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Babel-17 is about a new language created to be used interstellar warfare, and as I read the book of the same name, I indeed felt I was reading something written in another language. This terse Nebula winner is more a novella than a novel, and only offers tantalizing glimpses of the world Delany has built and the interesting characters that populate it.

I don’t have much to offer on this book. I found it difficult to get through, even knowing the conceit, having read the Wikipedia article simply to orient myself. Written in 1966. science fiction was opening up to new horizons, even more existential yet hallucinogenic horizons. Rydra Wong is a telepath, much like many of the characters we’ve seen in novels coming from the 1950s and early 60s. But Babel-17 seems to fall more along the lines of the sexual revolution and drug culture that the late 1960s fully embraced, as it is a language that offers wonderful glimpses of a new world, much like a hallucinogen might. The only downside if the drug cum language turns its speakers into saboteurs. Also, the dichotomy between Rydra’s allies and the enemy Invaders mimics the bipolar system of conflict set up by the Cold War during this period.

It’s surprising that the center of Delany’s novel is a young woman who is presented as competent, intelligent, strong, and capable. She’s not asexual but she’s also not oversexualized. This is a triumph for a science fiction novel of any period, not to mention one written in 1966.

I can’t really recommend or not recommend this book, as I found it slipping through my mind like water. I’ve read some of Delany’s short stories and enjoyed them, and he has another Nebula winner from the year immediately proceeding this one, so I’ll get to try again with him at a later date. Until then, I’ll let you all judge Babel-17.

Buried inside this terse read of a novel are the little nuggets of grand speculation that helped Rendezvous with Rama win both the Hugo and the Nebula in its year. This novel is a first contact story without any real first contact. The ultimate question – are we alone in the universe – is answered with a decisive no when the so-named Rama probe, a huge black cylindrical ship – enters the solar system. But, devoid of any sentient life, or perhaps or any life at all, the question then becomes, what else is accompanying us in the universe?

This book was written in 1973, when the American victory in the space race increasingly paled when faced with Earth’s increasingly apparent “limitations.” Set in 2130, Rama is Clarke’s imaging of what the space race could have gotten us. A world that was forced to pull together to protect itself from attack of space-born objects discovers and explores the Rama probe when it first appears in the solar system’s orbit. People are no longer identified by their nationality, but by their planetary statuses, and Clarke makes light of the UN, poking fun that it could have over 100 members while the planetary committee can barely function with under 10. Indeed, at one point while exploring the Rama probe, one of the characters remarks that the Ramans must have morals or they would have destroyed themselves, as humans almost did during the 20th century, an obvious allusion to the Cold War detente the United States enjoyed with the Soviet Union at the time.

But what is Rama, besides a curious allegory for Cold War relations? Rama is a massive, hallow space probe outfitted with many strange but seemingly useless features on its inside that begin to reveal their purpose as the probe awakens to life. Clarke was a  golden age hard science fiction author, and calling him a stickler for details is an understatement. Rama is nothing but a cold, scientific adventure story – even his human characters are never more than mere conduits to the futuristic dream ship that Clarke creates for them to explore. This can make for some dry or even frustrating reading, as Rama’s interior is described with intricate detail but all the greatest mysteries about her – i.e. who are her creators – are left unanswered.

And that is the way Rama must be left – as an exploration novel emblematic of a time when Americans looked to the stars with not just hope but also cold realism in their eyes. In Clarke’s future space pulled humanity together and allowed us to colonize the stars, just as in real life it drove two nations toward the pinnacle of scientific greatness. There is the requisite sexism,  but women also serve on Commander Norton’s exploratory crew, and are allowed to hold important roles on the ship. It’s also a book for fanboys and space geeks and anyone else who wonders whether or not we’re alone in the universe, and if not, what our companions are like. In Rama answers are only found in the things that the Ramans invented, but as there are many sequels, I can assume more is revealed about their nature in later books. Perhaps Clarke’s terse prose opens up a bit as well.

The first book I ever attempted to read by Arthur C. Clarke was 2001, a novelization based on a film based on a short story. I’ve never seen the movie, but I found the book to be boring, put it down, and never finished it. This was all at least five or six years ago. Fast forward to 2012 and I picked up Fountains of Paradise anticipating some of the hard science fiction coupled with existential crises that I anticipated from Clarke’s work. This book was written a bit after the Golden Age, when Arthur C. Clarke cut his teeth, and at the tail end of the wild and fancy speculation of New Wave authors. As a result, The Fountains of Paradise is a strange blend of hard science fiction and far eastern folklore, drawing lines from a fictionalized classic Sri Lankin setting to twenty-second century Earth and the aspirations of one man to physically link the earth to the heavens.

