Wednesday book meme thing, actually posting on Wednesday edition

[missroserose]

...for once.

What I've just finished reading

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is one of those books you can't really discuss without discussing the ending; the last part ties together many of the themes raised throughout. As I think I mentioned before, what I kept turning over in my head was precisely what Tchaikovsky was saying about human nature. (Spoilers ahoy.) I mean, throughout this long, long history, we witness the (beautifully written) accidental growth and evolution of an incredibly complex spider-society on the terraformed planet—terraformed by humans, and accelerated in its evolution by a human-engineered virus that promotes empathy and cooperation between its carriers. Simultaneously, we see the last vestige (so far as we know) of humanity, driven by all our worst instincts (fear and greed), only barely make it to this planet—this planet that they've convinced themselves they're entitled to, because that's the only thought that's keeping them going. The spiders, obviously, aren't big on the idea of giving up their planet to a genocidal race, but rather than annihilate the humans and their clear potential, they re-engineer the virus to create that same sense of empathy towards their race, and infect the humans with it, thus ending the conflict and allowing both races to move forward together, their diverse viewpoints making technological and social leaps that one race alone could never have achieved. So the spiders end up being the more humane of the two, and saving the humans from themselves...and yet without human ingenuity, their race would never have existed, so in a way the humans save themselves (sow the seeds of their own salvation, as it were). I honestly can't decide—is Tchaikovsky pro- or anti-humanity? Pro- or anti-technology? Does he think humans are inherently good? awful? self-interested? Is this story a warning or a wishful fantasy? I genuinely can't figure it out.

In retrospect, I had to laugh—when I got to the Big Epic Space Battle (which is told from the humans' point of view, and thus keeps the bit about the reverse-virus secret until the last), I was saying to Brian "This is well-written, but I was really hoping for the Star Trek ending..." And then the book goes and directly references Star Trek in the epilogue, haha. And yet...while it was definitely more hopeful than I'd initially feared, I don't think it was a Star Trek ending; the whole point of Trek is that humans can be better, we can solve our problems through diplomacy and finding common ground with those we encounter, no matter how strange or alien they may seem. Clearly that's not what happened here; the humans had to be genetically altered to find that common ground, and something about that just...doesn't quite sit right with me. It smacks of coercion, and I guess I prefer stories where people choose to do the right thing on their own. Still, it's a hell of a story, and I certainly enjoyed it.

The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. A super-fun (if super-Victorian) swashbuckling adventure read, with heroes and villains and swordfights and escapes and all manner of derring-do. (Also precisely the right kind of book one can describe with the phrase "derring-do".) Unsubtle in the extreme; when the characters profess surprise that someone named Black Michael, possessed of an isolated castle far in the woods, turns out to be a kidnapper and would-be usurper, well...I had to laugh. I admit I mostly read it because I'm looking forward to KJ Charles' upcoming The Henchman of Zenda...and having encountered the characters that telling is centered upon, I'm looking forward to it even more now.

What I'm currently reading

I actually picked up The Master and Margarita again, and I think I'm starting to gain the thread of it—so of course the thing to do now is to start all over again, with a different translation! Actually, I mostly wanted a Kindle edition with linked footnotes, so I invested in the 50th Anniversary Edition, which also came with a foreword and introduction that've provided some useful context on Bulgakov's life as well as a rundown of the various themes and characters. So I'm more hopeful this time around (and having easy access to the footnotes is helping as well.)

What I plan to read next

Probably something at random I grab off of the shelf, virtual or physical...it all depends.

Comments

[cyrano]

I've never actually read PoZ, but I've seen both of the films. Pretty archetypical, and definitely chock full of derring-do.

And currently reading Scaramouche (about the French revolution around the Council at Nantes, a revenge story without so much gruesome detail). It's also pretty archetypical.

[ivy]

You are the second person today to mention "Children of Time" to me; I ought to add it to my library list. I also enjoyed "The Prisoner of Zenda", but didn't know about "The Henchman", heh.

[missroserose]

I'd really enjoy your perspective on CoT! I know asakiyume loved it, whereas I had much more mixed feelings about it (if you skipped the spoilers, basically I feel like the ending was sold as a Star Trek-style hopeful sci-fi ending, and it was certainly more hopeful than the way it initially looked to be panning out, but it had an overtone of coercion that didn't sit right with me). I'm curious to see where you fall on it.

The Henchmen of Zenda was apparently originally slated for release much later this year, but Charles had a falling-out with her publisher, so she's self-publishing it in a month instead. (My fan-brain is going "A whole month??" even though my business brain understands that's really not a lot of time to get everything like editing and layout in order.) Given the (comparatively) serious tone of her other work, I'm curious how she'll take on the Hope-esque swashbuckling milieu—although she's got a heck of a love interest in Rupert of Hentzau to propel the plot along, haha.

[asakiyume]

I remember seeing an old movie of The Prisoner of Zenda--it was a lot of fun. Just on principle a story called The Henchmen of Zenda sounds good.

Both you and my oldest daughter had much more mixed feelings about Children of Time than I did, though for different reasons. She and I had a great time talking about it, and I'm really enjoying your thoughts here.

