Midwife Crisis (or Regressive Theocracy For Fun and Prophet)

In a year that has been difficult for many in North America, Naomi Kritzer’s new novella Obstetrix reminds us of the solace and strength that can be found through stories. The book, which bills itself as a rebuke to fundamentalist interpretations of religion, is at its core a celebration of the importance of literature (and fantastical literature in this instance) and how it can keep us grounded in times of adversity and stress.

Although it focuses less on
reproductive rights, Obstetrix
still provides commentary
on modern misogyny.
(Image via MacMillan)

Set in a near-future United States where women’s access to reproductive rights have faced further erosion, Obstetrix follows obstetrician Dr. Elizabeth Gwynn. The book’s setup centres on Gwynn’s criminal charges for performing a medically necessary abortion, forcing her to flee North Dakota. This suggests that Kritzer has set her sights on a work criticizing the broad-scale rising tide of authoritarian right-wing misogynist politics in her home country. However, the story quickly narrows its focus and policy issues take a back seat.

Within the first chapter, Gwynn is kidnapped by an eschatological sect and imprisoned in a compound run by fundamentalists with a narrow interpretation of the Bible. These Christian cultists force their children to get married at the age of 14, and expect every married woman to bear children on a regular basis. Gwynn’s role is to serve as their captive obstetrician, handling the complications of childbirth alongside other medical issues that arise on the compound.

Rather than offer us an over-the-top cult, Kritzer depicts a group based on a fairly mundane, bland, and terrifying version of Christianity that is removed from the American mainstream by degrees, rather than leaps and bounds. Their misogynistic control of women is fairly easy to find textual support for in the King James Bible, and the close-minded censorship and rejection of literature is not much different than many Christian groups that sprung up throughout America’s Second Great Awakening. The cult is scary precisely because its most fervent adherents could well be people we all know.

Kritzer has clearly spent some effort thinking about how a person of Gwynn’s educational and professional background might go about solving problems. For example, her approaches to handling the psychological pressures of dealing with the insanity of a fundamentalist sect are informed by medical practice and experience dealing with newborns and distraught new parents.

Since the cult has prohibited all books (even the Bible can only be read by the cult leader Father John), the captive Gwynn first finds comfort in trying to recount passages from a favourite novel titled, The Onyx Dagger. She then builds a semblance of community with select other women in the camp by sharing stories from the book. These other characters go on to play an important role in the denouement.

If anything is likely to keep Obstetrix from the Hugo ballot it’s that the award has often been likelier to recognize works that are more overt in their fantastical elements. This is instead a near-future dystopia that is sometimes indistinguishable from present-day U.S. What little technological progress may have taken place is largely outside of the purview of the story.

Given the turmoil in Kritzer’s home town of Minneapolis this winter, it is interesting that this book — which had to have been written prior to the chaotic deployment of armed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — seems to speak so directly to the present moment. If anything, events are outpacing the fiction we turn to as a source of comfort in these trying times.

The Tsars Like Dust

For a genre that has an unparalleled canvas on which to sketch alternative systems, science fiction all too often falls back on the oldest, simplest, stupidest, and most regressive form of government: Monarchy.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary
of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's
ascent to the throne, the authors
and editors of this blog would like to
respectfully suggest that all monarchies
(even vestigial ones like the House of
Windsor) should be abolished.
(Image via IMDB.com)

It’s easy to think of examples: Princess Ardala, The Gray Prince, King T'Chaka, Emperox Grayland, Emperor Six Direction, Princess Dejah Thoris, Emperor Balem Abrasax, Princess Irulan, Queen Yllana, Princess Astra, Emperor Zarkon, Princess Koriand'r, and Emperor Cleon II to name just a handful. Unfortunately, many of these examples do not engage critically with the idea of monarchy, nor attempt to grapple with the societal consequences of this form of government, nor question the underlying elitist philosophy it represents. Readers should therefore approach such stories with skepticism.

Given that there are few places that are still governed by monarchs of anything other than a vestigial variety, it might seem reasonable that few authors choose to engage critically with the consequences of the monarchies they depict. Americans under the age of 244 and British people with no recollection of what things were like before Peterloo don’t have any direct experience with just how truly awful it would be to live in a polity governed by Emperoxes. (Even if there's a good ruler like Greyland once in a while, they end up being hamstrung by the weight of tradition.) 