The Fountains of Paradise won both the Hugo and the Nebula for its year, and as I plodded through the book I found myself at a loss to identify anything that might make it deserving of such accolades. Over time it’s certainly paled in comparison to his other winner, Rendezvous with Rama, as well as beloved nominee Childhood’s End. I’m not sure how the larger sci-fi community at large rates this book retrospectively, but from where I stand there’s nothing groundbreaking of interest here.

The fixed center of Clarke’s novel is the space elevator that engineer Vannevar Morgan is bent on building in order to reduce the complication of rocket travel so that humans can colonize and explore space and the solar system with a greatly increased ease. Unfortunately for Morgan, the best place on earth to anchor such an elevator is on the top of the fictional mountain Taprobane, which for centuries has been home to an order of seemingly immovable Buddhist monks. These monks and their order have survived the onslaught of disasters and the ambitions of violent kings, and at first it appears they may be the only thing standing in the way of Morgan’s giant leap for mankind.

In a way, one of Clark’s goals in The Fountains of Paradise is to make an explicit connection between Earth’s history and the science fiction future that he creates. Morgan sees the space elevator as a necessary step forward in man’s need to invent, grow, and explore. The monks, conversely, represent a stagnant past, even though in the text they are venerated, in a way, for their willingness to uphold tradition. In a strange twist, it is a series of superstitious omens that causes the monks to abandon the temple, allowing Morgan to build his elevator.

This interaction reveals the subtle tension between the mystical and the scientific that underlies the entire books. The nature of god and fate form the quiet core of mankind’s search for life and truth among the heavens. While the temple on top of Taprobane stands for mankind’s spiritual link to the skies, it retreats in the face of man’s actual physical invasion of the heavens through the use of science. An interesting, almost throwaway plot, complicates the dialectic between religion and science, as an alien space probe has just happened to drift through our solar system around the time Morgan is planning and building his elevator. Viewed as a fount of knowledge, particularly because it represents a supposedly advanced culture, the probe is assaulted with questions, the most important of which turns out to be whether or not there is, in fact, a god. Frustratingly for Clarke’s humans, the probe’s answer is evasive enough to be both tantalizing and unsatisfying.

Fate plays a crucial role in the building of the space elevator as well, beyond facilitating its ultimate construction. Much of the action of the latter half of the book focuses in agonizing detail on the plight of a group of scientists who get trapped on the elevator following a near-catastrophic accident. For some reason Morgan is the only one who can save them, and while their fate in lays in the balance, his ultimately does as well. In a cruel twist, Morgan dies saving them before his space elevator is completed.

The present, the past, and the future, the scared and the profane, spirituality and science, tradition and exploration – all these dueling themes weave their way through Clarke’s novel. None of these are unfamiliar territory for readers and writers of science fiction, but as presented here they’re not necessarily more or less thought-provoking than in any other average novel. A random cast of seemingly superfluous characters makes finding the novel’s center difficult, as do random jumps in time and shifts from folkloric writing to hard science fiction. All these elements can be combined in success, but The Fountains of Paradise reads a bit like a half-formed draft with some lovely bit and many others that need re-evaluation. As I’ve said before, my own reaction may be in part because many works I’ve read are derivative of this book, which sometimes can have the unfortunate effect of devaluing the source material. Either way, this book is an unchallenging read that could have been much better. The terse style of the Golden Age seems to fall flat here when met with a more folkloric and spiritual attempt at writing and thinking about science fiction with the many intricate threads Clarke attempts to weave into his story of one man’s attempt to reach the stars.

When I worked at Half Price Books in Berkeley, Red Mars was one of those books that we sold out of regularly. Being two blocks from UC Berkeley, college students interested in buying and selling their books made up a large portion of our customers. Somewhere along the line we’d acquired the knowledge that Red Mars is required reading for students up at Cal, which always excited me: science fiction on a syllabus! So, one day, as I helped a girl find a copy of Red Mars, I asked her which class she was reading the book for. I expected her to name some upper level English course focused on science fiction, but what came out of her mouth was a long string of large scientific and technical words, astrobiology being one of them. I felt incredibly impressed by this young woman. Turns out they read Red Mars in upper level science classes (hard science classes!) at UC Berkeley to learn about what terraforming a planet might be like. That’s right, this work of fiction is used to teach actual science.

