Asakiyume mita

These thoughts will make most sense if you've already read Ann Leckie's Translation State. They may be comprehensible even if you haven't--but you have to not mind spoilers. With that warning...

( What's going on with the Presger Translators? )

I've started reading Sofia Samatar's The Winged Histories, and it's got the same finely realized scene setting that I loved in A Stranger in Olondria, but unfortunately the first of the four sections in it focuses on a soldier, and the first part of the soldier's narrative is bloody and depressing in a way that I'm not really in the mood for. But I'm going to push on, because there's more to this section than the war part, and it's only one of four sections in the novel.

Here's what I mean by finely realized scene setting:

The chair was wrote with curious forms of dragons, dogs and rabbits and stranger creatures, goat-headed lions and winged dolphins. It stood alone beneath the trees, a little away from the house, covered with dust and dried leaves. Siski cleaned it off with the hem of her skirt.

--It's that last line: dusting it off with the hem of the skirt. Thinking to mention it, how vivid and present it makes the scene.

I also impulsively purchased the anthology sovay mentioned, Consolations Songs: Optimistic Speculative Fiction for a Time of Pandemic, which features writing by several people on my friends list, and I promised a good friend of mine I'd read N.K. Jemison's The City We Became, which is his new favorite book of all time. Since he also really loved Ann Leckie's books and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time/Ruin, I feel like chances are good I'll like it. I also have some other things humming in the background that I keep meaning to get to--what's springing to mind as I type is Sue Burke's Interference, sequel to Semiosis, but there are many others.

I'm reading Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower right now, and finding it VERY thought provoking if a little slow with regard to actual story-stuff happening. The narrator is a god, and gradually from the narrator we learn what that means. Which is interesting, right? The parameters and limitations of divinity.

One thing that characterizes gods is that what they say MUST be true. It's a requirement. Instead of this fact conferring great power, though, the causality works the other way: a god can only say those things that it has the power to back up.

Gods have to be very careful when speaking about the nature of things. It might be that if you're strong enough, you can perhaps risk saying something like The world is round like a berry and moves around the sun, which is much, much larger than it looks in the sky without knowing beforehand if it's true. Maybe. What if you're wrong? What god is strong enough to endure the loss of the sort of power that even begins to touch what it would take to make that true, to change the very nature of the entire universe? ... So everything we said to each other had to be couched in qualifiers.

--The Raven Tower, 87.

This got me thinking to who/what has the power to create truth in our present day. In some nation-states, the government has that power--as The Simpsons noted:

The editor in me wants to let you know that in proper pinyin romanization that should be Tiananmen

It's possible to say that government-dictated truth is merely something that people pay lip service to. It's not true truth. People can argue that true-truth exists, even if we don't know what it is, even if we never know what it is. I think I agree? I'm never 100 percent sure of anything. But I'm not sure what practical use the knowledge that there's a true-truth out there is to us in a world where we have to make decisions and judgments based on the less-certainly-true truth. That's not to say true-truth isn't valuable or important. There are lots of things are are valuable and important that don't have practical applications ... I'm simply saying that in our everyday lives, it's worth considering who decides the less-certainly-true truth.

I loved it! Here's a non-spoilery review (duplicates what I've put up at Goodreads)

The book's called Provenance, and it's a perfect title, because where things--or people--come from and what (who) they really are is a central theme. The main character, Ingray, is the daughter of a powerful politician from the Hwae system--only actually she's a child from a public crèche, and that sense of her own insignificant roots weighs heavily on her and affects her actions. Hwae society is very wrapped up in what they call vestiges, a term that indicates everything from historical artifacts to personal mementos and souvenirs (one thing that Ann Leckie is excellent at is strange-ifying things--like museums or the importance of artifacts--to reveal stuff about human nature), but what if foundational vestiges are false? The two people Ingray first interacts with are also of mysterious provenance, and their claimed identities change.

In terms of story, there are multiple plots and schemes interacting, from the very personal (Ingray's competition with her brother) to the statewide (Ingray's family is in competition with another family for influence) to the regional planetary (a neighboring federacy wants to manipulate or pressure Hwae into granting it certain concessions that will work to its advantage in the region) to the galactic (the treaty with alien species, which *no* one wants broken, but which is at constant risk).

Ingray is a **very** different protagonist from Breq (from the Imperial Radch trilogy--Ancillary Justice etc.): she's not superhuman in the least, and that makes her bravery extra-impressive ... and very persuasive. When you see her doing things she's terrified of doing but that she feels she has to do to for the sake of people she cares about, it's inspiring! Makes you believe maybe you could too. Not that that's what the book's aiming for, but it's a great side benefit.

And there's humor threaded through the book, whether it's the fact that "compassionate removal" is the Hwaen euphemism for prison or the fact that the Radchaai ambassador to the Presger just can't keep pronouns straight. There are also some uproarious examples of insufficient machine translation.

And some really marvelous aliens. Folks, you will love the Geck ambassador. She's just wonderful.

I'll mention a couple of things I was less enthusiastic about just to acknowledge that they were present: there was a budding romance for Ingray that felt unnecessary and a bit shoehorned in: the object of affection was an interesting person who did bring out the best in Ingray at some key moments, and I could see how *in time* affection/romance might bloom, but Ingray's attention--rightly--was completely elsewhere most of the time, so.

There's also a lot of explaining that goes on. I didn't mind this exactly--I think it's good to make stuff clear to your readers--But sometimes I felt that the level and wide-rangingness of the discussion wasn't credible for a situation. In the end, though, I decided to accept it as an artistic choice, like accepting in a detective story when the detective gathers all the suspects in a room at the end to go over what happened. It was a conscious decision, though.

