Rocannon's World by Ursula K Le Guin

The fact that Le Guin goes from this pulp fiction, science fiction, adventure tale on a fantasy planet to The Left Hand of Darkness in three years of publishing staggers me. The amount of work put into her writing impresses. But, come on, let’s talk about this book alone before the context.

Here, in her first published novel, Le Guin writes a science fiction adventure tale on a fantasy planet. The plot is simple: a beautiful native woman receives the curiosity of a lightyears distant scientist (Rocannon) when she shows up demanding an artifact from his museum as her cultural heritage, he then finds the research on her planet and people woefully under-cooked, he travels there to research with a team, then they’re ambushed by an interstellar rebellion and he has to hero’s quest his way through legends and myths of the world to find his unsuspecting enemy and get revenge, acceptance, a place in the world. Look, the plot rests on the tired standard of heroes questing, but she doesn’t muddle her language the way CJ Cherryh did with her slightly similar first-novel, Gate of Ivrel. Le Guin’s writing is clear and effective, but never anything spectacular.

"What I feel..." Rocannon began.
"Well?" Ketho inquired hoarsely, after a long pause.
"What I feel sometimes is that I ... meeting these people from worlds we know so little of, you know, sometimes ... that I have as it were blundered through the corner of a legend, of a tragic myth, maybe, which I do not understand."

Structurally, the book takes a turn after that initial noblewoman goes crazy and runs off into the woods from the lightyear time dilation. This shift is followed by Rocannon’s arrival, the revolutionaries' ambush, and the hero’s quest storyline. This shift almost works, because that noblewoman’s quest for the necklace was also a hero’s quest of a sort, and because Rocannon’s companions are all descendants of that woman, but the split in the narratives is still somewhat jarring. From research after I finished reading, it seems that first part was initially published as a short story, so I guess this is a bit of a fixup novel. But Le Guin takes pains to tie the two parts together through similar characters and themes, so it almost works.

Not all roads that lead down lead up as well.

On its own, the book is an entertaining page turner. Two moments stand out as unexpectedly saving the hero without being foreshadowed—deus ex machina in the escape from the flying people’s city and in gaining telepathy; though the latter is somewhat foreshadowed, sort of, I guess. But it’s a good adventure tale despite these two moments. Except that the pacing is slower and I like adventure tales with faster pacing, I would put this up there with other pulp fiction I like. If you’re feeling like pulp fiction, you can do much worse than this book.

"Take cover!" but could not move himself. The helicopter nosed in unsteadily, rags of cloud catching in its whirring vanes. Even as he watched it approach, Rocannon watched from inside it, not knowing what he looked for, seeing two small figures on the mountainside, afraid, afraid—a flash of light, a hot shock of pain, pain in his own flesh, intolerable. The mind-contact was broken, blown clean away. He was himself, standing on the ledge pressing his right hand against his chest and gasping, seeing the helicopter creep still closer, its vanes whirring with a dry loud rattle, its laser-mounted nose pointing at him.

But I know Le Guin’s strengths later in life are character development, deep exploration of themes without losing the book’s entertainment level, and solid wordbuilding that leaves the reader wanting more. So let me examine those strengths now. First, character development. Rocannon himself is well-realized, as is Mogien, though the latter is more a foil that helps her explain her world. This companion-character-as-worldbuilder technique functions well within this novel, but the focus is clearly on Rocannon. So, what can I remember about Rocannon? He’s compassionate, intelligent, and determined. He tirelessly works to help those around him, even when they don’t realize he is helping them. He isn’t looking for reward, but the self-satisfaction of helping others. Le Guin shows this through Rocannon’s actions, words, and interior monologues, helping cement him in the reader’s mind as a guy to be friends with, both when he is powerful and after the ambush leaves him dependent. It's Le Guin showing, not telling. The only critique that I have here is that she took a while to build his character. Instead of changing Rocannon constantly through the novel, he doesn’t change much, just the reader’s understanding of him changes. Some of his terrible experiences, like being burned alive at the stake for three days and surviving, are forgotten as they alter him not at all, while he seems to have come to this world with everything he needed to save it already present in his personality. This unfortunate writing choice is something Le Guin improves on later, but at least here she has a well-founded, complex character to start from here, even if it takes her the whole book to build that character.

He had intended to add, "Give me a couple of hours to get clear," but did not. If he were caught as he left, the Faradayans would be warned and might move out the FTLs.

Second, the depth of exploration and variety of viewpoints of Le Guin’s themes are legendary in her later writing and storytelling. Here the themes touch on death, cultures, races, and working together. There are few deeper themes or philosophical ideas, and little in the way of exploration, but Le Guin points out some questions that are fascinating. One is lightyears. As the time dilation allows the initial noblewoman to outlive her husband, and is completely out of her conception, this realization drives her crazy. This isn’t so much explored as noticed and brought up. It’s an interesting take on time dilation, but not terribly so. The second is communication: instantaneous communication across lightyears is possible, so is telepathy. But she really just brings these ideas up without delving into them deeply. So, in terms of her later tendency to explore themes deeply from different angles, here she just mentions themes from one or two angles, and doesn’t really explore their implications or how those themes would change characters. But they’re interesting themes examined from an interesting angle, even if it isn’t explored deeply and that angle is really just one angle. It’s a good start, yet not up to the par of her later works.

"How far a journey, Lord?"
His lips drew back and back. "A very far journey, Lady. Yet it will last only one long night."

