Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Rebellion/Solaris on March 15, 2022

Adrian Tchaikovsky blurs the boundary between science fiction and fantasy by providing scientific explanations of the traditional fantasy themes. In Elder Race, a colony of people who had lost their knowledge of science regarded a man who possessed advanced technology as a sorcerer. In Ogres, when humanity was on the brink of an environmental apocalypse, genetic engineering changed the order of things. Now humans serve masters they regard as ogres — large, strong, and powerful, meat eaters who travel in trains and cars, who rule smaller, inferior, vegetarian humans.

The ogres call humans “Economics” for reasons involving Economic Measures that, in the distant past, favored the ruling class. The Economics don’t understand science and have forgotten their history. They don’t know why meat makes them sick. They view ogres as a different species entirely — a species that Economics exist to serve. Or so they’ve been told by the ogres.

Exactly how the ogres came to exist is a secret that Tchaikovsky reveals early in the novel’s second half. The answer is one that astute readers will probably suspect well before it arrives. A later reveal explains why there are so few humans in such a vast world.

Torquell is a young, unusually large and strong Economic with an independent, mischievous spirit. Torquell enjoys certain privileges as the son of the head servant of an important Master in his village, but he likes to hang out in the forest with Roben and his merry band of outlaws. The story gets started when Torquell loses his temper and defies the Masters. When Torquell realizes the severity of his punishment, he reacts in feral anger. Having no choice but to flee the consequences of his action, Torquell embarks on an adventure that leads him to Baroness Isadora, an ogress who makes him into an entertaining pet. Torquell learns to ask questions and devours volumes of history that help him understand his place in the world.

The story recounts a few years in Torquell’s young life as he discovers his place in the world. Ogres might be seen as an allegory of revolution, the story of an oppressed class that is inspired to rise up against its oppressors. Faced with a choice of working for masters or succumbing to death by poverty, it only takes one person to ask: What if there is a third way? The story eventually confronts Torquell with a moral dilemma (the kind leaders often face in time of crisis) between making a pragmatic compromise that improves life for some humans while leaving the rest enslaved or risking an idealistic path that could either free or destroy all humans. The novel’s ending takes a twist that suggests the choice is illusory, that some moral choices have only one answer.

There are echoes of Ukrainian resistance in some of the scenes, although that could not have been Tchaikovsky’s intent unless he keeps his crystal ball well polished. The ogres have superior technology and firepower; the Economics have heart, although (unlike Ukrainians) their testosterone supply has been limited by genetic engineering.

Tchaikovsky illustrates the axiom that history is written by the victors. History books portray Economics who resisted genetic modification as selfish and wasteful. Ogre historians conveniently omit mention of how genetic modification has served the interests of the ogres. I doubt that Tchaikovsky had this is mind, but there is a clear parallel here with the movement in southern states to ban teaching the reality of white subjugation of black people and the institutionalization of racism that followed.

Another timely theme is the ease with which leaders control followers by feeding them lies. Keeping followers uneducated and dependent on their leaders is essential both to ogres and to certain ogrish leaders in the world we inhabit.

A third theme that resonates is the ability of the ruling class to dismiss what their ancestors did as an unpleasantry that’s not relevant to the present because what’s done is done. Why should the generations that benefitted from their ancestors’ actions take any responsibility for actions that they did not personally take? The answer is obvious to non-ogres who still suffer the generational effects of distant horrors.

Ogres is a novella that Tchaikovsky cut to the bone. Not a word is wasted. If I have a quarrel with Ogres, it is that Tchaikovsky wrote it in the second person (a narrator tells Torquell’s story to Torquell). Second person is almost always a distracting point of view, although the choice makes some sense when we learn the narrator’s identity and the circumstances under which the story is told. Setting that aside, I appreciate Tchaikovsky for writing a brand of smart science fiction that is unlike anything else on the market. He never fails to entertain, but he always manages to illuminate social issues by removing them from a familiar context.

