“…no one should be made to choose between advancing the future we love and doing so kindly.”
Today I am wrapping up a review that took 4 years from beginning to end. It began in 2018, when Peter K suggested I read Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. I did and I was blown away by it. You can read my review here on Okazu, where I gave it a 9/10. This was a book for people who loved to read. It stretched my ability to follow a complex story, with roots in history, anime, 18th century literature, science fiction, political science, and /flailing hands/ everything.
Over the next few years I read the next books in the series, Seven Surrenders and The Will to Battle. I did not review them here, but they were as outstanding. The world Ada Palmer built was fully fleshed out. While we saw epic events from individual perspectives (and not all of those reliable), it was gripping drama.
And then, at last I read the series finale. Perhaps the Stars may well be one of the very best books I have ever read – in part because it scratches all of my literary itches. ^_^ As I read, I kept jotting down quotes, so I hope you don’t mind if share them as I write here.
“Then I wrote an essay, ‘On Fanatacism’ (based on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique portatif) in which I argued that war’s atrocities hatch, not from any inhuman machine of war, but from human hearts when we let conviction turn into fanatacism. We are all in danger of dying in this war, but we are all also in danger of becoming the authors of atrocities. The first danger we cannot avoid, but the second is entirely in our power, since each, of us alone can choose whether we let fanatacism fester in us, or keep our hearts havens of Reason, Reasonableness and Humanity.”
There is a constant dialogue between Past and Present in Terra Ignota, and, in Perhaps the Stars, it turns out that Future has been there are along, waiting to be noticed. References to both classical literature and pop culture stop being references, and shove their way through to the surface, where they stand gleaming in the light as the homages they are. I cannot stress how fantastic these scenes are. One of my long-lasting sells on literature is any mythology creeping in…but this is not a creep. In Terra Ignota, Homeric mythology is front of stage along with Gundam and Rose of Versailles and Utena. And little green army men. And Voltaire. It’s all real and all there.
Where previous volumes dealt with the remaking of the world after it had failed, Perhaps the Stars deals deeply with the unmaking of that brave new world; how simply refusing to acknowledge gender and sexuality, nationalism or the raw desire for power can never be a truly healthy society. (Queership has a terrific article abut Gender in Terra Ignota, which I recommend.) And how the world we leave for our children is a brand new set of diseases that need to be cured.
“…you who had power and used it to burn the world. You burned it a lot. You didn’t just burn trees and cities and each other. You burned our admiration for the governments we grew up respecting. You burned our sense of safety in our care. You burned our patience, our ability to believe in the great things in this world you promised to protect will still be there for us and future generations. You burned our trust as you misused the data and surveillance we let you collect…for the war, its propaganda and lies. You burned our self-trust, too since we know we are infused with your values, values we thought made both you and us people who would never do such what you just did. We have to be afraid of ourselves, vigilant against what you’ve taught us to be, since now we know that we are something to be afraid of and ashamed of. And even if you didn’t personally kill in the war, if you carried arms, if you participated, you helped burn what nothing can bring back. No sentence can repair any of that. So, we want you to repair what you can.”
Above all, Perhaps the Stars is paean to everything I hope for the world. That communities of intent and desire, are as powerful as the arbitrary allegiances we have because of geography. In fact, that was what spurred me to Interview Ada Palmer for Yuri Studio.I wanted her thoughts on what we do, here, every day. And boy did I get some great commentary! If you haven’t listened to Ada talking about the power of historical LARPing, Revolutionary Girl Utena and how fandom can save the world, you definitely should. This book and the conversation with Ada, convinced me even more that those of us in this Yuri community, are best served when we stand with each other and with other marginalized communities.
“Friends help friends ignore the voices that tell us we are not human, outside voices and in.”
At the end of everything, Perhaps the Stars is deeply aspirational. Ada spoke of Hopepunk, which is now my new favorite genre of everything in the world. I believe that one of science fiction’s jobs is to provide aspiration so the next generation does better, whether it be in connecting with other races, or with our own. We need to find the cures for the diseases we create and homes for our hearts. There’s a good reason why healing anime is super popular right now. Communities of intent become “ibasho, that special community that lets one be one’s self, the human half of home.”
Perhaps the Stars and the whole Terra Ignota series is a magnificent love letter to literature, philosophy, history and humanity.
I sincerely hope you’ll all read it. It’s worth every second. Now I think I’m going to get it all as voice recording and start all over again. ^_^
Ratings:
Overall – 10
