A Future Philosophy Of Justice

There’s a lot to recommend Gautam Bhatia’s new novel The Sentence; the book has compelling characters, an engaging plot, and often delightfully urbane turns of phrase. But the real star of the show is the speculative legal system at the heart of the story.

Set in an India-inspired alternate future city state called Permua, The Sentence follows Nila, a graduating student of law who is commissioned to investigate an assassination. The crime occurred almost 100 years in the past and the convict has been in suspended animation pending an appeal. The deadline for appeals ends at the 100 year mark, after which the cryogenic suspension pod is switched off permanently.

The Sentence is a meditation on
governance, on the death penalty
and on how we construct history.
(Image via Goodreads)

Bhatia has created this setting with evident care; centuries of history permeate the conflicts that tear at the city of Permua. Characters are informed by class-related aspects of this background and the weight of history makes the setting feel more immersive. This history is clearly inspired by real-world history (including the Paris Commune). At times, however, this depth of history can also bog down the story.

Permua — riven between two halves separated by class conflict — has adopted a legal system that depends on neutral arbiters, known as “guardians,” who have to forsake their upbringing and live a quasi-monastic life after completing law school. Consequently, Nila is torn between the anarchist commune in which she was raised, and the guardian culture in which she is apprenticing.

One of the most endearing relationships in the novel is between Nila and her high-born classmate Meru. Although the duo share a reverence for the law — and an allegiance to the guardian system to which they have dedicated their careers — their disparate class backgrounds inform their thinking and the interactions between them, often to entertaining effect.

These characters are well developed, with internally consistent personal philosophies informing their actions and interpersonal conflicts. These distinct points of view help the narrative avoid the didacticism of many other works in social science fiction. This is not a book filled with easy answers, nor absolutes. Rather, it sometimes feels like a constructive intellectual debate between students of philosophy and political science. There’s an effervescent quality to the book that makes it a joy to read, especially for policy nerds.

Legal systems in science fiction too often mirror the courtroom dramas that populate American television, possibly because it can be more difficult to offer counternarratives to established social structures and hegemonic ideas than it is to imagine differences in technology. The fact that Bhatia’s alternate legal system is one that is believable and engaging speaks to both his skill as a writer, and the clarity of his thinking.

Bhatia has a gift for aphorisms, and the novel is peppered with succinct and pithy observations such as “economic wounds make it so much harder to live your ideals.” Another favourite passage describes a building whose architect wanted it to be known as “The Fortress of Dreaming Spires,” but that the result was more of “a bedraggled hedgehog.” At times, the politically charged wry humour and wit of lines like these had us reminiscing about the 1980s sitcom Yes, Minister.

In a world unafraid of technology and unburdened by monopsony, The Sentence would be easily available in North American bookshops and online retailers, but its publisher Westland Books does not have wide distribution outside of India. It is worth tracking down a copy. The Sentence is among the best novels published this year.

The Un-American wey that a Lee-Science Fan fae the Left wis haunelt (Translated Blog Post)

Chan Davis (1929-2022) wis weel kent tae fans o lee-science in the 1940s an 1950s. He wis a fanzine editor, an early filker, kent for his daffin at Worldcon, an a ongauin screivar wi Astounding Science Fiction.

But the publict in general is mair likely tae mind o him as a mathematician…an as a political presonar.

Gien his jotters fae the Versity o Michigan in 1954, an the jyle for a saxmonth in 1960, on chairges o contemption o the Congress brocht bi the Hoose Comatee anent Unamerican Haunling, Davis haes lang wantit for the kind o vizzie that screivar Dr Steve Batterson plenishes throu his new buik The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis.

“Almost all HUAC witnesses with Communist connections were avoiding the jeopardy of contempt prosecution either by naming the names of others or declining to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.,” explains biographer Dr. Steve Batterson. “Finding both stay out of jail options to be intolerable, Chandler refused to cooperate asserting the Freedom of Speech protection of the First Amendment. He intended to use the standing gained by an expected conviction to obtain a hearing before the Supreme Court and hopefully end HUAC’s persecution of the left. During the height of McCarthyism, it was a course of enormous risk and courage.”

Awtho it sterts aff as a fairly evenforrit life story o Davis, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis soon taks the lang swatch o jist hoo the American law system wirks…or daesna. The buik shaws us a douce American mathematician warslin wi a system that haed failt in hainin the ceevil richts o its ceetizens.

“Even though I’m a mathematician, I’m also sort of a Supreme Court groupie … so the legal aspects of this intrigued me,” Batterson says. “And 10 years earlier, the Hollywood 10 had gone to jail when they based their defense on the First Amendment. So why did Chandler try something that hadn’t worked. It took me a while to understand.”

The buik howks faur intae the law pleas o the Davis case – an in parteeclar the Barenblatt V United States case whaurby the Supreme Coort ruled that the Communist Pairty wis that kenspeckle a threit tae the beild o Americae that it owergaed the kintra’s commitment tae free speech. A raivelt hesp tae be shair, but Batterson expoonds thir maiters clear an pyntitly.

“It always surprised me that I would talk to mathematicians and they wouldn’t know about Chandler Davis’ story,” Batterson recawed. “It was a long time ago, and the story was just … getting lost.”

 An emeritus professor o mathematics at the Emory Versity in Georgia, Batterson haed been aquaint wi Davis for mair nor 20 year. He haed read Schrecker’s history o McCarthyism No Ivory Tower, that comprehendit a chepter on Chandler Davis, sae he kent muckle anent the case.