If that knowledge didn’t clue you into the fact that Red Mars is a masterpiece of hard science fiction, then I will state it outright. Robinson goes to amazing lengths to create a story that depicts what the terraformation of Mars would look like if we could ever get off our terrible, ignorant asses and actually try to do something so bold and amazing. But ignoring the hard science that makes this book required reading for actual scientists, Red Mars is truly an opus about space exploration and colonization. Kim Stanley Robinson has found a new frontier in this western in space, not only in science, but in human societal relationships. Just as the colonists must deal with the nuts and bolts of getting to Mars and building a livable human habit on a foreign planet, they must also struggle to create or recreate human society on Mars. Expanding Red Mars beyond scientific discovery to explorations of cultural, societal, and interpersonal relationships is what makes this book such an important contribution to the field: Robinson remembers the human element. Beyond the amazing science in the book, Robinson’s attention to the human species is another reason those undergraduates are required to read this book: they’re not just learning physics and biology, they’re reading about how the human dimension of space colonization might look.

Red Mars won a Nebula but it did not win a Hugo, though its two sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars did win Hugos. It’s entirely understandable why this book is so acclaimed and is considered to be a standard text not only in science fiction, but among actual scientists. Robinson clearly did his homework, and at times this book reads like a textbook. At 572 pages, most of the book is detailed description of the scientific nuances of terraforming a planet or, less frequently but with just as much pedantry, long bits of narrative minutely detailing the political and cultural situation on the planet.

At this point I’m going to admit that I did a whole lot of skimming as I read this book. The science I found to be fascinating but as it went on and on I lost interest. That’s not fault of the author – I think someone more interested in that nuance than I am would be lost in a dream of realistic speculation. I am simply not so inclined. So, for readers like me, that made this book very slow in a lot of places. Normally this is where I’d say that Robinson needed a better editor to rein him in (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin), but in this case I think all of the scientific detail Robinson has included is not only necessary, it’s incredibly compelling. The book’s reception in the scientific community confirms this, but if you’re not a lover of science textbooks guised as sci-fi novels, this book might not be for you. That said, I think this is probably the best hard sci-fi book I’ve ever read. Though packed with information that can go on for pages without advancing the plot, the science stuff never seems long-winded or out of place. It is necessary for Robinson’s project. And it’s well written, so that when I felt like tuning in I found myself both interested and able to understand the scientific language.

That said, I do have real issues with Robinson’s attempt to weave politics and interpersonal relationships into the story. Yes, colonizing Mars would have a huge political dimension to it, and I think it’s a good thing that Robinson included that reality in the novel. Exploring the way Mars and Earth, as well as the colonists, would interact with each other, and further, the ways in which nations would attempt to redraw their boundaries (or not) on Mars, enriched the novel beyond the simple wonder of postulating how science might allow us to live on Mars. Robinson also goes out of his way to create a cast of characters who have differing visions as to what Mars should look like, from the extreme environmental conservasionist, Ann, to the terraformer, Sax, to the utopian revolutionary, Arkady, to the two idealistic American leaders Frank and John, who are just trying to bring everyone together, to Nadia, the engineer who doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than her machines, and so many other characters I could list. And that’s not even getting into the competing cultures that emerge as new groups of settlers arrive.

Refreshingly, Robinson’s Mars is multi-national and multi-ethnic. Everyone has their own vision for Mars and takes sides in the developing factions that arise as more Terrans emigrate from Earth and corporations try to take over operations on the planet to take advantage of natural resources. There remains a unique bond among the first 100 colonists, all scientists who share the same basic belief that Mars should be its own governing entity, free of any mercantilist system with Earth. Beyond that they do disagree on what a Martin government should look like. And so the explicit parallels are drawn between the mercantile relationship between imperial England and the American colonies and the subsequent revolutionary war, where the colonists in both American and on Mars resort to revolution to overthrow the mother country/planet in order to form a more perfect union. Red Mars shows us the colonization and revolutionary phase of this struggle, whereas I assume Green Mars and Blue Mars go a bit further into setting up the new Martin government.

The way Robinson writes about politics tends to remind me of Ayn Rand. I’m not accusing him of being an Objectivist. I don’t think he is at all. My comparison is stylistic. He tends to use the same literary devices to get his political views across: long, rambling monologues or debates between characters that are really just vehicles to get his ideology out there or explain positions or events to the reader in detail that characters in the book already know about. I’m not honestly sure what Robinson’s ideology is, which may be a point in Robinson’s favor. At the end of Red Mars , violent revolution hasn’t worked to drive out the unwanted interlopers from Earth, but the corporations and the UN are still enemies of the first 100 and Mars itself, both physically and socially (the physical and social landscape/well-being are always explicitly linked in the book). The true path to political and physical salvation may be revealed in the book’s sequels. Robinson does enough of a song and dance that the differing political views he offers seem to be a genuine exploration by the author of how competing viewpoints might come about and be expressed. But obviously he favors one, it’s just in trying to ferret out which one that is.

