Three Books for the Times (April / May 2020) - A Deepness in the Sky, The City & The City, A Song for a New Day

Note: I thought about these books as I thought about the pandemic over the course of a few months, then wrote them up in a few weeks. And because those few weeks coincided with the rise of a new civil rights movement, my list already feels outdated, like it belongs to a different era.

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

Vinge's novel follows a human society, apparently at least somewhat culturally descended from Han China, that exists as a fleet of spaceships. The Queng Ho are traders. They travel the human-settled parts of the galaxy at sub-light speeds, using long intervals of cryogenic hibernation to allow individual members to piece together a hundred-year lifespan over the course of thousands or tens of thousands of years of galactic history.

The Queng Ho see themselves as preservers of human culture. They are too small, with too few people, to train the really large number of specialists needed to create new technology - only a planetary society can do that. But planetary societies rise, collapse, and have to be rebuilt, and the traveling Queng Ho fleet is able to "restock" a rebuilding society with forgotten languages and technologies. Near the beginning of the novel, the Queng Ho gather to try to prevent a society from collapsing.

I actually forget what disaster befell the society, but a point novel raises is that it almost doesn't matter what the disaster is. The planetary society is incredibly advanced, but also incredibly efficient - which in turn makes it incredibly fragile. Everything is made just-in-time, everything is used, nothing wasted - which means there's nothing extra or spare, nothing redundant, nothing resilient. Any disaster that disrupts production will interrupt distribution and result in shortages and privation.

This incident doesn't take up that much of Vinge's novel, but I keep thinking of that when I see empty shelves at the drug store and grocery, when I see that basic supplies like paper masks and rubbing alcohol are still unavailable, that toilet paper and acetaminophen are rationed and in short supply. On the global scale, there's no such thing as "the right amount" - our choice is between "too much" which will lead to wasting the excess, "not enough" which will lead some to some people having to do without (and if the thing being done without is necessary for being alive, then "not enough" will lead to some people dying). Ironically, we live in a world where we both produce "too much" of many necessary things, and where people die from having to do without them, because we live under a system where people don't have a right to things, they only have the right to buy things, if they can afford them.

A portion of the Queng Ho fleet goes to investigate the "On-Off Star", which is a stellar anomaly that burns normally for hundreds of years, then goes cold and dark for hundreds, then reignites, etc. They are met by "the Emergents," a fleet launched by an authoritarian human government that collapsed due to a terrible pandemic, then rebuilt using the Queng Ho cultural broadcasts, but also rebuilt terribly unequal and cruel. While rebuilding, they eventually tamed the illness that destroyed them.

The Emergents ask for diplomacy, and deliberately infect the Queng Ho with their pet disease, then launch a nuclear first strike hoping to wipe them out. A handful of Queng Ho discover the plan in time to fight back, but aren't able to share the news widely. Both fleets take such heavy losses that the only way they can survive is by merging. The Emergents rule the merged fleet, and the surviving Queng Ho are subordinated under the excuse that they launched the unprovoked attack.

The fleet orbits the On-Off Star waiting for it to reignite. Everyone works in shifts involving long stretches of hibernation. Well, almost everyone. The Emergents put some Queng Ho to work creating decorations. They work some people to death, using up their entire lifespans doing unnecessary labor while the others slept. Others are infected with a modified version of the pet virus, which causes neurological changes that leads them to obsessively focus on a singular are of interest - and the Emergents are able to guide the area of focus so that their enslaved workers spend every waking moment obsessively thinking about the work their slavers assigned them.

The way the Emergents talk about these focused workers reminds me of the way Silicon Valley bosses talk about the long hours of overtime their programmers supposedly happily volunteer for. The treatment of the workers given a death sentence so they can carve frescoes remind me of the risks that food service, health care, and beauty industry workers are being asked to take for everyone else's benefit. The Emergents are tyrants who pretend to be victims, who treat all other groups as subhuman, who use propaganda to reject the legitimacy of others' desire for self-governance, who treat all criticism and dissent as a crime, who abuse workers, and who spread disease to others because they believe themselves to be immune. It's hard not to see parallels between them and certain aspects of contemporary American politics.

Aliens live on a single planet orbiting the On-Off Star. Their civilization is somewhat analogous to the Earth during WWII, both in terms of their technology level, and because their world is divided between two main factions. The aliens hibernate underground while their star is dark; they spend the last years for hibernation jockeying for position, each side trying to stay awake and keep their economy and war effort running just a little longer than the other. Again, this reminds me of the way states and countries seem to be vying to keep people at work, regardless of the risk, longer than the others. The multiple parallels make this the book I've kept thinking back on the most.

The City and the City by China Mieville

I've said before that we live in an era that sometimes feels unreal, that feels as though it's can't, or shouldn't, be real. To that, the pandemic has added the feeling of existing alongside other people who live in another reality entirely.

Because of my race, my gender, my age, my income, my education, where I work, what kind of work I do, who I interact with, who I know, who I'm friends with - I live in a world where we fear the pandemic and are social distancing to the maximum extent possible. We also have the luxury and the privilege of working from home, neither furloughed, fired, nor forced to go into an unsafe workplace.