Third, Le Guin’s strong worldbuilding shows up here through her tactic of involving off-scene developments, or an unexplored broader context, that influences the characters and story. For example, there is an explosion (the ambush), and Rocannon’s response (after mourning his friends) plays out in interior monologue, where he reflects that the revolution that had been brewing when he left civilization for this backwater world must have begun.
—This hint, this taste of a broader context can do two things. First, if it’s not followed up, it can easily feel like post-action explanation (ex post facto), which tends to feel cheap to the reader. You know, you spend a hundred pages reading the murder mystery, you get to the end, and it turns out the killer was really off-screen the whole time and there was no way you could have guessed who it was. It’s a let down. Second, if it’s followed up on well, this reflection can help build the world, and help the initial event achieve more surprise. Le Guin accomplishes this here: tracking down these rebels and destroying their presence on this world becomes the hero’s quest, the rest of the book. In other words, rather than explaining the event afterwards and then dropping it, Le Guin explains the event afterwards and then builds on it. Even helpful Rocannon becomes revenge oriented.
—One thing Le Guin consistently does in her later books and here in her first book, is to build the world—by which I mean her universe—through these aspects, through these glimpses that change people’s lives, that are built off of, that could so easily be asides but end up being key to the story and the characters. This is solid worldbuilding for Le Guin, and it was exciting for me to see her already good at that in her first novel. Not great at it, but good at it already.

They can send death at once, but life is slower.

In all, this is a fine first novel. I’m impressed with how somebody who wrote this could later write something as great as The Dispossessed, and my conclusion is that in order to break the rules, you need to first show you understand the rules. Now, I’m not one for rules of writing, but Le Guin here shows that she can write a page-turning novel comfortably, then later allows herself to experiment and try new things while still being based on that strong foundation. It’s a good trajectory that encourages me as a young author. In all, this novel is a good read, but I probably will not go back to it due to the shallowness of the themes, the lack of change in the main character, and, frankly, the quality difference between this and her later works.

The prisoner is the jailer's jailer.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

I knew nothing about this novel before opening it. This novel follows Shevek as he grows up, goes on sabbatical, and invents faster-than-light physics. The structure of the novel interlaces the chapters with ones leading up to and from the first chapter. In the first chapter, Shevek leaves Anarres for Urras, chapter two begins way back at the beginning of his life, chapter three starts from the end of chapter one, chapter four starts from the end of chapter two, and so on until the end of the novel. This structure provides a slow start to the second chapter, but things quickly build up to tensions that take hold and drive the book forward.

The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model.

While reading this, I found aspects of it reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Similarities in the balance between science, character development, drama, and action first tipped me off—hey, this mix is familiar from a later-published but earlier read book. As Rhodes delves deep into Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer, he includes biographical sketches that expand and contract based on their importance to the Manhattan Project or character. Yet he never loses sight of the scientific development, political drama, and action around the Manhattan Project.

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

Le Guin’s novel here predates this mix which favors biography but incorporates science, drama, and action. As Shevek works through the famine years, he is assigned to write up death lists, to decide which people will die and live—the post-bombing reaction of many of the Manhattan Project scientists is echoed in Shevek’s responses to questions surrounding this job posting. Of course, after I finished the novel and started looking around at information about it, I learned that Le Guin consciously modeled Shevek after parts of Oppenheimer. But this conscious modeling should never be an excuse, so was Shevek a believable character, or did Le Guin use Oppenheimer to get out of having to build all of Shevek’s character?

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” “It’s nothing to do with eternity,” said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. “All you have to do to see life whole is to see it as mortal. I’ll die, you’ll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun’s going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?”

Shevek’s introverted nature is deep and wide. His lack of attention paid during his formative years handicaps Shevek later on in life—he wins some and loses some, but never really knows why he wins or loses. Shevek is just Shevek, and he expects others to react to him, rather than changing how he acts to better influence others. Yet he eventually begins to realize and appreciate the influence and insights of others in his life. I see it like this: Shevek unthinkingly accepts Odonian communal truisms as a boy, ignores everything to focus on physics as a teen and twenty-something, then gains understanding into Odo’s thoughts and meanings through discovering people. As this surface-level understanding of Odonism stretches and frays, as Shevek realizes that truth exists behind the truisms, he starts to understand that other perspectives are beneficial to his own thinking and problems. At first he forgets the people in the usefulness of their perspectives, but after he loses the people and feels their lack in his life, he realizes that he has to put energy and effort in to get energy and effort out, and finally he starts to value people for themselves rather than what they can do for him or the culture. To be clear, every other character in the novel is Shevek’s foil. Shevek faces down the world. And Shevek is a complex, changing character who is fully realized within the novel. His consistent tendencies are not dropped because of deus ex machina moments, but they are modified by things like his being posted to be a death lister, his realization of subtextual human intentions, and love.

Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don’t see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can’t make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now and not now, we can make the connection. And there morality enters in. Responsibility. To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future. If time and reason are functions of each other, if we are creatures of time, then we had better know it, and try to make the best of it. To act responsibly.

And the novel is about that change in Shevek, about the journey from lonely scientific genius, to integrated member of a group. From not understanding his religious ideals, but holding them rigidly, to understanding the truth in them, and accepting his place in the world. The journey of enlightenment, in a sense. And that’s what makes this novel so keen. From a nominal anarchist to a real one. From a nominal Odonian to a real one. From a driven scientist who is on the brink of the great understanding of his life, to a scientist who has gotten that understanding and realizes what he has missed in the process.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

As noted above, the book—and Shevek’s changing—is about death, love, and the nastiness of humans. Though these themes are strong, Le Guin touches on many other themes and some of them are quite unique and well developed: anarchism and politics, collectivisation and personal property, gender relationships and the other, individuality versus and in support of the culture as a whole, interpersonal relationships, suffering and plenty, the creative process and overcoming barriers to it, introversion and hidden intentions, the effect of physical environments on personality and culture—this book covers a lot of territory.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

But where other novels cover a lot of themes without satisfying depth to any, Le Guin tends towards depth, exploring concepts from multiple angles through including actions and changes in characters that wrinkle those concepts. Instead of pulp fictional writing which often hammers a single theme home and merely mentions other themes, Le Guin designs each scene to allow themes to expand. Yet she doesn’t lose sight of what her characters believe, and this is where this novel attains greatness: these character and theme changes throughout the novel do not diverge massively, it’s not a clean break from introverted Shevek to partnered Shevek. Rather, Shevek goes through stages of introversion and reliance upon others, finally finding a balance in the latter chapters. This tendency of Le Guin’s to modify instead of discard earlier aspects of characters, to allow space for the transition to breathe, reflects the brilliance of her storytelling.

