Amazons of Black Sparta: a review
My mother gave me this book for Christmas 2010, I think after hearing about it on the radio? I’ve had great intentions of reading it since then, of course, but until now they have gone the way of many other good intentions. The other day, though – at least partly inspired by Tansy’s post about ‘Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy’ (which also appeared over at Tor.com, although be warned that one of the first comments is ‘most readers of SF are men’ and…I don’t even) – I decided it was time to read it. (There’s also been a bunch of great stuff written about the historical position of powerful women, as queens and warriors etc recently, calling out people who say women have had basically no part in the Great Historical Narrative That Is Mankind.)
This is a book of history. It appears to be thoroughly researched and meticulously end-noted. Alpern constantly refers to his sources, comparing the differences in their perspectives and attempting to explain them based on time, possible prejudice, and other aspects. This is particularly relevant and important because the sources come from a span of two centuries or so, sometimes using second-hand sources, and occasionally coming long after the actual events.
The book is about genuinely documented, real-life warrior women, who were pretty much automatically called Amazons by European observers, in the kingdom of Dahomey, on Africa’s western coast. And these are not from some far-off misty time; no, they date from the late 1700s at the very latest, and last saw action against the dastardly French when those colonisers decided to fight against and take Dahomey… in 1892. They were experts at the use of muskets and spears and – my favourite – the giant razor: said to have weighed 20 pounds or more, it had a blade 24-36 inches long that folded into a wooden handle. It was wielded with both hands and was particularly good for decapitations.
It’s not quite the book I was expecting. I think I was anticipating that was more narrative-driven, but only the last quarter or so fits that bill. The first three quarters read more like a catalogue: the recruitment, training, weapons, and everyday life of these women. The narrative comes when Alpern documents the battles that the ‘warrioresses’ took part in – first against other local tribes for a variety of reasons, then in two set of skirmishes/pitched battles with the French.
There are a lot of fascinating parts to this book – like the fact that the women as warriors may have originated in them being elephant hunters, and the fact that Dahomey had a lot of symmetry going on with women having parallel offices etc to the male hierarchy. One awesome, somewhat incidental bit – and this is for the fabric fetishists – is that the warrior women may have been involved in creating a gigantic patchwork, along with other palace women. It was composed of samples of every type of fabric imported into the kingdom or made locally. At one stage it was apparently up to 400 yards by 10 feet, and exactly it was intended for is unclear. The other mighty fact in the story is that pretty much everyone acknowledges that the women were mighty warriors, as good or better than their male counterparts, and generally even fiercer in actual battle: like, they were the last to retreat, and on a couple of occasions it was only women who got past the enemy’s barricades. And before anyone even thinks it, apparently the enemy generally did not realise that they were facing women, at least in the early battles, so no it’s not because they let the women in (besides, they were CARRYING MUSKETS or other guns – who would be stupid to let in anyone carrying a GUN? (hmm, perhaps this is a little close to the bone today)).
A very interesting read, and a fascinating period of history in general and in specific.
Four Ways to Forgiveness, or, Ursula le Guin is the best
There is just no denying it: Ursula le Guin is one of the greatest writers of the last 50 years (at least), and I firmly believe that the only reason she does not get more recognition for her commentary on race, politics, and – especially – gender – is because she sets much of that discussion off world. But, as I’ve mentioned before, this makes the discussion both easier to read – it’s not my society being critiqued! – and harder-hitting, because when we see our faults in aliens… it hurts more, somehow. Or maybe that’s just le Guin’s genius.
So. Here we have four interconnected short stories (although if we’re being technical I think the last two are probably closer to novellas). We have two planets, Werel and Yeowe. Yeowe was uninhabited until the Owners on Werel decided to start mining and farming it, for which they used the labour of their assets. Yes, Werel is a slave-owning society, and a capitalist one (I see what you did there, le Guin – very nice indeed – Marx needs a little chastising sometimes). And within the hierarchy of owner/owned there’s a gender hierarchy as well, with women being firmly the lowest section of each caste. Sounding familiar? Well yes, except that here lovely onyx skin is the most prized, and the paler you are – the more ‘dusty’ – the more obvious your slave status.
Me, I’m one of the palest of the pale whitefellas around. No way can I presume to comment on how people of colour would react to this inversion. For myself, I’ll admit that reading the derogatory term ‘dusty’ did not at first make sense (I thought it was referring to them living in the dirt and dust); and while it was uncomfortable in the context of slave/free, it’s awesome to read stories wherein black is desirable and beautiful… and it’s not a big deal.
The four stories all deal with the same basic issue and time: the consequences of a revolt of the ‘assets’ on Yeowe against the Corporation who owned them: consequences for the Owners and the assets, for men and women, and for the alien Ekumen observers (this fits into le Guin’s Hainish cycle). For me, while revolutions are interesting and all, it’s the aftermath that’s really the meat of history. What difference does it actually make? How long do changes take and how long do they hang around? Changing the world is one thing; changing attitudes and desires and beliefs quite another.
