Anthology: Sisters of the Revolution

Sisters of the Revolution, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, is a reprint anthology that brings together work from some of the most important feminist voices in science fiction. This is not hyperbole. Among the works collected in this PM Press publication are Joanna Russ’s When It Changed, James Tiptree Jr’s The Screwfly Solution, Octavia Butler’s The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and Ursula Le Guin’s Sur, as well as several other stories I’ve read and loved before from authors Eleanor Arnason, Vandana Singh, Nalo Hopkinson and Elisabeth Vonarburg. There were also a fair number of stories new to me, by authors both familiar and new. It’s an outstanding collection of writing by remarkable women.

In their introduction, Ann Vandemeer and Jeff Vandemeer write of this anthology as part of an ongoing conversation around feminist speculative fiction, neither a defining nor a definitive work. “We think of this anthology—the research, the thought behind it, and the actual publication—as a journey of discovery not complete within these pages. Every reader, we hope, will find some writer or story with which they were not previously familiar—and feel deeply some lack that needs to be remedied in the future, by some other anthology.”

As such, it is both deeply enjoyable in its right, and an encouragement to seek out further examples of the feminist vision in speculative fiction.

The stories contained in this collection examine many aspects of women’s lives and struggles. Woman as mother, woman as daughter, woman as leader, woman as revolutionary, woman as healer, woman as explorer, woman as hero. Women who defy the expectations of their society, women who choose to escape, women who try to do the right thing, women who rebel, women who kill, women alone, women betrayed, women who survive. I recommend it highly.

Samuel Delany: Shorter Views

Samuel R. Delany is as well-known and respected for his literary and social/queer criticism as he is for his writing of fiction in multiple, often paraliterary, genres, from science fiction to queer erotica. Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary, a collection of critical essays on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing, plus a number of interviews on a variety of topics, that demonstrates the breadth and depth of his thinking and his academic work in these areas, and offers the reader a sustained experience both instructive and challenging.

The book is divided into three sections - Part One: Some Queer Thoughts, Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary, and Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers. These categories, while suggestive of the overarching themes of each section, should not be taken as exclusive. In the first section, for instance, Delany has gathered essays and interviews that talk about queerness, but also queerness in relation to art, to his own writing in various paraliterary genres (science fiction, pornography), in other writers. In the second, he examines theory and criticism of science fiction, comics, and other paraliterary genres, but does so from the persoective of a queer academic, critic and author. The third section looks at specific writers and works, both literary and paraliterary.

There’s a documentary about Delany, called The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I’ve never seen it (though I’d love to if I can ever find a coy), but one thing I am certain of, is that polymath is one of the words that one can definitely use to describe him. It’s there in his writing, in the breadth and scope of his thinking, his references, his allusions, the often very disparate threads of knowledge that he draws together in presenting his arguments. To read Delany is to learn things you never would have imagined. To read this collection of essays and interviews is to have your perspectives on race and sexuality challenged, to have your understanding of the art and practice of writing and the genre of speculative fiction - and a few other paraliterary genres - broadened.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Black Panther Book 4

Black Panther: Avengers of the New World, Book One is the beginning of a new narrative arc in the Black Panther comic written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The rebellion is ended in Wakanda. A new constitution, a new, more representational form of government is being forged. But T’Challa and his people face a new crisis - the disappearance of the Orishas, the gods of Wakanda, who have until the recent rebellion been an active force in Wakandan life. But now prayers and entreaties go unheard, and not even the Black Panther can commune with his patron orisha, Bast, as he has in the past.

But there are other threats. Strange, violent reptilian beings have begun appearing, entering Wakanda through portals that Wakandan science cannot control, and Wakanda’s shamans cannot close without facing their own deaths. All that is known is that these Simbi are ancient enemies from Wakanda’s far-distant past. And the Simbi are not alone. Other creatures appear, giant ape-like creatures called Vanyan, the spider-men known as the Anansi, and other dooms from the past.

