science fiction

Review: The Limits of My World

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The Limits of My World, Gregory Coles. Loveland, CO: Walking Carnival Books, 2023.

Summary: A small group of people from two races encounter, and in the process, discover the challenge of communicating across two languages and a larger reality beyond their known universe.

Tei and Kanan are Fledglings hoping to be selected as Finals. Only ten from each class are selected, the rest being archived. Kanan is a runner who can complete a circuit of the Universe they inhabit in 17 minutes. Tei delves deeply into the archives. Both expect Kanan to be selected. Instead, neither are. Then something strange happens. They announce a special Final is to be selected, an Interpreter to learn the language of beings that exist in the world above, called Natchers. Tei, of all people, is selected, for his deep delvings into the archives, from which he will learn the language. Tei and Kanan have made a promise to find each other, but Kanan will be archived. Except she uses her speed to elude capture, finding herself in a meat locker among remains without the protective shell-like skin that has already been partially stripped off her.

Suddenly she finds herself in the world above with the “Natchers” except they don’t call themselves. They speak of themselves as humans, what Kanan’s race calls itself. The people she finds herself among call Kanan’s race the Cyborgs because of the shell-like covering called “skin” worn over what the “Natchers” call skin. She discovers why communication between the two peoples is so impossible–almost everything in one language means something else, sometimes just its opposite. “Sorry,” meant genuinely is considered a word of contempt.

Both Tei and Kanan, unaware of each other, learn that the two races depend on each other. Mahlah, a swimmer, leads a raid to obtain medicine desperately needed from the Cyborgs for an ill child, using re-skinned Kanan to gain access. Eventually Mahlah is captured by the Cyborgs and is “allowed” escape with Tei. Meanwhile, Tei has learned how a single group became two races, and that the Nothing beyond, is not nothing but a larger reality and end of a story they no longer comprehend. The contact Tei and Kanan have with the Natchers, and what they learn implicate them as traitors in the eyes of both races and yet point to truth both races desperately need to understand. As Coles writes, “Truth must be a fragile thing if it only survives in one language.”

Gregory Coles has done both some incredible worldmaking and explored how languages shape societies, and how truth is perceived. And as he puts it toward the conclusion of the work:

“The walls of the human world–the boundaries of their worlds–kept them from seeing the one sight that might have opened their eyes” (p. 322).

This is Gregory Coles first work of science fiction. It is the Foreword INDIES Award Finalist for science fiction in 2023, Kirkus Reviews Starred Pick, and a PW Booklife Editor’s Pick. I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty plot, the development of Tei, the descriptions of the Universe they inhabit, and the rich exploration of how language works. I hope I will see more from this writer.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Sea of Tranquility

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Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel. New York: Knopf, 2022.

Summary: Incidents of a strange hiccup in time over several centuries all have elements in common, including the appear of Gaspery-Jacques Roberts in various guises.

A distortion of reality, a kind of darkness, the sound of a violin, the hum of a train, and a whoosh recur in a number of places over several centuries, as does the appearance of a mysterious figure, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts.

He appears as a substitute priest to Edwin St. John St. Andrew, exiled to Canada in 1912 on remittances for careless remarks about colonialism. This after Edwin wanders in a forest near the village of Caiette, and witnesses this strange anomaly.

In 2020, Mirella visits a sound and light performance created by her friend Paul. During the performance, there is a video with the same phenomena. A person by the name of Gaspery-Jacques Roberts questions him about the anomaly afterwards. Mirella, trying to connect with a lost mutual friend, Vincent, through Paul recognizes Roberts as a man she saw in an underpass as a child.

In 2203, Olive is on a book tour on earth for her novel, Marienbad, the story of a pandemic, even as reports of a spreading pandemic trouble her and leave her counting the days until she is reunited with her children on the moon. But first, she must have an interview with a journalist interested in a passage where she recounts the same distortion of reality, the violin, the sound of the train, the woosh of a spacecraft taking off. And you guessed it–his name is Gaspery-Jacques Roberts.

It is 2401, and we learn at last about Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, who grew up in Colony 2 on the moon, the Night City, because of the failure of the dome projection system. He is named after a minor character in Olive’s book, Marienbad. After taking a hotel detective job in Colony 1 with the help of his childhood friend Talia, he enlists in The Time Institute after hearing his sister Zoey discuss the case of their investigation of the anomaly in Marienbad and at other points in time. It becomes his assignment, against the counsel of his sister, to go back in time and investigate.

