the long way to a small angry planet - 67% review
Tuesday, April 18th, 2023 19:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mutterwingwhirrman. i will have to reread the bit where pei makes contact with the wayfarer. i remember being so caught in the moment, sure that some danger was coming soon, but i can't put my finger on what it was. i was certain the captain was an imposter, or that when lovey couldn't detect the soldiers, that something was going to go amiss. and i want to live in that moment again, of knowing something was wrong, was waiting anxiously for kizzy to find it, and all with the underlying wonder of if what kizzy found was really all there was too it. i can't explain why i felt the danger, i just knew it. and i'll enjoy, at some point, revisiting that part and really breaking down how that part was written-- the mystery, the crew continuing on like normal, the breaks for comedy, all with that underlying tension below. that was... some really good literature.
and i really love the small interchange between kizzy and pei about like. what it actually means to survive in a state of constant danger. there's so much about kizzy's behavior that gives off the aura that great life events, especially danger, rolls off her the way a duck can swim around water and repel it naturally. the fact that the raid/pirate attack stuck with her was so clearly a contrast from the way she normally goes through life. and how beautiful it is that kizzy can articulate all of those things without using the word trauma, and have us the readers still understand it that way. kizzy may not know what exactly was traumatic about the raid, but she knows that that encounter keeps her up at night-- as a mech tech, she can trace the problems by examining the material conditions of her body.
so it was really interesting to be able to have that moment contrasting a danger she could handle and solve vs a danger she could not have seen coming and could not negotiate. "there are few things as unsettling as a lack of control in an unfamiliar situation." it's an interesting way to put her in a vulnerable position-- something that, despite how often she relies on her crewmates to take care of her basic needs, is still new to her. and pei's simple response. "i am scared of everything. all the time." and "i never thought of fear as something that will go away." giving kizzy her best advice, even if she doesn't know how it will land.
there's something so precious about a book that will take the time to show how to battered, bruised people can try, with the best of intentions, to be there for each other, even if their pieces don't fit together super well. there's a kind of warmth that bridges the gap between what one asks, and how the other tries to answer, and... i guess the trite, over-simplified summation of that bridging would be "love," at least in popular media, but i feel like just saying that wouldn't do the moment justice. i think it's love, yes, and a deep respect for what the other person is going through. and validation. but i think the answer that falls short, the intent that's launched across the gap of understanding to try and satisfy a question you don't quite understand... empathy? maybe? the platonic ideal of reaching out. a piercing, honest arrow of personal understanding that lances out and, while falling short of the mark, rings the bell of a bullseye anyway. a trajectory of more than accurate precision, launched clumsily and with inadequate momentum. i don't know. that moment was really important to me.
and the thing with sissix and rosemary. rosemary reciting these aspects of aandrisk culture like she's memorizing them from a textbook, just in time to land and see the real thing, to see the distinctions that aandrisks draw between the family that raises you, the family you choose to live with and experiment with and grow with, and the family that helps you raise your chosen young. what a beautiful elaboration of how cultures cannot be condensed into words on a page, to linear understandings of time, space, bodies interacting. i feel like i'm living through the recountings of a particularly profound ttrpg campaign, more than i am reading a novel or visiting a far off place in fiction. i mean, it IS fiction, but it's more than fiction. it feels real. it comes from a real place of wanting to understand different ways of life that might feel "alien" to a human reader, or a first time visitor, but is governed by its own set of logic and, in the right setting, makes total sense. i can see why someone would be homesick for this place. or, more reflective of the author's standpoint, would want to create a setting so luxurious in things that human culture does not value that it appears luscious and indulgent.
i wish i could linger in these spaces. i wish i could go over these passages over and over, revealing more thought, more content, more internal musing. it is rare that i want to explore the things that aren't said in media in a way that isn't coming from a place of dissatisfaction, but here? here it's a space where they already say so much and yet i would have them keep talking, keep being people, keep being interrupted by the things in life that are unexpected and shared with laughter and fraught with so much love.
and i really love the small interchange between kizzy and pei about like. what it actually means to survive in a state of constant danger. there's so much about kizzy's behavior that gives off the aura that great life events, especially danger, rolls off her the way a duck can swim around water and repel it naturally. the fact that the raid/pirate attack stuck with her was so clearly a contrast from the way she normally goes through life. and how beautiful it is that kizzy can articulate all of those things without using the word trauma, and have us the readers still understand it that way. kizzy may not know what exactly was traumatic about the raid, but she knows that that encounter keeps her up at night-- as a mech tech, she can trace the problems by examining the material conditions of her body.