The first story, “Betrayals,” is set some time after the Liberation, in a nowhere town on Yeowe. It’s the story that has least to do with the Liberation itself, although it comes about as a result of it. It’s a tale of two old people – and how refreshing is that? – dealing with being old, and the changes in their world, and how frustrating the world can be when you’re not able or allowed to make big changes yourself any more… but you can still make small ones, that do make a difference. Bitterness and growth and love. Also gossip, and the downfall of heroes.
“Forgiveness Day” comes first from the perspective of a ‘space brat’ – a worldly (hmm, or not; she doesn’t really have a world) woman of the Ekumen sent to Werel to act as an observer there. Being an observer on tight-knit, inward-facing and closed-mouth Werel was always going to be a difficult task, but having a woman in that position – going out, rather than staying in the beza (woman’s side); her own property, rather than a man’s; speaking to men as their equal – is yet another kettle of proverbial. Solly deals with it rather bullishly, which is perfectly fair and understandable. What puts le Guin at the pinnacle is that she writes Solly completely sympathetically for maybe a quarter? of the story, and then relates the next section from the perspective of Teyeo, her bodyguard, of whom Solly has a very dim view but who again comes across as immensely sympathetic, and casts some shade on Solly; and then the rest is the two of them in rather a pickle. It’s a commanding story of attitudes and cultural perspectives, and change in the face of necessity. It also starts opening up Werel society to the reader, giving hints and clues about how and why it works, which while not making it likeable begins to make it comprehensible.
“A Man of the People” begins on Hain, with a young boy growing up in a sheltered, insular pueblo… who eventually gets impatient with the local knowledge available and longs for something bigger. Nearly half of the story takes place on Hain as Havzhida learns about universal knowledge and eventually becomes a member of the Hainish delegation to Yeowe. While the previous story showed Werel from an outsider’s perspective, seeing Yeowe post-Liberation from such a view is revealing too, not least because the gender hierarchy has been replicated. The rhetoric of freedom, of liberation, is a complex one, and le Guin makes some offerings on how to understand it in this and the next story in particular. I think this story is my favourite, at least partly because it shows how power doesn’t have to come from violence, and subversion doesn’t have to involve deceit. And the characters are wonderful and varied, and Havzhida is a willing observer – not insistent on participation where that might not be appropriate. Which is something that some activists might do well to understand.
Finally, “A Woman’s Liberation” is probably the most difficult to read of the lot. The first is post-Liberation Yeowe, so at least the theory of freedom is present; the second is Werel, where there is no freedom for ‘assets’ but Solly and Teyeo move freely (mostly); the third is post-Liberation Yeowe too, with Havzhida moving freely and women beginning to do so. “A Woman’s Liberation,” though, is from the perspective of a bondswoman – an asset – on Werel. She is thus doubly bonded, doubly enslaved, both to her Owner and to the men of her caste. This makes for a sometimes-painful reading experience – not gratuitous, not unnecessary, but painful nonetheless. Things do change, as the name suggests, but le Guin does not hide the fact that changing official status is difficult, and indeed is only one step in losing the ‘slave-mind’. Rakam is a glorious character who grows and struggles and is unrelentingly honest with the reader. She’s inspirational.
These stories are complex and challenging and absorbing and frustrating because they do not fill in all of the gaps. By the end a general sweep of the history and society of Werel and Yeowe has been revealed, but there is so much more that could be written! This is one of the peculiar gifts of le Guin, I think – she does not tell us everything. Only what we need to know. Which is about liberation, and freedom, and individuality, and community, and love.
China Mountain Zhang
I’m conflicted about what to think about this lovely novel. On the one hand, there’s a part of me that thinks “it’s lovely, but it’s not that original.” This is partly because gay characters aren’t unusual in SF any more. Of course, there’s still not a huge number of them, so having a gay protagonist is indeed a good and challenging and different thing. I’m not sure what else makes this novel feel… familiar, I think, rather than avant garde or edgy; perhaps it’s that it doesn’t push the SF element, so the place does indeed feel close to home. And I usually like my novels to have that aspect of challenging edginess to them. Of course, this one does have those elements; they’re just not that outrageously obvious.
There are some novels that feel ‘pushy’ – I do hesitate to use the word, because of the negative connotations, but books like Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space sequence or Iain M Banks’ Culture novels are pushy SF; they make the SFnal features a front and centre part of the story, with the rest of the story necessarily incorporating giant AI minds or space ships. China Mountain Zhang does not make the fact that these events are happening at an unspecified time in the future an upfront-and-obvious part of the story; it’s fundamental to the events, yes, but McHugh unfolds it gently and quietly and innocently: “Oh, you didn’t realise my story was set in a post-socialist revolution America? What did you think was going on?”
The whole novel could be described as gentle and quiet. Even big events in characters’ lives are somewhat down-played. Even though the reader gets events from different characters’ perspectives, there is a feeling of detachment that lends a certain remoteness to it all; a certain in-the-larger-scheme-of-things attitude. Which in a bizarre way I think often emphasises the losses, especially, that each of the characters experiences.
This is in many ways a story of loss – actually a series of stories of loss. Half of the chapters focus on Zhang, the titular character, and follow his life across several years as he tries to find his way through the minefields of being gay when that’s basically unspeakable, of being ABC (American Born Chinese) when being Chinese-born is the way to the best jobs, and the other lesser and greater difficulties of growing up and moving around and fitting in. The alternate chapters do not always seem to fit in, although of course there are ties that bind. A kite-flyer who’s down and out; a goat-herder on Mars; a new-to-Mars immigrant; a Chinese-born woman in America. All with losses and experiences and fierce joys that are so different from Zhang’s but that clearly fit into this remarkable world that McHugh has created.
