JulesBut as a treat, I've decided to read the much-lauded hopepunk novel "A Half-Built Garden" by Ruthanna Emrys (@r_emrys) next. So I have something to look forward to for the commute home.
"Carol unhooked the sling, and I laid it down on the chilly grass, and I changed Dori’s diaper right there in front of an alien artifact of unknown origin."
I love this already. Yay for more baby content in science fiction!
It's just... we've seen First Contact by state-sponsored teams of scientists. By people specializing it. By random dudes in fields, until the government moved in. We've never seen it done by random parents in fields nursing their young while they talk. It's just amazing.
The "humanity must leave its cradle" thing is quite an old idea, on the other hand. Usually an expansionist "we need more living space" idea (🙄).
Lots of similarities to #TheTerraformers here: sensor networks to carefully monitor the environment; a movement with emphasis on treading lightly on the earth; a sort of "terraforming" (not to build a new ecosystem, but to change or rebuild an existing one); small groups working relatively independently; working together in family groups which aren't just nuclear families.
No moose (yet) though.
"Some things I couldn’t be diplomatic about. “We’re both her mothers,” I said shortly. “But which of you birthed the child?” “Where I come from, that’s a rude question. Why does it matter?”"
Good society, that. Because it is rude.
(But yeah. They got it all from old media...)
Bringing kids to negotiations because having them shows strength, because bringing them means no dangerous funny business, and because they bring levity to the table is cute. And somewhat sensible.
(Though "you're not really a parent if you didn't birth the kid" is a garbage take for sure. Being a parent means being very strong, and brave, and trust in the future, independent of the growing place of the child.)
Sexist framing aside, it's just a fun idea though. Would be cool to see fanfiction where they land in the 1950s.
"No, we can't talk to your "world leaders", they haven't birthed children. Scientists? Well... there may be a few. But they have to bring the kids! They can't leave them with their caregiver."
As a parent of two kids I've carried anywhere and everywhere during their first year, I like how much slings and wraps get used here 🙂
(One does get the feeling that the author knows parenting of small children firsthand, eh.)
"Carol had a normal childhood, and normal parents who had a back-up name ready when she told them she was a girl and handled it like sensible people. She’s barely had more trouble being female than you or me."
💙🥹
A "normal" childhood. A paradigm shift making me cry because so very many people who deserved that didn't get it.
Thinking about the discussion whether or not the negotiating humans should tell the Ringers about their gender. Dinar sees it as "(preemptively) bowing to the oppressor", likening it to assimilating into the white, gentile,... society - which, as she points out, hasn't ever really benefited anyone but the oppressor.
But the dynamic here is different, isn't it? The Ringers have an agenda, but they don't seem to be able to push it through by force. I
That whole "should we stay or should we go?" feels just... rushed at that point? Humans barely have made contact; there are so many groups and people's that haven't been in touch yet. It's not a decision for that small a subgroup to make so quickly. It shouldn't be on the table /at all/.
First step should be learning why the Ringers think everyone has to leave. What are their models like? How do they apply to Earth? What's the plan?
/Then/ comes the decision.
Of course, I'm also thinking of cosmic "you young races need to do THIS" scams, like in David Brin's "Existence". There's no way to verify the Ringers' story, so why is everyone taking it at face value?
Especially as they haven't talked about any specifics yet. "It just is this way". That's not something that invites trust.
What I like is the land organization around watersheds. They're somewhat natural borders (sometimes ancestral ones as well), and make sense as ecosystems and for pollutant tracking. I wonder how many people today know which one they live in (I do, but it's kind of obvious).
I also wonder how large these territories usually are; what the level of granularity is here.
"For the plains-folk, as far as I could tell, gender was a privilege that you won; for the tree-folk a birth assignment stricter than anything humans had ever enforced. Strange as Asterion’s way seemed to me, masking private selves with viciously enthusiastic role-playing, the Ringers must be even more bewildered."
So many different views of gender and how to perform it.
That thought about the display of humanity's arts and scientific accomplishment needing to include something from the Holocaust rings as true as it hits hard (because the shame is mine, up to a point).
(I remember an art project I did in school, a collage titled "what is a human being?" that I'm still proud of. It included nature and poetry and art and science, but also scenes from the camps.)
Also, THIS: "They could have put in the display of righteous gentiles. Or the time capsule that the people buried in one of the camps. A recording of songs from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. You think it’s only a story of how horrible humans are?"
"And one of the biggest things we’ve learned is to never tell other people what they have to be. Even when it seems like the answer should be obvious, we ask, and we keep asking.”
💙
And this at a Seder.
(I like that Jewish tread in here too. Makes the not wanting to leave Earth moored in a long history of exile, and wandering, and finding (or making?) home.)
At first, I disliked Asterion's island being called Zealand - New Zealand is called "new"* for a reason, Zeeland** is already there!
But then again, there's been climate change and a change in sea levels; maybe it /isn't/ there anymore. Even if I guess if anyone can save a land from rising seas, it's Dutch water engineers...
*as in, "new to the colonizers". Plenty people knew it was there.
**in the Netherlands.
As much as the Ringers object to forced labor during the Seder, I'd have thought the Watersheds would have milked the Corporations' use of it (well, indentured labor, but it's similar enough) more to show them in an untrustworthy light.
Come to think about it, it's remarkable we haven't actually seen any of these workers. They'd be the ones building the habitats and doing the mining; we should see them.
So... if the Corporations with their competitive attitude decide to go to the Rings, and no one forces the Watersheds out...
...that means the meek will inherit the earth, right?
Irina@quidcumque When my friend from New Zealand was here (waves to @zeborah) I took her to old Zeeland.
@quidcumque @zeborah Some of my friends have been to South Africa but I've never taken them to Hoorn, and I don't know if they've been around Cape Horn for that matter!
@quidcumque @zeborah (Hoorn is a pretty little town with a nice museum)