Then there are the interpersonal relationships among the first 100, specifically between Maya, John, and Frank, a love triangle that spans the book. I have to admit, this is my second time attempting to read Red Mars. The first time I got to the part where Maya fucks Frank then turns around and falls in love with John, the man Frank hates, and I just put the book down. I wasn’t interested in reading a 572 page book about a love triangle. The way Robinson writes about Maya is truly disappointing. Ostensibly she is the leader of the Russian delegation to Mars, but her only purpose in the novel is to serve as a sexual object for Frank and John, and for the author as well. Thankfully this book did not turn out to be a romance novel, but Maya’s only purpose whenever she was present was to have sex with one of those two men, or to make Frank resent that she wasn’t having sex with him to the point that it helped motivate him to murder John. The relationship between the three of them was really annoying, and I just couldn’t understand why Maya’s plotline had to exist when the rest of the book was so rich in characters. Another nice thread of science fiction romance for men, featuring the objectification of a sexually manipulative and therefore crazy woman, woven into to a densely factual novel.

I’m not reading into subtext here either. Robinson states more than once that Maya gained her position of power through using her sexuality to manipulate men. She is described by other characters and herself as purposefully playing Frank and John against each other. She is openly depicted as becoming crazed as a result of her mercurial feelings of “love,” which only ever manifest in sex. Her actions annoy the other characters, though only hers, never those of the male members of her trio. Taking a step backwards toward Maya’s sexual manipulation of men, this characterization actually extends to all of Russian society. Apparently, by 2026 Russian women turned the double burden on its head by making sexuality a weapon against men in order to gain positions of power. If you can’t beat the sexist system, join it? Or, there is a demographic imbalance of women vs. men in Russia so women use sex to take over the country? I don’t know. It’s a very strange reading of Russian history combined with a very sad understanding of women’s sexuality.

This book was published in 1993, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that may have something to do with the strange femme fatale imagery. Hiroko, an Asian woman, is also highly sexualized and eroticized. Her only real role in the book is to have orgies and pop out babies. That’s her contribution to the revolution. Apparently that in and of itself is a revolution. Procreation is not #1 on any of the first 100’s lists except for Hiroko and her followers. In fact, population problems plaguing Earth are one of the key threats to stability on Mars. Despite the sexualization of Maya and Hiroko, two other female characters, Ann and Nadia are scientists and engineers before they are lovers and women. It is a very strange balance, but in Nadia Robinson crafts a character who is both a competent and brave worker as well as loving and sexual. Ann herself is tough as nail, a brilliant scientist, and also capable of emotion. Neither of these female characters is punished for being smart and capable – in fact, they are, in Robinson’s world, to be admired for who they are as individuals. Robinson’s creation of these strong, human female characters just makes Maya’s character seem even further strange,  unnecessary, and a little insulting.

What’s really at issue here is Robinson’s social and political critique of the Blue planet, Earth, as it stood in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had just fallen, but as reflected in Red Mars, the ability of the UN to keep any sort of peace was a joke. Robinson explores the dangers of outsourcing government scientific projects to multi-national corporations but then asks, who else will provide funding? The importance of Arab settlers on Mars seems to bizarrely presage the post 9-11 world, down to an open debate about Women’s rights and Islam between the American Frank Chalmers, and the Arabic caravan that is hosting him as they wander the Martin desert. Perhaps most pressingly, beyond the blatant colonial metaphors, Robinson is concerned that the nation-states of Earth do not have the proper apparatuses in place to face the rising threats of overpopulation, depleted resources, and global warming. For Robinson, on Earth and on Mars, nation-states and nationalism are no longer the answer. Earth is lost, but Mars is the alien terrain that provides the setting for a rebirth of human civilization, and a dawning of a new system of governance not corrupted by nationalistic politicians and their corporate backers. Watching these dynamics play out through the spectacle of the colonization of Mars is what makes this book required reading not only for those looking to the stars, but back to Earth. Unlike the few lucky thousands who make it to the red planet in Red Mars, we’re still stuck her on our own on this dusty rock, but we’re facing all the same problems with even fewer answers.