But let me get back to my main point. This is an excellent, immersive, surprising, fun, thought-provoking, and moving book. Highly recommended.

I heard something on the radio this morning, a story I don't remember any details about, but it used both the words "contentment" and "complacency," and since then, I've been asking everyone (well, three people):

How do you tell the difference between contentment and complacency?

I'm not asking for the dictionary definitions of them--I know what they both mean--but both from the inside (in other words, if it's yourself and your feelings you're talking about) and from the outside (if you're talking about other people and your perceptions of them), how do you know the difference?

In other news, I made a tumblr for quotes from Sphene in Ancillary Mercy. I haven't yet filled it up with all the quotes, but I've got a good bunch. It's at Ancillary Sphene. I hope to make a picture, too, of Sphene and Translator Zeiat at their game.

In other, other news, if it's nighttime where you are (as it is for me) and not overcast, you can take a look at the moon and all its craters and mountains in high relief, because the sun is shining on it slantwise. I got the idea to look from a two-days-ago broadcast of Strange Universe.

All right then... see you around the Internet.

Note: I don't consider what I talk about spoilers, but if you want a completely virgin experience reading Ancillary Mercy, then save this entry for after you've read it.

I'm really, really loving what ann_leckie is doing with Ancillary Mercy. I'm about halfway through, and the two things I love most are the abundance of AI characters, with distinctive personalities, and the presence--hurray!--of another Presger translator, Zeiat. And what Ann is doing with both these is exploring personhood, both one's own and others'. At some points this is just terribly terribly moving (more on that when I've finished the book), and at other points hugely humorous, and that's another thing I really love about this book--the humor. The tension has been ramped up to Ancillary Justice levels, but there's laughter too, especially around Zeiat, but also from a surly AI, the ship Sphene.

About personhood. Consider Zeiat's confusion when she encounters Breq after the latter has been badly wounded:

"Fleet Captain," the Presger translator said, coming into the room, Five standing stiff and disapproving at the doorway. "I'm Presger Translator Zeiat." She bowed. And then sighed. "I was just getting used to the last fleet captain. I suppose I'll get used to you." She frowned. "Eventually."

"I'm still Fleet Captain Breq, Translator," I said.

Her frown cleared. "I suppose that's easier to remember. But it's a little odd, isn't it? You're pretty obviously not the same person. Fleet Captain Breq--the previous one, I mean--had two legs. Are you absolutely certain you're Fleet Captain Breq?"

"Quite certain, Translator."

This echoes their first conversation, when Zeiat wasn't sure of her own identity, but was persuaded of it by Breq.

Needless to say, mutual understanding when there are basic doubts such as this can be hard:

Translator Zeiat blinked. Sighed. "Oh, Fleet Captain. It's so very difficult talking to you sometimes. It seems like you understand things and then you say something that makes it obvious that no, you don't understand at all."

There's so much more--SO MUCH MORE--I'd like to share, but later. For now I'll just say that (so far) this is exactly the book I was hoping for--everything I wanted, plus surprises. THANK YOU ANN.

Milky Way Railway
Miyazawa Kenji, who wrote the mysterious and beautiful story Gingatetsudo no yoru (銀河鉄道の夜; translated by Sarah Strong as Night of the Milky Way Railway), lived in Iwate Prefecture, which the ninja girl visited this past New Years. She sent us candies in this commemorative tin:







You can see that after Ginga (Milky Way) station comes Minami Juji (The Southern Cross)

playlists
I've been very much enjoying the six Ancillary Justice playlists ann_leckie posted about in a recent LJ entry. They're all fan made and quite various in feel. They're at 8tracks.com.



windships

In this entry, blairmacg interviews Brad Beaulieu about the worldbuilding in his novel The Winds of Khalakovo, one of the novels in the StoryBundle I mentioned a couple of entries back. One of the things his world includes is windships. It got me thinking of how appealing the idea of windships is, the idea of sailing in the sky. Terri-Lynne DeFino had windships in Beyond the Gate that were quite magnificent.

The windships in Beyond the Gate are kept aloft by the magic of the Pilfer, which pulls elements from the surrounding air in and turns them into a levitating mist (though there's more to it than that, as the characters learn).

I haven't yet read The Winds of Khalakovo, but from the interview, it sounds like the mechanism of those windships are equally interesting--and very different.

I received a wonderful present from a dear friend: Radchaai pins, created by Ann Leckie! The long dangly one is for the House of Awer, which, as readers will recall, Lt. Skaaiat came from. Lt. Skaaiat shared with the protagonist a deep affection for another main character whose name I won't mention so as to avoid ALL THE FEELS, but I am *so happy* to have this pin. And, if you look in the upper corner, you will see a pin with an iridescent fish, which calls to mind a song that's central to the book:

My heart is a fish
Hiding in the water-grass
In the green, in the green

snow squall
On the way to my father's there was a snow squall. The trees melted away and the lanes of the highway disappeared.



pizza
I am so sorry, but it must be said. Here we have a leaning tower of pizza . . . boxes.



ice
This puddle has the smoothest ice, the best ice. if you run and slide, you can go almost clear across--no friction.



The ice has creatures. . .

( an ameba )

And treasures . . .

( an embedded bottle )

It's not really spoilers because it won't mean anything if you haven't read the book, but all the same, maaaaaybe you don't want to click through if you haven't read it. It's just one name, contextless, but still.

( it's… )