And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.

And her writing similarly rewards the reader. Instead of focusing on short, declarative sentences, she uses what declarative sentences there are as powerful transition points, as short summaries of understanding to both build towards and build from. Instead, Le Guin spends most of her words exploring topics and leading the reader to and from these transition points, these understandings. For instance, two sentences like, “I’m thinking like an Urrasti, he said to himself. Like a damned propertarian.” leads from a series of unanticipated realizations by Shevek about the nature of hidden intentions in those around him, and leads directly to the next few sentences which start to wrinkle and expand the realization of those two short sentences: “As if deserving meant anything. As if one could earn beauty, or life!” This immediate expansion shows how these transition points work in Le Guin’s writing, and she builds from them further to deeper exploration of their effects on Shevek and the world around him.

It’ll be explained. The great physicist was misled by a disaffected group, for a while. Intellectuals are always being led astray, because they think about irrelevant things like time and space and reality, things that have nothing to do with real life, so they are easily fooled by wicked deviationists.

Another strength of her writing rests on her ability to make characters feel alien. Though the aliens in the book are all humans from different planets, their views and personalities feel more alien than other science fiction books with exotic, non-human aliens. The nature of the Urrasti is significantly different than the nature of the Annaresti, and Le Guin never loses sight of that. She allows that difference to modify her characterisation of each individual. Though secondary characters are secondary, less focused on and less fully developed than Shevek, they feel different in their interactions with him and statements to him. Instead of changing both her writing of and the philosophies of aliens like Iain M Banks does in Matter, Le Guin changes only their philosophies, and it works. It kind of surprises me that it works as well as it does, but it’s a testament to her developed skill that the aliens feel so alien while sounding similar to Shevek.

My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.

So, yes, this is a great book and I already look forward to rereading it. On one hand, it’s just a tale of a pretty cush scientist discussing suffering, but there is so much more to it than that surface level story. The story is fascinating because of the support it receives from the depth of the themes, exploration, character building, world building, structure, and writing. It lacks incessant action, so the book isn’t for fans of pulp fiction, but it gains so much more by exploring interesting themes to a satisfying depth. I love this book.

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Outside of his short stories, my appreciation for Asimov remains pretty low. This novel helped me like Asimov more. I actually liked this novel more than Foundation’s info dumping and The Caves of Steel’s unbelievable police work. There were still some major problems with this novel—both in story and writing—but there were also positives that surprised me.

It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. [...] Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer.

First, the biggest problem: the verb “was” appears more than any other word in the book. Whole paragraphs only use this verb. The repetition of “was” bores as the novel continues, and I wonder that Asimov can’t be bothered to put more effort into the writing itself. This mono-verb-use betrays even the alienness of the middle alien section, helping the aliens feel human. I applaud aliens that feel alien to human readers, and these aliens do not, largely because the writing so rigidly utilizes “was”. Nothing has caused me to stop reading any novel more that poor writing. I almost stopped reading this one.

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

The book is composed of three novellas, and I think this novel shows how fixups can achieve cohesion.
—The first deals with Lamont discovering that the greatest boon to humanity ever, the electron pump, reflects the genius of parallel-universe beings, and not humanity—specifically not Hallam, who claims discovery and invention of the electron pump. Lamont also believes that the pump will blow up our universe much more quickly than Hallam believes. Through Hallam’s influence, Lamont is frozen out of important positions and outcast.
—The second novella deals with those parallel universe beings who exist in three genders that eventually melt together to form one. One of the three main characters wants to shut down the electron pump to save humanity, one of the others masterminded the pump in the first place, and the third tokens traditionalism. They eventually coalesce into a unified being that continues the pump’s usage.
—The third part of the book deals with humans again, as Ben Denison tries to escape earth to rehabilitate a scientific career shuttered by Hallam. Denison has similar concerns as Lamont and has been similarly frozen out by Hallam. He eventually wins the intellectual contest and gets the girl.
—I don’t feel that a fixup is necessarily a bad novel, and I’m actually pretty happy with this one as a fixup. One of the things that separates this fixup from bad ones is that these three novellas work together—they make sense to put together because they share a main theme and tension.

There's a certain drama in going down in a good cause. Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. But, Dr. Lamont, to do that one has to have a fighting chance. One has to have something to fight for that may—just may—win out.

The main driving theme in all three surrounds ideas of the dangers of scientific advances being exacerbated by the ugliness of people’s behavior. It’s like Frankenstein, but the monster is a machine and Dr. Frankenstein is still Dr. Frankenstein (Dr. Hallam here). Asimov does a good job creating and not forgetting the central tension of the electron pump destroying the universe—his writing’s focus on science means that it’s pretty detective-novel-esque how he doles out terms and explanations to readers. Yet he doesn’t belabor the point too much, and gets on with the story. You know, instead of spending 600 pages setting up the central problem of the book, Asimov does it effectively much more quickly, and then writes the book.

His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I’d say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop.

The one place where Asimov’s characterization really shines portrays the scientific community as a cut-throat place of backroom politics and conspiracies, most scientists searching for personal glory, and outliers appreciating scientific truths for their own sake. Considering the peer-reviewed, hierarchical nature of this scientific community, Asimov’s design of it rings true to human experience. When people are promoted for publicity and length of service instead of merit, these types of infighting always happen. Asimov did a great job here—Lamont being interviewed by the senator, Denison’s desperation for a fulfilling job in the sciences, Neville’s distrust of everybody but himself. This part of the storytelling or world building is the strongest I’ve seen Asimov do, though I haven’t read too much of him. Each of the characters reacts to this overall tendency in scientists in different ways—Lamont’s rage, the senator’s political calculations, Ben’s stoic acceptance, Selene’s spark to work around the problem, Neville’s secretive conspiring—they all end up different characters, but unified into a group by reacting to the same force of the group itself. I need to be better at this and here Asimov shows one way how. He focuses on the group dynamics in explaining character emotions. Like the following quote, which is Lamont reacting to the backroom politics of these scientists.