Because there are two sequels to this book that, as I mentioned, both won Hugos, I’m going to reserve some judgment here. Storylines are clearly unfinished, and sometimes in sequential books the weaknesses those loose ends leave are tied up quite satisfyingly in subsequent volumes. That said, I still think the portrayal of Maya was ridiculous and her storyline distracting and unnecessary. Otherwise this book is a great addition to the genre. There’s a lot to be digested in this book from all fields of study, and there’s some amazing prose to go along with that great scientific research. I’m going to take a break before I read the next two because the level of detail is just so intense and the plot is plodding as a result that I need a break from the kind of reading Red Mars demands – it’s almost like reading a dense, dusty historical monograph. That said, I do look forward to seeing what happens after the revolution.

I am a sucker for Falling Skies, the post-alien-invasion-show currently in its second season on TNT. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to watch this show, because it is full of problems. Butt loads. I guess it’s because I always feel compelled to investigate media and entertainment centering on dystopia, be it print, film, or, most rarely, television. And Falling Skies is certainly dystopic.

But it’s also incredibly problematic, beyond commonplace technical problems such as good writing. Too often dystopias look all too familiar to the world we’re already living in, just maybe throw in some alien overlords and nuclear waste. And when I say they “look” familiar, I’m not talking about physical landscapes, I’m talking about social constructs, or, the way the surviving society looks. Sometimes that means physically how society looks, not just the way it is constructed.

Falling Skies obviously has problems with race and gender. It’s a male-centric show focused on reinforcing current day definitions of masculinity. It appeals to a boarder audiences by focusing on plots that are family-oriented, or center around attempts to maintain and/or rebuild “normal” human families in the face of a catastrophic event. Come hell or high water, the American family will persevere, it will serve as something to protect and fight for, is the comforting message Falling Skies sends to its viewers. Even in the middle of the apocalypse, this will not change. Through the institution of the family, order lives on, as do the rest of us, even if we actually die.

It’s nationalism garbed in the robes of science fiction, but the producers make no secret of linking American exceptionalism and the myths of the American revolutionary spirit to the survivors’ attempts to outlive and destroy the superior firepower of the aliens. Survivors have organized themselves into militias and named themselves after the militias that fought in the revolutionary war. They are lead by real military commanders, bringing one of the most patriotic symbols, the army, to the forefront of the show. Though Tom is not military, he is a professor of  military history, a specialty that, when combined with his masculine bearing (stoicism, the ability to be an efficient killer, and a firm position as the physical protector of his family) automatically makes him the second ranking officer, according to the show’s logic. He is the civilian conscience of a militarized revolution, but his academic past works for him instead of against him because he studied a masculine, violent subject that echoes the gendered values Falling Skies upholds. The values the characters fight for are not only domestic values, they are American values, with the two being so inextricably intertwined that the link isn’t remarked upon often in the show, which is stunning considering how corny and awkward some of the dialog can be.

Noah Wyle’s character, Tom, is, as described, a military professor turned resistance leader. He’s wracked with guilt over the death of his wife, which he feels he could have prevented. Failure as a man number one. Now he’s left to be a father to his three sons, and really, to the hundreds of survivors he’s supposed to protect, help lead, and watch over. The show revolves around his relationships with his sons, who he must also raise to be proper men through modelling appropriate masculine behavior. In this show men are stoic, they are (very competently) violent (when necessary – because they are real, honorable men, they don’t act wantonly unless that trait are specifically written into their character bio), they are honorable, and they are also paternal, but mostly when it comes to instilling values of manhood. Their job is as protectors.

Interestingly, the role of the doctor is played by one of the show’s few female leads. You could say her occupation is a victory for feminism, but actually casting her as the doctor places her in a nurturing position. Constructed gender roles often dictate that women are inherently nurturers. The doctor here is not even a prestigious surgeon, but a pediatrician turned field medic. Her pre-attack job was to take care of children. Again, sexist logic: women are biologically childbarers and caregivers. And guess what, her son died in the invasion. Failure as a woman/mother number one. She is punished by her unending grief and this fact being her the only bit of backstory given to her character. She is defined by her motherhood, by her failure as a mother, and by her current job: to play mother to all the survivors, especially Tom (Noah Wyle) and the Second Mass’s leader, Weaver by mending their bodies and providing and emotional shoulder for them to lean on. She also becomes Tom’s sexual partner and emotional outlet. Tom can be soft around a woman. So she nurtures and has sex. That’s it.

