C. J. Cherryh, Foreigner
Aug. 7th, 2007 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedNoble Goal to Write Something At Last = TOTAL FAIL. (Do I even get to complain about this? I have to sit down and write for more than a few minutes before I can complain about this, right?)
Arrrrrrrggggggh. Here, have a rant on C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series:
I liked C. J. Cherryh better when she was writing about sentient alien lizards or the interactions between human beings. It's one thing to be told: we can't understand these lizards, our physiological differences are too great, but if we have to we can coexist with them in symbiosis. It's another thing to read a 300 page book about the deadly dangerousness of cultural misunderstanding when the species in question is not that different, they're humanoid and they have rational and reasonable systems of trade, agriculture, and politics, and we can communicate with them. True, the words don't translate exactly, as the narrator is continually reminding us, but then, that's true for any two languages, even the ones that don't involve space aliens.
What makes it worse is that Cherryh is all about describing exactly what cultural conditions underlie what material conditions, and vice versa, and the more she describes, the more you start thinking: so the original colonists misunderstood the natives at the moment of first meeting. So what? Why haven't any of the children learned to adapt? Because no human children have been exposed to atavi culture. Why not?! Humans are in a position of extreme weakness on this world, they're vastly outnumbered, they have limited resources, and there is no possibilty of help coming from "home," because no one else even knows where they are. Why, in such a precarious position, would they all choose to hole themselves up on one island, relying on the expertise of a single barely competent linguist to arrange all contact with the atavi -- which, by the way, is necessary for their survival?
I could understand this situation if the aliens (the ones with the power, remember) had suffered only one human to live among them, but the way the situation is presented, it's humans who have chosen to live forever apart and the atavi cant't understand why. Well, frankly, neither can I. Maybe some, but all of them? Why! Arg! I don't get it!
And then, the truly horrible thing: atavi culture resembles human culture. It's impossible to read this book without making the comparison (personally, my money's on Thailand or Burma). So I have to read this book that is covertly about humans, while pretending that it's really about space aliens. No thanks! Right now I'm 150 pages in, and in the last 100, nothing has happened except that someone tried to kill the translator last night. The page count since then has been nothing but worry, worry, worry -- one hundred pages of paranoid xenophobia.
My problem with this book might be just that the set-up is too much like a nightmare. A culture where you have to be polite all the time, because if you are not, and offend someone, even accidentally, they will kill you? Ahhhhhhhh! If this were a book about a human culture, I could survive by arguing that In Reality, It's Not Like That -- allowances are made for well-intentioned people, no one is going to kill you for something minor like dress code, at least not without warning you first -- but this is science fiction: you have to accept the premise or you are in for a long tough road of deluded anti-reading. I really don't want to accept the premise though. -_-;
Arrrrrrrggggggh. Here, have a rant on C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series:
I liked C. J. Cherryh better when she was writing about sentient alien lizards or the interactions between human beings. It's one thing to be told: we can't understand these lizards, our physiological differences are too great, but if we have to we can coexist with them in symbiosis. It's another thing to read a 300 page book about the deadly dangerousness of cultural misunderstanding when the species in question is not that different, they're humanoid and they have rational and reasonable systems of trade, agriculture, and politics, and we can communicate with them. True, the words don't translate exactly, as the narrator is continually reminding us, but then, that's true for any two languages, even the ones that don't involve space aliens.
What makes it worse is that Cherryh is all about describing exactly what cultural conditions underlie what material conditions, and vice versa, and the more she describes, the more you start thinking: so the original colonists misunderstood the natives at the moment of first meeting. So what? Why haven't any of the children learned to adapt? Because no human children have been exposed to atavi culture. Why not?! Humans are in a position of extreme weakness on this world, they're vastly outnumbered, they have limited resources, and there is no possibilty of help coming from "home," because no one else even knows where they are. Why, in such a precarious position, would they all choose to hole themselves up on one island, relying on the expertise of a single barely competent linguist to arrange all contact with the atavi -- which, by the way, is necessary for their survival?
I could understand this situation if the aliens (the ones with the power, remember) had suffered only one human to live among them, but the way the situation is presented, it's humans who have chosen to live forever apart and the atavi cant't understand why. Well, frankly, neither can I. Maybe some, but all of them? Why! Arg! I don't get it!
And then, the truly horrible thing: atavi culture resembles human culture. It's impossible to read this book without making the comparison (personally, my money's on Thailand or Burma). So I have to read this book that is covertly about humans, while pretending that it's really about space aliens. No thanks! Right now I'm 150 pages in, and in the last 100, nothing has happened except that someone tried to kill the translator last night. The page count since then has been nothing but worry, worry, worry -- one hundred pages of paranoid xenophobia.
My problem with this book might be just that the set-up is too much like a nightmare. A culture where you have to be polite all the time, because if you are not, and offend someone, even accidentally, they will kill you? Ahhhhhhhh! If this were a book about a human culture, I could survive by arguing that In Reality, It's Not Like That -- allowances are made for well-intentioned people, no one is going to kill you for something minor like dress code, at least not without warning you first -- but this is science fiction: you have to accept the premise or you are in for a long tough road of deluded anti-reading. I really don't want to accept the premise though. -_-;