“Chandler and I happened to be at the same conference in Banff [Canada] in 2010, and were on a hike together in the mountains. When I asked Chandler about the case he was very forthright with me. He wasn’t reluctant to talk about it because he knew he’d done what was right,” Batterson recawed. “The story fascinated me. He was a mathematician who went to jail … I mean that's a pretty unusual thing to happen!” said Batterson.

Lee-science an the warld o fans haes jist a neuk in this buik, tho it shuid be unnerstood that thir cheils becam less important tae Davis the mair he wis in hauns wi his cawing ower the years. Awtho Chan Davis kythes in fanzines aw throu the 1940s, he fell awa fae the warld o fans aboot the time that he wis up agin the Hoose Comatee anent Unamerican Haunling. Awtho John W. Campbell haed been a freen o Davis, thay haed fell oot wi ane anither in the late 1940s over the heid o Campbell’s takkin agin Eebrew culture.

“After he had been fired in 1954, he wrote what he later called some of his best science fiction stories,” Batterson notit (The stories in question comprehendit The Star System an Adrift on the Policy Level). “He thought that possibly he could make a living as a science fiction writer under an assumed name. But that’s not what he wanted. He was a mathematician, and he didn’t want to be forced into a career change by the government.”

The buik sterts oot wi the fairly evenforrit story o Davis’s early life. His bairnheid as the son o academics fae the Left that wis memmers o the Communist Pairty, his education at Harvard an his haun in the warld o lee-science fans, his airmy service, an his mairrage tae Natalie Zemon-Davis. Aw o this serrs tae bring us tae the hert o the wark: Davis’s bittie time spent at the Versity o Michigan, gettin his jotters, an the sax-year lang lawplea that landit him in the jyle.

“It was incredibly courageous what Chandler did,” Batterson said. “He was 27 or 28 years old when this all started. He had a wife and one child at the time – with another on the way. His wife was a graduate student, and it wasn’t clear at the time that she would go on to become one of the greatest historians of her generation.” Batterson expoonds.

In the time efter he tint his job, the Davis faimly gaed haun tae mooth. Whan freens an colleagues got up siller for them, the FBI endit up wi a leet o aw thaim that haed gien; but dowily it seems that no mony in the lee-science community stood by thair sometime billie.

“There’s not a lot of mention of science fiction or fandom in the FBI documents,” Batterson notit. “The FBI didn’t consider that to be disreputable.” Batterson said.

Efter he wis lowsed o his saxmonth sentence in the jyle in 1960, the faimly flittit tae Canadae whaur Davis an his wife becam professors at the Versity o Toronto. Aince mair he wis in aboot the warld o fans, an set furth a puckle stories syne. In 1989, he wis ane o the guests at the 47th Worldcon held in Boston. Baith he an his wife wis weel-quotit in regaird o thair academic cawings.

Chan Davis an Natalie Zemon-Davis
wis kenspeckle academics steidit in Toronto
(Eemage bi gait o University of Toronto )

In the seeven decades fae Davis compeared afore the Hoose Comatee, his poseetion haes been for the maist pairt exonert.

“These kinds of stories are always relevant. At the time, there was the censorship of left-wing political views under McCarthyism. But you find even now (in Florida for example) an attempt at censorship of left-wing political views,” Batterson notit. “Most people think that they’d take a principled stand, but when push comes to shove ... they bend just a little. Chandler Davis didn’t bend, and I find that interesting.” Batterson said.

Awtho the three foregauin life stories that Batterson haed wrutten wis set furth bi academic presses that haed parteeclar intress in warks o mathematics, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis wis set furth bi the forrit-thinking publisher Monthly Review Press, makkin hit faur mair easy tae get a haud o.

Over the bygane decade, the warld o lee-science fans haes stertit tae warsle wi the histories o its kittle icons. Braw life histories o Asimov, o Heinlein, o Campbell (amang ithers) haes shawn hoo muckle thay haed feet o cley. It maks a chenge tae be pit in mind o aw thaim athin the lee-science community that wis willin tae staun agin the blatters o the day, an rare tae hae this braw volume anent Dr Chandler Davis’s life.

Set ower in Scots bi Dr Dauvit Horsbroch, 2024

A New Moon Illuminates The Apocalypse

Rice offers an apocalypse from
a fresh perspective and with 
interesting insights. 
(Image via Goodreads)

Post-apocalyptic fiction is known for its hopeful restarts, but the subgenre can also include ultimately nefarious elements perhaps best described as fantasies of re-establishing paleoconservative social hierarchies. In the aftermath of societal collapses, readers are encouraged to imagine themselves as a heroic survivor, either uniquely prepared, or uniquely suited for the new world that arises from the ashes of the old. Unshackled from the confines and complexities of middle-class suburban civilization, the post-apocalyptic prepper fancies that they’d be able to reach their full potential.

From Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead, to Stephen King’s The Stand, to John Ringo’s The Last Centurion, many authors have used a white cis man empowerment framework to construct a political argument about what sort of idealized rugged individualists would thrive and what kind of world they’d build in the absence of society’s constricting rules.

Almost inevitably, there’s an aspect of libertarianism to these works. The end of centralized government that is inherent to these stories is obviously an appealing prospect to authors who believe government is generally a bad thing.

Over the past few decades the subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction has sometimes seemed a bit stale. The protagonists are too often fungible, omnicompetent white dudes who live by a rigid moral code. Characters like Joel Miller (Last of Us), Dave Marshall (Slow Apocalypse), Robert Neville (I Am Legend), Miles Matheson (NBC’s Revolution), or Rayford Steele (Left Behind) are basically interchangeable. It should not be lost on anyone that Earl Turner — the protagonist of the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries — hews closely to this archetype. Race, class and gender are all entwined in the tropes and conventions of apocalyptic fiction, and often with reprehensible subtext.