"I'm going to see Hallam again."
Bronowski's eyebrows lifted. "What for?"
"To have him turn me down."
"Yes, that's about your speed, Pete. You're unhappy if your troubles die down a bit.”

That said, the rest of Asimov’s characterizations are weak. Not as weak as other novels, but still weak. The characters are so consumed by their work that Asimov disallows them depth of personality. Selene and Ben end up in love, but this "romance" arises coincidentally, rather than naturally. I’m not even sure what either sees in the other—a break from the manipulation of her current man for Selene, and a nymph for Ben maybe? It’s thin, whatever it is, and it reads more like pulp fictional writing than an exploration. Dua ends up subverted completely by Odeen and Tritt in a way all to familiar to how women are consistently represented in fiction, again with no exploration at all—boring. Lamont’s great triumph is off-scene and the reader ends up as wistful as Denison that they may have been allowed to see this scene—probably because the rigidity of the novella structure Asimov set up disallowed him from going back to Lamont. And that’s a big problem. The structure might be a cool concept, a cool idea, but if it doesn’t let the author tell his story in the best way possible, why keep to it so rigidly? It hurts his building of characters.

“Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"
"As long as possible. Sometimes longer."
"What about you?"
"You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.”

The biggest problem is that the main tension in the book, people discovering that the electron pump will destroy the universe much faster than they had thought, gets forgotten by the end. This search for evidence drives Lamont, Dua, and Denison, but they never discover conclusive evidence. Yet the book assumes they have and concludes as if they have won, without the main thread of tension actually resolving. Instead, Selene and Denison solve the problem that should have been proven, while the problem is never proven. This plot-hole is gaping and obvious and I am stumped as to why any author would let that slip past them.

There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

In all, this is a better Asimov book than any I have read yet. Though big problems remain, at least I now have something other than his short stories to point to when people ask me about Asimov. I look up to his writing of group-individual dynamics in here, and I’m thinking of reading more Asimov eventually.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

Scattered is probably a fair way to describe what’s happening here. Two novellas build this book. And I think that split nature is a part of the problem: because the first novella deals with nudity, surprise, human savagery, and history, some of the more interesting aspects of the world as a whole are ignored or glossed over. These may lead to future stories, I see that there is a series following this book, yet when they come up in the second novella, they feel tacked on. While fixups are not inherently bad, Farmer puts the two novellas together poorly. The seeming lack of a shared theme further damages this book as a novel.

Know a man's faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.

The biggest problem lies in Farmer’s inability to clearly communicate conclusions to his themes. He’s dealing with some interesting issues: death, love, humanity as humanity, morality, religion, political science, history—Farmer brings up a ton of themes. Too many to adequately deal with all of the ideas he brings up. Scattered. And themes that would have been important to explain plot points—wanderlust, egalitarianism, warfare—are skipped over and implied instead of explored. That said, the theme of humanity as humanity is really well done, and I wish the rest of the book lived up to it. In short, Farmer states that humanity never really changes that much. From pre-homo sapiens to 21st century people, these resurrected characters are all given a second chance, and the first night is an orgy of rape and fear and murder. Humanity’s selfishness survives a second chance, in a way that reflects humanity as it seems to be.

The second biggest problem I see is that Farmer keeps talking in asides. Eventually plot points are dropped—Farmer spends pages dealing with the tension between Alice and Burton, but then they get together seemingly randomly, and the whole sub-plot is dropped from then on. The discussions of the characters create info-dumps, and their continuations are scattered throughout the novel. For instance, a 20th century Jew from America confronts Burton about a book he wrote that seems anti-semitic. They agree to discuss this later, but it’s a long time later when they finally do. And the weak payoff satisfies the buildup not at all. In short, the book rambles and trips over itself in the way the plot is paced and dialogue functions. Scattered.

The fortune of the man who sits also sits.

Farmer creates a couple of interesting characters, drawing heavily from historical figures. It’s uncomfortable, reading fictional representations of historical figures, as the archetype writes itself, and I’ve no idea how honest Farmer is being with these historical figures. I don’t need historical accuracy, but who is the intended audience? If it’s other Burton fanboys, then what does this book offer that I am missing, as a non-Burton fanboy? If it’s people who have never studied Burton, then a niggling question arises of who the historical figure was and how he is related to this fictional portrayal. There is an opportunity here, I think, but I’m not sure if Farmer’s method is the best or not. It works, because I don’t know Burton from Adam, but it’s a dangerous tactic.

The writing is pretty plain, but I want to lay the blame for that on the situation within the book. Namely, millions of people suddenly arise from the dead on a world constructed to observe their society and lives. Their newfound immortality and cosmopolitan situation—in both place and time—means that they have to teach each other to communicate, to get along. So, perhaps a plain language helps communicate this back-to-basics premise of the novel. Yet it doesn’t come off as strong wordplay.

Purgatory is hell with hope.

What can I take away from this novel, as a writer. First, the importance of some focus, some obstruction to the creative process, seems necessary to writing a better book than this. The scattered themes, conversations, and plots leave me unattached and largely uncaring. Second, the writing of plain language may be important to the premise, but the lack of beauty in the writing irks me. I wish Farmer had written better, while still retaining a plain diction—he pushed too far to one side in writing, and his writing ends up boring. Third, unnatural dialogue bores. These characters give five paragraph speeches like five paragraph college papers. No thanks—info-dumping substitutes for dialogue poorly. Fourth, the use of historical characters contains potential, but executing it requires great care. The redemption arc of Herman Goring plays as an aside to the main story, whatever that main story might be—and I’m not sure trying to redeem Herman Goring in the afterlife is the best move for any author. I will not be looking for other Riverworld books to read.

