![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesLook, two book posts in a day!
Embassytown was amazing. I have a feeling I need to make up a list of China Mieville's stuff and just go read all this things, because I also really dug The City and the City (expect to see a post about it).
Embassytown is sort of classic 'idea' SF. It takes place on the planet Arieka. Arieka is a backwoods at the border of known space, and the most interesting thing it has is exported local biotechnology and the fact the native sentient species (called the Hosts locally and the Ariekei offplanet) is physiologically and psychologically incapable of lying.
Embassytown is basically a boot about communication and preconceptions thereof. Ariekei have two mouths and some interesting cognitive circuitry: hearing is thinking is talking, and they are born knowing Language. They can't lie, to the point where even the slightest untruth is a performance art because 'holy shit!' -- it was a cognitive thing where they couldn't even think a lie and thinking is saying. And, deeper than that, they can't grasp symbolic language: things are what they are. They can't read or even gesture, or understand computer-synthesized spoken language. When two humans tried to mimic Language, they could recognize communication attempts, but had no clue what was being said.
The titular human settlement, Embassytown had to breed Ambassadors: twins raised from conception and given brain implants to think as much like one person as two people could. Most of them even had names like Mag and Da or Cal and Vin (and were usually called MagDa or CalVin) as a show that they were two halves of the same whole*. Ambassadors and Hosts could at least talk, though one of the themes of the novel was 'how do you know you understand someone, even if you think you speak the same language?' Does 'azul' or 'aoi' have the same meaning when I translate it to 'blue' in my head that it does when someone who learned it as a child?
Ariekei did seem to find humans fascinating because we can lie. They started developing the concept of similes in Language... and because they can't lie, they had to act out each simile first. As a child, the narrator of the book, Avice, participated in an uncomfortable creation of a simile so that the Ariekei could say 'like the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her' as a way to express rueful resignation.
The main story -- the narration starts with Avice's childhood and the first half of the book tells the story of how she came back to Arieka after being one of those lucky people who want to escape their small town and could, and her first interaction with Language and her second with the Ariekei, after she marries an offworld linguist, brings him home, and discovers a subculture of human 'similes' and other living pieces of Language.
Anyway, the main story is that Arieka's governing planet discover how to make an Ambassador other than 'twins raised from birth'... and shit hits the fan because Ambassador EzRa is just enough insnyc to be understood by Ariekei but not enough to just be a normal Ambassador. And Avice, as an outsider, as someone brought into the colony's governing bodies at time, and as someone who discovers she wants to know what is going on, has to Deal with Shit as Shit goes Down. And as someone who started interacting with the Ariekei, despite knowing that they probably couldn't parse her as a person since she couldn't talk with two voices.
You all know I'm all about weird alien shit and this is wonderfully weird alien shit. And makes you think about language and communication and change/paradigm shifts and being able to express things. And the lies that are more true than truth: similes and metaphors and, hell, fiction. I'm not at all like a summer's day, but I can say I am to convey a point.
I have to say, this is currently topping my Hugo Ballot, even if it is a traditional pick. (Which is a shame, since I would also happily give out a Hugo for Deadline as well.)
* Tangent: Among Others had monozygotic twins as characters too, with a big deal being that Mori's twin sister had died. For that matter, spooky twins is a trope.
Embassytown was amazing. I have a feeling I need to make up a list of China Mieville's stuff and just go read all this things, because I also really dug The City and the City (expect to see a post about it).
Embassytown is sort of classic 'idea' SF. It takes place on the planet Arieka. Arieka is a backwoods at the border of known space, and the most interesting thing it has is exported local biotechnology and the fact the native sentient species (called the Hosts locally and the Ariekei offplanet) is physiologically and psychologically incapable of lying.
Embassytown is basically a boot about communication and preconceptions thereof. Ariekei have two mouths and some interesting cognitive circuitry: hearing is thinking is talking, and they are born knowing Language. They can't lie, to the point where even the slightest untruth is a performance art because 'holy shit!' -- it was a cognitive thing where they couldn't even think a lie and thinking is saying. And, deeper than that, they can't grasp symbolic language: things are what they are. They can't read or even gesture, or understand computer-synthesized spoken language. When two humans tried to mimic Language, they could recognize communication attempts, but had no clue what was being said.
The titular human settlement, Embassytown had to breed Ambassadors: twins raised from conception and given brain implants to think as much like one person as two people could. Most of them even had names like Mag and Da or Cal and Vin (and were usually called MagDa or CalVin) as a show that they were two halves of the same whole*. Ambassadors and Hosts could at least talk, though one of the themes of the novel was 'how do you know you understand someone, even if you think you speak the same language?' Does 'azul' or 'aoi' have the same meaning when I translate it to 'blue' in my head that it does when someone who learned it as a child?
Ariekei did seem to find humans fascinating because we can lie. They started developing the concept of similes in Language... and because they can't lie, they had to act out each simile first. As a child, the narrator of the book, Avice, participated in an uncomfortable creation of a simile so that the Ariekei could say 'like the girl who was hurt in the dark and ate what was given to her' as a way to express rueful resignation.
The main story -- the narration starts with Avice's childhood and the first half of the book tells the story of how she came back to Arieka after being one of those lucky people who want to escape their small town and could, and her first interaction with Language and her second with the Ariekei, after she marries an offworld linguist, brings him home, and discovers a subculture of human 'similes' and other living pieces of Language.
Anyway, the main story is that Arieka's governing planet discover how to make an Ambassador other than 'twins raised from birth'... and shit hits the fan because Ambassador EzRa is just enough insnyc to be understood by Ariekei but not enough to just be a normal Ambassador. And Avice, as an outsider, as someone brought into the colony's governing bodies at time, and as someone who discovers she wants to know what is going on, has to Deal with Shit as Shit goes Down. And as someone who started interacting with the Ariekei, despite knowing that they probably couldn't parse her as a person since she couldn't talk with two voices.
You all know I'm all about weird alien shit and this is wonderfully weird alien shit. And makes you think about language and communication and change/paradigm shifts and being able to express things. And the lies that are more true than truth: similes and metaphors and, hell, fiction. I'm not at all like a summer's day, but I can say I am to convey a point.
I have to say, this is currently topping my Hugo Ballot, even if it is a traditional pick. (Which is a shame, since I would also happily give out a Hugo for Deadline as well.)
* Tangent: Among Others had monozygotic twins as characters too, with a big deal being that Mori's twin sister had died. For that matter, spooky twins is a trope.