RECOMMENDED

Hideout by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on March 8, 2022

The third Alice Vega novel cements the protagonist as a driven action hero who is unhindered by any internal restraint on her violent tendencies. Vega is interesting in part because she is a borderline sociopath, in part because she is likely somewhere “on the spectrum” (Vega has little use for social interaction), and in part because she recognizes those tendencies and gives some thought to whether they serve her well.

Anton Fohl hires Vega to find Zeb “Wrong Way” Williams, a kicker who played football for Cal. Instead of kicking a winning field goal in a rivalry game, Williams famously pushed the holder out of the way, grabbed the ball, and ran the wrong way, through the wrong end zone and out of the stadium, never to be seen (verifiably) again. That was in 1984. Fohl’s wife Carmen is an heiress who used to date Williams. She was hurt when he disappeared. For reasons of his own, Fohl wants Vega to locate Williams. Finding missing persons is her thing. She’s rather single-minded in her pursuit.

Years earlier, another private detective traced William to a small town in Oregon, where his photograph was taken with some other people. Vega begins her search in the Oregon town. Her key witness is a waitress who knew and had an argument with Williams before he disappeared from the town. Many of the people Vega interviews seem evasive, making it clear that at least one powerful person in the town is keeping a secret.

Vega’s investigation is sidetracked by her encounters with white supremacists who think she should mind her own business and leave their town alone. Using a white supremacy network, they make trouble for Vega’s father and her friend (and occasional lover and business partner) Max Caplan. The trouble impairs her relationship with Caplan, an event that deeply disturbs Caplan while causing Vega to make a decision she regrets.

For a chunk of the novel, the white supremacy subplot overshadows the missing person story. The aftermath of the trouble that the supremacists make with Caplan and Vega’s father highlight Vega’s difficulty expressing herself to the people she loves (or relating to them on any emotional level). She expresses herself more eloquently by breaking kneecaps and doing other nasty things to the white supremacists.

After Vega clears away obstacles, she gets the search back on track, figures out the town’s hidden secrets, and finds an answer to the mystery she was asked to solve. The plot’s resolution is both surprising and satisfying.

Like the earlier Vega novels, Hideout moves at a good pace, balancing credible action scenes with relentless detection. Vega doesn’t have time for small talk or rest breaks. Those personality quirks keep the plot in constant motion. Readers won’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about Vega, but it is easy to sympathize with her as she struggles to move forward without pushing away the people she cares about. Readers might have warm (if not fuzzy) feelings for Caplan, simply because he’s a decent man who loves his daughter and is tormented by his love for Vega. Characterization combines with a smart action/detective plot to make Hideout a good choice for crime novel fans who enjoy reading about tough, intelligent female protagonists.

RECOMMENDED

Eleutheria by Allegro Hyde

Published by Knopf Doubleday/Vintage on March 8, 2022

Eleutheria is a near-future or alternative-present novel about a wannabe activist who joins a community that plans to counter rising environmental damage. The eco-crisis has coincided with (or been accelerated by) authoritarian rule across the US and Europe and with ethnocentric isolationism that caused Scandanavian countries to seal their borders and withdraw from the EU.

The story envisions a watershed political change based on a utopian society that, like other fictional utopias, is populated by a small and nondiverse group of like-minded individuals. Successful small-scale utopias tend to go off track when they try to replicate their success in a larger community of people who have sharply different political opinions. That reality is one that Eleutheria never satisfactorily confronts. Nor is it clear why pragmatic solutions to climate change (alternative energy sources, biofuel, and making shoes from plastic harvested from the ocean) need to be showcased on a Carribean island to gain widespread acceptance.

Willa Marks begins her idealistic journey of environmental activism by reading an unpublished manuscript that she’s not supposed to have. The author of Living the Solution, Roy Adams, advocates setting aside all personal pleasures and goals for the sake of absolute devotion to the cause of saving the environment. Inspired by Adams, Willa travels to Eleutheria, an island in the Bahamas, where Adams’ crewmembers have established an eco-friendly community called Camp Hope in the expectation of launching an eco-conscious project that will change the world. The details of the project are vague, as is Willa.