Because while Zhang is a compelling character, for me it really was the world-building here that fascinated and still has me thinking. I can well imagine that a non-SF lover could read this novel without being overwhelmed by the SF elements, which is for me always an interesting exercise to consider; yes there’s people on Mars, but the considerations of life there are generally so mundane, as of course they would (will?) be for any sizeable population, that you could almost overlook that. There are other SF elements that I really loved – like the system that allows a user to design buildings and other things – but really the most shocking aspect is the one that very little real attention until the last chapter: that little fact that America is now a Socialist nation, and has effectively become a client state of China. Knowing only a few Americans well, and having had very few political discussions with them, I am still well aware of how outrageous using the s-word to describe any aspect of their politics is. I cannot begin to imagine how McHugh’s book was received by the general public – if any of them were aware of it – in 1992. Just like I can’t imagine how people read le Guin’s The Dispossessed in the 1970s.
I really enjoyed it. It’s an easy read that sucks you in and gently smacks you over the head.
On reviewing classics and historical movies, or, I saw Argo
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it, about whether it’s necessary to alert people to possible spoilers for works that are regarded as classics, or that are based on historical events. Someone was apparently complaining, over in the comments for the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, about other commenters spoiling the story. I dunno; Pride and Prejudice has surely passed its statute of limitations on that sort of thing? And I do know of a man who was in Vietnam (as in, the country and the war) at the time of the Apollo 13 crisis, so when the movie came out, he didn’t actually know what happened – and initially thought it was fiction.
What about other historical events? A movie about Cleopatra? – she kills herself, spoiler! JFK? – the president dies! About WW2? – the Germans win!
Or other classics? Hamlet? – everybody dies! The Trojan War? – Hektor and Achilles die at Troy, while Agamemnon gets killed by his wife! (except that – what the HELL, Wolfgang Petersen? Seriously? What is Clytemnestra going to do now, live happily ever after with Aegisthus? You deprived yourself of making the Oresteia! Are you mad? I wanted Angelina Jolie for Clytemnestra, Helena Bonham Carter as Elektra, and Karl Urban as Orestes! Someone, make it happen…)
This line of thought has come about because I saw Argo last night, and my modern history is poor enough that actually, I wasn’t sure whether the hostages got out or not. I thought I knew, but wasn’t positive, and also wasn’t sure whether I wanted TO know before going in.
Overall, it’s a really wonderful film. Incredibly tense; my companion was anxious throughout the whole thing, because her modern history is worse than mine, apparently. I though the cinematography was just awesome and nicely done to feel genuinely early-80s. I’m not quite up enough on my rock history to be sure that all of the music was era-appropriate, but I was ridiculously pleased when they put on (actually put on, on a record player) Led Zeppelin (Levee’s Gonna Break, fwiw). I thought all of the actors were great, and Affleck was outstanding, even under all of that hair. During the credits, they brought up pictures of the actual people involved, to show that they had cast people (and, obviously, used good make up) to make the principles actually look like their person.
Except. And this is my one gripe.
Affleck’s character’s name is skated over, in the film. He goes by Kevin Harkins while in Iran; he does at one point tell someone that his name is Tony Mendez. I didn’t think much of it at the time. During the credits, there’s a shot of the real Mendez – Antonio Mendez. Yes, he would indeed be Latino. And Affleck certainly does not look Hispanic. So I really am disappointed that Affleck, who directed the film as well, didn’t have the balls to cast an Hispanic actor in the role, and take on a lesser role for himself; perhaps the section chief.
Also, I don’t know whether it was shot in Tehran (I’m going to go with ‘no’), but it certainly makes it look like a gorgeous city.
ASif! closes its… doors? pages?
It’s with a sad (albeit understanding) heart that I pass on the message that ASif! is closing down.
What? You don’t know about Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus? The website that started eight years ago with a view to reviewing Australian works of speculative fiction, and – perhaps most intriguingly – aiming to give most works two reviews, thus giving context and a broader perspective? Well heck, get over to what I still consider to be the new site (although I think it’s been up and running on WordPress for, what, a year? two?) and browse their wares! It has long since branched out into international works as well as national – not least I think because that’s what was sent our way by publishers – but it is still pretty Australian-heavy. Plus, there are retro reviews from the old site, so you can see what we were thinking some years ago too!
… so yes, I say our. I’ve written reviews for ASif! for… I don’t know how long. Some years. I could probably go back and see when my earliest review was, but that might make me scared. Or cringe. Whatever, it has been a tremendous experience. I’ve been writing the odd review for very many years (back to high school), but this was the first time I got the chance to do it somewhat-regularly. More than that, thanks to the email list… well. I allowed myself to get roped into Last Short Story some fewer number of years ago, which in turn led to going to this thing called a convention, and – yeh. Galactic Suburbia would be a different beast if not for ASif; I wouldn’t be on it, for a start, since I wouldn’t know Alisa or Tansy (I would have heard of Tansy, of course, because I already had, but it would be a far-off fan-girling).
