Blandification

[mtvessel]

Nov 2022
The Galaxy and the Ground Within – Becky Chambers – Hodder & Stoughton, 2021
* * * *
Having set her previous book in a location almost entirely populated by humans, Chambers has now gone to the other extreme and has written a novel in which none of the characters are Homo sapiens. Not that you could tell from their emotions and relationships, which include a mother and her adolescent son, an artist returning from exile to see his children, and someone secretly visiting her lover. Adding shells, beaks, and long ape-like arms to the characters doesn’t really make them alien, but nonetheless this is not a bad book.

If is set on the small boring world of Gora which sits at the nexus of a set of wormholes and has become an intergalactic truck-stop, with various hostelries offering services to passing travellers. Ouloo, proprietor of the Five-Hop One-stop, welcomes three visiting aliens, not all of whom get along. But then a substantial portion of Gora’s communications satellites are knocked out of orbit, forcing them into an unscheduled layover.

In case this sounds like Chambers has finally overcome her aversion to conventional sci-fi drama, no she hasn’t – that’s basically the whole plot. Instead, the book consists of a series of conversations in which the characters tell their backstories and explore their cultural interactions. These aren’t particularly deep or complicated, but the generally pleasant atmosphere and the moments where prejudice is overcome make for a pleasant read.

You may notice that I have not named or described the visiting aliens. This is because I had trouble visualising them because Chambers is rather sparing in her physical descriptions (understandably, given that her characters already know what, say, an aeluon looks like) and struggled to associate each character with their species. This blandifying tendency (for want of a better term) is noticeable in modern sf and fantasy that is trying to be inclusive (see also The Unspoken Name), and while I appreciate the motivation, it does make it harder for readers used to the clear signposting (and, yes, stereotyping) of traditional SF to engage.

Despite that, I enjoyed this book because of the perceptive insights offered by its characters. Like this one:

You had to pause in the face of reflex, ask yourself if the narrative you attached to the knee-jerk was accurate. Once she’d grasped this, she could never again see life as a static thing, something with one immutable definition. The universe was not an object. It was a beam of light, and the colours that it split into changed depending on whose eyes were doing the looking. Nothing could ever be taken at face value. Everything had hidden facets, hidden depths that could be interpreted a thousand ways – or misinterpreted in the same manner. Reflexes kept a person safe, but they could also make you stupid.
(p 77)

In other words, always check your intuitive responses for prejudice. No card-carrying liberal could disagree with that, but I wish the hidden depths alluded to were more apparent in the narrative.