Since Willa was not invited to Eleutheria, she is not welcomed by Adams’ crew of ecowarriors until she gains Adams’ acceptance. That apparently happens after Willa suffers sunstroke while paddling around in the sea as she searches for Adams. Perhaps Adams decides to accept Willa because she is plucky. More likely, he accepts her because she worships him as a visionary. Nobody seems to notice that, as idealistic visionaries go, Adams seems a bit shady, although that will be obvious to the reader.

As Willa goes back and forth about her commitment to the cause, Adams adds new recruits in the form of rebellious teen offspring of wealthy parents. The story eventually takes an unexpected but welcome turn before reaching a bizarre and unbelievable climax.

Willa’s backstory portrays her as a young woman raised by drug addled survivalist parents in their self-inflicted cocoon of fear of outside world. Willa made terrariums that serve as a symbol for her youthful interest in protecting the environment, although they also seem to be symbolic of her need to protect herself. Willa later stayed with cousins who photographed her in designer clothes, hiding the price tags so they could return the clothing. That’s apparently symbolic of consumerism. Willa educated herself by sneaking into lectures at Harvard while hanging out with self-styled radicals called Freegans who regarded shoplifting as social activism. With little evidence, the Freegans adopted the belief that it only takes 3% of the world’s population to effect massive cultural change, a belief that Willa accepts as a verity before she begins her eco-adventure.

Willa began to hang out with Sylvia, a Harvard lecturer who became Willa’s first lover. How Sylvia came to possess the copy of Living the Solution that changed Willa’s life is a question that Willa does not ponder until late in the novel. While the truth is no doubt intended as a shocking reveal, it limps into the story as an anticlimax. A clash between Sylvia’s sophisticated political views and Willa’s naïve idealism fuels the novel’s relationship drama.

Eleutheria isn’t a long novel, but it feels padded. At one point, Allegra Hyde lists various things that can turn into projectiles in a storm. At another, she reproduces bits of climate change trivia that Adams’ crew members write down on pieces of construction paper. Occasional passages that describe the history and colonization of Eleutheria add nothing to the story. The plot too often bogs down when a good trimming of the word count would have produced a tighter, more evenly paced novel.

Hyde’s prose is often keen, but some of her images fail to make their intended impact. “Fear is a slimy sensation; it oozes into your limbs like a chilled eel.” How, exactly, does an eel get into your limbs? And what is the difference between a chilled and an unchilled eel, apart from the need to refrigerate eels that will eventually be used in sushi?

I had difficulty taking Eleutheria seriously, in part because it isn’t clear to me what point Hyde intended to make. Social activists can be silly and irrelevant and easily manipulated? True, but serious activists balance their idealism with a perceptive sense of the achievable. World governments show a trend toward redefining activism as leftist terrorism? Yeah, but the novel’s focus is not on the dystopian consequences of authoritarian rule. Self-styled visionaries often turn out to be frauds? Well duh. People are imperfect? Double duh, although that one seems to come as a revelation to Willa.

Hyde chose easy targets, from survivalists to gullible idealists, but exposing the obvious does too little to enlighten. Still, I appreciate Willa’s sentiment that “without a vision of a better world, it was despair all the way down.” John Lennon’s “Imagine” made that argument more simply and poignantly than Eleutheria.

The novel does make a couple of salient points, beyond the obvious truth that climate change, left unchecked, will eventually destroy most human life. One point is that the corporate elite won’t acknowledge the problem until the financial ruin caused by climate change exceeds the financial gain of running businesses that are based on carbon emissions. Another is that corporate media are great at reporting disasters — events that last a single news cycle — and not so great at reporting solutions that need to be explained and reexplained before they seep into the public consciousness. Despite its glimpses of thoughtful storytelling, the story is too muddled to serve as an effective cautionary tale and too detached to work as engaging fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin

Published by ‎ Scribner on March 1, 2022

Tell Me an Ending imagines a future technology that allows the pinpoint erasure of selected memories. People can elect to remember that they had a memory erased or can choose to have no memory of the procedure that wiped out a bit of their past. A lawsuit compels Nepenth, the company that performs the erasures, to tell the latter group that their memories have been erased. Nepenth is also forced to restore the memories of those who wish to get them back. The novel tells the stories of several characters who either know or learn that a part of their past has been deleted.