Anyway. It is certainly the right call for Alisa to have made; she has the most incredible number of calls on her time, and has had for as long as I have known her. It makes sense to tidy things, and projects should definitely have end-points rather than continuing on just because.
No more reviews after the end of this year. Vale, ASif!
On the Edge of Infinity
Edge of Infinity is not especially concerned about Earth, but it cares deeply about humanity. It’s not blindly optimistic, but neither is it depressingly morbid. It cares about the little things and the big, it’s got romance and death, and lots and lots of adventure, set within our solar system but not on Earth. Also, space ships.
Pat Cadigan opens the anthology and immediately throws the reader into the position of deciding whether they can hack the displacement. “Nine decs into her second hitch, Fry hit a berg in the Main ring and broke her leg.” This, accompanied by the story’s title – “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” – is a very clear sign that Here Be Science Fiction; the sort of science fiction that requires the reader to do a bit of work, while trusting in the author that these things really will make sense. And, of course, they do; Cadigan is a marvellous writer who mixes the very weird with the quite familiar, and gently leads the reader to understanding where she’s going with her story. The unfamiliar language is used partly to warn the reader that this is not a situation they can just take for granted, but also because it’s entirely appropriate that language would change out there around the moons of Jupiter – perhaps especially, as in this case, when those living in an alien-to-humanity environment have themselves changed from the human standard, at least morphologically. Cadigan also makes some interesting points about how being “two-steppers” has impacted on humanity’s ways of thinking, especially with regard to binary decision making. At heart, this story is about choice: an individual’s freedom to make choices about their body and their livelihood and where they live. Just suggested in the background is also a broader discussion about political choice, too, with shades of James SA Corey’s Leviathan Wakes and Caliban’s War, about the place of Jupiter in the solar system. It’s a fitting opening to the anthology, flagging as it does many of the issues that resonate across the set.
Elizabeth Bear’s”The Deeps of the Sky,” which comes next, is the only story that focusses on aliens. Here again though the focus is on choice; Stormchases and his skiff have been out mining a storm for trace elements such as iron when a curious object appears in the sky, and he has to decide what to do about it. The plot is thus quite straightforward, but it’s the world building that makes this story an interesting one. As mentioned, it focusses on an alien society – probably living in Jupiter – and aside from the alien biology, the aspect Bear gives most attention is that of reproduction. Who gets to reproduce and with whom, and at what cost (…literally) is absorbing Stormchases, and therefore the narrative. And it is indeed different enough to cast a rather fascinating light on humanity’s own tendencies in those realms.
Bringing the anthology back closer to home (… again, literally) is James SA Corey’s “Drive”, a story that unfolds along two different temporal tracks: in one, Solomon has just taken off from Mars in his souped-up space craft; the other follows Solomon from his first encounter with Caitlin and their subsequent relationship. Like Cadigan, Corey envisages a solar system that is as uneasy with differentials in political power as it is with access to, and production of, resources. This provides much more of the narrative tension for Corey than it did for Cadigan; Earth’s attitude to Mars has an immediate impact on Solomon and his life. I’m excited to see stories like this one, despite its melancholy tone, because it puts the idea of colonising Mars squarely back into the realm of the possible, at least from an SF perspective. There’s no suggestion that it will be easy – quite the contrary – but at least humanity is there, reaching beyond our own troposphere. Somehow the idea of being out on Europa or Titan isn’t quite the same, even though the colonisation of Mars is generally a prerequisite of that further expansion.
Sandra McDonald and Stephen D Covey deliver “The Road to NPS,” similar to “Drive” in that it focusses on the issue of transportation – bringing to mind Samuel Delaney’s Nova, and the suggestion that once a civilisation expand beyond the solar system, transportation becomes the most important issue. For Rahiti, this presents a challenge he cannot leave alone – despite the threat, and very real danger, inherent in doing so. Rahiti is one of few antagonists of this anthology that I did not particularly connect to. I think this is partly because his motivation seemed to be entirely commercial – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it simply did not work for me. And he just didn’t seem like that nice a guy, overall.
The first AIs turn up in John Barnes’ “Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh,” where, intriguingly, AIs are therapists. For humans. Which is about the most unlikely role I’ve ever read them in. This is one of the most complex stories of the anthology, narratively speaking. The “I” is the AI, and the narrative follows multiple threads. First, and appearing sporadically throughout, is the narrator’s own musings on its own capabilities – specifically the difference in subjective time that it and its human interlocutors experience. It draws a comparison for one of the humans: that “the ratio of [its] cycles of information processing per second to theirs is about the same as theirs to an oak.” In response to which, very sensibly, the human (eventually) asks what an oak would think about… which doesn’t seem to be the point, but perhaps from the AI’s point it is. Anyway, the story is a fascinating glimpse into what that sort of processing power might do (brain the size of a planet, and so on). The rest of the narrative involves the AI musing on its interactions with two humans it has counselled. Laura and Tyward see the AI for different reasons – Laura because of Ty, Ty because of an ant (a mechanical one). Their relationship, shown through the AI’s interactions with them as individuals, is poignant and realistic, even though I think the conclusion is a bit of a stretch. Finally, I’d like to point out how hard it was to write this without referring to the AI as ‘he’. I think this was because its character came across so strongly, and as humanly flawed rather than a remote perfect artefact, that it seemed wrong for it to be genderless. As for ‘he’ – well, yes. Aren’t all robots male? (sigh)
Paul McAuley’s “Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione, Ring Racing, Fiddler’s Green, the Potter’s Garden” wins for longest title. It, as a title, also covers the most important things that Mai Kumal learns about when she travels to Dione, one of Saturn’s moons, on the occasion of her father’s death there. Overall this is a less a narrative, really, than a rumination on what humanity might do Out There, so far away from the safe little blue ball. Colonisation; extreme adventure sports; secretive colonisation; and outrageous, lavish works of art. This is definitely one of the more overtly optimistic pieces of the anthology. While it’s a bit sad that Mai and her father were estranged, this is set against a glorious back drop of humanity’s potential, both in terms of relationships and Grand Achievements. And I think it’s a wonderful dream, for that.
