The Curve of the World

This book is Vonda McIntyre’s last novel. She finished it just before she died, and it has been lovingly crafted into publishable shape by her many friends, most notably Timmi Duchamp, Nisi Shawl, Debbie Notkin and Kath Wilham. It would have been great if Vonda had been able to live to see praise being heaped upon the book, but praise it we shall anyway.

In keeping with the theme of this issue, The Curve of the World is set in the Bronze Age. The characters do have some iron implements, but they are all sky-iron, made from meteorites, not smelted from mined ore. The main character, Iakinthu, is Cretan, what we know as Minoan, although that name was invented by Sir Arthur Evans. We don’t know what those people called themselves, but McIntyre has chosen to call them Idaeans. While the most famous Mount Ida in the world is the one next to Troy, there is also a Mount Ida on Crete. It is sacred to Zeus’s mother, Rhea, who is often syncretised with Cybele.

The Idaeans are a sea-faring and trading nation. Iakinthu was a famous bull dancer in her youth, but nowadays she is a successful and wealthy trader. Her ship, the Flying Fish, run for her by her lover, Aranthau, who is a skilled navigator, plies the Mediterranean, and even further afield, in search of people with whom to trade.

In her acknowledgements, McIntyre cautions readers against trying to match the book against our world’s timeline least their heads explode. The acknowledgements are at the back of the book, but I worked this point out early on. While the world of the book is clearly based on our world, it is not the same. The Idaeans trade happily with Egypt, where the Pharoah is a woman. So far so good; we know that Hatshepsut traded extensively with Crete. But they also trade with Hind (India) and with Sheng (China). From Sheng they get paper, which in our world was invented by the Chinese eunuch, Cai Lun, some time in the first century CE. Some paper-like products were known a few hundred years earlier, but certainly not as far back as Minoan times.

In any case, while the Phoenicians did sail beyond Gibraltar, there is no evidence that the Minoans did. In the book, Iakinthu and Aranthau go far beyond that. The title refers to fact that at sea the curvature of the world is obvious because you can see so far, and things appear on the horizon.

Idaean culture is largely matriarchal and peaceful. The Idaeans are all about commerce, not about conquest. But not every culture in the world sees things the same way. There is a culture called the People–fairly obviously Amazons–who are fiercely matriarchal and give away boy children. And then there are the Northerners: fair-haired, blue-eyed pirates who are fiercely patriarchal and want to conquer and enslave everyone who is not like them.

The Idaeans have a tradition of mutual fosterage which they use in diplomacy. So, for example, an Idaean teenager might be taken to live with the People for a few years, and a teenager from the People leaves with the Idaean ship in return. In this way different cultures learn about each other, and build ties of family and friendship. It is a matter of honour that, at the end of the agreed period, the young people are taken home, and given the choice as to where to stay.

The main plot of the book revolves around a child that Iakinthu has acquired in an unusual way. The Idaeans are horrified by slavery, and some years ago Iakinthu traded for a young boy the like of which she had never seen before. Rhenthizu, as she named the boy, was taken as a slave while very young and traded across the world. His original home is a place called the Salish Sea. Iakinthu knows only that it lies west across the ocean, but she has promised to one day take him home.

To ease the unlikelihood of the journey, McIntyre tells us that Iakinthu has twice before sailed across the Sunset Sea. She acquired and returned a given child called Uinthi who is what the Maisusutha people call Two Spirit. When Uinthi went home he promised his foster mother to try to find information about Rhenthizu’s people. That gives us a start on the adventure.

Many obstacles are placed in Iakinthu’s way before she can complete the journey, including a giant kraken, a terrifying volcano, and a warlike people ruled over by Lady Jaguar from whom they barely escape with their lives. There are definitely a few heart-in-mouth moments as the story progresses.

However, the main point of the book is to contrast the Idaean worldview with that of other cultures that they meet. Their desire to make friends and trade is in stark contrast to wish of the Northerners and Lady Jaguar to conquer and enslave. Given what has happened in the world since McIntyre’s death, that message is far more urgent now than it was when she wrote it.

There will, I am sure, be smart-arse reply-guys who will complain that the book is hideously historically inaccurate and that a voyage of the type it describes would be impossible. I don’t think it is. It seems like McIntyre’s world is one in which the rampant industrialisation of the late Bronze Age did not happen, allowing time for more development of maritime technology. We know that a Phoenician expedition circumnavigated Africa. We know what some Polynesians made it all the way to South America and settled there.

Most recently some interesting evidence has turned up about the pattern of Phoenician trading. It has long been assumed that they proceeded slowly around the Mediterranean, gaining the courage to go just a little further each time. We now know that they were much more adventurous; that they went as far as they could, as quickly as they could, because the further they went the better chance they had of meeting new people and finding new goods to bring back. Which is exactly what Iakinthu does in the book.

Nicola Griffith has said of the book:

“…it is a marvelous vision of how the world might have been, perhaps once was, and might, still, one day be. The world needs this novel.”

As the global trading system that we have so carefully built over the past few decades begins to crumble as a result of militarist madness, the truth of that is becoming ever more obvious.

Title: The Curve of the World
By: Vonda n McIntyre
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
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