Authors seeking to more accurately depict what a space empire might look like should probably look to the few modern-day examples of absolute monarchy that still exist, places like the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdom of Eswatini, and the Kim Family Protectorate of North Korea. To put it bluntly, in the real world there is a strong correlation between the authority of monarchs, and a lack of human rights, and this is rarely depicted in science fiction.

There are obvious reasons why writing about monarchs might be enticing: It’s an easy signifier of a character’s relevance and agency. The moment that someone mentions Princess Leah, the audience knows that this is a character who is important.

Likewise, from a storytelling perspective it’s easier to explain policy decisions as the result of one person’s choice, rather than the deliberative process often necessary for other forms of government to act.

It should also be noted that as the longest surviving human institution, persisting for more than 10,000 years, it seems likely that some form of monarchy will unfortunately continue well into the future.

But all too often, the genre has engaged uncritically with this repressive and regressive form of governance. For example, even when talking about what might replace a flawed and failing empire in the early Foundation novels, Asimov didn’t suggest a form of governance more complex or nuanced than monarchy.

Alderaan is depicted as idyllic
and a near utopian monarchy,
while in the real world kings
and human rights are incompatible.
(Image via StarWars.com)

In the Honorverse novels by David Weber, Elizabeth III, Queen and Empress of Manticore is inevitably always on the right side of every issue — and her decisive leadership is a stark contrast to the incompetent and bumbling democratic governments in the series. Although Lois McMaster Bujold at least concedes that there have been terrible emperors in the past, Gregor Vorbarra is basically decent. By failing to challenge the myth of the benevolent despot, these works reinforce it.

Perhaps the colonization of the stars is more likely under the violent and rapacious system of monarchy. Often empires don’t survive if they aren’t expanding. So a democratic system might be happy (or forced) to focus on increasing (or achieving) the wellbeing of citizens instead of venturing to the stars. Like the corporate pseudo-monarchs of capitalism, a traditional monarchy might also feel compelled to reach for ever more. But then fiction's various versions of the Organas should be portrayed as violent and greedy instead of as compassionate rulers.

The Star Wars franchise has rarely made any pretense of being interested in deeper cultural criticism, but the increasingly incoherent and inchoate depiction of governance systems is worth noting. It’s almost impossible to parse out how any of their government works; there’s a senate, an emperor, elected princesses, and a trade federation that wields some sort of authority. What is made clear however, is that the problem isn’t with the institution of the monarchy: the problem is that the emperor is evil. Ergo: the problem is that the wrong people are in power, rather than a need for greater systemic reform.

Despite otherwise nuanced and
high-brow storytelling, Leprechaun
In Space fell back on the tired
trope of having an interstellar monarch.
(Image via IMDB)

All monarchy is based on a presumption that there is an inherent superiority to those within a specific lineage, and as such it is underpinned by the same philosophy that informs institutional racism. This is reinforced in the latest Star Wars trilogy; Rey is a force adept only because she is a direct descendant of Emperor Palpatine. Her worth and power results from her lineage. It should therefore be no surprise that many science fiction writers who belong to marginalized and racialized backgrounds have tended to depict monarchies with a healthier degree of suspicion than the mostly white writers of the Campbellian era of SFF.

It is interesting to note that despite being on opposite poles of the political spectrum, of the big-name Campbell-era authors, Robert Heinlein and Frederick Pohl were possibly the most skeptical of monarchy as a concept. Pohl’s few depictions of monarchy are irreverent, while Heinlein depicts monarchy as either alien or abhorrent, while offering protagonists who champion democratic systems of various sorts.

There however is something to be said for fiction that directly engages with the idea of monarchy, and does so in order to interrogate what that system of government actually means for those who participate in it. An excellent example of this would be Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series, which somewhat unflinchingly depicts some of the consequences and externalities of having a privileged and chosen bloodline.

Monarchy is a brutal, awful system of government that has largely been abandoned in most prosperous progressive nations. At current count, the world has only seven absolute monarchies left, as well as a smattering of nations that have vestigial monarchs. It seems odd, therefore, that for significant portions of a genre that looks to the future this dreadful system seems to be the default.

When imagining futures for society, we would urge fandom to take an approach of healthy skepticism towards monarchies. 

Make Time For Years And Years

Russel T. Davies has usually been the wet firecracker of television writers. Despite this, he has given

Emma Thompson headlines a superb cast
in the BBC/HBO series Years and Years.
(image via iNews) 

viewers possibly the best science fiction on television in 2019 with his six-part miniseries Years And Years.

