Aliens
Posted in SF |
Yesterday, when I left home, I took Ally with me thinking I had about 20 pages to go, more than enough for the journey downtown. I finished the book unexpectedly, after about 5 pages, in a subway station. “Whoa! The ship left! Let’s see what happens next… Shit, the book’s over!” Who’d have thought a book has acknowledgments and editorial stuff at the end? Yeah, I’m a bit thick sometimes.
I thought of 2 or 3 titles before finally deciding on this one. I think it fits, because in the end, almost every character in the book is alien in a way. The wess’har, the eqbas, the bezeri, the isenj are the “classic” aliens. Little green men (squid, insects…) from Mars (Bezer’ej, Umeh…). But Shan, Eddie, the marines are also aliens. Shan was an alien even on Earth due to her unusual mentality; Eddie became an alien when he got attached to Wess’ej and a little matriarch-to-be.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was the wess’har amazement at the way humans conduct their affairs. Once you think about it, we don’t make much sense, and it’s very weird to hear it coming from an alien, completely innocently. It’s never judging, it’s simple curiosity: how can humans be so stupid? It’s a very refreshing change of perspective after all the SF based around “the human spirit” conquering all. Let’s face it, we’re screwing up our planet and fighting pointless wars, we probably shouldn’t be running loose around the galaxy.
But then… is genocide justified for environmental reasons? Doesn’t killing the whole population of a planet make you as worse as them? Can you choose who should die and who should live? Only keep the ones genuinely interested in the environment? “Selectively breeding for tree-huggers,” as Traviss puts it. My gut instinct says that you should try to fix the problem with no victims, but what if it is utterly impossible? I wasn’t expecting so many ethical challenges when I first opened City of Pearl.
Religion also play a pretty important role in the series. I’m not sure if this is Traviss’ own opinion on religion (Christianity in particular), but once again the aliens make much more sense than the humans. The Christian colony on Constantine feel the Eqbas are a miracle sent from God to enable them to take the gene bank back to Earth; the rational Aras can see no connection between the presence of the gene bank and the arrival of the Eqbas.
One quote I particularly liked, from Aras again:
“Ben Garrod [...] said his god forgave transgressions. Aras pondered the nature of forgiveness - acceptance, getting on with the future, not letting the past consume you - and wondered how God could take personal umbrage at so many things done to others, and why the deity had the right to forgive the perpetrator if the victims didn’t want to.
It was none of his business. The more Aras thought about the concept, the more it struck him the God was the distillation of humankind’s worst tendencies, not its best. God, like humans, presumed too much.”
I don’t think a Christian would appreciate the view this book gives of his religion. I happen to agree with it, however, so I liked Ally even more because of it - especially since Traviss choose to give us these reflections from an alien (i.e. neutral) point of view.
And, since this entry is already too long, just one more thing: I love the Britishness. I love “mate”, “bloody” and all the others. And I love the humor. Yes, it’s a serious book with important issues raised, but, just like life, it can’t always be serious. One of the funniest bits I bookmarked (and also one of the shortest; most of the others won’t work out of context):
“Looks like you’re liberating a few assets yourself.”
“Doing a bit of jungle training. Identification and utilization of native tropical food plants for survival in the field.”
“Uhuh…”
“Nicking the fucking banana tree.”
“Ah, the endless possibilities of the English language…”
Endless possibilities indeed… I love a well-placed swear word. And that “nicking” is so delightfully British.
(Maybe I’m getting over-excited here, but I’ve read little Brit literature and, mostly for personal reasons, I am fascinated by British English - even though I speak American.)
In the end? I can’t wait to get my hands on Judge. The end of Ally was surprising and unexpected and the change of scene should be extremely interesting.