Given this context for the subgenre, Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice is an admirable change of pace. Set a dozen years after a technological collapse, the book follows members of a small Anishinaabe community in Northern Ontario who have used traditional Indigenous knowledge and skills to survive as much of the rest of North America has fallen into ruin.

Although Moon of the Turning Leaves is Rice’s second novel following the Shkidnakiiwin community (after his 2018 novel Moon of the Crusted Snow), it stands on its own fully. Of the two, it offers more depth and insight into what has happened across this post-apocalyptic world.

In Rice’s first novel, the Anishinaabe community located north of Gibson Ontario survived the apocalypse by moving from their government reservation to the banks of a large lake where they’ve been able to subsist on fishing and hunting. By the second book, the resources of that lake and its environs have begun to run out, and the community sends a team of six people south to scout out their ancestral lands near Lake Huron.

Northern Ontario's wilderness provides an
interesting backdrop for an apocalypse.
(Image via Tourism Ontario) 

Led by Evan Whitesky and his 15-year-old daughter Nangohns (Anishinaabemowin for “Little Star”), the group is forced to confront what has happened to the rest of North America over the post-apocalyptic decade. While Rice’s first novel was about a group of people turning inward and forming community to survive, this second foray is about looking outwards and to the future to thrive.

In this setting, it should come as no surprise just how much time and effort these characters must put into ensuring they have enough food. The depiction of subsistence hunting, for example, brings into focus themes of respect for the land and for traditional practices. There are consequently long stretches of the novel in which not much happens other than surviving without modern conveniences, commercial agriculture, and supply chains. Some of that time might have been better spent on character development, as secondary protagonists can feel indistinguishable.

This is apocalyptic fiction with a rich sense of perspective, a strong authorial voice, and a compelling philosophical argument. In the event of a global societal catastrophe, it seems believable to us that the communities likeliest to thrive might be those who already faced a cataclysm (in this case, one that started in 1492) and thus carry a unique set of survival skills with them.

Is there an aspect of wish fulfillment and empowerment fantasy in Moon of the Turning Leaves? It would be easy to read it that way. But a story about a group of marginalized people seeking to return to their pre-colonization homelands has a completely different resonance than all the tales of privileged yuppies yearning for a might-makes-right world.

Moon of the Turning Leaves breathes new life into post-apocalyptic tropes, and deserves strong consideration for both the Aurora Award and the Hugo.

The Un-American Treatment of a Leftist Science Fiction Fan

Professor Chandler Davis: author, mathematician,
activist, and science fiction fan.

Chan Davis (1929 - 2022) was well known to science fiction fans of the 1940s and 1950s. He was a fanzine editor, an early filker, a Worldcon troublemaker, and a regular contributor to Astounding Science Fiction.

But to the broader public, he’s more likely to be remembered as a mathematician … and as a political prisoner.

Fired from the University of Michigan in 1954, and imprisoned for six months in 1960 on charges of contempt of Congress brought by the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), Davis has long warranted the sort of examination that biographer Dr. Steve Batterson provides in his new book The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis.

“Almost all HUAC witnesses with Communist connections were avoiding the jeopardy of contempt prosecution either by naming the names of others or declining to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.,” explains biographer Dr. Steve Batterson. “Finding both stay out of jail options to be intolerable, Chandler refused to cooperate asserting the Freedom of Speech protection of the First Amendment. He intended to use the standing gained by an expected conviction to obtain a hearing before the Supreme Court and hopefully end HUAC’s persecution of the left. During the height of McCarthyism, it was a course of enormous risk and courage.” 

Although it starts out as a relatively straight biography of Davis, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis quickly evolves into an in-depth examination of how the American legal system works … or doesn’t work. The book portrays a principled American mathematician at odds with a system that was failing to protect the civil liberties of citizens.

“Even though I’m a mathematician, I’m also sort of a Supreme Court groupie … so the legal aspects of this intrigued me,” Batterson says. “And 10 years earlier, the Hollywood 10 had gone to jail when they based their defense on the First Amendment. So why did Chandler try something that hadn’t worked. It took me a while to understand.”

The book delves deeply into the legal aspects of Davis’ case – particularly the Barenblatt V. United States case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Communist Party was such a significant threat to American Security that it overrode the country’s commitment to free speech. These are complicated issues, but Batterson explains them clearly and thoroughly.

“It always surprised me that I would talk to mathematicians and they wouldn’t know about Chandler Davis’ story,” Batterson recalls. “It was a long time ago, and the story was just … getting lost.”

An emeritus professor of mathematics at Emory University in Georgia, Batterson had been acquainted with Davis for more than 20 years. He’d read Ellen Schrecker’s history of McCarthyism No Ivory Tower, which included a chapter on Chandler Davis, so he knew the broad strokes of the case.

“Chandler and I happened to be at the same conference in Banff [Canada] in 2010, and were on a hike together in the mountains. When I asked Chandler about the case he was very forthright with me. He wasn’t reluctant to talk about it because he knew he’d done what was right,” Batterson recalls. “The story fascinated me. He was a mathematician who went to jail … I mean that's a pretty unusual thing to happen!”

Science fiction and fandom are relegated to a sideline in the book, though it should be understood that these became less important to Davis as his career progressed. Although Chan Davis appears throughout the fanzines of the 1940s, he fell out of fandom right around the time he was facing the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Although John W. Campbell had been a friend of Davis, they had a falling out in the late 1940s over Campbell’s antisemitism.

“After he had been fired in 1954, he wrote what he later called some of his best science fiction stories,” Batterson notes (The stories in question included The Star System and Adrift on the Policy Level). “He thought that possibly he could make a living as a science fiction writer under an assumed name. But that’s not what he wanted. He was a mathematician, and he didn’t want to be forced into a career change by the government.”

