![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
FOREIGNER: Discussion Post #1
Welcome to the first sixty-one pages, everybody! :D Anyone have anything to discuss?
Some ideas, since this is a reread for me (I will try to walk the delicate line between "discussion topics" and "spoilers") and thus certain details stand out to me:
1. This is the only time in the whole novel where we get an ateva's POV; before and after Manadgi, it's through-human-eyes all the way. Thoughts? (Why do it that way? What do we gain, or what is hidden, by Cherryh presenting the first contact through a nonhuman perspective? What do you get out of it, or wish had been included?)
2. While "Books" within books are certainly something I've seen before, the setup in Foreigner has always felt a little odd to me, with two very short "books" -- almost prologues -- prefacing a third, novel-length story. I'm genuinely curious about why it was set up this way! Anyone have any theories?
3. Personal reactions so far? First impressions of the atevi, or the humans of either/both Phoenix and the station?
I'll be back in a little while to post my own reactions; must run a couple of errands first, but I wanted to get the post out there in case anyone else has finished their reading!
Edit To Add: If you wish to take the discussion down a spoilery path, make any spoilery replies here and then link to them, so anyone wishing to avoid spoilers can do so!
Some ideas, since this is a reread for me (I will try to walk the delicate line between "discussion topics" and "spoilers") and thus certain details stand out to me:
1. This is the only time in the whole novel where we get an ateva's POV; before and after Manadgi, it's through-human-eyes all the way. Thoughts? (Why do it that way? What do we gain, or what is hidden, by Cherryh presenting the first contact through a nonhuman perspective? What do you get out of it, or wish had been included?)
2. While "Books" within books are certainly something I've seen before, the setup in Foreigner has always felt a little odd to me, with two very short "books" -- almost prologues -- prefacing a third, novel-length story. I'm genuinely curious about why it was set up this way! Anyone have any theories?
3. Personal reactions so far? First impressions of the atevi, or the humans of either/both Phoenix and the station?
I'll be back in a little while to post my own reactions; must run a couple of errands first, but I wanted to get the post out there in case anyone else has finished their reading!
Edit To Add: If you wish to take the discussion down a spoilery path, make any spoilery replies here and then link to them, so anyone wishing to avoid spoilers can do so!
no subject
With the second M. section, we get another useful piece of data which we really couldn't have gotten without a lot of spoken infodump if we were in a human perspective - M. reflects that "the aiji", with no adjective and thus seemingly distinct from "the Tachi aiji", should have "sent an assassin, not a speaker". Especially for someone who didn't read or doesn't recall the back of the book, that's a pretty shocking aside - not a soldier or a general, not a scout, but an assassin?
As far as the setup of pre-prologue, prologue, and book goes, I'm not really a fan; I think I'd have tried to stuff some of Book 1 into a human's POV in Book 2, and start with that. One set of people to care about, and then forget because they are in the distant past, is one thing - two is an awful lot. (This is why I advised doing Book 1 and Book 2 together - so it'd be clear we didn't need to care about these guys anymore.)
[If there's a spoiler thread or post, I do want to highlight something in the first Ian POV that caught my eye, too; if not, I could post it to my own Dreambit and link it in a separate comment, maybe?]
no subject
Very good point about the "intuitive" relating of data that a human would have to explain to us very tediously! I'd forgotten quite how much of the political situation Manadgi touches on in his little spying trip.
One set of people to care about, and then forget
This! I retain virtually no memory of anything in "Book One", I found when reading it this time! All I remembered was the pilot's weird timestretched perspective after the jump (and not the details of why, even! I thought it was still during the jump, didn't remember that it continued after). :P
It was kind of neat this time round, though, because of course -- having read the book before -- the name Cameron leapt out at me. Interesting to know what Bren's ancestors were!
[I think it would work out pretty well if I set up a spoiler post, too, and then you could link on the general discussion to your comment there? I'll go make one. That way if an individual moves/locks/whatever their DW in future, the conversation won't be lost.]
no subject
Erm. I have a weakness a MILE DEEP for alien-POV first contact stories, so. Yeah. I was so upset when those two just vanished and suddenly we were in Bren's very different day and age. D: I wanted first-contact shenanigans and Manadgi ruminating on the strange things humans say! And Ian's equivalent of
he followed me home"Hi, guys, I'm back! I followed him home, can I keep him?" (Hopefully with not too much foreshadowing; but it would be interesting to see the earliest signs of nonalignment of minds, and how the humans managed to miss, or misinterpret, them.)no subject
Alas, we got Bren instead. ;)
no subject
Weeeeell, okay, I guess I can deal with that.
