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primeideal"It's not their fault they exist." In "A Desolation Called Peace," one of the characters says this about a species of space cats who have gotten into the vents of his flagship after a recent military engagement, and now, the ship just has to put up with them, because when you're a travelling warship you pick up strange but cute creatures in your travels, it's what you do. Hold that thought.
"A Desolation Called Peace" is the sequel to "A Memory Called Empire," and both novels sort of tell you where they're going in their dedications. In "Memory," the dedication is to people who are "falling in love with another culture that's destroying your own..." This is the context in which we meet Marit Dzmare, the ambassador from small Lsel Station to the vast Teixcalaanli Empire. Marit appreciates Teixcalaanli poetry, but feels like she can't really fit in there because she's from Lsel. But despite that intro, I thought the dedication set up the story to be bleaker/heavier than it turned out to be in the end. (Granted, I am working off memory from three years ago.) There was a whole lingering Chekhov about evil aliens in the background that never got resolved, though, so that's the sequel hook.
"Desolation," however, is dedicated in part to "Stanislav Petrov, who knew when to question orders." So already, for those of you who recognize the name (and/or Wikipedia it), you can guess where the book is going. Which means some of the rising action/inaction felt kind of redundant--like, yeah, we know imperialism is bad, WMDs bad, let's see some aliens.
There are several different plotlines; one follows Eight Antidote, the eleven-year-old Imperial heir. His tutor, Eleven Laurel, tries to teach him puzzles about the history of Teixcalaanli military conflict, and this provides an effective way to get up to speed on who some of the major admirals are and why getting promoted to a commanding officer might be a double-edged sword.
There's a general sense of "the military department doesn't trust the civilian intelligence agency, who doesn't trust the science department, who doesn't trust the postal service..." Which, as anyone who has worked in the government bureaucracy can tell you, felt absolutely spot-on, A++.
In physics/philosophy, there are several different variants of the "anthropic principle," which in some way boil down to "conditional on intelligent observers perceiving the universe, the universe has to be like it is, because if was vastly different, then we wouldn't be here." Some are tautological, some are stronger. First-contact books sometimes border on a medium form of the anthropic principle: if you're gonna have aliens, they will probably be very different than humans in many ways, but if you want them to influence the plot (say, by talking to humans), they need to have at least something in common with us, physically and mentally, so that we can communicate with them. A type of creature who lived on timescales that were orders of magnitude greater or lesser than ours is never going to be able to carry on a conversation with us. Finding single-celled organisms on another planet would be fascinating, and in a different subgenre "what will humans do when they meet non-Earth life?" could have carried the plot, but for a book about "can we make peace with the aliens," there has to at least be a possibility of intelligent communication, even if its forms are different from human language. So I thought some of the "oh no, they communicate, but they do so without language! And their sound waves make my ears hurt? Whatever shall we do?" panicking was unnecessary. Can't you at least copy-and-paste reproductions of sound waves on your computer without listening to them? Even Ryland Grace knew how to do that. :p And maybe it's just the linguist in me talking, but Earth linguists tend to keep tweaking the definition of "language" so that "anything sapient, self-aware creatures like humans do is 'language;' everything else, no matter how complex [bees wiggling!] is just 'communication.'"
The flagship where this first-contact and/or war drama is playing out is called "Weight for the Wheel." And I'm not quite sure I get the joke. Is it a pun on Farscape's "Wait for the Wheel?" The Hope Eyrie "weight of the wheel?" Daenerys from Game of Thrones who wants to break the wheel of history? Help me out here. (On the other hand, "I feel like there's a subtle cultural allusion here that's going way over my head" is an extremely Teixcalaanli mood, so there's that.)
Okay, so--you know how I said "Memory" was less preachy/didactic than the dedication primed me for? This one felt more so. Fortunately, the Petrovian "patience and prudence" approach wins--it would be extremely disappointing to make it through almost 500 pages and then not--but Mahit's struggles with Teixcalaan felt more lampshaded here (again, I haven't read "Memory" in three years and may be misremembering). Guess what, in Teixcalaanli "Empire" and "world" mean the same thing, so there are no real "people" outside the "world!" (Hi, Sapir-Whorf!) Guess what, Teixcalaanli people tend to call anyone who isn't Teixcalaanli "barbarians," and that's bad! Guess what, Mahit enjoys Teixcalaanli poetry, and hates herself for it, because she'll never be accepted like a real Teixcalaanli! What's the point.
Space cats are cute and adorable. And you can't blame them for existing, because it's not their fault. However--and I recognize that this probably says more about me than the book--you also can't keep raising the Reverse George Bailey problem and kicking it down the road. If you feel like you should jump off a bridge, you can maybe wish you'd never been born and hopefully an angel will persuade you of the error of your ways. If you actually feel like you, or your culture, or your empire, ought to never have been born, what are you supposed to do? If there's anyone who has that answer, they're probably not writing science fiction novels.
Oh uhhhh I almost forgot bingo. Set In Space, Readalong. "Memory" is on the /r/fantasy LGBTQIA list so this might count as a sequel even though it came out later? I don't think there's enough of an alien setting to count as "weird ecology," although the aliens themselves are weird biological creatures.
