Alxsteele

Classic science fiction in the tradition of Asimov

Revisado: 10-22-19

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is a story about the rise of humanity to the status of an intergalactic race. Divisions arise, breaking the great empire into factions and eventually destroying most of humanity and its accomplishments. But one world remains: a planet seeded with specimen of earth’s species by the great scientist, Dr. Avrana Kern. But “Kern’s Planet” is seeded with something else: a nanovirus designed to elevate the species to semi-sentient status in order to eventually serve the human race. Kern’s project is altered when the Faction’s sabotage destroys the original hominid inhabitants. Left alone for eons, the nanovirus takes an unexpected turn, as a species of fully-sentient spiders evolve to fill and eventually dominate Kern’s Planet.

This arachnid culture is threatened when the remnants of humanity find their way cast to the stars from the dying earth, in the arc ship Gilgamesh. Will the same hubris and pride that gave rise to the great empire of humanity destroy the spiders and their culture? Will the evolved spiders find their way through the passages of change—from a state of fragmentary awareness through early industrialization, from cultishly religious to highly advanced—and find a non-genocidal response to the desperate fragments of earth’s last children?

Children of Time has several major themes that repeat across both dominant species and the span of time. First, there is the question of god and religion. Kern’s unchecked arrogance gives rise to a psychotic god-complex, perpetually elevating herself over others. There is no indication the real Kern ever moves beyond this corruptible condition. Echoes of this god-complex are picked up in the madness of the Gilgamesh’s captain Guyen, who positions himself the savior of humanity. At one time, even the most enlightened of the spiders sees herself the apex of achievement, destined to render all other spider nests to states of subjugation.

The spiders themselves develop a religion based around the orbiting satellite where the real Avrana Kern sleeps in a perpetual suspended hibernation. At different times, the power of the religious state has more or less sway over the course of culture, scientific exploration, freedom of speech, and the value of life.

The meaning and purpose of life is another theme woven throughout the narrative. It is picked up by earth’s survivors crammed into the Gilgamesh, asking what the point and purpose of “all this” is. The spiders ask it, when faced with the coming destruction of the primeval ants and, later again, when facing eradication from a genocidal plague. What qualifies as life? Whose life is valuable and which life takes precedence? Dr. Kern looks down on the so many blue-collar employees of her space endeavor, calling them monkeys. She later looks down on the nascent evolutionary species of spiders growing on her planet with the same contempt. When the remnants of earth’s population make it her way some 2500 years later, she does not acknowledge they are human, much less as being worthy of life.

Within the spider population, for most of their recorded history, male spiders have little to no value. Their lives are taken without consequence. Guyen, in his deranged state of self-importance, is willing to sacrifice all human life for his own immortalization. The scientist Vitas is willing to sacrifice all life on Kern’s planet because it is hostile to humanity and unwilling to aid in their plight. It is as though all the characters are asking what Bianca asks of the Messenger: “What does it mean that you are there and we are here? Is there meaning or is it random chance? Because what else does one ask even a broken cybernetic deity buy Why are we here?”

This is not a question the author answers. Even the exaltation of the species by the great Old Empire and the spiders desire to know why they exist is just another circle of cause and effect. After all, the reader must conclude: if there is no god, then there is no meaning.

At times Tchaikovsky begins to fall into shallow retellings of our modern, cultural moment, as in the bombastic extremes to which male spiders are degraded. Portia reflects: “...juvenile males do their best to attach themselves to the periphery of a female peer group, playing at flirting, running errands, paying in utility and amusement the value for the scraps of food that might get thrown their way.” She goes on to observe, “Other than menial labor, this is the place of a male in Portia's society: adornment, decoration, simply to add value to the lives of females.”

At one point, presented with the means of deliverance in exchange for allowing males their place of equality within the culture, Portia thinks:

…there have been deranged philosophers in the past who might put up such an idea as an intellectual exercise...but that is not the Great Nest—the Great Nest's way is the true way, the preferred path of the Messenger. Within her, biology and custom are at war. There is a place in her mind where the nanovirus lurks and it tells her that all her species are kin, are like her in a way that other creatures are not, and yet the weight of society crushes its voice. Males have their place; she knows this.
But there are also moments when the long—more than 600 page long—narrative takes a poetic form, as when the Classicists Holsten realizes the futility of their pursuits:

Yes, they had developed a technology that was still beyond anything Holsten’s people had achieved, but it was just as he had already known: the shining example of the Old Empire had tricked Holsten’s entire civilization into the error of mimicry. In trying to be the ancients, they had sealed their own fate—neither to reach those heights, nor any others, doomed instead to a history of mediocrity and envy.