Over the course of more than 20 years writing for television, Davies has built a reputation as a capable writer who crafts diverse and emotionally compelling characters, builds suspense and tension effectively, and then pulls the rug out from under viewers through trite and banal endings.

This tendency was the signature aspect of his work on Doctor Who. As we have noted before, deus ex machina is his stock in trade. In the penultimate episode of DW’s Season 2 (The Sound of Drums), The Master is built up into an imposing and compelling adversary, but in the finale he’s defeated by people thinking happy thoughts. In Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks, the entirety of the plot of the two-part episode is undone in seconds through largely incomprehensible means.

His new six-episode series premiered on HBO on Monday night, shortly after completing its initial run on the BBC. True to his oeuvre, Davies’ sixth and final hour-long episode of Years And Years might not stick the landing, but the previous five episodes are compelling enough to make up for that.

The series chronicles the intertwined stories of a multi-generational family living in and near Manchester over the course of 15 years starting in 2019.

The four middle-aged siblings; Stephen, Daniel, Rosie and Edith Lyons, their grandmother, their spouses and their children provide viewers with different vantage points of a rapidly changing future that is marked with chaos and uncertainty. Woven throughout the series are the rise and ramifications of a far-right political figure Vivienne Rook, which give viewers cause for reflection on current populist political movements.

There’s a soap-opera nature to the series that occasionally feels improbable, but that same aspect

Russel T. Davies can't deliver a good
ending, but for once that doesn't
spoil the overall greatness of a show.
(image via BBC)

makes it easy to suspend disbelief about technological speculation while being pulled into the emotional lives of compellingly flawed characters. When banks fail and brownouts become the norm, you both see and feel the impact on consumers and homeowners. When medical technology advances and health care is privatized, you see and feel what it means for both the person affected and those close to them.

Some of the brilliance of the series is not even what it shows explicitly, but in what is implied in throw-away lines. Bananas are extinct? It’s not safe for U.K. citizens to visit the U.S. anymore? The Tower of Pisa is no longer leaning? There are so many details to appreciate.

The final episode is a disappointment in exceptionally predictable ways. Bad guys are defeated in a particularly trite (and improbable) ending that undermines some of the emotional weight of the series, though at least Davies has the courage to imply that the systemic issues that led to fascism have not been overcome completely.

Years And Years is a series that is more than the sum of its parts. No single episode deserves a Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form Hugo, but the whole should be seriously considered in the Long Form category. The continuous march of technology (and those who control it) – and the creeping rise of fascism – are examined in an engaging way by the birdseye view of years and years of development over the course of all the episodes.

Does Years And Years bear all the hallmarks of Russell T. Davies’ writing? In both the best and worst ways, it does. It may also be his masterwork. Years And Years deserves very serious consideration for a Hugo.

The thoughtless utopia

There are more ways for the world to go wrong than ways for things to go right.

At least, that’s what a careful review of science fiction indicates. It seems it is usually easier for science fiction authors to create a compelling and believable dystopia than it is for them to offer a utopia that rings true. One supposes that if there were an easily imagined path to utopia, we’d all be on it by now.

But these facts don’t mean that when writing stories about utopian societies, creators should be absolved of at least providing some bare-bones explanations of what societal structures have led to the perfection of their imagined nation.

This speculation about social structures doesn’t need to be convincing — Heinlein’s utopian world of Beyond This Horizon suggests that a socialist command economy, gun rights, and eugenics are the secret recipe. Hardly believable off the printed page, but he at least put in some thought about how his world would work.

All I know is that I didn't vote for
Jaresh-Ino to be president of the UFP.
(Image via MemoryBeta) 

What is bothersome is the intellectually lazy utopian imagination, the offering of a science fiction paradise in which there is no thought about how that utopia was achieved.

The United Federation of Planets, as depicted in Star Trek's Original Series and Next Generation is an exemplar lazy utopia. Sure, some handwaving is offered around humanity ‘evolving’ beyond a need for money, but little concrete evidence is offered about how this utopia actually works.

How are the competing needs of different citizen species balanced? How are minority rights ensured? How do they balance the right to privacy with the need for security? These are the types of questions that all free societies must struggle with, and yet in hundreds of hours of Star Trek stories that have been filmed, no solid answers are offered.

Of course, the nebulous nature of the United Federation of Planets offered authors and fans plenty of opportunity to impose their own ideas and ideals onto this world — sometimes to excellent effect. For example, economic historian Manu Saadia uses Star Trek as a jumping off point to explore socialist ideas about a post-scarcity economy in his book Trekonomics.