But there are risks. The greatest is to change the timeline. The primary concern are changes that impinge on the Time Institute itself. And the classic dilemma of time travel stories arises–do you let bad things happen to people when you know what will happen to them? Do you do so even when you may be exiled in time, not allowed to return to your own?

The plot is probably not terribly original as time travel stories go. The novel recapitulates the pandemic story we’ve all lived (“We knew it was coming“). But the writing is gorgeous and spare and the relationship between Gaspery, his sister, and Talia particularly well-drawn. Each vignette is brief, sometimes broken into several chapters, moving first forward, and then back in time until we encounter the violinist in the railway station…

Review: To Open The Sky

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To Open The Sky, Robert Silverberg. New York: Open Road Media, 2014 (first published in 1967).

Summary: Noel Vorst’s new religion sweeps the Earth with its promise of eternal life, but Vorst’s plans extend far beyond Earth or even the near planets to the stars.

By 2077, the Earth has colonized Mars and Venus, terraforming Mars and adapting humans to live in the Venusian atmosphere. A UN functionary, Reynolds Kirby struggles with the high tension this high tech life creates, little relieved by temporary plunges into nothingness, or other pleasures. A new religion is on the rise, replacing those that no longer speak to the world Kirby lives in. They are called the Vorsters after Noel Vorst their founder. Their chapels are springing up in many cities, the central focus of which is the small cobalt reactor giving off a bluish light. Services follow a liturgy that is a pastiche of scientific mysticism with the promise of eternal life for followers. Kirby is drawn in, and over the years rises to become Vorst’s right hand man.

Meanwhile, another movement breaks off from the Vorsters, led by David Lazarus, until he was supposedly martyred. They are the Harmonist and they’ve succeeded where the Vorsters failed in establishing their mission to Venus. Vorsters who try either die from the vicious creatures on the planet or the inhabitants who want nothing to do with them, or they become Harmonists.

The Vorsters have advanced in extending life and the breeding of ever more effective ESPers at their Santa Fe center. The most visible sign is Vorst himself, who is still alive 100 years later. On Venus, the Harmonists have advanced in telekinesis with the development of “pushers” able to move things and people further and further. All the Vorsters efforts to train the ESPers to do this fail, often at the cost of their lives.

Then Lazarus is found in a nutrient bath encased and buried on Mars. The Vorsters bring him to life, only to turn him over to the Harmonists. It turns out that all of this is part of a grand plan of Vorst that extends far beyond Earth, Mars, or Venus, to “open the sky,” as it were, to the universe.

The question around this book is that of “at what cost” Is the cost warranted of the young lives wrecked, ESPers driven into insanity and a merciful death, “pushers” who are destroyed, all of these young and devout? Is this “religion” just the cloak for the ambitions of one man, as much as others seem to be helped?

In some ways, this book feels more timely today than in 1967, as we see many religious figures who have used religion to gain and abuse their power, and often their followers. In the human longing for something more, there is a great vulnerability, that may be twisted by the power, either tempting others who are needed to join in the quest for power, or to be used up and discarded by the powerful. In this, Silverberg may have been prescient.

Review: Parable of the Talents

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Parable of the Talents (Earthseed #2), Octavia E. Butler. New York: Open Road Media, 2012 (first published in 1998).

Summary: The growth and heartbreaking destruction of Acorn, the Earthseed community founded by Lauren Olamina, and how Earthseed rose from the ashes.

In Parable of the Sower (review) Octavia Butler creates a leader, Lauren Olamina, of a new religious movement in a dystopian America, and describes how she gathers a band of refugees into Acorn, a community formed around the principles of Earthseed. This work continues that story through the narration of Lauren’s daughter, who eventually, with the help of her uncle found her mother’s religious writings and journals, after being abducted as an infant by the extremist wing of a Christian nationalist group.