Still fixed on this apparent determinism of human action, Tchaikovsky let’s Holsten arrive at the logical conclusion of this line:

There had been no innovation that the ancients had not already achieved, and done better. How many inventors had been relegated to historical obscurity because some later treasure-hunter had unearthed the older, superior method of achieving the same end? Weapons, engines, political systems, philosophies, sources of energy... Holsten's people had thought themselves lucky that someone had built such a convenient flight of steps back up from the dark into the sunlight of civilization. They had never quite come to the realization that those steps led only to that one place. Who knows what we might have achieved, had we not been so keen to recreate all their follies...

Children of Time is a fun piece if not provocative, creative if not unique, and a joy for readers who press through some of the slow development in earlier chapters of the unfolding narrative.

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A Primer on Poverty in the United States

Revisado: 08-28-19

Nickeled and Dimed, On (Not) Getting By in America, is a first-person reflective work documenting the author’s attempts to make a sustainable living on minimum wage jobs. The book is structured around the locations where Barbara Ehrenreich gained her live-bodied experience, first in Florida, then in Maine, and finally in Minnesota. Ehrenreich balances descriptive narrative, third-person perspective, and scientific and economic research, painting a detailed picture of life at minimum wage. While the book is not comprehensive or thorough in its assessment of the problems of poverty and contributing factors, she does not portray it as such. Rather, she outlines her process and objectives clearly enough such that readers should not be disappointed in her final scope.

At the beginning of the book, Ehrenreich sets up the guidelines for her field experimentation. She draws from her background as a scientist to set the parameters of her time “under cover.” From there, she attempts to work and live off of minimum wage jobs in Key West, Florida where she works at a waitress. She portrays the sullen lifestyle of people, mostly women, trapped in the vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. And her descriptions of the people she served (food to) were profoundly thought provoking. As a person of faith, I was particularly sobered into reflection by her description of Christians, writing:

The worst, for some reason, are Visible Christians—like the ten-person table, all jolly and sanctified after Sunday night service, who run me mercilessly and then leave me $1 on a $92 bill. Or the guy with the crucifixion T-Shirt (SOMEONE TO LOOK UP TO) who complains that his baked potato is too hard and his iced tea too icy (I cheerfully fix both) and leaves no tip at all. As a general rule, people wearing crosses or WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) buttons look at us disapprovingly no matter what we do, as if they were confusing waitressing with Mary Magdalene's original profession. (36)

In the next section of the book, Ehrenreich details her life in Maine working as a maid. Readers are forced to consider the exuberance of financial excess employed in such a way as to benefit the owner and only the owner. Ehrenreich reflects:

There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of extreme inequality. Corporate decision makers, and even some two-bit entrepreneurs like my boss at The Maids, occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class—and often racial—prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing…. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves. (212)

In the third working section of the book, Ehrenreich moves to Minnesota and takes up work at the local Wal-Mart. She conveys the litany of evaluations, assessments, tests, and training she and other new employees are subjected to. Recounting the often passive-aggressive or, more often, outright aggressive attitude of managers, she concludes:

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you were treated as an untrustworthy person, a potential slacker, drug-addict or thief, you may begin to feel less trustworthy yourself. If you were constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. (210)

Ehrenreich is thoughtful if not always fully informed. There is enough substance to force engaged readers to reflect on their own role in perpetuating cycles of poverty. If her research is dated, that is the result of time and not effort. Where she is perhaps over-dependent on research and reports from the Economic Policy Institute, to the neglect of other sources like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the Bureau of Economic Analysis, one may conclude this is intention: calling into question the legitimacy of governmental reporting standards. If her opinions are sharp, well, frankly, that’s her prerogative as a writer.

I recommend Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed, not as an expert treaties or a model of slow, deep journalism, but as a text that brings poverty in the United States into focus. By marrying real data, verified research, and personal experience she avoids the ubiquitous anecdotal sob-story that such stories . Instead, she invites each of her readers to consider and then act on behalf of those enslaved by our economic practices and policies.