Chan Davis and Natalie Zemon-Davis were
prominent academics based in Toronto.
(Image via University of Toronto)

The book starts off with a fairly straightforward biography of Davis’ early life. His childhood as the son of leftist academics who were members of the Communist Party, his education at Harvard and involvement with science fiction fandom, his military service and his marriage to Natalie Zemon-Davis. All of this is in service of the focus of the book: Davis’ brief stint at the University of Michigan, his firing, and the six-year legal saga that led to his imprisonment.

“It was incredibly courageous what Chandler did,” Batterson explains. “He was 27 or 28 years old when this all started. He had a wife and one child at the time – with another on the way. His wife was a graduate student, and it wasn’t clear at the time that she would go on to become one of the greatest historians of her generation.”

During the period after his firing, the Davis family faced economic hard times. When friends and colleagues took up a donation for them, the FBI ended up with a list of who donated; sadly it appears few in the science fiction community stood by their former compatriot.

“There’s not a lot of mention of science fiction or fandom in the FBI documents,” Batterson notes. “The FBI didn’t consider that to be disreputable.”

After he was released from serving his six-month prison sentence in 1960, the family emigrated to Canada where both Davis and his wife became professors at the University of Toronto. He rejoined fandom there, and published a handful of later stories. In 1989, he was one of the guests at the 47th Worldcon held in Boston. Both he and his wife had distinguished academic careers.

In the seven decades since Davis appeared in front of the House Committee, his position has largely been vindicated.

“These kinds of stories are always relevant. At the time, there was the censorship of left-wing political views under McCarthyism. But you find even now (in Florida for example) an attempt at censorship of left-wing political views,” Batterson notes. “Most people think that they’d take a principled stand, but when push comes to shove ... they bend just a little. Chandler Davis didn’t bend, and I find that interesting.”

Although the three previous biographies that Batterson had written were published by academic presses that specialized in mathematical works, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis was published by the progressive publisher Monthly Review Press, and will consequently be more widely available.

Over the past decade, science fiction fandom has begun to grapple with the histories of its problematic icons. Excellent biographies of Asimov, of Heinlein, of Campbell (among others) have highlighted that they had feet of clay. It is refreshing to be reminded that there were those within the science fiction community who were willing to stand against the prevailing winds of the day, and gratifying to have this excellent volume about Dr. Chandler Davis’ life.

Judge, Jury, Executioner ... and Prophet

The black-clad implaccable figure of Judge Joseph Dredd looms large over the history of British comic books.

Ever since March 5, 1977 when he first graced the pages of the comic book 2000 A.D., Dredd has fought alongside Batman and gone toe-to-toe with The Predator, and generally provided a presence that has inspired two Hollywood movies, one animated television show, no fewer than eight video games, four table-top roleplaying games, and a line of Funko Pop! Bobbleheads. Dredd’s cultural impact and enduring appeal are clearly worth examining.

Police conducted a Judge Dredd LARP
in response to a trans-rights demonstration.
(photo by Olav Rokne)

In his new non-fiction book I Am The Law, British journalist Michael Molcher provides the character with an overdue analysis. He makes a compelling argument that Judge Dredd isn’t just the most important British comic book … it might be one of the most important works of science fiction, and maybe even social science fiction, of the past four decades

“What Dredd tackles is the fundamental nature of policing in society. Consequently, it’s a story that has asked deep questions about what kind of society we want,” Molcher says. “Dredd just gives such a prescient warning – such an important warning – about what we’re sliding into.”

Dredd was created by American expatriate writer John Wagner and Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra in 1977. Each of these creators came to Great Britain having grown up in a country where the relationship between police and the broader public was more fraught than it was in the United Kingdom. Molcher argues that their creation of a militarized science fiction police officer who upheld a rigid and absolutist approach to law enforcement was fundamentally different from other contemporaneous cultural commentaries on policing. While characters like Dirty Harry, The Sweeney, and The Punisher all represented “the strong individual tired of the weak state, Dredd represents the strong state that is tired of the weak individual.”

The book depicts the creation of Judge Dredd as a response to the rising reactionary moral panics that engulfed British media in the late 1970s. Molcher seems to argue that comics provided a fertile ground outside of the “establishment” media for Judge Dredd writers like John Wagner and Alan Grant. It provided a platform from which they could offer pointed critiques that were later seen as prescient. 

“Things that happen in [Judge Dredd] echo, copy, or pressage things that happened in real life maybe a week or two either side. These are comics that were written months before,” Molcher says. “It’s almost Cassandra-like.”

Michael Molcher's deep dive into
philosophy and sociology elevates
I Am The Law to a must-read text.
(Image via the author's Instagram)

By understanding Judge Dredd, Molcher argues, we can understand the multifaceted political crisis we are facing today. Thus, it might also be considered an important work of social science fiction. Throughout the book, history, sociology, and cultural studies are woven together.

“When you look at the book Policing The Crisis by Stuart Hall — it’s about the moral panic around the mugging crisis of the 1970s -- you can’t help but realize that Hall and [Judge Dredd writers] John Wagner and Alan Grant are talking about the same things,” Molcher says.

Dredd was published when an ascendant right-wing press was stoking public fears about crime and safety in Britain. Through the mid to late 1970s, headlines trumpeted the idea of a “mugging crisis,” and chronicled the bloody exploits of the Yorkshire Ripper. Simultaneously, the reputation of the police was being eroded by a series of scandals in which abuse of power had come to light.