Taking quite a different tack, one of the narratively most straightforward stories is “Safety Tests.” Here, Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes a very normal, albeit still dangerous and necessary aspect of humanity + machinery – the idea of needing a licence – and explores it. In space. Using spaceships. Around an inhabited space station. Over the course of a single day, Devlin must deal with six quite different applicants for public piloting licences. Things progress from there about as Devlin appears to expect every day to progress. That is, poorly. There’s not much extra world building built into this story, but it’s the sort of situation one can imagine fitting into most any space-faring story (imagine Ellen Ripley or Han Solo going for their licences. I dare you).
“Bricks, Sticks, Straw” is my favourite story of all, so thank you very much Gwyneth Jones. Set very briefly on Earth, the focus is on four Remote Presence devices, operated by humans on Earth but physically located on the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Thanks to a solar storm, the link to those devices is severed, but the software agents… well. They continue to exist, and to operate, if in rather different ways from what their designers and operators would recognise. These manifestations are wonderfully thought out – how such software, designed to be intelligent and run programmes, might react to apparently being abandoned by their makers, and how they might interact after that happens. (It does make me wonder somewhat about the poor old Mars landers and rovers….) Sophie, on Callisto, is the focus of the story: she is both an array collecting data of the Jovian system; and a memory, or a remnant, or an avatar of the Sophie back on Earth. Of the four devices, she is the only one who both accepts this reality and thinks that getting back in touch with Earth is actually important. So this is the only story that does not imagine humanity having literally spread out through the solar system – yet, anyway; it’s also the story that feels temporally closest to Now. Sophie is delightfully engaging, and her concerns entirely realistic (within the bounds of the story, naturally).
Following a theme of Hannu Rajaniemi work in Jonathan Strahan anthologies (… that would be two from two, so maybe not a theme yet; the other one was “The Server and the Dragon,” in Engineering Infinity), “Tyche and the Ants” is the most magical-seeming of these stories, while – as the reader suspects throughout and has confirmed by the ending – having a very solid science fictional basis to everything; it’s the perception that lends the magic, not the action. It also comes close to the Jones story as being my favourite. Tyche lives on the moon, dividing her time between the Base, where she’s meant to stay, with only the Brain for company; and the place through the Secret Door, where waits the Magician and various other creatures. Her seemingly happy life is, however, disturbed the day the ants come to the moon. On one level this can be read as a poignant almost-fairytale; it’s sweet, if combined with some rather sad moments because of Tyche’s confusion. However, Rajaniemi does that wonderful thing of suggesting an enormous background to the story, without ever overwhelming the immediate story – and I now really want a novel set in this universe. Please. Because there are all sorts of ideas about humanity that are suggested at but not fully developed.
The main narrative thread of most of these stories so far (the Barnes is perhaps the exception) has encompassed a relatively short timeframe. Not so Stephen Baxter’s “Obelisk.” Beginning with the arrival of Wei Binglin on Mars, as he pilots the Sunflower in after a very difficult voyage, the story follows the next several decades of Binglin’s life as he adapts to Mars, deals with the brash American Bill Kendrick, and both watches Mars develop and assists in that happening. Binglin is an interesting character through which to explore this; he feels a great deal of guilt concerning the Sunflower, and he’s unconvinced, early on, about living planetside. His growth as a character works overall, and I can absolutely agree with how Baxter imagines Mars bootstrapping itself. And the fact that he imagines it as a largely Chinese endeavour is certainly believable, although there’s not a whole lot of Chinese-specific culture to be seen. However, I was troubled by the way Baxter dealt with Xue Ling, Binglin’s adopted daughter. The role she plays seems largely superfluous; certainly the apparent pull she exerts on both Binglin and Kendrick is not required to get them to do what they do. Rather she sometimes seems like an excuse. Her actions at the conclusion of the story were especially problematic, seeming not to fit in at all and feeling instead like gratuitous sentimentality on Baxter’s part, or as if there needed to be some big dramatic Thing to impart some sense of occasion to the story. It was unneeded and I think actually undercut the rest of the story.
