Story set in a Fallout-esque world where a knight comes to town to slay a "demon" (really a mutated human) and a local womanQuick, queer, and awesome.
Story set in a Fallout-esque world where a knight comes to town to slay a "demon" (really a mutated human) and a local woman is determined to stop him.
Too quick for me to say anything more with spoilers, but like everything Alix E. Harrow writes, it's worth the read....more
This was one of the more thought-provoking books I’ve read. I can’t say that I enjoyed it, per se, but it was excellent.
This is a 1990s science fictioThis was one of the more thought-provoking books I’ve read. I can’t say that I enjoyed it, per se, but it was excellent.
This is a 1990s science fiction novel set in a far future where humanities colony worlds, long-sundered, are reconnecting. Though everyone involved is human, there are nevertheless differences that have popped up on different worlds. One of the more drastic changes was on a just-newly-contacted world, where newborn humans are completely sexless and genderless, each with the potential to develop male or female. At adolescence, one set of characteristics matures, and one atrophies. And, in about a third of the cases, neither set develops, and the person continues without any gender or sex.
This book tells the story of Tedla, one of these “neuters.� Most of their world regards the neuters, more or less, as developmentally disabled; they’re near-universally assumed to be slow, dull, and in need of guidance by gendered men and women. They wear grey, are known as “blands,� are each in the guardianship of an individual or organization of gendered men and women, and are relegated to menial work. Except that Tedla has ended up on another world and received an education.
The story starts with Tedla arriving in an emergency care facility, having attempted suicide. The doctors are perplexed by Tedla’s completely genderless biology, and call in a cultural anthropologist to try to figure out Tedla’s story. We as readers gradually learn how Tedla came to the point of attempting suicide, in a story told in three parts. Parts of it are in the present, where Tedla is a person of great interest for various reasons as their homeworld makes its way into galactic society. Parts of it are Tedla’s recountings of their past. And parts of it are notes from an anthropologist that was part of the first contact team on Tedla’s world.
Now I’ve been referring to Tedla using the pronoun “they� as the currently-accepted gender-neutral singular. The book uses the pronoun “it� for Tedla, exclusively - everyone from Tedla’s world, including Tedla, insists it is correct. Tedla is neither male nor female, so “he� and “her� are both completely wrong. It makes many of the people in the book uncomfortable to refer to a person as “it,� and it makes *me* extremely uncomfortable as well - I kept wanting to say “just call them they!� But this is intentional on the author’s part; she wants to push boundaries, and being a 30ish year old book transgenderism was much less known and much less accepted (as far as it currently is) than today.
This book addresses a ton of topics. If I were to try to settle on a single theme for it, I would say this is a book about the societal problems caused by having an oppressed class, and the way that the oppressors tend to blame the oppressed for it. But it also has a great deal to say about cultural relativism, and about capitalism - the world in which Tedla tells their story has an economy based entirely on the commoditization of information, which is obviously relevant in our current world (I’d really like to hear Gilman’s current thoughts on this).
As I implied above, just because this is a great book doesn’t mean it’s an easy one to read. It very much isn’t. Tedla lacks genitals, but that doesn’t mean Tedla can’t perform sexual acts, or be used for them. Very strong content warnings here: sexual coercion, brutal sexual assault, and grooming are all major elements of the story.
A well-done, challenging, and extremely strange book (which is a compliment). I'm honestly not entirely sure how I feel about it, or even what I thinkA well-done, challenging, and extremely strange book (which is a compliment). I'm honestly not entirely sure how I feel about it, or even what I think it meant. Gonna need to ponder this one for a while....more
This was fun! Not as much fun as the movie (since it doesn't have Actual Chris Pine and Actual Hugh Grant) but that's a pretty high bar.
This gives us This was fun! Not as much fun as the movie (since it doesn't have Actual Chris Pine and Actual Hugh Grant) but that's a pretty high bar.
This gives us a nice look into the gang before the events of the movie; it was very enjoyable to see Edgin and Forge working together. Goes over a number of their adventures together (along with Kira, Holga, and Simon, of course), each adventure being a great idea for a D&D campaign complete with boss fight at the end....more
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