Another example of a poorly crafted utopia is Wakanda, the high-technology kingdom that is home to Black Panther. How Wakanda became a utopia while neighbouring countries did not is never fully explored.

It is suggested that the presence of a miraculous resource — the metal vibraneum — may be the root cause of the nation’s perfection. But in the real world, resource riches rarely lead to anything like

Supreme executive power derives from
a mandate from the masses, not from
some farcical aquatic ceremony.
(Image via MarvelCinematicUniverseWiki)

utopia.

If the natural resource of vibraneum had been paired with a democratic governance system, or an alternative inclusive governance model, it would have been easier to buy into the idea of Wakanda, but the country is ruled by an absolute monarch. This would make it one of only seven absolute monarchies on Earth, and none of the others are human rights leaders. To put it bluntly, absolute monarchy and utopia are utterly incompatible.

It is interesting to note that current Black Panther writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has begun to address these questions of governance in Wakanda. One hopes that this new more democratic version of Wakanda may make it to the movie screen one day.

We would argue that Coates’ work on the book is a recognition that a believable utopia would not be based on resources, wealth or technology, but on equitable distribution and respect for the rights of those who live in the utopia.

In short, utopia is in large part a matter of societal institutions and cultural practices.

The libertarian utopia
of The Unincorporated
Man is compelling (if
unconvincing) in part
because the authors
had the courage to
be political.
(Image via Amazon.com)

Proposing alternative — utopian — societal institutions and customs will always risk alienating a good portion of your audience. Social institutions are inherently about the distribution of power in a society, and therefore the imagining of different social institutions is political, and political arguments will always offend someone.

For the broadest audience to remain unoffended by an imagined utopia, the author — or studio — needs to be as vague as possible. Perhaps that’s why so many high-budget productions — like Star Trek and the movie Black Panther — depict banal utopias that offers vagaries and magic to explain the perfection of their societies.

Utopia is more difficult an construction than dystopia, both artistically and in the real world. No author will ever write a utopia that is convincing to everyone, but those who try should try to offer ideas, and should be upfront about their politics.

Künsken has a talent for imagining new unfreedoms

On one level, The Quantum Magician is a straightforward heist novel that might be compared to an

(Image via Goodreads)

Ocean’s Eight set in space.

But there’s far more going on under the hood of this well-engineered machine than that reductive description conveys. It is a novel about self-identity, about colonialism, about being handcuffed by our own instincts, and about the subversion of human freedom.

Derek Künsken’s debut introduces the reader to con-man protagonist Belisarius, who gathers up a rag-tag group of his former associates to pull a scheme worth billions.

These associates include his childhood love, his dying mentor, an outcast from the Puppet society, a zany demolitions expert, and an AI that thinks it’s the reincarnation of a Catholic saint. To be fair, some of these characters seem like they’re straight from central casting, but for the most part their relationships and dialogue are engaging and enjoyable.

Belisarius’ scheme, which involves helping a small fleet of warships successfully pass through a heavily fortified transport hub, is somewhat grandiose, but it provides Künsken some interesting chances to comment on colonialism and economic justice.

The planning, execution, twists and turns of the heist are interesting enough to make the book worth your time. But it’s the interplay between human and transhuman motivations that elevates The Quantum Magician.

Central to what makes the book so enjoyable is the character of Belisarius, the Homo Quantus.

It would be easy to imagine a
young Michael Cane as
Belisarius.
(Image via Mirror.Co.Uk) 

Genetically engineered as part of a project to create a human capable of understanding quantum mechanics, he is able to enter various trance-like states in which he redirects portions of his brain that are usually dedicated to social skills or motor functions.

He is, however, a reject from the genetic engineering project, incomplete and unable to fulfill his instinctive need to understand. To distract himself from his inabilities, he focuses his prodigious intellect on understanding human motivations and working as a con artist.

It is a difficult task for those of us who have standard-issue brains to write believably about the thought processes of those who are neuro-atypical, but Künsken pulls it off admirably. Some of the best portions of the book are those in which we get a window into how Belisarius’ brain is constantly churning with mathematics, a need to count items, and to grind away at even minor quandaries.

One of the other real highlights of the book are when Künsken uses the plot and the setting to take readers on a tour of a variety of ways that genetic engineering might lead humanity on a road to unfreedom: the engineering of people like Belisarius whose instinct for curiosity is so tweaked as to be inescapable; the creation of benthic monstrosities Homo Eridanus that cannot escape the task that they were designed to do; and finally, the citizens of the Free City of Puppets.