The other female lead, Maggie, is a bad ass militia scout. Again, points for placing a woman in an aggressive role, right? Whoa there buddy. This position, by default, makes her a failure as a woman. She is given a complicated back story of sickness, rape, and crime, all punishments for her attempt to break out of the show – and society’s – dictated domesticated role. This form of punishment for bold, masculinized women is an old, old story in all kinds of media. And, another old story, Maggie is trying to find redemption through the love of Tom’s oldest son, Hal, who can validate her as a woman and therefore as moral by forgiving her for her past sins. Hal also acts as her protector, and when she tries to protect him, at least in one instance, she get’s beaten half to death. Oh, and did I mention it was during a catfight with Hal’s old girlfriend, another (blond) masculinized female who is also punished for stepping outside a domestic role by being abducted then physically and mentally altered by the aliens? Poor Maggie (and Karen). She deserves better.

And then there’s race. It seems that the white people on Earth did an exponentially better job of surviving the alien invasion than any of the other minority races. This racial superiority is doubtless an outgrowth of the discriminatory casting of current day Hollywood and the inherent white superiority complex in our dominant cultural narrative. Our society is not post-racial, and though Falling Skies makes tries to take a stab at it, it does not depict a post-racial dystopia. African, Asian American, and Latino characters play supporting roles and tend to end up dead. Another familiar trope. Oops.

I have spent a lot of time studying the history of civil defense engineering in our country. For those not familiar with the term, civil defense most often refers to things like bomb and fallout shelters or protection systems set up during the Cold War meant to help American citizens survive catastrophic nuclear attacks. Officials also developed plans to rebuild society afterward. Historian David Monteyne recently published Fallout Shelter, an excellent book that explores the racial dimension of civil defense planning (many other works explore the thoroughly gendered dimension of civil defense, as does Monteyne).

After studying an amazing array of primary sources detailing how civil defense was planned and imagined by civilian and government experts, he found that these officials created plans that turned out to be inherently racist and sexist. In the future envisioned by these white men, those who survived nuclear attacks would be suburban, middle-class whites, and these men and women of the domestic ideal would work to recreate the domestic ideal of the 1950s and 60s in order to rebuild society following nuclear catastrophe. Sitting through just a few of the civil defense PSAs the government in the 1950s and 60s is enough to convince you of Monteyne’s point. This projecting of a present ideal onto the future is exactly what the survivors in Falling Skies are doing – upholding families as the key to human survival and attempting to recreate traditional looking families by reforming old ones or creating new ones in the ideal’s image. To make matters more complicated, the aliens are stealing human children, therefore undermining family structure even more. This is supposed to be the most horrifying aspect of the invasion, and drives the desire to reconstruct and rebuild families. The show is obsessed with this idea, from the macro level of the Second Mass (an army) being a family, down to Tom and his sons (one of whom was taken by the aliens).

But back to Fallout Shelter and race. Most interestingly, Montenye points out that civil defense officials assumed Americans living in the suburbs would survive any attacks, because they assumed city centers would no doubt be targets of any nuclear attacks, such as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This assumption made civil defense plans inherently racist – most suburban populations are white, and the targeted inner cities are defined by the large population of poor minorities forced by discriminatory policies to live where there was/is affordable housing. Russian bombs would do the job of whitewashing America.

So maybe something similar is happening in Falling Skies, this assumption that those who die will be those in the cities, and that the (often invisible) residents of these cities will be minorities. The survivors in the Second Mass are all suburbanites, after all. Maybe this subconscious but easy assumption explains the lack of minorities among the survivors. If you asked the show’s creators they would most likely say that is absolutely not the case. They would defend casting choices. The would point to the doctor, Moon Bloodgold’s, half-Korean ethnicity, which creates a interracial romance worth Tom that is worth remarking upon; I’m sure the producers would cite her as one example to counter my argument. Still, the future remains predominantly white. And that’s the thing about cultural norms and subtext – we are raised by society to think and act in a certain way, conditioned to receive certain messages, whether outright or subconsciously, that tell us how we should act based on how we look, what set of genitalia we have, etc. These ideas and beliefs are encoded within us, so often without our knowledge, and we embed them in all the things we create, that we do, say, and think, intentionally or not, because they are a part of us. And it takes work to break them down and strip them away. If the producers of this show are imaging the future as white, it is most likely because 1) the system of casting in Hollywood is racist and 2) we have all been fed images like this for so long that it takes conscious effort to realize the blinders we are wearing, and then we must make the effort to correct our mistakes.

Because these culture values are so firmly and often subconsciously embedded, we must ask, especially of those who are envisioning the future: why are our cultural creators still assuming that it’s only whites who will survive catastrophic events? Why do we believe these “visionaries” when they depict minorities as returning to savagery or gang rule, or don’t even give them a place in the future at all? Why don’t we question these current day racialized and sexualized images of ourselves  that are constantly projected into the future?

