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CJ Cherryh, queen of my id
I've been traveling for the last couple of weeks, which is why I didn't jump on this right away, but I can FINALLY talk about my recent CJ Cherryh obsession.
It started when I picked up a pinch hit for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
space_swap and fell headlong and hardcore back in love with Cherryh's Heavy Time/Hellburner duology, which I seem to orbit cyclically and fall back in love with every few years. Actually, let me just link to the two Hellburner fics I wrote for Space Swap:
Search and Rescue (8400 wds)
A violent act of sabotage leaves the Hellburner crew scattered and separated on a damaged station.
[Tags include "Hypothermia", "Cuddling & Snuggling", and "Families of Choice", to give you an idea what this one is like. It was hella fun to write.]
Long Haul Into Night (1900 wds)
It's always on the night shift that Dekker asks the off-the-wall questions.
So Heavy Time/Hellburner is part of a much larger universe of Cherryh's, Alliance-Union, and this time I decided to try to read the rest of it. My Cherryh reading has always been sporadic. I read a scattered assortment of her books as a teenager, fell passionately in love with Heavy Time and Rusalka in particular, but was never fond enough of her writing to seek out everything she'd ever written.
I think that time has come. Either I've grown into her books as an adult, or something, because OH MY GOD. I don't think I realized, reading her books piecemeal over the years, that the aspect that drew me in such a major way to my favorites of hers - the above-mentioned ones - is pretty much A Thing in nearly everything she writes.
Basically Cherryh absolutely LOVES writing about (for lack of a better word) queerplatonically bonded little groups of characters in codependent, mutually-weird-about-each-other found-family arrangements. In some of her books it's built into the cultural structure of the world (e.g. the nighthorse riders in the Rider at the Gate duology*, or some of the cultural arrangements in Alliance-Union). In other books the characters fall into it by accident and just kind of make it up as they go along. Either way, I'm starting to realize that characters being passionately loyal to each other, living right on top of each other in intense domesticity while often being fundamentally undomestic people, and just generally being weird about each other in iddy found-family ways is very much a Cherryh thing.
*Of which I've only read the first book so far; nobody spoil me for book 2 plz!
Also, in nearly ALL her books that have this (which is nearly all her books, period), it's either one very lonely and traumatized person being adopted by a more stable group, or a group of lonely and traumatized people adopting each other. Which is also, er. Highly relevant to my interests.
There is a post I read on DW a few years back, that I don't think I can find again without extensive googling, but it described EXACTLY what I like in fiction in a very clear way - "clair pockets in a noir universe". I latched onto that description hard, because YES, THAT. I love, love, love books/shows/movies that are entirely honest about the terribleness of the world - terrible things happen, and in fact, things fundamentally ARE kind of terrible - but the characters create their own little warm places of light and love, because they just love each other that much. And that's the button Cherryh's books are hitting so hard for me right now. There are a lot of awful things that happen in her books that WOULD be grimdark if handled in a different way, except that the characters manage to drag their own little corners of the universe, and each other, kicking and screaming into the light. I love books that expose all the awfulness of the world and then say "but we don't have to be like that," and especially when they do that through the characters' love and loyalty for each other, and damn but Cherryh's id seems to align perfectly with mine in that area. Not all of her characters get happy endings, but most of her books actually do end in a way that makes me feel all wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket - in part because they go through such horrible things getting there.
Also, she is absolutely shameless about writing wildly iddy stuff if she feels like it. Two characters who started out punching each other in the face and end up clinging to each other desperately while covered in their own blood and left to die on an abandoned space station after sacrificing themselves so their friends can escape a ruthless space pirate fleet, while said friends are fighting their way through space pirates, morally gray military, and their own families to get back to the space station and rescue them? SURE, WHY NOT.
I want to write further posts about individual books because I have a lot to say about them, or at least a lot of feels about them - when I'm done traveling (soon!). But I did want to throw out there that a lot of people are probably introduced to her work through Downbelow Station because it won the Hugo, and while it's a book I'm glad I finally managed to read (after bouncing off it several times and finally getting myself to read it by virtue of being trapped with it on a train), and it does actually hit Cherryh's typical emotional notes in the last, oh, fourth or so, it is NOT typical of her books; her books can be grim, but generally not THAT grim, and that book also has really offputting Noble Savage aliens, which is weirdly something that I have never encountered in any of her other books, even ones written around the same time. She can do great aliens! (I need to reread the Chanur books, speaking of which.) Just ... not those particular aliens. They are slightly less offputting in context of her other books because characters being intensely loyal to each other and loving each other through cross-species/cross-cultural bonds is something she really likes and writes a lot, but when one group of them are heavily coded Noble Savage and are basically getting murdered because of their affection and loyalty to the offworlders who use them as cheap labor, it becomes, let's say, uncomfortable. So yeah. That's a thing.
But basically her books are Found Family R Us and I still have SO MANY of them to read or reread, whee.
ETA: I found the post on Tumblr where I link to the "clair pockets in a noir universe" post (actually, as it turns out, a comment on a slightly different post), for further context.