Conversation #1: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Introduction: This is a new thing on this blog: a conversation with a friend about a book we both read. Boru and I have spent thirteen years meeting once a week, every Tuesday night. We often discuss literature, or our other shared passions, over cigars. (By discuss, I mean shout at each other.) We also co-founded a monthly, structured, cigar and philosophy discussion group, TOOL, where a group of our friends does their homework on a film, album, or book chosen by a member of the group, then spends four hours talking about its ideas and craft. Tuesday Night and TOOL have both been beneficial in my own life, and I think in Boru’s as well.

This conversation is something new we’re trying. It may work, it may not. Here, we have both read a single novella for the first time, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. We pre-agreed to have a written discussion about this novella, which promises to be quieter than our usual shouting. Here, as I write these first lines of the conversation, it is a Tuesday night, and our usual meeting has been cancelled this week because of Valentine’s Day. Since I do not observe this holiday, I get to begin the discussion.

Letter 1
I chose this book because it won the Hugo for novella (17,500 to 40,000 words), so it was on my list to read. I know it’s out of your usual reading radar, being science fiction, but it doesn’t appear that apologies are in order—it isn’t a mess. Thank you for reading it with me. After reading it, I do want to discuss this with somebody. Having gone in blind, I'm pretty happy about that good fortune. But it’s also not the greatest book I’ve ever read. I’ve got a few things that I want to talk about.

First, I’d like to tackle a big question. Why science fiction? Not why in general, but why here specifically. A question I often pose to things I read is why they are in the genre that they are in—be it science fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, romance, comics, or whatever. It seems to me like the genre can both help and hinder a book. For instance, my typical example presumes that somebody wanting to write about the dangers of fanatical monotheism would lose half of their intended audience if they wrote about Christian Fundamentalism or Islamic Fundamentalism; writing about a made-up religion’s Fundamentalists through the lens of science fiction or fantasy would help the author not lose half of their intended audience. On the other hand, the marketing materials and covers of typical fantasy and science fiction novels certainly chase away potential readers—but in any genre, books that are more about the genre than the characters are typically bad. (Sorry, gathering my thoughts by typing.)

So, here in Binti, for what purpose is it a science fiction story? On one hand, there could be a genre-specific reason: science fiction rarely features people racist against other groups of humans. Science fiction is often optimistic—the Cyberpunk era being the only contrast I can think of right now. In Binti, Okorafor questions that inherent optimism, pointing out that magic spaceships aren’t necessarily going to solve humanity’s problems with getting along. It’s a well-made point, and one that revolves around her technology discussion, which is on a more applicable scale. She discusses different sources of technology: the earth-based Otjize and the unknown-based Edan. Both are equally miracle workers, one is ancient as dirt, one is frighteningly futuristic. I think she’s trying to make an argument I already agree with: technology is just technology. High-tech and low-tech are the same thing. Traditional methods and technological methods differ not at all. In other words, magic shrimp space ships aren’t going to squash human hatred, they’re just going to allow it to spread across the skies. But they will change, or modify some human problems: humans aren’t the big fish in Binti's galactic pond anymore, they’re just five percent and it’s not even the strongest or smartest or most powerful five percent. And I think that’s a potential reason for couching this story in science fiction: what better genre to discuss the ineffectualness of potential future technology than that? And while she's there, she'll just point out this massive oversight within the genre too—racism. However, I realize that this is a dense book filled with tightly inter-related ideas. Boru, you don't read as much science fiction so your head is probably clearer here. You tell me—if you would like—why is she writing this story as science fiction? What would have been uncomfortable for other genres?

Letter 2
I, Boru, am happy to be a part of this. I have found Tuesday night, and TOOL, very beneficial to my mental health. It will be interesting to translate those stimulating conversations into something less ephemeral.

I enjoyed Binti as well. And it isn’t my favorite book of all time. I think I might know why it’s science fiction, though.

The sci-fi element allows Okorafor to do a few things. It helps the oppression/redemption story to seem new. We’ve seen this in many mediums over the last 50+ years: slave narratives; apartheid stories; tales of the Civil Rights struggles of the 60’s; and so on. Although this tale has been told in science fiction as well (Enemy Mine comes to mind), the future setting allows for some details that might let it seem somewhat fresh. And, it allows the author to show bigotry and redemption across several arcs. She creates several groups that get to show their bigotry and then overcome (mostly). The Koush are prejudiced against the Namib, and shed this prejudice after Binti shows exceptional ability. The Meduse are prejudiced against the Koush, whom they see as representative of all humans. Again, through her exceptional abilities, Binti wins them over. And, the faculty at Oozma show colonial instincts toward the Meduse. When given evidence that they have transgressed, they return the Meduse chief’s stinger. Okorafor shows these different levels because she gets to create them. This structure would be harder to pull off with existing earth-bound groups. She also gets to externalize, and complicate, the effects of assimilation through the transformation of Binti’s hair. A more realistic fiction would be forced to either explicate this effect through bald exposition, or through lengthy character building. The first would be ham-fisted at best. The second doesn’t fit well with the idea of a novella.

In the same vein as the first question, I am stuck wondering why this was a novella. As you know, Anonymous The Younger (ATY), I’m down with a good short story. I don’t mind having some questions left unanswered. I’m a Carver fan, for heaven’s sake! Part of my mild dissatisfaction with Binti is that Okorafor left so much unsaid. We read much about the fears of assimilation–the warnings of Binti’s parents, the Meduse calling the edan “the shame”–and the physical effects, but we are shorted on how those affected process these. The story itself made me think that I would get some insight into this, but it never follows through. I know there are more Binti books, so perhaps the author decided to honor her commitment to novella and address this topic later, but it left this reader unhappy. I’m not asking for a 600 page revision (although that might be fun), just a little more of a glimpse into how Binti, and Okwu, deal with becoming part of a different community. What say you, ATY? Should this have been a novel?