Molcher explores how this moment was reflected in contemporaneous pop culture and how Judge Dredd quickly differentiated itself from these other social commentaries. By depicting Dredd’s inhumane response to crime as an explicitly state-sanctioned activity, the comic’s writers suggest that the inhumane actions of real-world police are often implicitly state-sanctioned.

“There's a subtle kind of moral economy to Judge Dredd comics which can be easy to miss if you're there for the shooting,” Molcher says. 

Despite having a cult following in the United States, Dredd has never had as large a following there as in Great Britain. In part this can be chalked up to the stories being published much later in America, in large volumes that only included the most commercially successful issues. 

Early Dredd comics including The Cursed Earth
are put into historical context.
(Image via WhatCulture.com)

“America is always going to struggle with Dredd as a character. It has to do with the nature of the American action film, the nature of America's relationship with its police, and the desire to make Dredd into a hero when he's not.” Molcher says.

The book often makes for grim reading, especially when Molcher explores the global rise of authoritarianism and the decline of democracy. Chapters on how Judge Dredd responds to protestors — and how that’s now reflected in real-world police responses to activism — are chilling. 

“This wasn’t the book that I’d intended to write,” he says, explaining that his original pitch to his publisher was a book more broadly about the history of Dredd. “I knew that the book would be about politics and that there would be an aspect of it that would be about criminology. But the more I read about the history of policing, the more I realized that this version of the book was unavoidable.”

I Am The Law may be the best primer for American audiences wanting to understand the phenomenon of Judge Dredd. It may also be one of the most important books about science fiction published this decade. Molcher has offered readers a dystopian non-fiction that matches the current moment.

A Canticle For Hopepunk

From early days in the genre, novels were often built out of previously-published short stories. The result was called “A fix-up.” Stories that had been popular in pulp magazines sometimes helped convince publishers that there was an appetite for a more expansive and expensive book-length version.

Vast sweeps of history can show
the ramifications of policy decisions.
(Image via Goodreads)

These fix-ups also came with their own synergy between form and function. Interlinked stories working on similar themes turned out to be a form of science fiction that was well-suited for galaxy-spanning tales and large sweeps of future history. Many of the books traditionally considered to be classics of the genre fit this mold, such as Foundation, City, and The Martian Chronicles.

With the rise of cheap paperback novels in the 1960s, and the decline of pulp magazines, the great science fiction tradition of fix-ups has been in significant decline. Which is why it’s refreshing to read Annalee Newitz’ latest novel. Although not technically a fix-up, The Terraformers uses a style and structure that is reminiscent of many of these works.

In fact, the novel could be read as a response — a mirror image even — of Walter Miller Jr.’s Hugo-winner A Canticle For Leibowitz. But while Miller is focused on history’s cycles of creation and destruction, Newitz’ book explores tensions between freedom and corporate serfdom.

Like Miller’s fix-up novel, Terraformers is split into three sections that are set in similar locations but separated in time by centuries.

Each book’s first section focuses on an individual in a sparsely-populated world making the discovery of an underground facility filled with hidden knowledge. It’s this section of Terraformers that provides the book’s two most memorable and compelling characters; an ecological systems analyst named Destry and Whistle, the intelligent flying moose she rides.

In both novels, the second section involves two institutions in conflict over the control of technology. While Miller had secular scientists and the church battling over access to knowledge, Newitz shows democratic egalitarian governance struggling against hierarchical capitalists over transportation technology.

We are on #TeamWhistle.
(Photo by Olav Rokne)

Though both novels end with a revolution, Newitz’s work is less fatalistic. Terraformers seems to suggest that although there will always be those who seek to dominate others through wealth, through hierarchy, and through coercion, the majority of people will work towards community and good governance. 

The classic fix-up novels that focused on a sweep of history shared many similar flaws; compelling characters are given short shrift, transitions between historical eras can be jarring, and some portions drag. In mirroring the strengths of these works, The Terraformers is also burdened with many of the same problems.

Large-scale sweep-of-history stories might make it difficult to put the focus on individual characters, but they do provide the opportunity to relay the long-term consequences of policy decisions. In the hands of politically astute writers like Newitz and Miller, this medium can provide insightful commentary on human nature.

There is also something of Clifford D. Simak’s fix-up novel City in the DNA of The Terraformers, as uplifted animals debate the merits and the legacy of humanity. Newitz introduces us to talking wolves, cats, and earthworms, whose views on the conduct of homo sapiens is not always glowing. This occasionally gives the book a fable-like quality that some readers appreciated, but others found a wee bit twee.

With their third novel, Newitz offers readers a good example of a classic science fictional form that has been much neglected over the past few decades. As with the best fix-ups, it is more than the sum of its parts.

The End Of History & The Last Question

A novella that could be interpreted as a direct rebuttal to the work of Francis Fukuyama, Light Chaser

Light Chaser hits
shelves Aug. 24, 2021.
(Image via Goodreads)

is a deftly written space opera whose slender size belies the big ideas its authors are tackling.

Collaborations are tricky businesses, but Gareth Powell and Peter F. Hamilton’s work here shows that the results can produce a unique and engaging chemistry. Both of these authors are best known for tackling space opera, but Powell has usually provided more action-heavy fare while Hamilton has gone for vast sweeping epics. Light Chaser is an interesting balance of both of their strengths.

Set in a distant future where a human diaspora has populated millions of planets across the universe, the novella follows a near immortal traveler Amahle whose task is to document, collate, and share the memories and experiences of those living in these worlds. After working on this task for millennia, Amahle’s memory of her own experiences has faded, providing an interesting point of reflection on the role of the cultural archivist.

The worlds she visits are disparate but stable. Some could be described as high-tech civilizations, while others are immiserated medieval monarchies. What all these societies have in common, however, is that they are stable and unchanging. Humanity has hit a steady state; this is the ‘End of History.’