The chapters of the book begin with an Earthseed verse, then a section in bold print by daughter Asha Vere (born Larkin) followed by journal entries of Lauren that tell the story of the growth and heart-breaking destruction of Acorn, and what followed. Acorn was the place where Lauren and her husband Bankole built a community of refugees on his land and formulated the teachings of Earthseed, gradually drawing convinced adherents. Everyone worked and contributed, children were taught, and products of quality were sold in neighboring towns. She began to think about how they could send people out to teach Earthseed elsewhere. Amid this, the child they hoped for so long was born, who they named Larkin.

Meanwhile, Christian America, a church-based nationalist movement with political aspirations gained increasing sway in a country that wasn’t working. They brought order, housed the homeless, and their leader, Jarrett, became president on a platform of restoring American greatness by cleansing the country of all “heathen” beliefs. Her half-brother Marcos, rescued from slavers, refuses to join Earthseed, drawn by Christian America and his desire to preach. Bankole sees what is happening and wants to take Lauren and Larkin to a quiet town. Lauren refuses, convinced of the truth of Earthseed and the potential of a movement that would eventually take the human race to the stars.

Until, that is, the Crusaders, a radical arm of Christian America come, seize Acorn, imprisoning the men and women separately, and taking all the children away, placing them with adoptive parents, including Larkin. The adults were all “collared” with electronic collars. Bankole dies during the attack as does Olamina’s close childhood friend Zahra. They are supposedly being “re-educated” but no one succeeds in being released. Women are assaulted by their Christian captors and expected to be submissive.

How they escaped, overcoming their captors, and how Earthseed arose out of the ashes occupies the later part of the book. It comes down to Lauren’s “talents,” her abilities to lead and persuade people to follow, not blindly, but willingly. It also has to do with her “magnificent obsession” that she pursues, even when her brother won’t follow, or face the evils Christian America had perpetrated. Likewise, she seeks her daughter for years, but ironically, it is Marcos who finds her, misleads her about her mother and educates her, showing her love her adoptive family never did and her mother never could.

There is so much here. Butler presciently anticipates the Christian nationalism and demagoguery of our own day and its appeal, as well as the xenophobia of anything that is “other” and the subjugation of women. That is chilling. Equally interesting is her exploration of what it means to be a founder of a religious group, to know to the core of one’s being that a revelation is true, and how one cannot do other than pursue what one knows in one’s being is true. Persecution, the loss of family, and arduous work are all part of it, but also the forming of a community of the convinced.

Butler is a compelling but uneasy read. There are brutal and heartbreaking passages, but also much to provoke thought. In a sense, these books might also be parables that might come with the words of the greatest parable-teller, “Let the one who has ears, hear.”

Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein. New York: Ace, 2018 (originally published in 1966).

Summary: In 2076, Luna, a colony of Earth on the Moon, decides to declare independence, to end the one-sided grain export to earth that will deplete lunar ice reservoirs, under the leadership of a sentient computer.

In 2075, the colony of three million on Luna lives underground in a warren of tunnels. Many are convicts, former convicts, and descendants of convicts. Nominally, they are ruled by a Warden whose main responsibility is insuring the continuity in hydroponically-grown grain shipments being shipped to earth via the catapult. He’s largely incompetent, and the real brain behind Luna’s operations is Holmes IV, a supercomputer, that, unknown to all but a computer tech who listened and treated him humanely, had become sentient. The tech, “Manny” O’Kelly-Davis engages him and teaches him to joke.

As extraordinary as this relationship is, it is just the prelude to a series of events leading a body including Manny and the computer, now named Mike (short for Mycroft Holmes), to instigate a movement leading to a declaration of independence on July 4, 2076. Joining him is Wyoming (Wyoh) Knott, a female revolutionary agitator and Professor Bernardo de la Paz, who has recognized that Luna’s grain shipments to earth will use up Luna’s ice reserves in seven years, leaving the moon waterless and threatening the existence of the colonies. And Mike? He becomes Adam Selene, leader of the movement (as well his alter ego, Simon Jester, who loved to poke fun at Luna Administration as the impetus for revolution developed)

After independence, Manny and the Prof pursue a desperate course to head off an invasion from a vastly more powerful but dependent Earth. Despite their physical weakness due to living their lives in Moon’s low gravity, they go to Earth, even while they leave Mike and Wyoh to prepare an unorthodox defense of Luna. They hope to negotiate a peaceful transition to independence and a sustainable trade relationship that didn’t deplete Luna’s ice reserves, serving as ambassadors for Luna. Will proud Earth listen, especially the North Americans, or will they be as stubborn as the British monarchy 300 years ago? You can probably guess, if you don’t know the story. Will a war be necessary and will these scrappy revolutionaries have any better chance of succeeding? Mike had calculated their odds as one in seven.

