Adapting to humanity

[bibliogramma]

Camouflage, Joe Haldeman

Imagine an immortal shapeshifter – let’s call it, as Haldeman does, a changling - that’s spent millennia on Earth. It can be anything, a rock, a tree, a shark, a human being – but if it is going to function in human society, it must learn how humans behave. And how which kind of human – male or female – behaves. It makes mistakes – sometimes horrifying ones – as it learns to be like a human, but it’s primary motivation is curiosity, and it functions though adaptation.

Imagine another kind of immortal. This one can change its appearance, but only within limits – like a chameleon. One of those limits is that it is always human and male. It is interested only in survival and self-gratification. It is almost always aggressive, and violent. The ultimate Alpha male.

Now imagine that humans have found a space ship that’s been waiting on the ocean floor for millennia while its pilot explores life on earth, have raised it to the surface and are, naturally, trying to see what makes it tick.

You would likely assume that at least one of these immortals arrived in this vessel, and that both are interested in getting access to it. And you’d be right.

In Camouflage, Haldeman gives us a well crafted story with a very interesting cast of characters, many of whom do not yield up all their secrets until the very end of the book. What makes the book particularly interesting – and earned it a Tiptree Award – is the way that Haldeman explores gender roles and presentations through the actions of his two alien immortals as they move toward a final confrontation with each other, the alien spaceship, and the human researchers who found it and are trying to understand it.

One thing that I found interesting in looking at reviews of Camouflage was that even though the text makes an explicit reference to the fact that the chameleon remains the same sex throughout its lengthy history on Earth, reviewers often describe the character as one that can mimic the appearance of any human being. It seems that, in exploring aspects of gender role presentation and construction, Haldeman has in serendipitous fashion underlined another troublesome aspect of conventional gender dynamics – the elision of all human beings under the term man.