Perhaps that’s what is so compelling about dystopia, at least for some: the reassurance that even after annihilation, gender and racial norms will survive, institutions like the idealized traditional family, which has never actually existed, will survive, will be renewed, and so will one unfortunate definition of society and stability.

But that’s not for me, and that’s why I’m so disappointed with Falling Skies. I prefer my dystopia much more foreign and challenging.

 

Edit to Add: I just realized that I forgot to do any analysis of sexuality on the show. As far as I can tell, everyone is thoroughly straight, further supporting that the show’s narrative attempts to depict and uphold the heterosexual component of the 1950s/60s domestic ideal.

The idea that the disappearance or removal of all technology and nuclear weapons might be the only way to save the human race is not new to science fiction. Clifford D. Simak made exploring the pros and cons of this scenario the center of many of his works, including the great City. Vernor Vinge, another decorated author, is more known for his far future Hugo winning space operas than post-Cold War dystopias. In The Peace War, however, written in 1984, a time when President Regan built up the US army as the USSR began to collapse under the strain of rot from within, Vinge’s near-future exploration of technology, morals, and war proved compelling enough to garner him a Hugo nomination.

The Peace War is the first in a string of nominees that I will be reading in place of the actual Hugo winners from their year. Why I’m skipping certain books varies on a case by case basis, and that doesn’t mean they won’t pop up later in the project. In this case I’m choosing to ignore William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Skip down to the end of the review for my explanation of why.

I’ll be forthright when I say that I love Vinge’s Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, and I look forward to reading Vinge’s other near-future winner, Rainbows End. At his best, Vinge is a modern master, blending hard sci-fi and far future plots to create incredible universes that leave the reader both convinced and in awe. His books are also quite riveting page turners, and I generally tend to dislike books overly driven by plot. But no, in Vinge’s universes the reader is treated to vivid and surprising characters that are just as alive and captivating as his harrowing plots.

The Peace War is interesting, but it is certainly not Vinge at his best. It is mired in Cold War not-so-sub-text, set in a world in which the Peacers have disabled every nuclear and military complex and weapon on earth, bringing “peace” to a world teetering on the brink of catastrophic, violent collapse. The Peacers, are not a governmental body but a private corporation who created a technique called bobbling. Using this technique the Peacers surrounded all military weapons and installations in impenetrable silver spheres – referred to as bobbles – therefore incapacitating all world governments by rendering their armies useless.

But in this new, demilitarized world, the Peacers are the enemies. Disallowing not only military but other forms of advanced technology that might lead to military development, the Peacers have plunged the world back into what Vinge repeatedly refers to as a feudal society, though Vinge only gives us glimpses of a ravaged Southern California ruled by what might be some sort of feudal government. Mostly the world seems to be populated with gangs, tribes, traders, and our heroes, the Tinkers: men and women who continue to develop advanced technology. Hiding from the Peacers, they hope to one day overthrow the authoritarian entity and let the United States flourish again.

There are a lot of things going on in The Peace War, most of them very thinly fleshed out in favor of advancing action, a weakness that Vinge put aside in later works. One reason dystopias are so captivating is because of the world building that occurs in such familiar places. The disaster has already happened – what does like look like for the surivors? Literally, what does it looks like? These questions, and Vinge’s world invites many of them, go largely unanswered.

On the micro level, Vinge is obviously trying to explore the way race and social status would be constructed following such a catastrophe. The main character, Wili, is black, something that Vinge reminds us of over and over again, especially every time he is introduced to new characters. But the meaning of this blackness is unclear; several times Vinge alludes or states that other characters might be surprised to take orders from Wili or to learn that he is a genius, but why this characterization in relation to Wili’s blackness is so important is made unclear. No racial tension is ever actively demonstrated. Interestingly, Vinge again alludes that Southern California is no longer angelo, but boosts a majority Spanish population, though in the caste system is still seems English speakers are on top. Confusion abounds. Does this mean whites are still in control here? Is there a difference between language and race? Wili grew up in Southern California but is fluidly bilingual, further compounding this problem. Then there are groups of people that are only referred to by made-up tribal names. Wili is always black in relation to them while their own racial identities remain unclear.

