In the spirit of supporting my local library, I borrowed Isabel Allende’s ‘The Wind Knows My Name’. This story of generations of lost children, refugees, murdered parents and government led racism and misogyny is harrowing. Comfort comes in the actions of brave and loving adults who come together to help as much as they can. Samuel escapes Nazis and grows up in England, a beneficiary of the Kindertransport. Letitia and her father return from a trip to find their entire village murdered by government militia. Anita and her mother flee from a murderous man but are separated by USAian government policies. Their stories draw together slowly as hidden links and themes become clear.
By the time I’d finished the Allende book, the three sequels to Joan Slonczewski’s ‘A Door Into Ocean’ had arrived. I didn’t finish the fourth book in the series until earlier this month, but I’ll post them all in this month’s blog.
It’s entirely possible that late 20th Century feminist science fiction is my favourite genre. I felt truly happy whilst reading this book, and am slightly annoyed that it’s taken me this long to find out that ‘A Door Into Ocean’ has sequels. It’s like finding out that your favourite frock has pockets, but you didn’t know until the 20th time of wearing it.
So, Daughter of Elysium … in depth exploration of the problem of wanting to extend human life but also to have kids, lots of kids. Philosophical exploration of ‘compassion’ and who it’s owed to. What is sentience? Who is human?
To come from the first chapter of Book One, with pairs of Sharers visiting Valedon, twin planet to their own Shora, to decide if the human inhabitants were ‘human’ by Sharer criteria, to the last chapter of Book 2 where ‘humanity’ has just got a whole lot bigger, has been a vastly entertaining and interesting ride. I absolutely loved this book.
The third book in the Elysium Cycle has a much simpler plot than the first two books. Again, Slonczewski explores what it means to be a person, and at the same time looks at the evolution of individuals, species and societies. Two centuries on from the events of Daughter of Elysium, the story stays connected to the previous book via three long lived characters and a generational link with the Bronze Skyans who were central to that story.
Genetics and biochemistry again play a big role, along with more questioning of the ethics of terraforming.
I absolutely devoured this book.
And so to the final book in the series, which I’ve read 25 years late.
Brain Plague takes us back to Valedon, the planet where it all started. Sentient alien microbes have found that the human brain provides a wonderful environment, and they find a way to communicate with their hosts. For these tiny creatures, a year is just a day for their host, but they find a way to communicate. They are explorers and would be colonists, and symbionts with their hosts, helping them to work and create. Unfortunately, not all the colonies are beneficial to their hosts, they have discovered that manipulating a human brain to provide a dopamine rush can turn a human into a willing slave to unscrupulous microbial ‘masters’.
When a young artist is inoculated with a refugee colony, her life changes forever, and she finds new friends both within her own body, and with the community of ‘carriers’. She is recruited onto a committee that guards carriers against rogue microbes, and finds that she must act, as the brain plague masters grow bolder and more desperate in their need to recruit new host bodies.
I have loved reading these books, and will have a hell of a book hangover over the next few days. Late twentieth century feminist hard sf is very much for the win. The series explores what it is to be human, it looks at speciesism, environmental destruction, the inevitable conflict between longevity, fertility and environmental protection, and then brings the series to an awesome conclusion by turning human beings INTO the environment that needs to be protected from intelligent microbes with an overwhelmingly ‘human’ urge to breed and explore. I wish there were more books in this series.