The concept is intriguing. Curiosity creates a natural dilemma as Nepenth’s “self-confidential” patients (the ones who choose to forget the procedure) wonder what they’ve forgotten and why they wanted to forget. Some might want to recover the memories to reduce the anxiety of not understanding their full past. At the same time, if the memories were so unbearable that they wanted to erase them, does it make sense to have them restored, only to be tormented by them again? A key character suggests a possible answer: taking away memories also erases identity. How do you know who you are unless you remember who you have been? If you did something bad and wanted to forget about it, how do you safeguard against repeating your past when you don’t know what you did?

Most of the key characters have had the procedure and are wondering whether they should reclaim their memories. When Mirande is offered a memory restoration, she has no idea what she suppressed. Her husband Finn suspects that Mirande had an affair with David while Finn was working in Singapore. Is that what Mirande erased? Would that explain why David is suddenly back in their lives?

William did something during his employment as a police officer that he paid to forget because he couldn’t live with the guilt. It’s not legal for cops to get memory wipes (they need to remember evidence), nor is it legal to erase memories of crimes, but William does it anyway.

Oscar is traveling the world, convinced that someone is pursuing him. He leaves for a new destination every time he believes he’s been found. He has a necklace made of teeth but he doesn’t remember how he acquired it. Nor does he remember his childhood. Oscar is an example of someone whose life was clearly not made better by forgetting his past.

Mei is linked to a different character in a way that Jo Harkin conceals from the reader for much of the novel. She is a failed college student who has vague memories of doing something in Amsterdam. She travels to Amsterdam to reconstruct the missing event.

A couple of other characters, Noor and Louise, work for Nepenth. The organizing plot revolves around Louise’s involvement in a secret project that goes beyond the simple removal of an unwanted memory by experimenting with a more ambitious goal. Louise is dealing with the consequences of that project while Noor, who has been kept in the dark, pokes into Louise’s secretive actions. Louise also had a project of her own that involved making memory deletion available to people who seemed to need it but were not lawfully entitled to it.

Tell Me an Ending explores the moral complications of selective memory erasure. If guilt and remorse are necessary and useful consequences of bad behavior, is it socially harmful to allow the suppression of memories of misconduct? Noor and Louise focus the novel’s ethical theme near the novel’s end as they argue about the benefits and detriments of Louise’s decision to substitute her own judgment for society’s judgment as to who should be entitled to a memory wipe. The debate is about the shades of gray that complicate every moral judgment, as well as the single shade of green that Louise earns from giving people pain relief who aren’t legally entitled to it. Noor has her own reasons for feeling guilty. The two characters lay guilt trips on each other, inviting the reader to decide which one makes the better case.

Apart from Oscar and William, the stories of the individual characters feel incomplete. While the individual stories are a useful means of exploring the ethical ramifications of memory erasure, Harkin shortchanges the emotional development of the characters who cope with the aftermath of Nepenth’s procedures. The novel as a whole is less than the sum of its incomplete parts. The eventual focus on Louise and Noor is unfortunate, as they are the least interesting characters. Still, I give Harkin credit for her thorough discussion of the moral ramifications of a procedure that neuroscientists are likely to learn to perform in the not-so-distant future.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Doloriad by Missouri Williams

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (MCD x FSG Originals) on March 1, 2022

The Doloriad is an ugly story told in beautiful but bewildering prose. My reaction to much of The Doloriad was “ick.” My reaction to the rest of the story was “WTF?” More patient and intelligent readers might take more value from The Doloriad than I mined from it.