This issue of Wili’s blackness is worth bringing up because Vinge makes it such a glaring point of description but refuses or overlooks explaining to the reader how race works in this dystopic society. His oversight is really a shame, as dystopias provide an interesting setting to explore social constructs like race. Though Vinge seemed to sense these possibilities, his novel is much more interested in exploring the technological marvels he creates in the form of the bobbles and cerebrally interactive computer networks than how humans might interact following a devastating event.

His strange half-exploration of post-apocalyptic social constructs extends to women as well. The antagonist of the novel, Della Lu, is an Asian woman. Her race is mentioned as constantly as Wili’s, with just as little exploration of what that racial identity means to Lu, and to the other characters she reacts with. A bit more fleshed out is her characterization as a woman. Like with Wili, Lu is constantly aware that all the men around her are surprised and resentful that they must take orders for a woman, even though she is more competent than they are. Unlike Wili, Lu at times even has to listen to men denigrate her femaleness, whereas Wili’s blackness if never openly addressed.

Lu isn’t very sympathetic, she’s through and through a killer, bent on destroying the Tinkers because, well, who knows why, really. It seems every story needs and enemy. At one point she has sex with Mike Rosas, a Tinker turned turncoat turned Tinker again, only for the reason that she is trying to shut him up. The sexual encounter sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the novel, as if Vinge threw it in there simply to spice up the narrative. Women in this book are always sexual objects, including Jill, a computer program created to resemble lead Tinker Paul Hohler’s lost love. Vinge also assumes that a return to the “feudal” structure (a word I’m not sure he even understands) automatically means a return to extremely restricted gender roles – all the peripheral female characters are expected to be domestic and silent. This is a post-feminist novel written during the rise of the New Right, perhaps grasping at the disintegrated domestic ideal. Women can have agency, but in the case of Lu, if they step outside the domestic norm they are heartless bitches who use their bodies to manipulate men and are punished for their sins by death. A familiar trope. Vinge does allow one female character, Allison, to have agency, even though she takes on a non-masculine role in the storyline. Allison, however, has literally been objectified by Paul Hohler, who created the computer program Jill in her image.

Overall The Peace War’s most interesting contribution to the field is its examination of Cold War tensions through a dystopic lens. On a geopolitical level, the three remaining powers in the novel are France, China, and America (all under control of the Peacers), with nary a mention of the USSR. This trio of powers is a wonderful imagining of what might have grown from the alliance made between the French and the Chinese. In 1984 the Soviet Union was collapsing, and in The Peace War there’s nothing left of it. Instead, the unstoppable behemoth, China; France, the rebel of Europe; and the USA have taken over control of most of the world. Interestingly, Africa, always a problem for the first world, remains largely uncontrolled, though it lacks the technological resources of Tinkers elsewhere in the world and is therefore not as much of a threat of Peacer technology. Vinge created a fascinating reading of contemporary geopolitical structures in his dystopic future, and this is yet another point of interest that it would have enriched the novel if only it had been fleshed out.

A product of the 1980s, in The Peace War, Vinge explores a lot of familiar technology, like sophisticated spy satellites and computer networks that looks suspiciously like the internet. The book also reveals that fears of nuclear war and the escalating development of technology didn’t die with détente – they continued to suffuse people’s lives and minds, driving their actions and influencing their fears. The Peace War doesn’t find peace in removing technology. As the title of the novel suggests, the attempt to remove technology simply led to a war to bring it back, almost leading us again to the conclusion that violence is inherent to Man. Vinge’s characters believe that peace is possible, but only if technology is used correctly, and is put in the right hands. What “correct” use is and whose hands should be in control remains unexplained, along with most of the dystopic world Vinge created.

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During the course of this project I will skipping at least a few of the actual award winners, each for varying reasons. In the interests of fair play, I’ll try to explain why I’m skipping each one. This year’s winner that I’ve chosen to exclude was Neuromancer, by William Gibson. I know that Neuromancer is considered one of the game changers of modern science fiction, that it is much, if not obsessively beloved. The thing is I don’t like it. I’ve tried to get through it many times and never once have I been able to finish it. I find it to be dense, boring, and unreadable. To be fair, I am not a fan of cyberpunk in general. Also, I have actually read quite a lot of William Gibson’s work. I didn’t like any of those books either. While less dense than Neuromancer, I found his plots to be repetitive and all of his endings to be terribly anti-climactic, so much so that they ruined the premise of each book that I read – and some of them had really good premises! Those disappointments combined with my inability to make it through Neuromancer even once left me feeling rather disinclined to try reading it again, especially since I’m doing this project for fun. I’m sure there are many really wonderful places both online and in print that you can go to read about how great or shitty Neuromancer is. For now this won’t be one of them.