One of the nicely used tools for worldbuilding employed by the authors is Amahle’s collection of work experiences. By allowing her to vicariously live the memories of a few inhabitants of civilizations she visits, the reader is provided an ethnographic glimpse of the civilization instead of a summative infodump.

As her travels progress, Amahle starts to receive coded messages from a mysterious sender in her past… and starts piecing together the fact that her AI companion on these voyages may have ulterior motives. At moments, this may remind readers of the 2010 Hugo-winning movie Moon.

Capitalist eschatology
reached its apex in 1992.
(Image via Amazon)

Be forewarned: the ending that may be undermined by the narrative structure of the novella. For example, the book starts at the end of the plot and even five pages in, the reader already knows that the protagonist will sacrifice herself and her partner in order to kill an ancient and evil force. So it doesn’t come as much surprise when the reader learns that this ancient evil force is behind the stagnation of the human race, nor does it surprise when they start preparing to sacrifice themselves.

That being said, the novella is very welcome for its implicit criticism of complacent feel-good neoliberal end-of-history ideology that leaves major portions of the human race trapped as part of low-wage low-rights pools of exploitable labour. The metaphor was both incisive and perfectly woven into the story.

Light Chaser is an absolutely essential text for fans of either author, offering the punchy dialogue and sprightly pacing of Powell’s best work and the quirky-big-space-idea think pieces of Hamilton’s. It will likely find a place on several of our nominating ballots next year.

Witches Of The World Unite!

Themes of women’s liberty, worker solidarity and resistance to capitalism are all addressed in The

(Image via Goodreads)

Factory Witches of Lowell, a lovely novella by C.S. Malerich about a 19th-Century cotton workers union.

The story follows union organizer Judith and her witch coworker Hannah as they organize the women factory workers into a labour union to oppose Mr. Boott, the agent of the capitalists back in Boston.

Hannah casts a spell with the cooperation of the other factory girls that will enforce solidarity among the workers. None of them can break the strike without the cooperation of all the workers. Solidarity being perhaps the most useful tool among the working class, this is very powerful magic indeed.

Of particular note is how magic in The Factory Witches is inherently tied to a capitalist worldview, as it is impossible to cast a spell without ownership of the spell components. This draws into question the very nature of ownership over intellectual property and its theft.

Mr. Boott, as an agent of wealthier men back in the city, is doing all he can to ensure the highest profits for his principals. He raises the cost of rent, threatens lower wages and longer hours. He squeezes the workers to ensure profit stays where it belongs, with the wealthy owners. He is the clear villain as he attempts to break the strike by the factory girls. He plays this role well and is a thoroughly unlikeable character.

Overall, the story is one with a good message and a strong narrative. At a scant 80 pages, it moves along quickly and provides a hurried resolution. While many SFF stories can feel long, this novella’s weakness is that it might be too short. This results in underemphasizing the factory workers’ struggle, and failing to depict the efforts that capitalists were, and still are, willing to make to break a strike and the power of unions.

It’s easy to enthusiastically recommend this story when wanting more is our biggest quibble. We look forward to reading more work by C.S. Malerich.

The Vanished Birds soars

Rich with anthropological detail and criticism of market-driven ideologies, Simon Jimenez’ debut novel is a puzzle that rewards those with the patience to figure out how all the pieces fit together.

(image via Goodreads)

The novel’s sections appear at first to be distinct from each other. Readers begin by learning about a child growing up in an early agrarian society visited by space ships about every dozen years. Next they’re swept into the story of a merchant vessel from an advanced mercantile civilization reliant on exploiting planets like the one in the first chapter. Finally, the novel becomes an adventure about the rescue of a lost crew member.

Throughout the novel, flashbacks to a near contemporaneous earth are used to convey backstory through the eyes of Fumiko, an early architect of interstellar civilization who skips forward through time by going in and out of suspended animation.

Although various parts of the novel appealed to various book club members differently, there was a consensus that Jimenez’ writing is excellent. Some of us were drawn in by the first chapter while others were worried it was setting up a more wunderkind YA narrative. Using a subsistence farmer’s point of view in the first chapter served to create context for the subsequent stories.

There was even sharper disagreement about the flashbacks. Some club members felt it was essential exposition about the failure of modern capitalism and the colonization of space, while others described the flashbacks as extraneous.

The final section of the novel, in which the plot hits a fairly frenetic pace, left some readers scratching their heads. The change in tone from a contemplative — almost meditative — novel, to an action-adventure is somewhat jarring. 

(Image via Backpage)

Space opera is a subgenre that has all-too-often fallen into the trap of focusing on technology, rather than imagining alternative ways that humans can organize themselves. One of the most appealing aspects of The Vanished Birds is that Jimenez weaves social commentary and structural critiques into the cultural setting. He’s skillful enough not to slap readers in the face with this, but rather offers enough detail that those who scratch beneath the surface will be rewarded.

Jimenez seems deeply versed in the history of the genre; at times paying homage to Ursula K. le Guin, and at others referencing Alfred Bester. In fact, the book could be read as a direct response to Bester’s The Stars My Destination, as one of the main characters in The Vanished Birds can jaunt like the earlier novel’s protagonist Gully Foyle — and at a whim can travel across vast distances almost instantaneously. Jimenez’ seems to be suggesting that a citizen’s ability to leave would be the ultimate subversion of corporate power. 

The Vanished Birds is a puzzling novel, and one whose pieces occasionally fit together oddly. But it is also  a smart and thoughtful book that will deeply appeal to readers looking for cultural criticism in their outer-space adventures. 