It started when I picked up a pinch hit for
space_swap and fell headlong and hardcore back in love with Cherryh's Heavy Time/Hellburner duology, which I seem to orbit cyclically and fall back in love with every few years. Actually, let me just link to the two Hellburner fics I wrote for Space Swap:Search and Rescue (8400 wds)
A violent act of sabotage leaves the Hellburner crew scattered and separated on a damaged station.
[Tags include "Hypothermia", "Cuddling & Snuggling", and "Families of Choice", to give you an idea what this one is like. It was hella fun to write.]
Long Haul Into Night (1900 wds)
It's always on the night shift that Dekker asks the off-the-wall questions.
So Heavy Time/Hellburner is part of a much larger universe of Cherryh's, Alliance-Union, and this time I decided to try to read the rest of it. My Cherryh reading has always been sporadic. I read a scattered assortment of her books as a teenager, fell passionately in love with Heavy Time and Rusalka in particular, but was never fond enough of her writing to seek out everything she'd ever written.
I think that time has come. Either I've grown into her books as an adult, or something, because OH MY GOD. I don't think I realized, reading her books piecemeal over the years, that the aspect that drew me in such a major way to my favorites of hers - the above-mentioned ones - is pretty much A Thing in nearly everything she writes.
Basically Cherryh absolutely LOVES writing about (for lack of a better word) queerplatonically bonded little groups of characters in codependent, mutually-weird-about-each-other found-family arrangements. In some of her books it's built into the cultural structure of the world (e.g. the nighthorse riders in the Rider at the Gate duology*, or some of the cultural arrangements in Alliance-Union). In other books the characters fall into it by accident and just kind of make it up as they go along. Either way, I'm starting to realize that characters being passionately loyal to each other, living right on top of each other in intense domesticity while often being fundamentally undomestic people, and just generally being weird about each other in iddy found-family ways is very much a Cherryh thing.
*Of which I've only read the first book so far; nobody spoil me for book 2 plz!
Also, in nearly ALL her books that have this (which is nearly all her books, period), it's either one very lonely and traumatized person being adopted by a more stable group, or a group of lonely and traumatized people adopting each other. Which is also, er. Highly relevant to my interests.
There is a post I read on DW a few years back, that I don't think I can find again without extensive googling, but it described EXACTLY what I like in fiction in a very clear way - "clair pockets in a noir universe". I latched onto that description hard, because YES, THAT. I love, love, love books/shows/movies that are entirely honest about the terribleness of the world - terrible things happen, and in fact, things fundamentally ARE kind of terrible - but the characters create their own little warm places of light and love, because they just love each other that much. And that's the button Cherryh's books are hitting so hard for me right now. There are a lot of awful things that happen in her books that WOULD be grimdark if handled in a different way, except that the characters manage to drag their own little corners of the universe, and each other, kicking and screaming into the light. I love books that expose all the awfulness of the world and then say "but we don't have to be like that," and especially when they do that through the characters' love and loyalty for each other, and damn but Cherryh's id seems to align perfectly with mine in that area. Not all of her characters get happy endings, but most of her books actually do end in a way that makes me feel all wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket - in part because they go through such horrible things getting there.
Also, she is absolutely shameless about writing wildly iddy stuff if she feels like it. Two characters who started out punching each other in the face and end up clinging to each other desperately while covered in their own blood and left to die on an abandoned space station after sacrificing themselves so their friends can escape a ruthless space pirate fleet, while said friends are fighting their way through space pirates, morally gray military, and their own families to get back to the space station and rescue them? SURE, WHY NOT.
I want to write further posts about individual books because I have a lot to say about them, or at least a lot of feels about them - when I'm done traveling (soon!). But I did want to throw out there that a lot of people are probably introduced to her work through Downbelow Station because it won the Hugo, and while it's a book I'm glad I finally managed to read (after bouncing off it several times and finally getting myself to read it by virtue of being trapped with it on a train), and it does actually hit Cherryh's typical emotional notes in the last, oh, fourth or so, it is NOT typical of her books; her books can be grim, but generally not THAT grim, and that book also has really offputting Noble Savage aliens, which is weirdly something that I have never encountered in any of her other books, even ones written around the same time. She can do great aliens! (I need to reread the Chanur books, speaking of which.) Just ... not those particular aliens. They are slightly less offputting in context of her other books because characters being intensely loyal to each other and loving each other through cross-species/cross-cultural bonds is something she really likes and writes a lot, but when one group of them are heavily coded Noble Savage and are basically getting murdered because of their affection and loyalty to the offworlders who use them as cheap labor, it becomes, let's say, uncomfortable. So yeah. That's a thing.
But basically her books are Found Family R Us and I still have SO MANY of them to read or reread, whee.
ETA: I found the post on Tumblr where I link to the "clair pockets in a noir universe" post (actually, as it turns out, a comment on a slightly different post), for further context.
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I think this might have been me, but hell if I can find the post or comment, heh. Anyway, yes! I love this about Cherryh.
Have you read the Faded Sun trilogy? Those might actually be some of my favorites.