Alastair Reynolds’ “Vainglory” is another story that uses two temporal tracks. In the first, Loti Hung is confronted by Vanya Ingvar, and asked some uncomfortable questions about her interactions with a certain Skanda Abrud; while the second is essentially Loti remembering exactly that interaction. While many of the central characters throughout this anthology have been engineer or science-y types (although not all, Tyche in Rajaniemi’s story and Mai is McAuley’s especially), Loti is quite different: she’s an artist. Specifically, a rock artist – someone who carves rock on a massive scale – we’re talking asteroids here. And I love the very idea of a science fiction story that focusses on the possibilities for art in the future, in these far-out locations humanity may find itself in (McAuley does a similar thing). The story is about one of Loti’s commissions, and it not turning out to be quite what she thought; and Ingvar investigating just exactly went on with it. The interaction between the two women is understated and believable, as is that between Loti and Skanda. Again, this quite personal story is set against a much larger backdrop of solar system colonisation, the arrogance of wealth, and questions of justice.
While transportation may be one of the major issues of solar system colonisation, as shown in “Drive” and ” The Road to NPS,” solar system habitation is going to be greatly impacted by something that already affects large swathes of Earth: access to water. In “Water Rights,” by An Owomoyela, this issue is front and centre after an explosion interrupts the water supply for many of the near-Earth colonies. This is of immediate interest to Jordan Owole because, as the owner of an orbiting hydroponics outfit – which naturally has a large reservoir – she’s now become of great interest both to the authorities and to independent orbiting homesteaders. Which is an uncomfortable position to be in, to say the least. While this sounds potentially depressing, Owomoyela pulls a beautiful turn at the end which nearly brought tears to my eyes, and makes it amongst the more obviously optimistic of the anthology.
The ultimate story in this set is from Bruce Sterling, and a weird one it is. “The Peak of Eternal Light” is set on Mercury – a Mercury with incredibly restrictive and quite bizarre gender restrictions, especially when it comes to marriage. There were moments when I, as a woman, found reading this story actively unpleasant; while Sterling may not (probably does not) accept the ideas presented here as worthy, and does indeed go on to critique them to some extent, it was still not an enjoyable experience. There are a number of instances where he veers very close to existing stereotypes that, in a futuristic setting – even with outre accoutrements intended to suggest perhaps that this is new and weird – were depressing to imagine continuing beyond the confines of Earth. Marriages are entirely arranged and intended to be endured, nothing more; couples spend time with one another in strictly regimented ways, and the women appear to live in the equivalent of a harem. The central couple, who refer to each other as Mr and Mrs Peretz, do begin to question some of the limitations placed on them; and I did enjoy the idea that the bicycle, which was indeed a revolutionary form of transportation in its time for women, would find a new lease on life on Mercury. This questioning, though, did not compensate for the overall image of life on that planet. I do not want Sterling’s vision of the future.
Overall, this is an awfully good anthology. And it’s very exciting indeed to read an anthology entirely dedicated to science fiction, and science fiction of what might be called the medium term future; not the immediate collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, nor the humans-spanning-the-galaxy stories (which I do adore, I’ll be honest). It’s an anthology that spans ideas, planets, concepts, personalities and the future of humanity. What’s not to like?
Caliban’s War: a review
This review will contain spoilers for Leviathan’s Wake, the first in this series.
Leviathan Wakes centred primarily around two characters: James Holden, somewhat reluctant captain of a fairly small spaceship who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then things got worse; and a detective straight out of the pulps, whose obsession with finding a missing girl took him all sorts of interesting places and got him involved in some very, very messy stuff.
When Caliban’s War opens, Miller (the detective) is gone, and Holden is trying to figure out what to do with his now-smaller crew on his very shiny, somewhat illegal and quite fast Rocinante. But events begin with two completely new characters. In the Prologue, a young girl is taken from her creche and shown a man who is not a man; in chapter one, a Martian marine watches her platoon get slaughtered by something monstrous, which doesn’t react like it ought to. Both of these events indicate fairly obviously that the molecule that caused all the fuss in Leviathan, and which crashed on Venus at the end of that novel – but clearly didn’t get destroyed – is Up To Something. And we go from there.
Mars and Earth are on the verge of war, while a little girl is missing. The political position of the outer planets and asteroids is of serious concern, as is the relationship between two crew members. What I really liked about this novel is that it manages to focus on the big and the small at the same time, without trivialising and without making one look pointless in comparison. Prax’s world is (quite literally) falling apart and he can’t find his daughter and this is a real, vital, and urgent problem that has to be dealt with. Meanwhile, how to keep incompetent politicians from muddling into a war – or, worse, deliberately starting one – consumes Avasarala’s night and day, as the assistant to the undersecretary of executive administration of the UN – a title that sounds empty but that really makes her one of the most powerful wheelers and dealers on the planet. These two plots get about equal time, and equal sympathy, which is a marvellous achievement – especially since they’re not the only parts in the whole. There’s also Bobbie, the Martian marine, and how she copes with being a survivor, as well as being turned into a political pawn; and Holden sticking his nose in where he knows it doesn’t belong, meanwhile maybe messing things up with Naomi. Plus, all of this is tied into That Alien Molecule.
