Regenesis by CJ Cherryh

1. This sequel to Cyteen starts near where Cyteen left off and discusses another year in the life of these characters. However, Regenesis assumes that the reader has already read Cyteen to the point where it doesn’t stand on its own very well. In a sense, this novel is a character study of Ari. This character study is driven by two things: Denys Nye dying provided the opportunity for Ari and the kids to take control of Resuene and organize differently than Ari I had; secondly, Ari II is different from Ari I—how different can she be without straying too far from Ari I while still retaining the benefits of her predecessor? These two are intrinsically linked: without being different, Ari II wouldn’t want to change things; and without things being changed around her, Ari II wouldn’t be different. These intertwined twins of conflicts propel the novel from being simply a chronicle of Ari to being an engrossing story in its own right. Also, Union’s post-war economy and politics have changed, and that rapid and unexpected external change is what these characters are dealing with. By the end, one realizes that it takes hard work, long study, and a lot of stress to retain the power of the parent in the younger child, no matter the privilege. This theme gets satisfyingly in depth. Ari reaps both benefits and detriments from her predecessor/parent: her predecessor was powerful, but not well liked. Ari has to deal with that while she is coming of age. It’s a satisfyingly complex and diverse theme and story that remains interesting and applicable throughout.

2. The structure here perfectly matches and tells the story.
—By slowing down the novel for the action—spending more time and words on the violent or complex days—Cherryh inherently signposts that those portions are important: the extra description of them, and reading time spent on them, communicates this. But she reinforces their importance through the chapter titles that tell the day and time of the chapter’s beginning—down to the minute. This labeling is a reference point, a landmark for the reader: even though the novel is chronological, pointing out the gap or lack of gap between documented portions of the story helps the reader keep track of the story. Again, like in Cyteen, this is a structural tactic that I rarely see used well, but Cherryh does by using it to cut out scene-setting in a novel that has a lot of scenes over its 592 pages.
—Simultaneously, she does not ignore the down-time. Cherryh uses it to allow a natural place for rumination, for the characters and the reader to reflect. She even summarizes actions of the last few chapters at times, in the characters’ minds, ending with a sort of, “What a day” conclusion. This helps explain the importance of the important bits, helps the reader know what’s going on and why the characters care. But more importantly, it allows Cherryh to draw meaning out in a way that feels honest to human psychology—sometimes the moment is too chaotic to fully understand the implications, but a little reflection can unlock a lot of wisdom.
—She paces the book well through this structure in order to not overburden the reader with too much rumination or too much action. Rather, the action and the rumination are split, like in normal day-to-day life, but the book is constantly going back and forth between the two instead of being all action for the first three hundred pages, and all rumination for the last. She doesn’t keep the pace up too high for too long, or too low for too long, instead allowing the chapter breaks to switch gears within the story and bring in a slower or faster scene—or to continue directly from the last chapter to increase the tension within the ongoing scene.
—This structure makes this book easier to follow, especially with Cherryh’s typical voice. Like in Cyteen or A Song of Ice and Fire, most chapters are self-contained and it’s a strong tactic.

3. Cherryh uses a third person narrative that typically focuses on one character. Her voice is so closely tied into the character’s thoughts that Cherryh will not describe what the character is seeing fully—if the character has never ran foul of security, they will not notice the security around, and the reader will not know if security is around. Or if the character does notice something, it’s probably important because it’s new, unusual, or a problem. This is something that I adore about Cherryh’s writing because it keeps the story moving along: through this voice, Cherryh focuses on what’s important—the actions, dialogue, and thoughts of the characters—rather than what isn’t—the specifics of the technologies, the mundane, and the non-informative stuff like going to the bathroom. There are things that are unimportant to stories and Cherryh’s voice is a perfect way to exclude them.

4. The writing allows places of beauty and places of efficient prose. This use of prose is common and Cherryh does it well here: the description of the new apartments are incredibly effective at communicating beauty through beautiful images and language. But other parts are efficient prose that concisely describe things that are not beautiful with more normal language. This variety is key to my enjoyment of Cherry’s novels because as it’s constantly changing, I am entertained by the variety.

5. Cherryh deals with the characters changing well: Justin and Ari are perhaps the two most significantly changed by the events in this novel. And though Justin is a new man by the end, part of the administration that was his antagonist for so long, he is still Justin and still influenced by his time as a consistent suspect. Ari is finding herself through the intense expectations on her and her otherness in being partly her predecessor and partly herself. By the end she knows which parts are her and which parts are Ari I, and she takes a number of conscious choices throughout the novel to utilize the best of both and become a middle ground that she desires. This example shows Cherryh using the science fiction cloning technology to make the coming-of-age narrative explicit. It’s a fantastic use of science fiction to take something we almost know and make it strange in order to explain it: here Cherryh illuminates how we deal with the beliefs of our parents as we come into our majority, discarding some as old fashioned, some as ill-fitting, and keeping what we agree with after we’ve had a chance to reflect on our own experiences. Justin and Ari are not the only characters that experience these changes—especially from the start of Cyteen to the end of this book—so this is a theme explored more than just how it relates to Justin and Ari. Cherryh does a great job at changing the characters in fundamental ways, but keeping enough of what was before that it feels psychologically honest.

