Hopes and Cures
Review: Sherwood Nation by Benjamin Parzybok
CW: Domestic violence, weird politics
The title of this book intrigued me, because anything to do with Robin Hood will always catch my attention.
Unfortunately for me, Benjamin Parzybok’s work is only very tangentially related to Robin Hood. It’s the story of a young woman who robs the rich and gives to the poor, gaining the nickname Maid Marian, and who then tries to create her own tiny nation in a drought-ravaged Portland.
(I assume the Portland geography is accurate but have no personal experience to go by).
This is climate fiction that is both harsh and resilient and I suspect Parzybok at least thinks he’s writing hopepunk.
The problem with this book is a central one of philosophy:
Parzybok presents the thesis that “Dictatorships handle crisis better than democracies” and argues it through this book.
Obviously, this is not a philosophy I can ever agree with, especially right now. Perhaps a competent dictatorship will do better than an incompetent democracy.
Contrast this with Naomi Kritzer’s wonderful The Year Without Sunshine where the crisis is dealt with with a kind of very polite Midwestern anarchy that I can get behind.
Obviously, the micronation of Sherwood will fail. Or will it?
Either way, the book never wrestles with this central idea of dictatorship over democracy in a time of crisis, but merely presents it as a fait accompli.
I’m not one to assume that an author’s philosophy matches what’s shown in their book, but this one makes me suspicious. And whether Parzybok agrees with it or not, it made the book a hard read.
So did the 100 page chapters.
No, that’s not a typo.
I get complaints that mine are too short and they might be right, but I think that’s better than…a short novella. Ahem.
He’s not a bad writer, mind, if you can get past the politics as presented, and the characters are interesting, although I would kind of have preferred a second gay couple to contrast with the Mayor and his husband, who are A. The bad guys and B. Really quite dysfunctional.
I can’t quite recommend this, but I can see some people enjoying it.
I was given a copy of this book for review purposes.
Review: More Than the Sun and Stars by Adam Dorr
CW: Cure narrative.
Dorr markets this book as hard science fiction. I hate to second guess the author, but I would call this a work of cyberpunk…it is very definitely about identity and also about the singularity.
There’s an arm’s race between two ways of achieving it. On the one hand, there’s the government scientists who have built Delphi, an AGI.
On the other hand, there’s the corporate ExoCortex project, which seeks to achieve superintelligence through merging of woman and machine.
I say woman, because their first success is Hishomi Lancaster…who was born with profound intellectual disabilities. Apparently, Dorr also had a profoundly disabled child.
My issue with this is, of course, that it’s a Cure Narrative, albeit an understandable one. Dorr Flowers-of-Algernoning a disabled child probably speaks to his wishes for his own…certainly the afterword implies that. But the cure narrative is combined here with disability-as-superpower, in the implication that Hishomi succeeds because she’s disabled.
I absolutely understand why Dorr wrote this book, but…
This is a beautifully written book that explores the nature of intelligence, sapience, and identity through the concepts of man-machine intelligence, merging intelligence, hive minds…and he’s also clearly read Spider Robinson’s Mindkiller. It does step well outside my personal definition of hard SF, but at the same time… (Also I’d like to remind Dorr most smartphones don’t have removable sim cards anymore).
It’s also about love, as the title indicates, and the things we will do for and to the people we love. It deals with issues of consent…what can you morally do as the parent of a disabled child?
And, again, it’s beautiful, even as I struggled to get past the cure narrative. It’s also hopeful and shows us a potential future that might actually achieve Utopia For Everyone (and sensibly is not where most of the story is set).
I can’t quite recommend it, but it’s definitely interesting, and I’d like to see what Dorr does next.
I received a free copy of this book for review and award consideration purposes.