Recently we took part in the Book Smuggler’s holiday
Smugglivus and one of the points we raised on our Inclusive
Ingrid post was:
Sometimes Inclusive Ingrid wrote this book to tell us that racism/homophobia/sexism/ableism et al is bad, guys. Let me tell you how bad it is, because it’s really really bad. Have you not seen how bad it is? Don’t worry, this book makes it very very clear. Example after example, incident after incident all explained in detail. It’s a wonderful lecture on the damage and prevalence of prejudice! Unfortunately what it isn’t, is a story. Inclusive Ingrid has sat herself down and written one long PSA, shoe-horned in some downtrodden vampires and a werewolf who wants to expound on their women’s studies notes, and neglected to actually include a plot. Or characters we don’t want to cheerfully beat to death with their own sociology 101 texts.
That’s pretty much the very definition of this book. It
is there to make a point and it does to at length and with great repetition.
Some time ago I
read the Sword of Truth series by
Terry Goodkind which was, basically, a great big love in to Ayn Rand and the
joys of libertarianism. This book is Anarchism version – one long polemic on
how anarchy, no government etc is such a wonderful thing conveyed through an
alien living in a utopian society describing his world and showing us the way
to fix our world.
Now, I’ll add another preface by saying I am a very liberal
person – I am, in many ways, the commie-pinko-socialist the right wingers love
to hate – so many of the points the author was trying to raise definitely
resonated with me: environmental destruction, wealth inequality, lack of
representation in democracy, the way politicians try to hold power – so, no I’m
not putting this book down because it clashes with my political views because
in some ways it doesn’t (until the libertarianism raises its ugly head).
But it is mind numbingly naïve and simplistic to a point
where I’m not sure whether the author even believes what they’re writing or is
trying to parody them
Most of this lecturing is delivered by having an alien,
Albert, describe his society to many people, starting with married couple Tom
and Samantha. After many many many many lectures (and shenanigans from a Completely
Awful Journalist) a television interview happens which is very very very long and
this, in turn, leads to a big societal uprising that Tom and Samantha lead
In some ways it was very useful that it was an alien that
communicated their world and society because it required a completely alien
world and an alien society for me to believe it was workable. The inherent
practicality of it that even the book has to acknowledge is backed by a lot of
special alien woo-woo to cover any of the inconveniences that putting humans in
this system would bring (not least of which are the aliens not needing cooked
food, food storage, medicine, sanitation, construction, recorded history,
literature, written communication at all, transport, education – so much more).
Basically, the alien physiology (and low resource nature of their world)
renders any kind of collective undertaking unnecessary. They live as
free-thinking individuals without leadership, hierarchy, government or laws
because absolutely nothing in their society or world requires collective
effort. And even this doesn’t follow through in their depiction – because this
society with virtually stone age tool use (and even that is helped by an
incredibly convenient ecology that produces easily customisable items) has
still managed to produce chemical and biological weapons… somehow.
As for order in this alien society – well they don’t need
laws because they have an absolutely terrifying level of conformity. People don’t
do anything considered wrong because they’re raised to believe that some things
are “just not done.” There’s no rebellion or questioning and this completely
fails to work with a truly long section on the diversity of viewpoints, seeing
things from different positions in order to reach the truth – because their
whole ordered society requires people not to have differing viewpoints. For
bonus funsies, all aliens gather together in rituals that merge their consciousness
ensuring both conformity and complete lack of anything resembling privacy.
Also, the society has gone all Vulcan and removed any extreme emotions because
emotionally lobotomising this population is the only way their society can
work. And yet, utopia!
I’m not against an alien society having any of these
features – it’s all a fascinating look at a completely alternate society based
on beings that are very alien from ourselves. What I am against is apparently a
huge number of people hearing this and decides it’s a wonderful way for people
to live. Albert is praised for the world he presents, his ideas cause a vast
revolution and absolutely no-one sees the absolutely terrifying dystopia he’s
presenting or how humans quite simply do not fit in his world setting.
In some ways I kind of hope that towards the end of the
book everyone gets a swift dose of practicality and challenges all this – but I
DNFed at 150 pages – and not just because the lack of any real depth to the
lectures, but the way they are presented as well.
First of all, we have a truly ludicrous amount of
exposition. This book is 650 pages long and if the rest of the book is anything
like the part I read then at least 400 of those pages are spent on clumsy
lectures. From pages 84-112 we literally have nothing but Albert sat there
explaining his alien world. And that’s not the first lecture, not even close.
The info-dumping is tremendous.
This discussions are also terribly hollow. People are
ridiculously credulous, believing Albert, Tom and Samantha with precious little
actual proof or convincing. People accept Albert is an alien with ridiculous ease
– both bad guys and good guys. And I used that simplistic term for a reason –
the good guys are impossibly good, beautiful, skilled, patient, kind, polite,
forgiving and generally perfect to a level that makes my teeth itch. While the
bad guys are thuggish, ignorant, not-very-bright, cruel, crude and violent.
They might as well all have big moustaches to twirl
Every conflict is ridiculously simple (partly because of Tom and Albert’s uber-martial art skills. And of course an alien society that hasn’t known conflict in 1,000 years has martial arts); every argument with an enemy feels really scripted. They reminded me of when I was a teenager and I had imaginary arguments with people who pissed me off – they would make silly arguments and I would righteously slap them down and everyone would hail me as a rhetorical god. Of course, real life never quite works out that neatly and most opponents aren’t obviously awful and don’t usually do and say things that are so easily smacked down. But that’s how every conflict was resolved, the bad guy would say or do something patently ridiculous without any regard for the consequences or whether they were making sense and then the good guy would demolish them all with a palpable aura of smugness.
Which stands in for the entire storyline – everything is
simple and contrived. A ridiculous shows entitled “Interview with an Alien”
manages to get a viewership of 40,000,000 people which is about 60% or so of
the entire British population (where this book is set). And watching this interview
is sufficient to cause the viewers to rise up and threaten the next revolution –
which then somewhat clumsily segues into Samantha and Tom getting a government
job which calms the revolution down? Apparently? Thankfully the One Good
Politician decides to champion them.
I stopped when it was apparent Tom and Samantha were
going to go on television again which promised for more lectures on why the
system is broken and how they can fix it – this after Samantha just had a 2 page
rant on how taxation is theft (but she’s asafe because she has the mystical
martial art of Good Guy Arse Kicking as well).
The sad thing is that underneath the polemic, there’s a
decent writing style in places – Tom and Samantha bounce off each other in a
really fun way and it’s one of the best depictions of an actual relationship
between two people who are clearly madly in love that I have ever seen. I love
them together and a story of them doing almost anything other than throwing
political broadcasts at me would be a sheer joy to read. Similarly the writing
style, when not lecturing, is wonderfully light, fun and jokey with a kind of
wry irreverence that reminds of Terry Pratchett or Ben Aaronovitch or Jasper
Fforde.
But it doesn’t come close to saving this book for me.
But, if you are interested in a vision of Anarchy (capital A) and some not-very-complex
musings about it, this book isn’t terrible. For me, those Sword of Truth
flashbacks drove me to hiding. But I do think there is a lot of my taste in here and for other readers who can work past, through or even enjoy the utopianism, then this book would be an absolute joy for them. I say this especially because by the synopsis eventually a lot more happens