The storyline might sound like it gets a bit complicated, but Corey (actually Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) keeps it well under control by cycling through the different points of view in distinct chapters, each of which is named after their character. I get that sometimes authors want the reader to be in the dark about who is speaking, but sometimes that’s just a pain in the butt, so I applaud this measure. The collision of the different plots, which you just know is going to happen, happens in occasionally surprising but consistently pleasing ways – it never feels forced, and the plots entwine and carry on organically, with individual threads not getting subsumed by what might be considered (by some) as more important matters.
Characters are one of the strengths of this writing team. Holden is the main carryover character, but despite the reader already knowing him fairly well he still manages to occasionally surprise, as he develops in response to new stimuli such as his position with Rocinante and Naomi and oh, his experience with nasty mutant alien things. Much of that development is for the worse, at least at first, but it’s real and sympathetically described – not just put in for shock value. Of the others, probably my least favourite is Prax, a biologist, and the one whose daughter is missing; he’s the least interesting exactly because he is so single-minded in what he needs to achieve. His personal degradation matching Ganymede’s is cleverly written, but I don’t find monomania that intriguing. Meanwhile, Avasarala and Bobbie tie for my favourites. Avasarala balances foul-mouthed, cynical, driven and obsessive politician with loving grandmother is totally believable ways, and makes me despair for world politics. Bobbie’s development is probably the most nuanced of all: she deals with the aftermath of her platoon’s destruction, with the tension between Mars and Earth, with politics she knows little about and cares for less, all outside of the marine corps which is the only place she’s ever wanted to be. There are some novels with shifting points of view where as a reader, I am tempted to skip some chapters to get to the interesting bit. That’s not a problem I faced here.
Finally, a note on world building. The tensions between Mars and Earth, and the Outer Planet Alliance, can be read to some extent as an extension of terrestrial politics over the last couple of centuries; Mars and Earth are superpowers, while the OPA are colonies beginning to buck the reins of their colonial masters. It’s not a straight transposition, of course, but the idea that some – especially Earth-based – politicians would attempt to treat the solar system as an extension of their own world definitely makes a sad sort of sense. Zooming in somewhat, Corey’s development of the way asteroids and moons could be made not just habitable for humanity but vital to humanity’s livelihood in space is beautifully detailed without being overdone. As is the fragility of those systems. And their vision of Earth? Brilliant – and one of the interesting points of optimism for the system as a whole, which I won’t describe because it would just take too long.
Overall? I enjoyed Leviathan, but this is even better.
The Shapes of their Hearts
Cyberpunk. I loves it. This is not one of the best, but it’s definitely an interesting idea: someone has a new revelation from God, and recruits followers; for various reasons they leave for a new world, but this is complicated by said revelation, so original dude has a scan done of his brain and this scan lives on as a computer programme to keep giving visions and explaining the revelation. Et viola: deus ex machina where you take an I-don’t-understand-Latin stance; a very literal ghost in the machine. Now add someone who wants a copy for themselves, but that would be illegal, and… here we are.
I do not understand the title.
The plot: is generally straightforward. The POV jumps around a bit, but not confusingly. There are a few twists in the tale, generally related to character revelations, and the conclusion was pleasingly both appropriate and not completely neat. It’s closer to a heist story than a quest, in the way the Object is sought after; the vaguely criminal, or at least not-completely-above-board, elements contribute to this feel. One of the problems for me is that there are some tantalising little side stories… but they’re only hinted at, never given conclusion or even fleshed out very much. And this was annoying mostly because some of them appear, at the start, as if they are going to become very important. But they don’t.
The characters: a good variety. (Hey, I think it passes the Bechdel Test! Woot!) There’s the kinda-cops on Eden, who each have troubled/secretive backgrounds but work well together (that makes it sound like a buddy-cop movie; it’s really not); a DaSilva (cloned bodyguard) and her employer; and an IT/weather tech on Eden who’s really not sure she wants to be there anymore. The POV switches between one of the cops and the IT woman, mostly, which works well. None of the characters are especially fleshed out – there’s some background here and there, but not a whole lot about motivation or interactions beyond the plot – and now that I think about it, I didn’t actually care much about any of the characters themselves.
All of this makes it sound like this is a novel not worth bothering with, but there are definitely some really great aspects – I did finish it, after all. If you’re not in to cyberpunk then it isn’t for you, but I really enjoyed the bits ‘online’, so to speak, with one of the characters stuck there and having to deal with their predicament – including hostile programmes and the possibility of being ripped out of the virtual world, with attendant physical ramifications. I also enjoyed much of the characters’ interactions, and the plot itself: it’s fast-paced, easy to read, and enjoyable. The world building isn’t wildly exciting or innovative, but some of the ideas that Scott brings out certainly are. There’s only a passing reference, but the issue of clones is fascinating, especially when they know what they are; she’s done interesting things imagining how the law might treat them. The question of FTL travel is barely touched on, but again is really interesting: Scott allows it, but with serious physical and mental consequences if you do it too many times. I would read a whole book that set out to explore that idea.
Long story short: I didn’t love it, but it doesn’t put me off other Scott novels (which is good, because I have at least one more already on the shelf…).
City of Illusions
Fulfilment of my desire to read all of Ursula le Guin’s work continues apace, but this did not actually move me towards my goal… since as soon as I opened it I realised that I had read it before (in a double with Rocannon’s World). However, my memory being what it is, I couldn’t remember details, so I just kept on reading.
