian Gray Season 2, Ugly, Robert Hoge
Plugs: Splendid Chaps Nine/Women, featuring Tansy: September 15
Glitter & Mayhem released and partying, glitter skate style.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Adventures of Alyx
No, I did not misspell my own name (although someone at work did yesterday…) – Joanna Russ called her character Alyx, and I have finally read the collection of four short stories + one novella about said adventurer.
The thing you have to know about Alyx is that although the name stays the same, and some aspects of the character remain the same, trying to establish an internal chronology for these stories is likely to bust your brain. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t have to work. Maybe it’s the same woman, maybe she’s a time traveller, maybe the name lends certain characteristics (like Julias in Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Love and Romanpunk) … or maybe Russ is playing, and it actually doesn’t matter. Although once you accept that it doesn’t necessarily work, making connections is a lot of fun.
These stories are different genre, with different approaches to narrative – what makes a narrative – so don’t go in expecting a cohesive whole. Of course, it is a whole in that Russ is doing confronting things with her female character: making her the lead, and not making romance important, and exploring reactions to women. That’s still a bold thing to do, and my edition of these stories was published in 1983; they originally came out between 1967 and 1970. I really wish I was alive to experience Russ As She Happened. And it makes me wonder who, if anyone, fills a similar niche today – and whether I am completely missing their stuff, for whatever reason.
I feel like a barbarian myself to admit that I did not love the first two stories. In fact, it took me ages to get through this slim volume because I was so not in love with the first one, and then the second, that I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy the rest. I persevered though, partly from an admittedly perverse desire to be able to say that I had read it, and partly because I knew that the stories changed up so I was hoping that I would come across stories more to my taste later on. And I did. Some of what comes below is my analysis of my own reactions to the stories, rather than a pure review. This might be dismissed as navel gazing; for me, it’s a way of working out how I work with Joanna Russ, such a powerful influence over what I’m interested in.
“Bluestocking” begins in a very self-deprecating way – “This is the tale of a voyage that is on interest only as it concerns the doings of one small, gray-eyed woman.” Not a great start? It gets subversive within moments, though, suggesting that the first man was created from the sixth finger of the left hand of the first woman… but our lady, Alyx, has all six fingers. Alyx is a pickpocket; she gets hired to look after a spoiled young woman. Then there are adventures, of a sort. There’s travelling, and bickering, and a sword fight. It is also supremely brief. I’m not sure whether it was that aspect that most didn’t work for me, but it certainly contributed – I found this story quite frustrating, with all its lacunae and its teasing and… something. “I Thought she was Afeard till she stroked by Beard” worked similarly on me. In this case, Alyx escapes an unhappy marriage; gets on board a ship and has a complex relationship with the captain; and is frustrated by the place of women in the world. I think it’s clever, but for mine there’s just not enough.
I should say at this point that there is more going on here than ‘just’ a narrative, especially in narrative connections; I know Russ is addressing Fritz Lieber, and others. I haven’t read any Lieber. Perhaps this is a fault in me, and the stories would be greatly improved with that background knowledge. But I know Terry Pratchett riffs off Lieber too, and I enjoy those stories; I know Mieville and Reynolds are riffing off others, but I still enjoy theirs too. So… perhaps it’s ok that I don’t enjoy all of Russ’ work? Maybe?
“The Barbarian” is a story that Gary Wolfe, in his essay in On Joanna Russ (… I think?? eep maybe I’m wrong…) suggests is the switch for Alyx between fantasy and SF, which is an intriguing way of seeing it. Here Alyx is again a crim-for-hire, but she doesn’t like what she’s hired to do and things go downhill from there. For me as a reader, though, things started going up. This story appealed more, although I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a simpler story but with more flesh, more detail?
Then – next – oh, delight: “Picnic on Paradise.” This was originally published alone, as a novel; I guess it’s a novella, by today’s standards? 90 pages in my little pocketbook edition. Alyx, a Trans-Temporal Agent brought from the ancient Mediterranean world to both the future and a different planet. She’s being used to guide a disparate group of tourists across a war-ravaged planet, to keep them safe in the most horrific of circumstances: no access to their technology. There’s an incredibly profound moment at the start, where one of the women asks why Alyx is “covered up” – wearing clothes. So Alyx takes off her shift, therefore mimicking those around her, which group promptly have apoplexy. Alyx is confused, naturally; one of them says that she is wearing her history, which they are not used to. This goes a long way to demonstrating some of the rather large differences between Alyx and her charges. The story is a straightforward one of flight, and fighting for survival: getting lost, getting hungry, literally fighting (nature, each other, etc). It’s Russ, and having read We Who Are About To… I wasn’t surprised that things do not go according to plan, in a drastic way. One of the remarkable aspects is, of course, that the leader is a woman. Making the hard decisions, being contemptuous, fighting – being well-rounded. The tourists are a motley bunch: nuns, macho men, wannabe robots, high-society ladies. They too have their chance to be well-rounded, to interact especially with Alyx but also each other. This isn’t a fun story but it’s a great story, an intriguing one, and one I am so pleased to have read.
The final story in the set is a difficult one in terms of “Alyx canon,” the idea of which I rather suggest Russ would either have rolled her eyes or laughed at. Because Alyx probably isn’t in it. Her descendants might be, but if you read this by itself you wouldn’t have a clue about her. It’s also frustrating me because I know I have read it – “The Second Inquisition” – before, but I don’t know where. Some anthology, some time. Anyway… this too is science fiction, focussed on a young girl whose family is hosting a very odd stranger, who leads the girl in all sorts of directions: physically, introducing her to other, even more strange people; intellectually, introducing her to books and ideas she has never encountered; and culturally, challenging a whole bunch of assumptions within the family and society more broadly. There’s also questions about reality and imagination going on here that I think I missed the first time through. Intriguingly I think this gets a little close to the ‘galactic suburbia’ stories that Russ dismissed, since the focus is very much a suburban home with the occasional break-in of the science fictional. At any rate it certainly makes a challenging and difficult-in-a-good-way conclusion to the collection, because it doesn’t fit neatly into Alyx’s adventures. Which is as it should be, because Alyx – as a woman and as a character – doesn’t fit anywhere comfortably either. And she wouldn’t want to.
Randomly Yours, Alex 