Letter 3
I'm glad you brought up that comment about enslavement by Binti's mother. That was very prominently placed there at the beginning. But, no, this should not have been a novel. Mostly because the most awe-inspiring thing about this novella is its density. Most novellas try and make a single point, or at the most three. Here, Okorafor uses these interrelated themes that every action and scene exhumes further. More characters, scenes, and exposition would probably have bogged it down and dulled this razor-focus the novella has. Listing the four biggest themes I saw, it’s easy to see how mixed together they are:

—On one hand, it’s about Binti being physically violated without her consent, being used by others: the Khoush touch her hair at the spaceport; the Meduse sting her before replacing her hair with their own tentacles, okuoko, without consent. And both of these change Binti fundamentally, so they're not sensationalist lit.

—Another theme is the role of technology and nature: the Edan and the otjize are both wonders, one technological, the other traditional dirt. The Third Fish in a giant, spacefaring shrimp used as a ship, and made in a lab/shipyard. It's probably the central metaphor for this theme, though more time is spent on the other two examples.

—Another theme is home and uniqueness. At home, we are not unique, but in the larger world, we are all unique. This is more Binti's personal journey, as much as she's allowed to have one by the circumstances.

—But I think the most prominent theme, and the one most affecting to Binti as a character, comes from her mother’s prophetic words at the beginning about the university leading her into slavery. It’s the idea of colonization, empire, and its effects on one person. I would argue against your thought that this isn't drawn out enough, and say that by being written the way she wrote it, the inevitability of assimilation is shown effectively. And that's the point that Okorafor makes: thoughts and people are equally enslavers. As you know, while I was laid up in the hospital a few months ago, I read Sandman by Neil Gaiman. The basic premise is exhumed by Alan Moore like this:

I suggest that if reality were genuinely a simple matter of forensics, ballistics, and gross physical mechanics, we’d all have things a fucking sight easier. The distressing or glorious truth is rather that our fantasies are real things. They exist, albeit in an immaterial realm beyond the reach of science or empirical investigation. They influence our behaviour and thus influence the material world, for better or worse. In effect, fantasy is a massive component of reality and cannot really be discussed as a separate entity in itself.

(Of course, this is also what Moore is getting at in From Hell, but that's strictly an aside.) Where Okorafor goes with this premise is multifaceted. On one hand, the Edan and the the otijze both react to Binti's dreams in ways that explicitly affect reality. But more importantly, Binti is enslaved as equally by the circumstances to friendship with Okwu as she is by the thought patterns of her tribe, by being a scholarship student as she is by the school's intellectualism itself, by the Medusae changing her hair as she is by her father's artistry. She has so many competing ideas and ideals that a novel would have a hard time focusing. Okorafor explores these themes to a satisfactory conclusion, and something longer runs the risk of being as repetitive as Ayn Rand. So an intriguing balance between density and length is superbly achieved here, to me. It leaves enough mystery up to the reader’s extrapolation, but gives enough facts to guide that extrapolation.

Now, I'm not saying that the point is that this is strictly defined enslavement, but that the benefit for Binti is when she manages to meld the inner and the outer enslavements to accomplish great things, things that haven't been done in years. She uses the obstacles—because of both dreams and physical necessities—to find a path that fits her. From what we know of the loosely sketched other characters in this world, only Binti could travel this path. I take this conclusion that thoughts and physics are both reality as Okorafor's main argument in the book. But is this just a case of osmosis? Is this insight only because Gaiman's earlier work is on my mind since I just read it? Is this too much of a stretch for this text?

Letter 4
I see your point about the length of the piece—a deeper exploration of all the themes of the book would have been difficult to pull off. Okorafor, by hinting at each, gives the reader many points of departure for exploration of the topics without pushing said reader in any particular direction. I can appreciate that.

And I think your Moore-colored glasses make for an interesting frame for a deeper exploration. Okorafor is dealing with some heady stuff here, it seems. Why not structure a reading around a heady premise? This works as well a some approaches, and better than most. A less secular reading of Moore's idea would lead one to see a synthesis of faith (in the broadest definition) and fact.

Binti's faith in the beliefs of her community of origin could be seen as what gives the otijze it's healing properties. Her desperate need for survival leads her to "pray" to the Edan, and it comes to life. The use of math to put one in a trance that allows for a stronger connection to universal forces would be the best example of this.

I think this might be the bigger theme. How does a person use the tools of enslavement (using your broad view of the term), faith, and fact, to forge a relatively autonomous and authentic self? To examine the tools and make them his/her own? We see Binti accepting and rejecting these tools in her struggle to be her own person, and to survive. Accept the otijze, reject the isolation. Accept the academic quest for knowledge, reject the ivory tower patronization. Accept the desire to survive, reject the drive to destroy. If we accept all outside influence, we are enslaved. If we reject all outside influences, we are a slave to our opposition. We can't escape enslavement, but we can be aware of how it affects us and how we react. I almost wonder if Okorafor is trying to show a path out of colonial influence.

Letter 5
That's a great insight into the treeing Binti does, Boru. The treeing crosses the line between faith and fact in an intriguing way that initially had me quite confused. I think your conclusion is spot on, that Okorafor is forging a path out of colonialism. But... but the path she presents is one of Binti being useful to the potential colonizers in a way that doesn't betray herself. This contrasts with being a curiosity to them, as she was in the spaceport. This usefulness seems better than being a freak show exhibit. But having to prove your worth before being accepted as who you are is an unfortunate pill to have to swallow. Maybe that's just part of what being human is all about though, for everybody.

In a way, Binti goes through the typical path of the colonized through this novel: marginalized and used as a natural resource for luxury and practical items; a remarkably intelligent colonized person then rises up and accepts an invitation to be educated and trained, accepting because of personal reasons; then is enslaved as a freak by the Khoush, Medusae, and University; then proves a innate and unique usefulness that cannot be ignored; then trying to take on the best aspects of multiple cultures to actually forge a path out of colonial influence. Again, assimilation is inevitable seems to be the point. (Or "resistance is futile," I suppose.) In this way, Okorafor seems to suggest that the colonization cannot be reversed or ignored by either the colonized or the colonizers. But because the colonization happened, the path out isn't a path back or a path in—just returning home or becoming the Khoushest Himba wouldn't be honest to the experiences and would limit future potentials in life extensively.