Interview with Gautam Bhatia, author of The Wall

Lawyer, academic, and author Gautam Bhatia has been editing non-fiction articles at Strange

Gautam Bhatia’s debut novel
The Wall is the sort of book that
you keep pondering weeks after
you finish reading it. 
(Image via Amazon) 

Horizons magazine for more than five years. The Rhodes Scholar has written two non-fiction books about constitutional law, and in August saw his fiction debut The Wall released by HarperColins. The book, which is set in a city that has been trapped within an impenetrable wall for 2,000 years mixes insights into sociology, law, and the nature of rebellion. Bhatia, who is completing his PhD at Oxford, spoke via Skype with blog contributor Olav Rokne in September.   

The Wall is a powerful metaphor. Never more so than in the current political context, in which world leaders have used walls as a totemic symbol of their own xenophobia. Was this book in any way shaped by that political environment?

The idea of the wall was part of the story from the beginning. It was there when I started writing the book in 2008, long before walls … you know … really became such an unwanted part of our daily imagination. 

 But many people have always lived with walls.

I mean, the India-Bangladesh border has always inspired rhetoric about infiltration, so-called illegal migration, fences and walls. So there have been people who always suffered because of walls.

It strikes me that The Wall is actually an almost exact mirror image of what Iain M. Banks did; The Culture was entirely post-scarcity and the world of The Wall is one in which scarcity is turned up to the Nth degree.

There’s one little line where someone says that “you can vote for many things, but you can’t really vote against the wall.”

That line actually is a little sly tip of the hat to a statement made by one of the European Union commissioners when there was a popular protest movement in Italy against austerity, and he said that “look you can’t vote against the treaties.” There’s a sense that for the European Union, when a country wants to rebel against austerity, it’s treated as if they’re rebelling against the natural law of the world. How can you possibly vote against a natural law? 

 

And so I thought about what would happen if something like neoliberalism took a physical form in the shape of a wall; you literally can’t vote against The Wall.

In the world in which we live, scarcity is a rhetorical device that is used to suppress popular aspiration. What would happen if scarcity wasn’t just rhetorical, but actually physically there in front of you? 

Author Gautam Bhatia's
keen legal mind informs
his rich and nuanced 
worldbuilding. 
(Image via The Times of India)

What other writers influenced your writing?

[Ursula K.] Le Guin was a massive influence.

When I was seven or eight years old, my parents got for me a copy of the Wizard of Earthsea. There were three books I read when I was very young. One was the Hobbit, the second was the first Harry Potter (a Canadian colleague of my dad’s actually brought it from Canada when he came visiting and it hadn’t become a cult phenomenon yet), and the third was Earthsea.

At that time, I really loved Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter both. I kind of passed by them after a point, but Le Guin has been a continuing and formative influence.

Dispossessed, as you can see is a huge framing influence on this book in many ways, not just in the shape of the political conflict, but also what Le Guin kept telling us all: that we should imagine alternatives to capitalism, and that it was possible to imagine those alternatives even in constrained spaces.

There’s a scene early in your book that reminded me of The Dispossessed, how our words constrain our language, and how our languages can constrain our worlds. It’s the scene with Methila learning about the word “horizon.” I wondered if you were deliberately setting this up as a metaphor for the ways that our imagination can be constrained by a hegemonic set of ideas.

You’re right that it is a metaphor, but also I wanted to explore in literal terms what impact that kind of constrained life would have upon your language and what impact the inability to frame certain words would have upon how you could visualize certain things.

One thing that's fascinated me has been the interplay between language and the way we perceive the world. Samuel Delaney’s work was in that sense very interesting for me and more recently China Miéville’s Embassytown.

Can you tell me a little bit about the legal system, and what ideas were you trying to explore with it?

The exploration of the legal system in The Wall obviously stems from my other life as a lawyer — as a constitutional lawyer specifically.  

I realized over the years that legal structures — in a certain sense — form the hidden plumbing of the world. Many of the things that you don’t think have anything to do with the law are still very much undergirded by what the legal system allows or doesn’t allow.

[For example], the so-called free market itself is entirely a construction of a series of legal rules involving property contracts. So law is kind of the unarticulated basis of many things we do in our daily lives. It’s relatively unexplored in speculative fiction.

Law is so connected to the material realities of any society. If you were to change something as basic as having a wall that ensured a literal scarcity of resources, and created actual restraints on mobility, then the way the laws would be framed to express that material reality would also be very different. I thought it would be very interesting to explore.

Are you working on any books after these two?

Right now mentally and emotionally completely consumed by Book Two and finishing the story. I have some vague vague ideas for another series that continues to play with Ursula LeGuin’s whole idea that the task of speculative fiction writers is to imagine alternatives to capitalism. That’s just something that I’m obsessed with. I’m just thinking about how to work with that within a space opera framework.

It’s something a bit like what Iain M. Banks did, but he didn’t really explore how The Culture worked. He often focused more on the conflicts The Culture had with other non-Culture societies, and I’m more interested in how a post-capitalist space-faring society would work — how the mechanics of it might work from the inside. I just have some very very vague ideas which are completely unformed right now.

But for the moment, I’m investing my energy on Book Two and finishing that now.

A Strong Sense Of Justice

An active and ebullient presence on Twitter, Adri Joy has been blogging about science fiction for more

Adri Joy is one of the 
editors at Nerds Of A Feather.
(Image via Twitter) 

than five years.

Having joined Nerds of a Feather as one of their editors in 2019, she has written first-rate reviews and provided needed criticism. Her work deserves to be recognized and we will be putting her name on our Hugo nominating ballots in the fan writer category.