(Hahahaha, I ♥ Bren so much! I'm a fangirl, I admit it. He's just... so awesome!)
no subject
no subject
I'd love some recs of that!
no subject
It is hard to find!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'm fairly sure it's "atevi __", as in "atevi food" or "atevi culture".
no subject
no subject
no subject
I wonder if there's any way to verify that, either with Cherryh directly, or via someone who knows her? I can ask around on the forum...
But that still leaves the question, albeit shaped a bit differently: why did the publisher want it in there?
I think I mentioned in my rec that I had trouble getting into the book, the first time round, because of the dual prologue -- was afraid to develop any interest in Bren until 100+ pages, because I feared he was going to disappear on me the way Taylor and Ian and Manadgi did.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Whew, it's lucky Manadgi was brave enough to go through with making the first contact himself. Imagine if the Mospheiran aiji had sent a platoon of assassins with twitchy trigger fingers! Er... the atevi might never have had to deal with humans at all and kept the planet to themselves, which would have been a lot simpler and prevented actual war... but we wouldn't have had this story. I like it very much that Manadgi and Ian have such great good will towards each other and are each willing to assume the other is a reasonable person despite being so different and the circumstances of their meeting not being ideal.
I agree that the atevi viewpoint is excellent to have -- seeing the moon-man as tiny, fragile, pale and incomprehensible in motivation, but bleeding red blood like anyone else, helps to show the difference and the similarities to us far better than reading it through human eyes.
no subject
no subject
1. To me, it sets the atevi up as aliens not completely Other - someone we can relate to enough to sympathize with. But since a huge theme of this first book, at least, is Bren not understanding how atevi really feel/think, it makes ok sense not to let the reader more in on their thoughts/feelings, either.
2. Like
3. I'm disappointed by this book's handling of women, and find it especially depressing since the author is female. The two female characters (Miyume Little, presumably Bren's x-number-of-greats-grandmother? and Ian Bretano's mother) we learn the most about in the first two books, are nervous fussers, that's really their defining characteristics. Uhm :o( SPOILER: Jago is cool, but she's cool as a character, not particularly as a female character. Barb is nothing but a convenient hole, GAAAAAHHHHHHHH :o(((
It's very, very possible that I've just gotten too used to extreme space-opera-y sci-fi like SGA, etc., but Foreigner reads rather more like hard-ish sf to me (whereas one of the reviews in my copy calls it space opera) - the way I had trouble understanding what was going on (like the "mass" introduced in the very first lines - I still don't understand what they're talking about - a planet, a star, what???), and couldn't relate to the characters, not to mention how Cherryh seems to have gotten the number one writing advice backwards and goes for tell, not show, whenever possible, reminds me of other sf books I didn't much care for, like Asimov's Foundation trilogy.
There are bits and bits of writing I liked (and I actually managed to finish reading the whole thing, so obviously it wasn't all bad!), like humans being "a biological contamination of the infinite, a local and temporary condition" - awesome writing/concept :o)
no subject
I am also very disappointed by the women in these books, especially since the author is a woman and the story is so appealing in so many other ways. I want them to be perfect and entirely unproblematic, and in the female characters they're just not up to standard. I'm sorry to say (considering you've only read the first) that we are not going to meet any competent, interesting human women for several books yet, and they are outnumbered by nervous fussers, extreme incompetents, emotional blackmailers and switchboard operators. We get the two competent, intelligent atevi women in the first book, another as a minor character in the second book, and the rest are wives/mothers or extremely unimportant scenery characters such as cleaning maids and the Minister for Something-or-other who stands up to ask a question in parliament one time, showing that atevi women are allowed positions of power in this world, we just don't get to focus on a single one.