I don't think I thought of the ending as being as coercive as you did; I think I saw it more as the nanovirus opening up a reality to the humans that they hadn't been able to grasp--as if they were given the ability to see into ultraviolet. I suppose if someone gave you the ability to see into ultraviolet, that's kind of coercive too (assuming once you have it, you can't get rid of it) because you're stuck with your new full(er)-spectrum vision whether you want it or not. But in the same way that in general we can imagine being endowed with something without feeling coerced, that's how I felt about the effects of the nanovirus. If anything, my frustrations (because even though I gushed about the book, I did have a few reservations) were more that I felt like the pre-virus humans were overly blind to the possibility of the spiders being intelligent--like Tchaikovsky amped that up, so the sense of conflict and stress would be high--but really I thought, wouldn't ANYone wonder/feel inclined to try to reach out? It reminded me of how in Vampire movies no one has ever heard of vampires and so has no idea of what's going on. Here, it was like no one had ever contemplated the fact that just because the things look like giant spiders and you don't like how spiders look, it doesn't mean that they're monsters. Although another friend of mine who read it said he thought that was partially why the fungi planet was in there--to prime the humans to see the spiderwebs in space as just disaster rather than intelligence.

I disliked the way Tchaikovsky had the characters think disparagingly about "monkeys," and I can see how that reads as anti-human, but I was thinking that the actual human characters were plenty sympathetic, for the most part, even in their fear--or maybe I just felt sorry for them? IDK--but I didn't experience the book as excessively anti-human, and I didn't really see an opposition between the spiders and the humans. I mean, plotwise, there was an opposition, for sure, but I didn't see that as Tchaikovsky wanting/intending people to pick a side, or doing so himself--although maybe he was? And maybe given the way the story is set up, it's natural to? But I guess I just didn't happen to do it myself and didn't happen to see that tension.

All this isn't intended as a "you're wrong!!!" or to change your mind--not at all. I like what you say and I am nodding my head. It's more just to show what my headspace was/is on the points you raise.

[missroserose]

No, please! I like your thoughts and reactions. There is plenty of space in my brain for alternative viewpoints on books—comparing reactions is one of my favorite parts of reading the same book together.

Actually, the way the humans thought about "monkeys" didn't really register with me one way or the other; mostly I think it was what you said—the fact that nobody in the human crew even thought to try reaching out, or even seemed to consider that the spiders might be intelligent. Like, I get that people who're in survival mode are not generally in the best frame of mind to do the hard work of crossing cultural divides. And once they made it clear that their goal was genocide, well, I had little sympathy for them, frankly they deserved far worse than they got. But still, it seems unlikely (as you say) that nobody had seen an episode of Star Trek, haha. It makes the crew of the Gilgamesh seem like a particularly unimaginative lot. And then when the author clearly thought this was a happy ending, whereas I saw it as a happy-as-it-could-have-been ending, well...yeah.

I was discussing it with Brian (he hasn't read the book yet, but doesn't mind spoilers), and he put it this way: "It sounds kind of like what might happen if the Federation had gone to the Borg and said 'there's this species that's murdering us, we don't have the ability to stop them but we know that you do—please go Borg them.' Which is a Star Trek I'd love to see and probably one that most fans would hate." I think ultimately that might be part of the problem—Star Trek comes (rightfully) under criticism for painting a particularly rosy view of humanity and aliens both, insisting that there's always room for diplomacy; but in the real world things go wrong, organizations don't always act in good faith, and people make mistakes. I've been reading up on statesmanship both historical and current, and foreign policy is just one giant mess sometimes. Nobody has the whole picture, you're constantly making decisions based on incomplete data, and if they shake out well you're a genius—and if it turns out you missed something key, well, you've just killed a bunch of people or started a war and you should have known better. Star Trek endings just don't tend to stem from that kind of imperfect decision-making.

[asakiyume]

I didn't fault the humans as much as you did for the genocide because they were clearly not recognizing (through their invincible ignorance) that the spiders were self-aware beings like themselves--they saw them more like dangerous vermin. I mean, that's uncomfortable too. But I kill ants in my house... I wish I could say I didn't, and if I could be like the spiders and find a way to redirect them, I'd much prefer that, but as it is, I do kill ants. So I guess I do make a distinction that way.

I know in history people have used language to equate their enemies with vermin to justify genocide. That makes me think two things: first, that people share a sense of wrongness about actual genocide and have to try to disguise it as something else, and second, that people didn't feel that way about wiping out things that didn't reach that standard. I'm glad we've broadened our sense of ... not sure what to call it: compassion/sense of fellow-creature-hood to a place where we also feel it's bad to wipe out other species, but I notice we haven't reached that point with things like the smallpox virus or the AIDS virus. I like the spiders' solution...

Tangentially, it made me uncomfortable when I thought the spiders were going to wipe out the ants, because even though the ants weren't individually aware, they had a kind of awareness en masse. But then the spiders didn't! So that was good/cool.

[missroserose]

That's a good and interesting point about recognizing fellow sentience vs. not, as well as actively dehumanizing a race by comparing it to less-sentient beings. In truth, I'm not a fan of killing vermin either, though I recognize the necessity of it; boundaries are important, and they'd attack me if I invaded their home. I try to use techniques to shore up boundaries as much as possible to prevent the issue in the first place (caulking cracks in the wall, for instance, or patching up holes where mice get in), but I've used traps and ant bait before. And our cats have no compunctions at all about killing invaders, heh.

That said, I think there's a reasonable difference between killing creatures that are invading your home and wishing you could kill *all* examples of a creature. I don't want all ants everywhere to die, they serve an important purpose. Same with mice, snakes, lizards, moths, and everything else we had invade our house (mostly in Arizona). About the only critter I feel that strongly about is mosquitoes; I recognize they have their place in the ecosystem but I HAAAATE those bloodsuckers Probably because there's just no negotiating boundaries with them. Maybe that's the differentiator (and why the humans were so happy to think of the spiders as vermin)—if something's invading 'your space', you're much more likely to be hostile to it. And it was pretty clear that the humans had a sense of entitlement about 'their planet', which is problematic in itself.

(Also, Brian just came out and asked what I was up to, and I answered cheerily, "Discussing genocide with my friend!" Because this is what I do for fun, haha.)

[asakiyume]

tea and genocide with friends ;-)