Letter 6
Is it possible that Okorafor might also be giving us a glimpse into the mind of The Magical Negro? Your discussion of exceptionalism struck a chord with me.

From Mammy in Gone With The Wind to Bagger in The Legend of Bagger Vance, we've seen examples of the colonized bringing spiritual enlightenment to the colonizer. Always exceptional in some way, they transcend the bonds of servitude and patronization to bring growth and awareness to their "superiors." We see the story through the colonizer's eyes, so we see their growth and the influence The Magical Negro has on them, but we rarely get insight into the mind of the "noble" colonized. Baldwin and Wright, among others, have given us modern day glimpses of the internal lives of the oppressed, but their protagonists aren't "making things better" for their oppressors. In Binti, we have a savior of not just one, not just a community, but an entire galaxy of colonizers. She shows everybody the way to peace. And we get to see what she is thinking while she does it. We get her inner monologue, not the filtered view of those she saves.

Perhaps, by subverting this trope, Okorafor shows that the "exceptional" is more like us than exceptional? Maybe she's using something familiar to further humanize "the other?"

As you know, I love it when an artist turns a cliché on it's head. Am I reading too much into this?

Letter 7
Ah, this seems to be a referential piece that I was missing. Thanks for filling it in for me. Binti has the same effect as the magic pixie dream girl on those around her, but through hyper-rationalization and accident, rather than unthinking enthusiasm. She shows a better way, even though sometimes she may not want to.

I think that we are agreed on the themes, except that I still believe the theme of thoughts as reality is in here and emphasized, and you think that's a stretch.

So, one last point specific to her writing and storytelling, the reveal in this story seems to ape China Mieville’s typical tactic—though he didn’t originate it, he has popularised it, at least for me—in that it appears about third of the way through the story. But that’s where the similarities seem to end for me. As you wrote a while ago, here on this blog, his twists reveals the fantasticness of a situation that seemed mundane up until then. In Binti, the reveal rockets the story off in a new direction. And I don’t know if it works as well. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate reading new things and I hate writing rules, but a new thing has to be effective.

So, what does Okorafor actually do? First, she sets up the relationship between the Himba and Binti herself—Binti is a minority within the Himba culture, the one who seeks the stars rather than “preferring to explore the universe by travelling inwards”. Then she sets up the Himba-Khoush antipathy: the Himba are a minority group in human affairs that are at least regionally run by the Khoush. The Khoush differ extensively from the Himba, acting as a sort of aristocracy. Then comes the minor role humans play in greater galactic culture: only five percent of the prestigious university is composed of humans. So Binti is a minority within a minority group within a larger minority group. Perhaps I'm drawing too much on Martin Heidegger with these nesting worlds, but it seems to me that this layering is a difference between the way Okorafor and Mieville deal with their reveals. While they do similar things, the setups are so different that the end-result is different. Binti takes a left turn into destiny, Mieville's characters continue on the same path but with the reader having a new understanding of the context. On my second read, the bit before the reveal seemed less altered by the reveal than in Mieville. The first part was just reading along, understanding from revisiting those words rather than from knowing the end, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. In other words, Okorafor's reveal feels more like an injection into the story to switch its tracks into a new direction, where Mieville allows his pre-reveal language to give greater context to the same story.

Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven

What keeps bringing me back to these Larry Niven books? I think it’s the connections I miss in his sparse writing style that he then spins into future stories. For instance, the deus ex machina of the floating building in the first book comes back to help define some of the world building in the second and third books, even the sensationalist sex is expanded upon in later books (but not in enough depth to mean that expansion escapes sensationalism). It’s an awareness of every little detail, and a building off of it. With this super-sparse, jump-cutting writing style, every word matters. And Niven builds on single words in ways that mystery authors would be proud to have done—though mysteries often obscure important facts through wordiness instead of sparseness. In other words, it’s these logical connections between the world building and the storyline that I appreciate. It’s a believable world, for the most part; but that doesn’t matter as much as the way Niven presents it. These jump cuts leave me no time to contemplate: I read, Niven solves the problem, I keep reading. Yet if I put the book down, I too can apply my mind to this logical puzzle of a story and world Niven has created. And this fourth book scratches that itch—surprising as the third failed at that. This mystery is the flipside of his sparse writing.

Then he saw his own droud sitting on a table.[...]
So, a replacement. Bait for Louis Wu, the current addict, the wirehead. Louis's hand crept into the hair at the back of his head, under the queue. Plug in the droud, let it trickle electric current down into the pleasure center... where was the socket?
Louis laughed wildly. It wasn't there! The autodoc's nano machines had rebuilt his skull without a socket for the droud!
Louis thought it over. Then he took the droud. When confused, send a confusing message.

The same still cannot be said for the characters: these hyper-rationalist characters still come off flat and uninteresting. I understand that culturally top-down speculative fiction like Star Wars exists for solid reasons: the most at stake, ease of worldbuilding, being in the action, etc. But after four books where Louis Wu just happens to be kidnapped, tricked, or forced into being the savior, the mantle still doesn’t fit. He’s not nearly as smart as a Pak Protector, yet we’ve had Protector after Protector turn to him for advice. It fits awkwardly: here at least Niven notices this awkwardness and initially only brings Louis into the inner circle as a consultant on the Fringe War, but then his typical storytelling gets the better of Niven and Louis is planned to be part of a triumvirate of Protector rulers. It doesn’t fit what Niven has given us of his characters, as little as that is, so I still believe Niven writes characters poorly.

[T]he Hindmost [mourned]. "All gone. I lost my place as Hindmost chasing the Ringworld's wealth of knowledge. And those you spoke of, those you love, Louis, what of them?"
"I'll never find them. Hindmost, that's the point. Now let's fix that autodoc before something intimate tears loose inside me."