When I was imagining Book I as opening scenes to an exciting film, I was also thinking of changes that would HAVE to be made for it to come across as at all acceptable: Get some women on the bridge! (Is Kiyoshi Tanaka a feminine name? Three on the bridge stated to be male, two of them viewpoint characters, one stated female in a subordinate position, how many not stated?) Maybe Taylor should be a man for whatever reason, but McDonough or Captain LaFarge could be a woman, or both. Scene with Neill Cameron and mute hand-appendage: Give half his lines to Miyume, or give her some lines from unnamed bystanders. Make her a pusher pilot instead of just a mechanic's wife, that would add some tension! It's amazing just how few women there are unless you imagine every ungendered background character as female, and it's got to be deliberate choice to make none of them active or give them a few paragraphs as viewpoint.
Then in Book II there's Manadgi, Ian, sneezing Estevez (points for implied gay couple?) and Ian's father telling his wife not to get hysterical. Bah.
no subject
(If I ever start a book club, I'm going to call it More Women On The Bridge! and rec sci-fi novels with gender equality. And push for more such!)
I didn't think Joy Bretano sounded any more panicked than her husband, so I guess I just interpreted all that as his own attempt to keep from panicking? Especially since he tells her exactly what was told to him:
He punched in his wife's office number, before the news could go out. He said the way Pardino had said it, just, "Joy, Ian's in a little trouble, don't panic, but they've got a contact down there and Ian's met it."
I do wish we had more of her perspective, though. :(
...Unrelatedly: Please teach me to do the cool highlight-to-read thing, too? I have never quite known the html tags for it, though I might be able to work it out...
no subject
SPOILERS!
<span style="color: #333333; background-color: #333333;">SPOILERS!</span>no subject
Would that all one's favourite media were like that!
You know, I'd forgotten about her, because she seems modelled after so many human characters of the same ilk in countless books!
Wait, what, where - I totally missed that :o) !
no subject
no subject
So there really isn't any evidence against, and good evidence for.
no subject
On the other hand, a few people have noticed that Bren himself reads as "codedly female" in this series: oddly enough, I was discussing it with someone a couple weeks ago on another comm.
reads rather more like hard-ish sf to me
I think that's mostly the prologues? -- once Bren and his very human perspective enter the picture, it's much more about him and his character and the way he interacts with the atevi culture. :D
I think my hard-sf-ness has improved since I first read this series, though! I remember not really understanding much of the ship part when I first read it, but it was clearer to me this time! (A "mass" is anything large enough to register significantly on readings -- could be a sun, could be a lump of rock. Basically the point is that it can be sensed by instrumentation and thus used to navigate. In the Chanur series, ships have to have a mass to aim for when they enter jump; otherwise the ship doesn't know where to come out of hyperspace and will just keep going. And the entire reason the hani have autonomy as a species is because there happened to be a cold, dead lump of rock on one of their borders with enough mass to serve as a jump point; otherwise they would be dependent on routes travelling through their ally's space.)
Haha, actually, I think the Chanur series is the reason I know what a "mass" is in terms of interstellar travel. :D Also haha the Foundation trilogy! I liked the third book, I think.
Wonder if some of the tell-not-show is related to that whole 'added afterward' thing? A sort of, "my editor says I should do this, so I banged out something quickly while I was focused on an explanation instead of a story"? Or, at least, "I don't want to invest in building a bunch of likeable characters whom I know will only get ten pages and then never show up again"?
Hmm.
no subject
I'm having a really hard time remembering where one book ends and the other begins, in my mental recollection of the series, but it didn't feel to me like there weren't a lot of women. Thinking about it now, though, I think it's not until #3 or #4 that we get a human woman who's noteworthy for something other than being attached to Bren in some way. :/
no subject
Interesting point about Bren being coded female. When I first read the book I was really enjoying reading about the main character being in a world where everyone is bigger, stronger and more violent than he is, and it wasn't until ages later that I realised it's because that's the world I live in and I'm identifying with him unusually well because of it.
no subject
I checked some dates, and it's really interesting to me that she wrote this one after finishing the Chanur series -- maybe she felt she'd had a surfeit of female characters/dealt enough with gender issues/didn't want to be branded as an "author for women"? Maybe she felt ready to take on the male brain, for a change/after working through all that? (I notice we don't get any POV from Khym Chanur till the 3rd or 4th book -- maybe it took her a while to get her nerve up for writing a male POV?)
like humans being "a biological contamination of the infinite, a local and temporary condition" - awesome writing/concept
Oooh, I missed that line, but I love it!
no subject
no subject