Two hundred years prior to the events of the novel, The Puppets were designed to be slaves. Genetic engineers boosted their ability to feel religious fervor, and coded them to worship a breed of master humans. By the time that The Quantum Magician takes place, the society of the Puppets has devolved into something strange and awful.

Although they aren’t front-and-centre, the particular form of unfreedom embodied by the Puppets is

Derek Künsken offers new ideas about
how freedom could be subverted.
(Image via DerekKunsken.com)  

affecting, viscerally repugnant, and creepy.

More than anything else, it’s the subplots about the Puppets that might place The Quantum Magician into a grand tradition of dystopic science fiction novels that warn about the subversion of human rights. The work I was reminded of most often when reading this book was Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness In The Sky, and the particular unfreedom embodied by Emergent focus.

Science fiction is often at its best when imagining new forms of tyranny. It is clear that Künsken has a talent for imagining oppressions. On the strength of that alone, The Quantum Magician is well worth picking up, and may end up on some of our nominating ballots.

Autonomous is a rich text

Despite being a debut novel, Autonomous is already enjoying a lot of Hugo buzz, helped along by the

Autonomous is jam-packed with ideas.
(Image via Den Of Geek)

prominence of its author, former io9 editor Annalee Newitz.

Set in a corporatist dystopia, the book offers twin narratives of a pharmaceutical pirate named Jack, and Paladin the robotic intellectual property police tasked with catching her. These intersecting stories allow the characters to explore various facets of a post-national libertarian North America where citizenship is commoditized, and human rights only exist for those who can afford them.

The book’s plot takes the characters to cities, provinces and territories throughout Western Canada – communities that members of our book club have called home. Newitz’s understanding of these places, their geography, and cultures is evident.

This is a rich text written with a deep understanding of the genre. Newitz’s academic background is evident in both the plausible science and the narrative construction.

There are more interesting science fictional ideas in this book than many authors choose to explore in an entire career. This is both impressive and overwhelming. It often feels like Newitz is trying to pack in more than the base plot can handle.

Saskatchwanian readers had no problem
believing that Newitz has visited
Moose Jaw and Saskatoon
(Image via TourismSaskatchewan.ca)

The productivity enhancing drug that is the core of the conflict in the book is both a plausible corporate misdeed and a logical extension of the science fictional concept of “emergent focus” Vernor Vinge introduced in A Deepness In The Sky.

The ontological malaise underpinning the character arc of Paladin is reminiscent of Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream, while also raising questions about consent. Paladin’s feelings are an invasive program that forces her to love her human handler. Some of our readers interpreted this as a metaphor for the patriarchy.

Newitz’s book almost makes some interesting arguments about intellectual property issues, and about the ways in which the rights of patent-holders are abused. Unfortunately, the basis for these ideas is not provided nor fully explored, and no alternative to the status quo is proposed.

True to the title, a main conceptual focus of the novel is to explore the ways in which sentient beings gain or lose autonomy, and to show why this matters. Newitz links the erosion of human rights to legislative negligence that unevenly granted rights to sentient robots. The result is a society that is unjust to many humans who have the same legal standing — and lack of autonomy — as most robots.

Some of our group found several relationships within the book to be problematic. The power

Corporations pushing productivity
enhancing drugs is another way in
which human autonomy is undermined
in Newitz' debut novel.

(Image by GladisAbril via Pixabay.com)

dynamic between Jack and an escaped slave was questioned, as was the age gap between Paladin (an 18 month old android) and her amorous corporate handler (an adult human). Anytime one person in a sexual relationship had less than full autonomy, we had significant qualms.

And in this way, the book prompted an exceptional amount of discussion amongst our book club. For every engaging idea the reader had to chew on, there seemed to be some flaw to dissect.

The plot structure, which alternates between Jack’s and Paladin’s points of view, may be the most fundamental challenge of the book. Most chapters seem to undermine the narrative tension of the subsequent chapter: Jack isn’t in Vancouver, so we know Paladin won’t find her there. Paladin isn’t in Saskatoon, so we know Jack’s not in danger.

Taken on their own, each of these stories are well-written, tightly plotted, and interesting. There is depth in the writing and in some of the explorations of identity, but we felt like these parallel narratives undermined each other often enough to distract the reader from the story.

Autonomous is an extraordinarily promising debut. Any book that provokes such intense — and interesting — discussions should be a strong contender for the Hugo Awards. We are looking forward to her next work.