Guided by the spirits of former Black Panthers, T’Challa seeks out a potential ally, the ancient sorcerer Zawavari, who appears to know something about what is going on. He manages to close a gate, killing a troop of invading Vanyan, but falls into a coma - first uttering the chilling words that the gods are dead, and predicting that the Originators will return. With Zawavari unable - temporarily, they hope - to help, Shuri persuades T’Challa to seek the help of his former wife Oromo, the warrior goddess known as Storm.

As the crisis worsens, news is brought to T’Challa of a new religious cult - in the name of the “twice-risen” god Sefako - sweeping the land, filling in the gap left by the disappearance of the orishas.

And there are other enemies circling Wakanda as well - Zeke Stane, Doctor Faustus, Fenris, and the rebel Zenzi are planning to take advantage of Wakanada’s unrest. The first dign of their involvement comes when T’Challa learns that Fenris has kidnapped T’Challa’s old friend Asira and given her to Wakanda’s enemies, the Azanians. Aneka and Ayo of the Dora Milaje are sent to rescue her, but are taken prisoner by Doctor Faustus and Klaw.

It’s an action-filled, tense beginning to the next Black Panther adventure. I find the missing orisha plotline more engaging at the moment, but that’s probably because I lack context for all these villains and their history with the Black Panther. I’m certainly enjoying the fact that in Black Panther, we have a hero surrounded by women without whom he would be quite lost. And I find the idea of Wakanda, an uncolonised African nation, ever resisting, very powerful.

Olaf Stapledon: Darkness and the Light

Olaf Stapledon is not, I think, particularly well-known these days, nor is his fiction often read. Most science fiction fans have likely heard his name mentioned as one of the early lights in the genre, but don’t go much further. Stapledon was a philosopher as well as an author of fiction, and much if his fiction is engaged in working out scenarios that illustrate some of the ‘great questions’ that philosophy seeks to explore.

Darkness and the Light is for the most part an exploration of an idea that goes back at least as far as Plato’s Republic, if not further - the question of what are the characteristics of the best society for humans to live in. Stapledon was inclined toward socialism as a basis for a good society, though he did not consider himself a Marxist, and was no supporter of the imperialist and militarist formulations of totalitarian socialism that emerged in China and Russia.

In Darkness and the Light, Stapleton imagines two separate futures for humanity, either of which could happen, depending on the choices we make as a global society. One path leads to tyranny, the other to a functional socialist utopia. He begins with a ‘future history’ describing the path of world politics up to a crisis point, at which tine these futures diverge. He calls this the time of balance, in which things could go either way - a concept reminiscent of the principle behind Isaac Asimov’s ‘historical necessity’ as demonstrated in the Foundation series, whose first chapters were also published in 1942.

In Stapledon’s time of balance, Russia has conquered the majority of the planet, with China the only major power free of its domination, controlling Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. The only country which has maintained independence from both powers is Tibet. It is in the success or failure of a political and social renaissance in Tibet that Stapledon locates his ‘crisis point,’ the point in human history where the future splits into two possibilities which he labels the darkness and the light.

“... the relations of the new Tibet with its two mighty neighbours constituted the occasion on which the great duplication became unmistakable and irrevocable. Henceforth my experience was dual. On the one hand I witnessed the failure of the Tibetan renaissance, and the destruction of the Tibetan people. This was followed by the final Russo–Chinese war which unified the human race but also undermined its capacity. On the other hand I saw the Tibetans create, seemingly in the very jaws of destruction, a community such as man had never before achieved. And this community, I saw, so fortified the forces of the light in the rival empires that the war developed into a revolutionary war which spread over the whole planet, and did not end until the will for the light had gained victory everywhere.”

Stapledon outlines the path toward darkness first. In this future, Chinese psychologists counter the spread of ideas from the Tibetan renaissance by creating a new religion based on acquiescence to the state and the purification of humanity though suffering and cruelty. Both Russia and China wage war against Tibet, which cannot withstand the assault and ultimately capitulates. The country and its people are destroyed. The two superpowers then agree to engage in a limited but long-term war intended to keep their respective peoples engaged and committed. However, over time China, where the doctrine of cruelty has taken precedence over the virtue of subservience - the reverse being true in Russia - slowly gains ground until China emerges as the victor and world ruler. Holding power through fear and sophisticated mind control, and glorifying torture and cruelty, the Chinese Empire slowly declines as its population decreases, natural resources are exhausted, scientific progress fails, the economy falters. Eventually the empire fractures, and humanity slips into a dark age if barbarism from which no escape is possible due to the slow degradation of human beings themselves into a species of limited intelligence and motivation. The end of man comes when a change in the behaviour of rats, making then more aggressive, brings about food shortages and ever increasing numbers of deaths from rat attacks. Thus ends the future of darkness.