Given the fact that she is both a millennial and British, it should come as no surprise that her writing style is quippy and nuanced. Her reviews are often well-constructed, stylistically solid, and provide a strong through-line of argumentation about what makes a work compelling.

By any measure, Joy has written some of her best work in 2020. In her review of Incomplete Solutions, she provides a culturally sensitive approach to the work while not not turning a blind eye to issues surrounding gender. Her discussions with other bloggers about awards shortlists often provide both wry humour and accurate criticisms. In her blog post “Tor.com Publishing, First Become Ashes, and the pretty pastel packaging of abuse,” Joy offers an even-handed, insightful and compelling analysis of the marketing surrounding K.M. Szpara’s novels. It is this last post that is particularly illustrative of what makes Joy such an important voice in the SFF community: she is unafraid to engage with the political and social questions influencing the genre.

And on these political and social questions, Adri Joy seems motivated by a strong sense of justice. She is fierce in her defense of trans rights, gay rights, the rights of neurodiverse people, the rights of persons with disabilities, and the rights of all marginalized people. In doing so, she does not shy away from controversy, and seems more interested in integrity than popularity.

Just as important as her blogging, Joy’s presence on Twitter contributes to her standing as a first-rate fan writer. She is quick-witted, funny, and fast to find the joy in the SFF community.

There are times that some people in this book club don’t entirely agree with Joy. What is undeniable however, is that she argues with insight, passion, and tenacity. Even when we disagree with her, the debate is better for what she has to say.

A People's Future Without Labour

Forty years ago, Boston University history professor Howard Zinn refused to cross a picket line, in a

Howard Zinn speaking to one
of his colleagues during the 1979
Boston University staff strike.
(Image via HowardZinn.org)

show of solidarity with striking clerical workers at his institution. Speaking with the workers on the picket line motivated him to help raise the level of labour history awareness in his country.

He came to believe that the inclusion of labour narratives in popular history books could help. The resulting work, A People’s History Of The United States, has become an influential and controversial classic that examines previously untold stories of workers and marginalized peoples. 

Any author or editor attempting to claim the mantle of Zinn’s work has an unenviable task ahead of them. But when SF luminaries John Joseph Adams and Victor LaValle — both of whom have produced top-quality works — announced a short story collection whose title is an homage to Zinn, we were very excited. 

Given the provocative and timely premise of A People’s Future Of The United States, we approached the collection of stories with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the collection as a whole failed to live up to the grand ideas described by the editors.

The book’s introduction is one of the strongest parts of the collection. Over the course of eight pages, Adams sets out the premise of the work, and alludes to the fact that many of the same omissions in mainstream historical narratives are reflected in how we imagine possible futures. Like all good

Even the cover of A People's
Future includes the shadow
of the word "History."
(Image via Goodreads) 

introductions, it encourages the reader to keep reading. 

By definition, collections provide access to a variety of works and it’s rare, perhaps even impossible, to expect that all readers will universally enjoy every contribution. Our book club enjoyed Sam J. Miller’s excellent parable about surveillance, privacy and the policing of heteronormative behaviours. Omar L. Akkad’s harrowing story about internment camps will stay with readers. G. Willow Wilson’s takedown of the privatization agenda is exactly the sort of work we had hoped to read when we picked up this volume. Seanan McGuire’s story includes a ray of hope and helps enrich the anthology.

Questions of race, class and gender are important to explore and have all-too-often been ignored in science fiction. 

We would argue that because science fiction is an inherently political genre, it is of paramount importance to create inclusive futures we can believe in. Some of the stories in this volume do indeed ably tackle topics of race, class and gender. But the topic of labour is almost entirely neglected. 

It is disappointing that an anthology that so explicitly aims to address cultural blindspots has reproduced one itself. 

In comparison, the index to Zinn’s classic history book includes a full page of references to organized labour movements. At a rough estimate, 30 per cent of the book deals with the struggles of traditional union movement organizing, and workers rights are integral to much of the rest of the text. 

Zinn examines at length the general strikes of 1934, 1936, 1938. He tackles women’s roles in the

Howard Zinn's book talks about Joe Hill
and the Industrial Workers Of The World.
(Image via Wikipedia)

labour movement, both prior to the Wagner Act, and afterwards. He talks about how women used the union movement to affect change long before there was an organized feminist movement. He chronicles organized labour’s transition from being mostly indifferent (or antagonistic) to race relations to becoming allies of the civil rights movement. He tackles the philosophical questions that drove a wedge between the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the American Federation of Labour (AFL) in the 1930s. 

It is, in our minds, staggering to think that a book positioned as the spiritual heir to A People’s History Of The United States could completely ignore the role of labour in class and other struggles. It’s not as if issues related to workers’ rights in the United States have been solved. 

Relatedly, some of the stories didn’t seem to exist in a “People’s Future” at all, but rather in a fantastical alternate universe that has little connection to the political environment framing this collection. Celestial beings with snakes growing from their heads and dragons are fun to read about but we found it hard to make a connection to a future United States in at least a few of the stories in this collection. Even when we liked the stories individually, the fantastical elements put them at odds with the idea of a real-world “Future Of The United States.” 

In standard texts about history, labour had been ignored; it didn't fit in with military or great man history. Zinn changed the focus and brought labour to the centre. This collection failed to do that for science fiction.

There are significant current labour struggles that are going to define whatever future people in the United States will share: the fight against precarious employment, the tensions inherent within two-tiered union contracts, evolving questions around scope-of-work issues to name a few. This is an area that is rife with dramatic science fictional potential, but is being neglected in the genre. 

With slightly different editorial choices, A People’s Future Of The United States could have been an essential text for progressive science fiction fans. As it is, we have a short story collection with good stories in it, but which is less than the sum of its parts.