"A Desolation Called Peace" is the sequel to "A Memory Called Empire," and both novels sort of tell you where they're going in their dedications. In "Memory," the dedication is to people who are "falling in love with another culture that's destroying your own..." This is the context in which we meet Marit Dzmare, the ambassador from small Lsel Station to the vast Teixcalaanli Empire. Marit appreciates Teixcalaanli poetry, but feels like she can't really fit in there because she's from Lsel. But despite that intro, I thought the dedication set up the story to be bleaker/heavier than it turned out to be in the end. (Granted, I am working off memory from three years ago.) There was a whole lingering Chekhov about evil aliens in the background that never got resolved, though, so that's the sequel hook.
"Desolation," however, is dedicated in part to "Stanislav Petrov, who knew when to question orders." So already, for those of you who recognize the name (and/or Wikipedia it), you can guess where the book is going. Which means some of the rising action/inaction felt kind of redundant--like, yeah, we know imperialism is bad, WMDs bad, let's see some aliens.
There are several different plotlines; one follows Eight Antidote, the eleven-year-old Imperial heir. His tutor, Eleven Laurel, tries to teach him puzzles about the history of Teixcalaanli military conflict, and this provides an effective way to get up to speed on who some of the major admirals are and why getting promoted to a commanding officer might be a double-edged sword.
Eight Antidote loved the constraints best of all. Delimiters. This happened, so it must be possible. Solve it.
I got Ender Wiggin and Mazer Rackham vibes from these two right away! And to some extent, it feels like "Desolation" is trying to be a subversion of "Ender's Game"--like, kids can be very smart and good at solving puzzles, but they also might have panic attacks trying to navigate a crowded spaceport for the first time, because life is scary when you're eleven. On the other hand, Ender's Game (uh, spoilers) confronts the "if you annihilate an entire planet, but there's only one hive mind there, are you really only killing one person?" issue more effectively than "Desolation." If you have qualms about annihilating a planet, it should be because killing a planet (one individual or many) is bad, not because it might have knock-on empathy effects for other beings nearby!There's a general sense of "the military department doesn't trust the civilian intelligence agency, who doesn't trust the science department, who doesn't trust the postal service..." Which, as anyone who has worked in the government bureaucracy can tell you, felt absolutely spot-on, A++.
In physics/philosophy, there are several different variants of the "anthropic principle," which in some way boil down to "conditional on intelligent observers perceiving the universe, the universe has to be like it is, because if was vastly different, then we wouldn't be here." Some are tautological, some are stronger. First-contact books sometimes border on a medium form of the anthropic principle: if you're gonna have aliens, they will probably be very different than humans in many ways, but if you want them to influence the plot (say, by talking to humans), they need to have at least something in common with us, physically and mentally, so that we can communicate with them. A type of creature who lived on timescales that were orders of magnitude greater or lesser than ours is never going to be able to carry on a conversation with us. Finding single-celled organisms on another planet would be fascinating, and in a different subgenre "what will humans do when they meet non-Earth life?" could have carried the plot, but for a book about "can we make peace with the aliens," there has to at least be a possibility of intelligent communication, even if its forms are different from human language. So I thought some of the "oh no, they communicate, but they do so without language! And their sound waves make my ears hurt? Whatever shall we do?" panicking was unnecessary. Can't you at least copy-and-paste reproductions of sound waves on your computer without listening to them? Even Ryland Grace knew how to do that. :p And maybe it's just the linguist in me talking, but Earth linguists tend to keep tweaking the definition of "language" so that "anything sapient, self-aware creatures like humans do is 'language;' everything else, no matter how complex [bees wiggling!] is just 'communication.'"
The flagship where this first-contact and/or war drama is playing out is called "Weight for the Wheel." And I'm not quite sure I get the joke. Is it a pun on Farscape's "Wait for the Wheel?" The Hope Eyrie "weight of the wheel?" Daenerys from Game of Thrones who wants to break the wheel of history? Help me out here. (On the other hand, "I feel like there's a subtle cultural allusion here that's going way over my head" is an extremely Teixcalaanli mood, so there's that.)
Okay, so--you know how I said "Memory" was less preachy/didactic than the dedication primed me for? This one felt more so. Fortunately, the Petrovian "patience and prudence" approach wins--it would be extremely disappointing to make it through almost 500 pages and then not--but Mahit's struggles with Teixcalaan felt more lampshaded here (again, I haven't read "Memory" in three years and may be misremembering). Guess what, in Teixcalaanli "Empire" and "world" mean the same thing, so there are no real "people" outside the "world!" (Hi, Sapir-Whorf!) Guess what, Teixcalaanli people tend to call anyone who isn't Teixcalaanli "barbarians," and that's bad! Guess what, Mahit enjoys Teixcalaanli poetry, and hates herself for it, because she'll never be accepted like a real Teixcalaanli! What's the point.
Space cats are cute and adorable. And you can't blame them for existing, because it's not their fault. However--and I recognize that this probably says more about me than the book--you also can't keep raising the Reverse George Bailey problem and kicking it down the road. If you feel like you should jump off a bridge, you can maybe wish you'd never been born and hopefully an angel will persuade you of the error of your ways. If you actually feel like you, or your culture, or your empire, ought to never have been born, what are you supposed to do? If there's anyone who has that answer, they're probably not writing science fiction novels.
Oh uhhhh I almost forgot bingo. Set In Space, Readalong. "Memory" is on the /r/fantasy LGBTQIA list so this might count as a sequel even though it came out later? I don't think there's enough of an alien setting to count as "weird ecology," although the aliens themselves are weird biological creatures.