Stapledon’s narrator then turns toward the future of the light. In this future, the confidence of those influenced by the Tibetan renaissance gives them courage in the face of persecution and allows them to ridicule and ultimately defeat the religion of cruelty and submission promulgated by the Chinese. The core of the Tibetan renaissance - part philosophy, part faith - which takes hold in the other nations of the world is simple:

“Love, they said, and wisdom are right absolutely. True community of mutually respecting individuals, and also fearless free intelligence and imagination, are right absolutely. And we all knew it. There is one intrinsic good, they said, and one only, the awakened life, the life of love and wisdom.”

Russia wages war against Tibet, but is hampered by numerous rebellions throughout its territories, and by corruption and inefficiency within the war effort itself. Over time the Russian empire disintegrates; many of its territories are seized by China, while a few gain independence and ally with Tibet in the Mountain Federation. Tibet has a more difficult time defending itself against China, but eventually manages, at great cost, to effect a state of truce. During this period, the influence of the Tibetan philosophy continues to spread, quietly eroding the control of the Chinese imperialists over their people. When war came again, despite some serious setbacks, the Federation holds out long enough for the Empire to begin to collapse from within. Much of the world falls into civil and interstate wars and confusion, but over time more and more nations decide to adopt Tibet’s principles and join the Federation. The Light prevails.

Stapledon has his narrator ‘quote’ from the preamble to the new global federation’s constitution:

“We acknowledge that the high goal of all the lives of men is to awaken themselves and one another to love and wisdom and creative power, in service of the spirit. Of the universe we know very little; but in our hearts we know certainly that for all beings of human stature this is the way of life. In service of the spirit, therefore, we the human inhabitants of this planet, unite in a new order, in which every human being, no matter how lowly his nature, shall be treated with respect as a vessel of the spirit, shall be given every possible aid from infancy onwards to express whatever power is in him for bodily and mental prowess, for his own delight and for service of the common life. We resolve that in future none shall be crippled in body or perverted in mind by unwholesome conditions. For this end we declare that in future no powerful individual or class or nation shall have the means, economic or military, to control the lives of men for private gain.”

I must acknowledge here that as a socialist and social justice advocate, these words appeal greatly to me, as does the general shape of the emerging global society the Stapledon goes on to describe in the penultimate, and most political, section of the book - with one very important exceptions.

A recurring theme in the novel is a strongly eugenicist argument that the downfall of civilisations results from intelligent and industrious people choosing to have fewer children while the ‘dullards’ of the world procreate indiscriminately. Stapledon incorporates eugenicist policies in his global utopia, including the forced sterilisation of “defectives and certain types prone to criminality” - a policy that is not only abhorrent, but without any scientific basis.

But Stapledon does not end with his socialist-syndicalist global utopia. The end of the novel delves deeply into metaphysics, positing a vast uncaring and chaotic universe underlying our material one, that resembles more the darkness deemed vanquished than the prevailing light. Humanity engages upon a final struggle, with the very nature of this universe substrate, seeking to bring light to existential darkness. Despite many setbacks, a new form of human evolves to wage this metaphysical war, and our narrator, unable to comprehend the minds of this advanced humanity, can no longer see where the future leads.

This is not a novel as we ordinarily understand the term. There are no characters, no narratives based on personal actions and relationships. Stapledon’s narrator simply offers a sustained description of the events that occur in the two futures he has seen, and of the societies that emerge as a consequence of these events and the forces at work behind them. The metaphysical ending seems rather out of place with the sense of material, historical forces that drive the details of these futures, but does fit into the underlying image of an ongoing struggle between darkness and light.

It’s an interesting read, but not a particularly satisfying one.