![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Reading stuff
I finished the second of Cherryh's "Foreigner" books today. For the plus, Bren is a lot more active and competent in this book. On the other hand, oh my HEAVENS, her characters spend a lot of time thinking about stuff. In the first half of the book, I skimmed a lot and ended up skipping very long paragraphs and often whole pages that were just Bren thinking about culture and aliens and communication and etc etc ... it's sort of plot-relevant, but sort of not; the book still makes perfect sense if you don't have to suffer through Bren going off on a thought-tangent every third page.
I do like the series, though. It really makes you think about a lot of things we take for granted in the way that humans relate to each other, especially our emotional communication.
I've been craving this kind of sci-fi lately, the "sense of wonder" sci-fi that I fell in love with as a kid in the '80s. A lot of the old stuff is hard for me to read these days because of the way it treats gender and race and sexuality -- I really appreciate that these things are better handled in modern fiction, but at the same time sci-fi seems to have been sucked down a whirlpool of dystopian misery, brutally gritty military SF, and self-consciously ironic takes on tropes that I'd rather enjoy in their unironic, cheesy glory. Which is not to say there's nothing at all to read; there are a few contemporary authors (Tobias Buckell comes to mind) who are writing sci-fi in the old "wheeeee!" mode, and I can enjoy bleak and dark if it's well-done, but I still crave more YAY! and less GLOOM! in my SF.
I do like the series, though. It really makes you think about a lot of things we take for granted in the way that humans relate to each other, especially our emotional communication.
I've been craving this kind of sci-fi lately, the "sense of wonder" sci-fi that I fell in love with as a kid in the '80s. A lot of the old stuff is hard for me to read these days because of the way it treats gender and race and sexuality -- I really appreciate that these things are better handled in modern fiction, but at the same time sci-fi seems to have been sucked down a whirlpool of dystopian misery, brutally gritty military SF, and self-consciously ironic takes on tropes that I'd rather enjoy in their unironic, cheesy glory. Which is not to say there's nothing at all to read; there are a few contemporary authors (Tobias Buckell comes to mind) who are writing sci-fi in the old "wheeeee!" mode, and I can enjoy bleak and dark if it's well-done, but I still crave more YAY! and less GLOOM! in my SF.
no subject
I love the Foreigner series so much it's hard to describe; there's so little sci-fi out there that does what it does, in terms of alienness and the difference in form and culture. The atevi fall squarely into a category of alien that I find ridiculous in any other work (mammalian, humanoid, human-faced "aliens") and then makes me believe it, because their interactions make the mental divide so very clear. Atevi are more alien than some space squid I've read, but always in an oblique way that leaps out at you unexpectedly because right up to that point they 'passed' so well for human. Awesome.
Everybody thinks about everything, endlessly, in Foreigner; the trick is that all of that mental mapmaking and second-guessing is necessary, because the brains involved don't align, and even with all that fact-checking and review they don't always work out the right answer. Tough to read sometimes, yes; but it's pretty much the only way we have of seeing just how fine a line a human has to walk in such a situation. (Foreigner is one series whose books I can't read in small installments, e.g. on my lunch breaks; I have to be able to read large chunks, or the plethora of thought-tangents divert me too much.) And overall the message is pretty hopeful, because: Bren is alive, and all the other humans are alive, and after 400 years they are making progress from their original "no contact" stalemate!
Yeah, I, uh. May love Bren and this series a little too much. (Also: Bren♥Jago 4ever!!)
I like military sci-fi, too; or rather, I like military SF when it's done right. Unfortunately, I've had to implement a "female writers only" filter to the genre in order to get the stuff that's done right. D:
And if you coauthor with John Ringo you are dead to me, regardless of your gender, though so far it seems to be only men who do so... gee, can't think why.Vaguely in the same vein, though very different in tone, have you ever read Robert Forward's Dragon's Egg? Way lower on the 'characters you love' scale, but pretty high in 'aliens whose minds are shaped by a very different environment than Earth', so it might fall into the "yay, fun science speculation and neat aliens" category for you.
no subject
And, yeah, I can't think off the top of my head of another book that does this kind of thing this well -- the atevi looking so much like, basically, Star Trek aliens (mammalian, humanoid) is a feature, not a bug, because humans subconsciously expect them to think and act human, and then get thrown for a loop when they don't. I can't remember the last book I read that did this excellent a job of making aliens likable and relatable and yet, very very alien.
Constant character introspection is also a recurring trait in Cherryh's books. It's been long enough since I read her that I'd forgotten how much time her characters spend pondering things. Bren is definitely way out on the introspective end even for a Cherryh character -- though, like you said, it's (more or less) necessary to the story. I still think the books could get away with less thinking and more doing, but the pondering is at least tangentially plot-relevant ...
And I have not read Dragon's Egg! Or even heard of it. I'll look for it.
Rachel Hartman's Seraphina is another recent one I read that had an intriguing take on human vs. alien thought patterns. Dragons don't experience emotions, at least not that humans recognize as such, but once they encountered humans they found that they could take human shape and get the full gamut of human emotions -- it's overwhelming to them, but they also like touristing for short periods in human form. Unlike the Cherryh books, this one, which is fantasy YA, tends somewhat in the direction of elevating human over alien modes of thinking (or, I should say, human modes of caring) but the relations between humans and dragons, and the way the two groups view each other's weaknesses, are really interesting.
no subject
Heh, introspection really is a Cherryh thing, you're right! Pyanfar and Hilfy certainly do enough of it - again, in the context of trying to interact with alien motives and understandings. Apparently the World According To Cherryh says: if you want to survive among aliens, you have to do a lot of thinking, at every step.
Commentary on how refreshing this is compared to the "anti-intellectual" attitude of a lot of sci-fi shall wait for another post.Hartman's novel sounds interesting! I'm not much for shapeshifters, but I am weak to dragons. :D
no subject
(And I second Dragon's Egg as a book to keep an eye out for, for all that I haven't read it in years upon years. But it has very awesome aliens, and one of the most alien environments I've run into in hard SF.)
no subject
no subject