The characters believe themselves to be “the last humans ever,” although some suspect, with no real evidence, that other humans have survived whatever apocalyptic catastrophe has destroyed civilization and contaminated the environment. No other people have been seen for at least a couple of generations. The characters live in an encampment on the edge of an empty Prague from which they scavenge. A woman known as The Matriarch has made it her mission to repopulate the planet, a mission that must be based on incest in the absence of abundant breeding stock. Incest produced Dolores, a sad creature with no legs and obvious cognitive deficits. When the Matriarch leaves Dolores in the forest, either as a sacrifice or in the hope that unseen neighbors will find her and breed with her, the community sees it as a sign when Dolores rolls or uses her pudgy arms to crawl back home. Whether Dolores encountered other humans and was rejected, whether her return portends an invasion by outsiders, whether Dolores is simply tenacious, is the subject of unresolved debate.

One of the Matriarch’s brothers is a schoolmaster who lives apart from the family. A large man with no legs (a trait that runs in the family), the schoolmaster believes that “the history of the world is the history of cruelty.” He wants to cocoon himself in a mound with moths. His reasoning is obscure (it has something to do with rebirth), although few of the characters are capable of rational thought. Believing himself guided by a “mysterious power,” the schoolmaster makes a discovery that renews conjecture that the encampment’s residents are not alone in the world. Whether that is true, like most other questions a reader might have, is left unanswered.

The lack of any explanation for the novel’s central events is frustrating. Perhaps Missouri Williams intended to make a point by creating so much bewilderment, or perhaps she was too lazy to invent answers to obvious questions. Since the novel’s twisty (and sometimes nearly impenetrable) prose does not suggest laziness, I suspect Williams intended to leave the reader in the shoes filled by the characters, surrounded by circumstances and events that they cannot comprehend. If that was her intent, the absence of explanation is no less frustrating to readers who know that writers, unlike characters, have the godlike power to explain things, even if they choose to keep “but why?” a secret.

Some of the characters ask whether survival has any point, if there is any reason to repopulate a world that humanity destroyed and will probably destroy again. This, I imagine, is the grim moral lesson of The Doloriad. If we destroy humanity’s home, humanity does not deserve a second chance.

One of the girls is learning to be a storyteller but her stories are modern fairytales of Ivy League schools and incest. In the ugliest scene, Dolores is raped and repeatedly kicked by her brother Jan, who doesn’t seem to need the release since he’s been having (more or less) consensual sex with his other sisters. The siblings worry that Jan will take charge as the Matriarch grows weak. Whether that will happen is another unanswered question.

The characters seem to have television (although how they are finding usable fuel for their generator after two generations without refineries or gas stations is unclear); they watch videocassettes of an old show called Get Acquinas in Here in the Matriarch’s attempt to impose “some kind of order” on “their blank river of time.” The television version of Acquinas dispensed ethical wisdom on his show, but by the novel’s end he has apparently become a character in the book, or at least an observer of the other characters. Acquinas also argues with a philosophical sheep. I’m not sure what that was all about.

In fact, I’m not sure what most of the novel is about. To be fair, I lost interest long before the sheep and Acquinas began to converse. The novel’s long, rambling, dense paragraphs will put off some readers. They did nothing to enhance my appreciation of the story. I must admit that my mind kept wandering. Maybe I was distracted by Russia’s war with Ukraine and other dismal world events of the sort that might lead to the post-apocalyptic setting that Williams creates. At least at this moment, I would rather escape dark reality than read about an even darker fictional future, particularly a future with philosophical sheep. Since I might not have given the book fair consideration, I am tempted to recommend it with reservations, but I can’t find that degree of fairness in my heart. Literary and ancient historical allusions abound for those who wish to decode them. Readers with strong stomachs and infinite patience might find Williams’ unfinished ideas and evocative prose sufficient to make the novel worthwhile.

NOT RECOMMENDED