In closing, Niven writes interesting ideas, then doesn’t know what to do with them. He admits in this book that these plot ideas are partially taken from fan forum theories. It’s an interesting idea for an author to engage with his fans in such a way, but Niven may rely upon those fan theories too much. It makes sense to be inspired there, but to ignore building characters for four books makes no sense. I am surprised I read all four of these, but they were not challenging reading, they did not burn my brain. Pulp fiction. The worldbuilding ideas are interesting, but Niven takes them so far, that there is little mystery left to the reader at the end, and the books are not great. At least one review mentions that this novel seems more phoned-in paycheck collection than an inspired continuation of the story, and I’m not sure I could argue against that.

A number of Web sites have sprung up (well, at least two) whose topic is Larry Niven's fiction. In September 1999, tipped off by my lovely agent, Eleanor Wood, I logged onto larryniven-1@bucknell.edu. They were arguing about whether you can clone a protector, and whether Seeker and Teela Brown might have left a child behind. If they'd been right I wouldn't have seen a story, but they were off on the wrong foot, and I could fix it. After a few months of following these discussions, rarely interrupting, I had enough material for Ringworld's Children.

Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven

This book differs from the two preceding it by using a pair of plots. One plot, the first half of the book, is all sex and violence as a sex-solidified-coalition attempts to take down a vampire infestation that grew when Louis Wu boiled the sea and blocked out the sun. The second half of the book is Louis Wu picking a new head protector for the ringworld through pseudo-orchestrating a big protector fight. Niven attempts to tie these two together by having the goblins carry off a spoil from the vampire eviction that then seems to inform a part of the later protector duel. But this is thin, very thin, and it’s basically a fixup novel, composed of two short stories poorly linked together.

Two-tenths of night passed this way, I think. Then the wind swung around. I didn't notice right away: the vampire scent was gone, but we had our own smells by then. But Chit saw —"
Chit: "Vampires trying to creep upon us across the ice. They're not much darker than snow themselves."
Kay: "The wind went gusty and stayed that way. They'd get a whiff of us and look around, and we were conspicuous, I guess."
Paroom: "Ten tens of them."
Kay: "Toward morning they stopped coming entirely. We left a carpet of vampires dead in the pass."
Twuk: "There's nothing under the Arch like the stink of a hundred vampire corpses. They do avoid their own dead."
Vala: "Might keep it in mind."
Twuk: "We collected our cargo and our bolts and bullets at halfdawn. Vala, I think we *saw* the Shadow Nest."
"Tell it."
"Warvia?"
The Red woman didn't look down. "From spin the light of day flowed toward us while we were still in dark. We were exhausted, but I was at my post, here on the cannon tower. The clouds parted. I saw two black lines. Hard to tell how far, hard to tell how high, but a black plate with structures above, high in the center and glittering silver, and its black shadow parallel below."

Niven’s sparse writing style still comes off like a mystery novel at times. Implying heavily but making sure not to be too explicit. Jokes about William Shatner-speak would apply here, I think, but I’m not a trekkie so I don’t really know for sure. An appropriate analogy for the style is probably jump cuts between short scenes. For instance, when the vampires first attack, that is a tense scene: there are people disappearing into the night; blasts of light from the cannons; the confusing smells of alcohol, pheromones, and sulphur; an unsteady alliance (not yet sealed with sex) trying to not fall apart; a wife cheating on her husband; low ammo, confusion, death and destruction. And these hyper-jump-cuts work great. They give me a sense of the fog of war, of the desperation and frustration of this night-fight.

In every direction she could see pale hominid shapes. So little detail. You had to imagine what they looked like; and with the scent tickling your hindbrain, you saw glorious fantasies.
They were closer. Why wasn't she hearing guns? She'd reached Anthrantillin's cruiser. Up onto the running board. "Hello? Anth?"
The payload shell was empty.
She used the trick lock and climbed into the payload shell.
All gone. No damage, no trace of a fight; just gone.
Soak a towel. Then: the cannon. The vampires were bunching nicely to spin. Bunching around Anth or Forn or Himp, somewhere down there? It didn't matter. She fired and saw half of them fall.

Yet, Niven seems to really like these jump cuts and uses them throughout the book, in the ruminative and relaxing sections as well as the crazy battle scenes. As this tendency is embraced by multiple types of scenes, all of that conveyed desperation is lost because the jump cuts become normal.

Vala said, "The Grass Giants have crossbows. Why are they worried? Crossbows won't have the reach of guns, but they'll outreach vampire scent." The wagonmasters looked at each other. Anth said, "Grass eaters —"
"Oh, no. Elsewhere they're considered scary fighters," Whand said.
Nobody answered.

This novel explores the ringworld technology less than the prior two, but really starts to get into the ringworld ecology. Humanoid protector-breeders evolved over thousands of years to fill the niches in the environment left empty by the original protectors. Separate species fulfill various aspects of environmental health like the goblins eating the dead of the other species. That’s really what this book is about, Louis learning about the various bipedal species, sexing them, watching a group of various species take on the vampire problem, and then using his knowledge to pick an appropriate head protector. Any theme is going to be loose in this adventure tale, but I think a sense of putting the whole ahead of the parts is probably the strongest theme.

At some point the negotiations had become a swimming party.
A sword could be used on oneself. Just turn it around. Jump from the top of a rock?

So, again, I felt like some mindless adventure with an interesting idea or two, and this fit the bill well. A frantic pace to the writing turned pages, but nothing really burned my brain up after reading. The two big faults—the writing being too frantic and the book being an awkward mashup of two stories—really detracted for me. At least he tries to use the sex constructively in the novel, but it doesn't really come off that interestingly. I’ll read the fourth because, well, there’s only one book left to read. But if there were four or five more books in the series, I would stop here. The tight focus of the first novel is entirely gone, and I feel that this writing style matches best with a tightly focused book.

"Louis Wu, react."
Louis answered. "You've started something you can't stop. You've attacked two war fleets, three if you count the Fleet of Worlds. Political structures get old and die, Bram, but information never gets lost anymore. Storage is too good. Somebody will be testing the Ringworld defenses for as long as there are protons."