I and almost everyone I interact with, we stay home as much as possible, go to work only when required, go shopping only when necessary, take exercise at odd hours and in bad weather in the hopes of not running into anyone. We interact only virtually. We cancel plans, and keep canceling, as the timeline when we think we can meet again safely keeps receding farther into the future. We skip visits, let our pantries go bare. We do without. We wear masks. We fear not only catching the virus, but spreading it to others. At any moment, I could be sick and not know it.

And yet when we do go out, it's as though the world has split in two. In this store, the other customers wear masks, walk quickly, stand far apart, just as I do. In that store, the walk slowly, touch items and set them back, they talk loudly about how they aren't afraid, how the virus is harmless, perhaps imaginary. They approach me easily, while I feel forced to skitter away as though by magnetic repulsion. In this store, the workers wear masks too, wipe surfaces with disinfectant, stand as far from me as they're able. In that store, the workers wear their masks like necklaces, chitchat with me as they ring up my purchase.

Mieville's story is pure social science fiction. He presents a reality that isn't real, but could be. It requires not different biology or different physics, just different beliefs, following the same rules that turn real beliefs into social reality. The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma are separate because their residents believe them to be separate, and act on those beliefs in a way that makes them real. It's the same way that the townspeople in Lars and the Real Girl treat the doll Bianca as a fellow citizen with an active social life, and in doing so, bring her to life, socially. For as long as the others treat her a living, Bianca occupies the same position as any other townsperson.

Beszel and Ul Quoma occupy the same physical space, but the citizens of each city refuse to see the people and places of the other. In a segregated neighborhood, that's easy, since there's no one there to see; in an integrated neighborhoods, it depends on a practiced eye for un-seeing that the citizens train themselves in over time.

Yes, it's a metaphor made literal - for the way every city is two cities or more, segregated by race and class, full of people who have learned to un-see each other so thoroughly that they do it unconsciously - but Mieville avoids making too-simplistic or too-obvious equivalencies. The comparison more convincing precisely because you have to notice it yourself.

There's a murder-mystery afoot, there's the bureaucracy of border-crossing, there are rumors of a fabled third city that is un-seen by citizens of both Beszel and Ul Quoma who both assume it belongs to their neighbor, and after reaching peak speculation, there's a conclusion that feels realistic by comparison for being relatively prosaic. The real draw here is Mieville's bravura description of the two cities, and his excellent narration of the process of un-seeing.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

Pinsker's novel follows two people, a punk musician living through a moment of rapid and profound social change, and a music fan living after the change has become permanent. The musician comes from our world before the pandemic, from the "normal" we all want to return to. She's on tour when a series of terrorist attacks happening in public places in rapid succession lead to a shutdown of all large gatherings of people - movies, sporting events, concerts. The shutdown happens on short notice, in response to an acute emergency, but then it stretches on, and on, and then it becomes permanent. The music fan comes from farther in the future, from a world like ours could become if our shutdown becomes permanent, if it becomes our "new normal."

Pinsker must have written this book in 2018 or early 2019; it was published in the fall just before the novel coronavirus first appeared. She couldn't possibly have known that coronavirus was coming. She was probably thinking about America's mass shootings, perhaps especially the one in Las Vegas, where a man with a sniper rifle in his hotel room opened fire on a crowd attending an outdoor concert. Her premise in brilliant in its elegance and simplicity. How many shootings like that one would it take before we stopped having outdoor concerts altogether? Before we stopped watching live sports, stopped going to movies?

I left my workplace at the end of a shift, expecting to come back after the weekend. I haven't been back since. At first we were told we'd be out for a few weeks, then for a few months. We're making plans to reopen soon, but we've been warned that we might be required to shut down again on very short notice. No one wants to speak aloud exactly what turn of events would require us have to do that. I'm fortunate. Others have left their workplaces and will never return, other workplaces are no longer there to be returned to. I worry about Pinsker's novel. I worry it will come true.

The music fan in Pinsker's novel grew up after the shutdown. She grew up in a world where people staying at home and never gathering in large groups in person is "normal" and "natural" and unremarkable. She listens to her mother's stories about being in crowds the way we would watch a movie scene where someone fills up their care with leaded gasoline, doesn't buckle a seatbelt, and swigs from a flask of liquor while chatting with a pregnant passenger who's chain smoking and taking "mommy's little helper" pills, on their way to a job at the asbestos factory, and no one is watching the road.

Eventually Pinsker links the two story threads back together. All her life, the music fan has attended virtual concerts, digital concerts, but learns about an underground scene of punks playing illegal live shows with audiences larger than those permitted by law. One of those punks, of course, is the original musician. When I first heard about this book, I expected to feel sympathy for the people trying to rebuild a society where we spend time in groups and crowds.

And in a way, I do sympathize. I also want to be around people again. I also miss eating out at my favorite restaurants, browsing at the bookstore, reading in a coffee shop, playing boardgames with friends, enjoying a slow drink at the bar. I also want to return to "normal." But more than I want that, I want it to be safe first. And so my sympathy is tempered with fear and trepidation. And a worry that Pinsker is right. I worry that when it is safe, that I'll still be afraid, permanently agoraphobic, or that I'll be so used to staying in that the idea of going out in a crowd no longer occurs to me, or that there will no longer be such things as crowds to go out into.