The plot serves as a vehicle for exploring a variety of alternative possibilities–sentient computers being just one example. Line marriages address a two to one ratio of men to women, where one married into a line of interlaced marriages of men and women spanning generations and lasting over a century or more. Government, such as it is a combination of a function-driven bureaucracy and a cross between anarchy and libertarianism. The threat of being tossed out an airlock keeps most in line–the bad actors don’t last long. They develop a system of trade with little theft and where payment of debt is a high value. With the “harsh mistress” of the moon, perhaps they realized both responsibility and interdependence.

Of course, the most interesting question is what the relation of colonies on the Moon, or perhaps Mars, will be to Earth. More recent futurists and many in the space exploration enterprise have considered the colonizing of the Moon and Mars, particularly as life on earth becomes more environmentally tenuous. It is easy to think of Earth as the Mother planet. But if colonies become established, and people inhabit them for generations, what paths will exist to redefine these relationships to avoid interplanetary war? Admittedly, this is still a ways off, if ever. But Heinlein makes us consider questions that go beyond feasibility and technology–questions that in a way have always occupied us and need to be answered anew.

Review: Imago

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Imago (Xenogenesis #3), Octavia E. Butler. New York: Popular Library, 1989 (Link is to a current, in-print edition).

Summary: The concluding volume of this trilogy explores what happens when human-Oankali breeding results in a construct child that is not supposed to occur.

Jodahs is one of Lilith’s children with both human and Oankali parents. Up until now all of these “constructs” mature to be males or females with a blend of human and Oankali traits. This appeared to be the case with Jodahs and its paired sibling Aaor until they began to metamorphose. They didn’t smell right to the others. They were changing into ooloi, the third sex of the Oankali (referred to as “it”). This was not supposed to happen and was potentially dangerous. Ooloi could alter DNA at a touch, indeed the structure of anything, and an imperfect ooloi could unleash organic destruction on the planet.

The sensible thing was to transport to the mother ship. The family takes the riskier course of leaving the settlement of Lo to an isolated place to allow both Jodahs and Aaor to complete their metamorphoses. In the process, Jodahs encounters a brother and sister, Tomas and Jesusa, afflicted with painful tumors that will kill them and much of their settlement–but they are also fertile humans. Using its ooloi powers, which are not flawed, it heals them and bonds with them. They become mates and help it complete its metamorphosis. Aaor is less fortunate. It needs mates too, and lacking them, it goes formless with despair, and is danger of dissolving, not a good thing

This leads to a daring action. The settlement the brother and sister came from had kept its existence hidden. This could not continue. The shuttles would come for them. Jodahs realizes he can play a key role in helping them end resistance, choosing either breeding with the Oankali or joining the human-only colony on Mars. The settlement also offers hope of mates for Aaor. But they religiously hate Oankali, and especially ooloi. There is a good chance Jodahs, Aaor, Tomas, and Jesusa could all end up dead.

Butler explores the unanticipated consequences of colonizing a race. The settlement of Tomas and Jodahs represents the human passion for self-determination, which clashes with a more powerful race that neither succeeded in keeping them sterile, nor could let them, exist as they were. Is benevolent intent from one’s own worldview sufficient when it violates the self-determination of others. Is using one’s power to shape the decisions of others so that they will accept what they need to do to survive acceptable when their self determination will kill them?

The capacities of the ooloi also raise questions for humanity as we are witnessing the dawning of new genetic technologies such as CRISPR, capable of possible healing of genetic disorders, but also “optimizing” human genetics or even changing our genetic codes, giving us new capacities. The ooloi seem capable of making perfect changes. Would this be so for us, and would there also be unforeseen consequences?

I came to the end of this book wondering why the trilogy ended here. To say much more would be to leave spoilers, but I thought this series could go further. Others see the emergence of construct ooloi as the culmination of the process that began in Dawn. I can’t help but think this may have opened possibilities the Oankali haven’t anticipated. But we’ll never know…