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Long on hardship. Short on narrative style.

Revisado: 08-23-19

Maid is a first-person reflection on the difficulty of finding financial stability, single-motherhood, low-paying jobs, and the perpetual threat of homelessness.

The book is structured around the dwellings where the author lived and, as the book progresses, those that she cleaned. The early chapters set a backdrop of a low-income upbringing, pre-college dreams, and sexual freedom. Ms. Land describes her early work life, meeting and living with her daughter’s father, the subsequent emotional separation from him due to his emotional abuse, and her pursuit of stability. She provides insights into the unique difficulties lower-income people face, particularly women with children. Details of her life in transitional housing capture the monotony of a life impoverished by lack of resources and relationships.

In the middle part of the book, Ms. Land describes the houses that she cleaned and, to some degree, the people who lived in them. Some detail is provided about these individuals and their lifestyles, most of which is aimed at the filthiness of their bathrooms and floors. These sparse details are bracketed by reflection on her genuine loneliness, her boyfriend and their shared space, and honest concern her daughter. There are occasional reflections on the past: her father’s failure to show any meaningful love through support, and her mother’s utter narcissism.

In the last section of the book, Ms. Land continues the reflection on housing, work, and motherhood, culminating the narrative with her final arrival to and relaunch of life in Missoula, MT.

Ms. Land’s insights into the plights of the poor as she experienced them are best captured in chapters three, four, and five. There she engages the deep wounds of emotional abuse, the perpetual fear of losing her daughter, and the constant threat of homelessness, hunger, and despair. She tells of other women she met who gave up and tried to take their own lives or who, in turn, had grown so embittered by their own hardships that there was no more sympathy to go around.

The book is not short on the hardships that Ms. Land and, by extension, other women experience living in poverty. But the text lacks the reflective tone necessary to move the reader from outside the pages into the situations described. Too many sentences begin with “I”—as many as six at one time. Where vivid narrative description could have immersed the reader in the hardship, at such moments, the reader is brought back to their own reality. Instead of showing, the text tells, and in telling it teaches, and teaching it occasionally falls into preaching.

The descriptions of the other people with and for whom Ms. Land worked could have made the reader love them or hate them. As it stands, they are feckless, often flat. The observations of others is too obscure, with each descriptions too quickly turned into a mirror for Ms. Land and her thoughts, dread, or fatigue. In saying this, there is the risk of evoking anger: how can a reviewer sitting in relative ease judge so critically? At issue is not Ms. Land, her legitimate suffering, her fierce determination, and ultimately her fulfillment of her driving commitment to care for her daughter Mia, and get to college. Rather, it’s the realization that the text evokes sadness for her plight without ever forcing the reader to deal with her or his culpability in the economic system designed to keep the poor poor.

By way of contrast, Barbara Ehrenreich in a similar reflective work, Nickled and Dimed, regularly employs the third person, crafting the stage with sufficient detail to allow readers to be lost in the situations—or at least the reporter-like quality of writing—to forget they observers. Then she hits the reader with a fact or figure that suddenly triggers an interaction at the grocery store or a fuel station, making the narrative personal. I suspect that Ms. Land embodies a quality of description and detail paralleling her self-reflection past and present. Had she prevailed in this combination, readers would find this story about us: people, humanity, and our interdependent relationships. As it is, the story remains about Ms. Land, and readers are merely observers of a tragedy for which they are not invited to feel anything but sadness, ultimately freed of the obligation to make sure this kind of story doesn’t happen again.

In a society that celebrates freedom of choice, Ms. Land is silent on that point, strikingly so. It’s amazing how infrequently the author reflects on her own personal choices that, for ill more than for good, bend the arc of her narrative toward tragedy: the choice to enter into a sexual relationship with a relative stranger; the commendable—but no less burdening—choice of having, nurturing, and raising her daughter; even the choice to spend money on tattoos. In all stories, choice plays as much a role as belief, determination, and the actions of others.

I commend chapters three through five to readers seeking to gain more insight into the difficulties of the rural poor. The aforementioned Nickled and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, offers a companion perspective. Finally, I commend to all Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance, which extrapolates the complex narrative of multi-generational poverty.

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