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As noted in an ETA I just edited into the above post, I found it (this links to a Tumblr post in which I talk about the original post) - and it was a) not you XD, and b) actually a comment thread to a post talking about a book that I didn't like as much as most people seemed to, precisely because it didn't have those noir elements.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to talking to you about Faded Sun when I get there! :D
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BUT IT SHOULD BE.
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CYTEEN
Athough it is VERY long. But it's amazing. First thing I ever read of Cherryh's, and then I scoured used bookstores (this was long ago) so the second thing was Forty Thousand in Gehenna, heh. I've been meaning to read Rusalka for forever.
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Rusalka is fantastic; I really love it.
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Finity's End is another particular favourite.
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I will post on the Rider books when you finish Cloud's Rider.
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I'm looking forward to being able to discuss the Rider books with you!
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Have you read the Morgaine series?
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The tl;dr here is that there's a lot of reading in my future. :D
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...now I want to re-read it too.
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In the late oughts, Jo Walton did a re-read of Cherryh's books for Tor.com. The post on Heavy Time/Hellburner is this one:
A happy ending depends on when you stop: Heavy Time, Hellburner and C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe
For me, Hellburner is the ultimate Cherryh because we not only have two really great pairs of pairs (romantic partners vs. adversarial/reluctant friend partners vs. best-friend partners, and then in-system partners vs. Belter partners) but we also have the lone watchman, Jurgen Graff, mostly cut off from the guidance of his own seniors, having to stand aside from the comradeship of the test crews, ending up in the hot seat at investigation hearings, and ultimately being the ethical heart of the story.
Mild spoilers for Heavy Time/Hellburner in comment
But yesssss, I think one of the main reasons (if not the main reason) why Heavy Time/Hellburner continues to be my favorite of her books is because so many different relationship factors come together in that book. It's got romantic love and friendship love; it's got close/easy relationships between people who just click with each other, and hard-won friendships between people who really had to struggle to get there; it's got moral conflicts between good people who just have fundamentally incompatible views of the world; it's got lonely, damaged people adopting each other, and people who were taught to value profit over human lives choosing The Power of Friendship instead; it's got the casual domesticity that I am a complete sucker for, with the whole group living right on top of each other in the close quarters of station/ship life. All of that plus really solid hard-scifi worldbuilding and a "ground up" view of high-level political movements from the POV of people on the ground.
I was a little worried that it would lose something on the reread, but actually it's turned out to be one of those delightful books that I still love in all the old ways, but appreciate in whole new ways now. In particular, the protagonists defying the rapacious Company that controls their entire lives was, ahem, very topical. The characters are such a well-selected cross section for telling that story, from the idealist, to the apolitical ones who just want to get ahead, to the disillusioned former revolutionary who doesn't want to watch another group of friends die the way the last ones did ...
I also love the point Jo Walton makes in the post you linked to about sexism in the future, in particular Meg's uphill battle to be recognized as the brilliant pilot she is. I think it's all the more interesting because it's very clearly a choice the author made, not a default assumption about how the future is going to be. I'm reading the merchanter novels right now, and merchanter society (in the same universe and the same time period), shaped by different social factors, doesn't have anything of the sort. It's specifically that Company-run Belter society is like that: majority male, lots of resistance to women breaking into the boys' club. And this is something that you rarely see in scifi - it's usually either a mostly-male future world with maybe a token female around for a love interest (fortunately quite rare now) or it's a gender-equal future where it just doesn't matter. And I completely enjoy those latter ones too, and tend to write them myself, but I really liked that the book did deal with Meg and Sal facing sexism because that's not something you see in SF very often.
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That is the best possible outcome of a reread.
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But now you have me really eager to read Hellburner/Heavy Time specifically, which I'd been putting off because I thought Downbelow Station was a requirement and knew that one was supposed to be somewhat inaccessible. But what you say here makes me think I can probably skip it and still get what's going on, especially since I've already read a little Alliance-Union.
Clair pockets in a noir universe is a lovely way of putting it, and I adore that feeling too.
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... but yeah, I am INCREDIBLY attached to Heavy Time/Hellburner. I love the characters, and I recommend them highly. (And then you can read my fic! And maybe write fic for it! *tempts*)
They're currently out of print, but in addition to used books on Amazon, they're available as ebooks on Cherryh's website - although those versions have a number of OCR errors and the ebook version of Hellburner is missing one scene that I really feel the lack of. (If you go the ebook way, I have a version of the book that I've edited the missing scene back into, which I will happily provide.)
Clair pockets in a noir universe is a lovely way of putting it, and I adore that feeling too.
Yesssss. :D I've loved this for a long time, and I've even tried to describe it to people in the past - I think I used to put it something like "it always feels like they're teetering on the edge of disaster, but the disaster never actually happens" - but that is just the perfect way to describe it.
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Does that help? :D
(Also, having just read Pride of Chanur, I think this series is an EXCELLENT introduction to her writing - it moves along fairly briskly and has a lot of top-notch stuff that she's good at, such as family/found-family feels, alien worldbuilding, and space opera action.)
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