City kinda fits into the Hainish cycle, but doesn’t really. It’s set on an Earth that has been a part of the League of All Worlds – the general background for the Hainish novels – but Something Has Happened, far back in the past, such that humanity now appears to exist solely in isolated enclaves that have little to do with each other, let alone to do with an interplanetary society. Some of the Hainish novels mention an Enemy approaching, and there is rumour of an enemy on Earth too, but their connection, if any – ?
The novels begins with a strange man wandering out of the Forest into the clearing of Zove’s House, which is something that just doesn’t happen. Additionally, he has weird eyes, as shown by the cover there – yes, like a cat. (Note: I think the blurb accompanying this edition is atrociously misleading.) He is taken in, and taught to live as a man, because despite being fully grown he has no language or any other capabilities beyond those of an infant. They give him a name: Falk, meaning yellow. Eventually Falk leaves, in the manner of young men who feel they have a quest to complete, and his travels take him to various parts of the world – meeting new people, most of whom are far less welcoming than his original sponsors, and eventually getting to the city of the Shing, who may or may not be enemies. And there he learns a secret….
I like this story a lot, for all it’s not my favourite. I always enjoy le Guin’s imagined future societies, and the things she sees continuing: here, for example, the Older Canon, Taoism, and the Younger Canon, which appears to be bits of the Bible; bits and pieces of technology; occasional random names (Kansas!). Her people are often sketches but for all that they generally feel real; Parth, Falk’s main teacher, is only in the story for the first 25 pages, but she is vital and vibrant and alive. The plot is also sparse; I have been known to describe le Guin’s work as exquisite pencil drawings, especially when compared to the lavish oil paintings of much modern fantasy. Anyway, the story certainly doesn’t fill in all of the details of Falk’s learning or his quest: after 11 pages, she skips five years – I can well imagine some authors taking the first book of a novel to fill in that time with everything he learnt! There are some clever twists along the way, but I don’t really think they’re the main point, somehow. The story is definitely important, but ultimately I think it is the vehicle for demonstrating Falk’s character, how he changes and develops and deals with situations.
An interesting part of the le Guin canon, for sure.
In the Mouth of the Whale: a review
I have not read The Quiet War nor Gardens of the Sun, so no doubt I missed some of the A-HA! moments that other readers got. But the promotional copy said this could be read as a stand-alone, and I pretty much agree. McAuley explains pretty much everything – eventually, in some cases – that is clearly a hang-over from the other two novels, and the action certainly seems to stand by itself. I’m not sure whether I am now spoiled for those other two novels, or whether this will simply give me a different way of looking at them. Because I certainly intend to read them, which may be the biggest endorsement I can give of this novel. It makes me want to read more of the same universe.
The novel is told from multiple perspectives in multiple places. There’s the Child, growing up in Brazil with what appears to be a fairly normal childhood, but which clearly is not – for a start she is referred to as “the Child,” and capital letters may as well be glowing and red as well as capitals; then there’s the fact that her part of the story is not told by an uninvolved third party or by herself, but by a ‘we’ who refer to the Child as “our dear mother, twice dead” (p4) and about whom too much knowledge has been lost. So, weird.
Then there’s Isak, who is introduced while harrowing a hell with Horse, his ‘kholop’ (possibly terminology from the other books?), and whose life is as esoteric and bizarre as one could hope in an SF novel. Something of an outcast but still devoted to his family and his job, talented, and rather good at getting into trouble and usually getting out of it. Hells are technological rather than spiritual, but there’s still something Dante-esque about them and their connection to the ‘real’ world.
Finally there’s Ori, who works “on the skin of the Whale” (p19), whose jobs seem as dangerous as Isak’s but with a lot less kudos. The Whale is a monumental craft orbiting… somewhere… and Ori and her kin are essentially enslaved workers, keeping it going for their masters. She’s got ambition but seemingly little hope of fulfilling it.
These three stories look, for a long time, like their intertwining is going to take quite some stretch of the imagination. But intertwine they do, of course, and it works. But aside from the plot, one of the very interesting aspects of this novel is the storytelling techniques used by McAuley. The Child’s story is told, very consciously told: the reader knows there is a narrator, because they break in every so often to comment on what is unknown or on various frustrations. Isak gets to tell his own story – he’s an active narrator, choosing what to tell. And Ori, the slave, is the subject of a faceless narrator, with no choice over what is told or not. Very, very clever.
The plot? Well, it’s set a long way in the future, and humanity has splintered into a number of different… I want to say genres, but that would be weird. I’ll go with subsets instead. They do not coexist peacefully, and there’s something that all of them want to control for very different reasons. And in their own way, the Child, Isak, and Ori all end up playing a part in the battle to control and use that object.
Each of the threads has some very interesting aspects to it along the way, of course. Through the Child McAuley explores a not-too-distant Earth, with gene modification and other such SFnal aspects but also family interactions and attitudes towards technology. Via Isak the theme of technology is continued, and how knowledge can or should be stored and used – and what it means to keep it safe. And in Ori the ideas of freedom and individuality are played out and explored.
Very enjoyable far-future SF, with quirky and fairly well-developed characters. Lots of fun to read.