so it was really interesting to be able to have that moment contrasting a danger she could handle and solve vs a danger she could not have seen coming and could not negotiate. "there are few things as unsettling as a lack of control in an unfamiliar situation." it's an interesting way to put her in a vulnerable position-- something that, despite how often she relies on her crewmates to take care of her basic needs, is still new to her. and pei's simple response. "i am scared of everything. all the time." and "i never thought of fear as something that will go away." giving kizzy her best advice, even if she doesn't know how it will land.
there's something so precious about a book that will take the time to show how to battered, bruised people can try, with the best of intentions, to be there for each other, even if their pieces don't fit together super well. there's a kind of warmth that bridges the gap between what one asks, and how the other tries to answer, and... i guess the trite, over-simplified summation of that bridging would be "love," at least in popular media, but i feel like just saying that wouldn't do the moment justice. i think it's love, yes, and a deep respect for what the other person is going through. and validation. but i think the answer that falls short, the intent that's launched across the gap of understanding to try and satisfy a question you don't quite understand... empathy? maybe? the platonic ideal of reaching out. a piercing, honest arrow of personal understanding that lances out and, while falling short of the mark, rings the bell of a bullseye anyway. a trajectory of more than accurate precision, launched clumsily and with inadequate momentum. i don't know. that moment was really important to me.
and the thing with sissix and rosemary. rosemary reciting these aspects of aandrisk culture like she's memorizing them from a textbook, just in time to land and see the real thing, to see the distinctions that aandrisks draw between the family that raises you, the family you choose to live with and experiment with and grow with, and the family that helps you raise your chosen young. what a beautiful elaboration of how cultures cannot be condensed into words on a page, to linear understandings of time, space, bodies interacting. i feel like i'm living through the recountings of a particularly profound ttrpg campaign, more than i am reading a novel or visiting a far off place in fiction. i mean, it IS fiction, but it's more than fiction. it feels real. it comes from a real place of wanting to understand different ways of life that might feel "alien" to a human reader, or a first time visitor, but is governed by its own set of logic and, in the right setting, makes total sense. i can see why someone would be homesick for this place. or, more reflective of the author's standpoint, would want to create a setting so luxurious in things that human culture does not value that it appears luscious and indulgent.
i wish i could linger in these spaces. i wish i could go over these passages over and over, revealing more thought, more content, more internal musing. it is rare that i want to explore the things that aren't said in media in a way that isn't coming from a place of dissatisfaction, but here? here it's a space where they already say so much and yet i would have them keep talking, keep being people, keep being interrupted by the things in life that are unexpected and shared with laughter and fraught with so much love.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-19 06:31 (UTC)I also think of the way that they speak about each other's races and allow for a space of good faith misunderstanding. Like, the space in human culture between different ethnicities is so charged, I don't totally fault people for taking umbrage when people misstep because so often those spaces are the first warning signs for hostilities.
However, in this space it's so nice to see people's missteps just be met with a jovial space of misunderstanding. "We're all equally weird and that's okay. So long as you understand that it's okay, it's okay to me too." That fits into the same space for me as the bridging of the gaps from mismatched connection points.
love these so much
no subject
Date: 2023-04-19 06:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-19 06:40 (UTC)And the concept of humanity's long history of aggression and conquest being not a continued chain but rather a history to reflect upon with shame and humility and to reach out wanting to listen rather than dictate because of that? The concept of people realizing that the way to peace must be through...a kind of restorative justice lens on violence and history where there's not a desire for revenge or punitive measures, but rather a desire for all species to work towards the obsolescence of violence? Just. what a universe.
I think good science fiction reaches the point of, "in the future" and then the author must think things through, either to extrapolate current ugliness into dystopia or to directly address it and try to create something more utopian.
Also I think that like. Utopia is a loaded word. It begs the question, "For whom?" Is it a single space where there's a utopia at the cost of turning a blind eye to all else? And here the answer is no. Everyone's just continually trying for it. Which. is honestly so much more utopian than those ivory tower depictions.
god I love thinking and talking abt this book!!