6. There are a couple of points where the story seems to forget threads that are not resolved, but these specific dropped threads do not bother me because the book is a character study of Ari—let me explain.
—I could complain that the unrealized looming visits by people who were sent away during Ari’s childhood creates a dropped plot point, but I don’t think they actually do. The important thing to the novel is Ari’s realization that she isn’t that little kid anymore and these people have lived their own separate lives for more than a decade: they were not placed in existential limbo by being separated from her, they are complex humans who she does not know. This realization is incredibly important to the novel because it shows Ari that she isn’t the little kid anymore, as much as she is needled by Justin calling her a kid. It also slaps her in the face with her own ego: she is just a dim memory to them and her obsessing over them for years is a sign of her strangeness. It reinforces the coming-of-age theme and signals the beginning of the end of that process for Ari.
—Similarly, Yanni and Hicks are suspected of malfeasance by Ari, but are cleared in ways that are not as complex as some of Ari and Justin’s changes. But again, the book focuses on Ari, not Yanni and Hicks. Ari realizing that Yanni is not a threat is a big step in explaining Ari and her growing up. She shows that she is able to contextualize a person and realize what that person is in a way that children do not. Yanni is neither enemy or friend, but he’s his own person and agrees with Ari in some ways while disagreeing in others. To me, since the novel is a character study of Ari, this reason for dropping suspicion of Yanni satisfies the plot point of suspicious Yanni sufficiently.
—So even where the story seems to forget things or drop threads, they are used for what Cherryh is doing in the novel, for what is important to the novel. They are not forgotten, they are used and moved on from.

7. In all, Regenesis is a fantastic book, but it’s only a sequel—it assumes the reader has read Cyteen and it doesn’t stand well on its own. The fact that it’s not as popular now as Cyteen was twenty years before is a sign of how times and science fiction have changed. Nearing the end of the Cold War, this Eastern Bloc focus was on everybody’s mind, but is now not thought of as often.
—Meanwhile, science fiction has begun to reflect the political correctness of the culture today, and that means that the Azi, the human clones that are essentially a second class within the society, or slaves by most reviewers’ reckoning, are just not popular today. People have a problem with Cherryh not explicitly stating that she is against this slavery in the novel. She says that the specific people trying to save the Azi are more earnest than wise, but the morality of the Azi/Citizen culture is a big sticking point for a lot of people. Her voice is partly to blame here: her characters make money by selling Azi for altruistic reasons that their culture politically agrees with, so it’s somewhat understandable that they don’t want to question the morality of it—like Heinlein, her characters run away with the novel. As deplorable as their ignoring the issue may be, people do it every day and we should discuss it: wearing clothes made by slave labor, buying products when the store isn’t adequately compensating the provider, working for companies engaged in adverse business practices—these are things we all deal with daily. Cherryh tackles the mindset, not the specific problem. Shouldn’t we be conscious of these things and thinking about them? They’re important issues. I don’t think I should deplore the book because Cherryh’s characters live in and support a culture that I disagree with. I should react to their culture in healthy ways.
—But I think the issue is deeper than self-deception: the Azi are a necessity for the population booms needed in space expansion on the scale of this novel—people don’t want to move from their comfortable positions, so Azi fill the role of pioneers and their children become the citizen base for new cultures at new space stations or planets. Yes, Cherryh doesn’t include what could have been the interesting implications of the Gehenna situation and its international relations fallout; but on a smaller scale she deals with those issues throughout the novel. Also, the Azi inherently reflect the citizens’ beliefs and wishes and as they create problems—Paul with Jordan, Kyle with Gerrard, or Abban with Ari I—the author might be making a moral statement: Azi are an efficient political necessity, but too little thought went into the premises of that necessity argument to allow them to be problem free—especially in military Azis’ reintegration to society, but even in small things like Caitlin not realizing that Justin calling Ari a kid may be disturbing to a natural human of eighteen who has a crush on Justin. Olga Emory is deplored for the military mindsets she pumped out over a century in the past. Who is and is not frustrated in the plot probably indicates the author’s point of view.
—In closing, if science fiction isn’t where we can discuss a culture like this and learn from it, then where can we? I’m obviously not advocating more slavery in science fiction, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I am advocating freedom for authors to discuss ideas they find important through cultures that are different than ours.
—Where Cyteen was notable for gay main characters, Regenesis is deplored for Azi slavery, and that critical and fan response is a perfect snapshot of how science fiction has changed from 1989 to 2009. This is a good book, a great sequel, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending too much time reading it and not enough time doing my chores or being social. These are important issues and I’m glad Cherryh is bringing them up. She probably means to rub the reader the wrong way with them, and I love being asked to think about things.