kelly_chambliss

I've seen a lot of interest in this postcyberpunk novel since it finally came back into print recently, in conjunction with the author finally releasing a second novel earlier this year. I knew that the author was a nonbinary trans woman (she/they) but what I didn't know until looking further was that she was also the author of The Androgyny RAQ, one of the only web resources in the 1990s on what we would now call nonbinary gender (though that term hadn't been coined yet). The site is of course extremely dated now, but as a teenager it was a lifeline to me. I studied it closely—even re-reading it now, every word is familiar. So that was quite an astounding and unexpected blast from the past.

But moving on to the book: In dystopian 23rd century Russia, Maya is a well-known "camera"—a journalist whose cybernetic implants allow her to record not just sight and sound, but all her sensory perceptions, emotions, and knowledge, and broadcast them to the online audience. She works remotely with Keishi, a "screener" who manages the broadcast and handles research in the vast realms of cyberspace. Maya is doing a story on massacres perpetrated by a mind-controlled Unanimous Army, which for some reason no one seems to quite remember the details of. The closer the pair gets to the truth, the greater the danger, as the regime they live under punishes thought crimes, and Maya has already been convicted once before and had her forbidden thoughts and feelings forcibly suppressed. The authorities might not be so lenient a second time.

I started out liking this book—the worldbuilding is wonderfully trippy—but somewhere in the middle it lost me and didn't win me back. I was invested in Maya as a protagonist, but the focus kept getting pulled away from her. They find a key witness to the massacres, and once he gets going he monologues for several chapters at a time, and I just did not care about him or his story at all. Later in the book there are even more interminable sequences of characters talking at Maya about everything that happened after the massacres, explaining the labyrinthine plot to keep it covered up. Perhaps this was thematically intentional; Maya is just a "camera," her job is to learn of things that happened, not to participate. But this is why people came up with the writing rule that you should put your POV character where the most interesting events are: if all the interesting things happened to other characters, why isn't the book about them?

Similarly, we hear a lot about how the most technologically and socially advanced region of the world in this time period is Africa, how people aren't oppressed there and their internet is more sophisticated so they can upload themselves fully without losing anything, etc. But we never go there and see any of it, or even meet any actual African people. This struck me as using Africa as a mere prop, a superficial reversal of presumed reader expectations that still holds it at an exoticized distance.

The other thing I didn't like was how the F/F relationship was handled, and all of that is probably a

spoiler.

Maya's past thoughtcrime was that she's gay, and the authorities fitted her with a suppressor chip that made it impossible for her to feel sexual attraction or romantic love. This is presented as a horrific fate. And, I mean, in the context of the story, with it being forced on her, yes, it is horrific. But as an aroace reader, the presentation was incredibly uncomfortable. I know aspec identities were not well understood in the queer community in 1996; I know because I was there. But since the author doesn't seem to know that some people are naturally the way Maya is, she doesn't specify that the problem is that it was forced on her, and just writes the book as if not experiencing attraction is inherently tragic.

I also hated Keishi from pretty early on, because of how insistent she is that she is in love with Maya and how pushy she is about it. The (not unexpected) reveal that she was Maya's partner before the suppressor chip doesn't make it any better, because she has zero respect for Maya's agency and what she wants. She pressures Maya to deactivate the suppressor chip not because Maya is saying she wants to do that, but because Keishi wants their relationship back the way it was. And if they do that and get caught, it's Maya's neck in the noose! Keishi's cyberspace power level is much higher than she had made it out to be, so she was never really in danger (though when she wants to manipulate Maya into doing something, she pretends to be).

In the end Maya tells Keishi to go fuck herself and finally affirms her own agency. Which I guess is the ending I wanted. But then it's like... what was the point of it all? I want to read it like the pressures of living under homophobia contributed to Keishi's extreme codependence (which is a not uncommon failure state of queer relationships, even more so at the time of this book's writing) but I don't know that that's actually on the page. Keishi is a shitty person and I ended the book not really understanding why, or what Maya ever saw in her in the first place.

I don't want to say that fictional queer relationships have to be positive portrayals (though when you have one [1] queer relationship in a book in 1996 and it's like this, that is certainly a choice). I just felt almost no hint of queer joy in this book at all, no suggestion that after Maya moves on maybe she'll feel more empowered in her lesbian identity or more in charge of her attractions or... I don't know, I wanted some sliver of hope, and I couldn't find it.

As a side note, I was amused by the references to 20th century "classical" media. So many SF writers try to do this, and it's always interesting to me how it ages. Sometimes it feels plausible—sure, maybe in the 23rd century Casablanca is still relevant. Other times Reed swings and misses, imagining that in hundreds of years people will still know the significance of Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault.

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