What We Are Seeking

It has been a long time since The Fortune Fall, but we finally have a new novel by Cameron Reed. Was it worth the wait? Oh dear me yes.

Let’s do some background first. This is far-future SF, but not exactly Space Opera. Mankind has colonised the galaxy, but thanks to the tyranny of time and distance, each planet is mostly isolated, and dependent on the Free Ships for contact with the rest of the diaspora. The Ships are a law unto themselves, and individual planets have diverged quite a lot politically.

Scythia (I will talk more about the name of the planet later) is a relatively new colony. Unusually the colonists have come from two different planets. The Zandaheans are fundamentalist Christians, while the Ischnurans are somewhat more liberal but still practice marriage, which is expected to be heterosexual.

John Maraintha had signed up as a doctor on the Ship, Edgar’s Folly, but on a Ship the captain’s word is law. When a request comes from Scythia for two specialists, one of whom is a doctor, John has no choice but to be put off on the colony world. But John is from Essius, a planet where women have considerably more rights, and where marriage is seen as a great evil. Pretty much every other planet regards Essians as a bunch of sex-mad libertines who are likely to want to shag anything that moves. Of course this isn’t true, but it is going to make John’s life hard.

The other specialist dropped off with John is Sudharma, a translator. He is required because the people of Scythia think they might have encountered a race of intelligent aliens. They need someone to try to communicate with these creatures to establish whether they are intelligent.

Why is this important? Well, because of Earth. The people of Earth are no longer fully human. They have entered into a state of symbiosis with an alien race called the aiyi. And the aiyi, being fully aware of the evil of which humans are capable, are very keen to prevent any genocides. By the time that John and Sudharma arrive on Scythia, an Earth woman and her attendant aiyi are already there, and the colonists are very nervous.

Oh, and Sudharma is a Jain, which means that he has strict dietary requirements and religious observances.

The wildlife on Scythia is quite different from anything that humans are used to. Everything is both plant and animal. They begin life as plants, then bud off animals, which then plant the next generation. The colonists assume that the creatures they have names Basket-Men, after the woven bags they always carry, are an animal form, but they have not yet encountered the plant form.

The book is fairly obviously about the European colonisation of North America. The colony on Scythia is small, isolated, at the mercy of the unfamiliar local environment, and runs on gossip and narrow views of correct social behaviour. John, Sudharma and the Earth woman, Vo, are all threats to the colony’s social structure.

But things on Scythia are not as simple as the colonists like to pretend. To start with, humans will be humans despite what sexual mores society tries to impose. Also the Ischnurans have space in their society for non-binary people, who are called jesses. There is one on Scythia. Their name is Iren. Inevitably they become an ally for John.

Which brings us to the other main theme of the story: transition. You may have noticed that they native species on Scythia all transition from plant to animal as part of their natural life-cycle. And plants are often both male and female. John makes friends with Piro and Laura, a Zandahean couple who are not as strictly observant as their fellow Christians. Their child, Tali, wants to become a jess.

Much of the story is explicitly about society’s attitude towards queer people. The way in which John, Iren and Tali are treated by the colonists is very reminiscent of homophobic and transphobic attitudes. But John is not blameless either. To start with he has something of a saviour complex. He sees that the colonists are behaving badly (by his social traditions), and wants to do something about it, even if their victims don’t want him to. Also he will come up against two other types of transition, both of which disturb him greatly.

It is also the case that the role of jesses in Ischnuran society is very much prescribed. You can’t just be non-binary, you have to go through a special ceremony and play a specific role in society. This is true of trans people in many traditional human societies.

I suspect that the name of the planet was chosen because the ancient Scythian people made space in their society for non-binary people.

So What We Are Seeking is very much about being trans and how society reacts to trans people. It is also a clever piece of science fiction with some innovative aliens. I expect that most reviews (and academic papers) will focus on the latter. But do please listen. What was done to Iren, and how they are forced to deal with that, are very much true for trans people in our world.

Title: What We Are Seeking
By: Cameron Reed
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
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