Re-read review: Paradises Lost, by Ursula LeGuin
This is one of my favorite long-distance space travel stories, because the conflict is not what you usually see. Namely, there is nothing wrong with the ship – all the bits are working perfectly - or the society on it, at least at first. Everything is great, and that’s where the problem comes from! The point of a generation ship is to get from planet A to planet B over the course of more than one generation…but what happens if some of the crew don’t want to get off the ship?
The novella-length tale – which I found in the collection ‘The Birthday of the World’ - follows 5-Liu Hsing and 5-Nova Luis. As their numbers suggest, they are part of the fifth generation on Discovery, which is expected to reach Sindychew1 when they are in their sixties. Luis is a quiet, sensitive boy who is very loyal and deeply intellectually honest. Hsing is a highly practical bisexual girl who is good at math, likes writing, and has a short temper when faced with fuzzy thinking2. Their friendship is really sweet, and through their eyes you learn how life on the ship is structured. They are five years old at the start, trying to understand what a planet even is:
The blue parts were water, like the hydro tanks only deeper, and the other-colored parts were dirt, like the earth gardens only bigger. Sky was what she couldn’t understand…It was air. But blue…and it was outside the dirtball…You lived on the outside of the dirtball, like evamen doing eva, only you didn’t have to wear a suit.
As the two get older, they begin to realize that there are problems. Hsing becomes a navigator and marries head navigator 4-Canaval Hiroshi, who tells her the secret of the discrepancies in the acceleration records. The ship had accidentally pulled a slingshot move, and they would be reaching their destination 40 years ahead of schedule! At the same time, Luis, trying to research their destination, discovers that someone has been deleting or hiding files about life outside the ship. So what will happen when whoever did that discovers that the journey has been shortened?
What I find intriguing about the world of Discovery is how many ideas that currently face huge resistance are welcomed because of how blindingly obvious it is that social harmony and sustainability are necessary for survival. The society is essentially socialist: resources such as living space are partitioned according to need, there is no money, and material goods cannot accumulate - everything eventually needs to be recycled3. Numbers per generation must be maintained at the same level, but there is flexibility in reproductive allowances. Everyone can have one child that inherits their name (eg. Liu or Nova) and is their responsibility4. But not everyone can have or wants a child, so most who want two can - and if their partner also has one or two then that is a sizeable family! Apart from giving birth most gender roles are equal, but since some men were psychologically suffering without their own special “risky” role, only men do EVA.
Out of this harmonious society comes a new religious movement, the Angels, who believe the journey is the destination, that they were meant to be free of corrupt earth forever. Their slightly creepy focus on “Bliss” creates personal rifts first:
Rosa looked at her with a general lovingness that insulted Hsing obscurely but very deeply… “Why do you think we’re here, Hsing?” Mistrusting the question, she pondered a bit before she answered. “If you mean that literally, we’re here because the Zero Generation arranged that we should be here. If you mean it in some abstract sense, then I reject the question as loaded.”…”Don’t be afraid, angel,” Rosa said, smiling at Hsing’s anger.“Don’t be afraid of joy.”…when she left Rosa, she was bereft. She had lost her friend for years, her beloved for a while. They wouldn’t link when they grew up as she had dreamed. She was damned if she’d be an angel! But, oh, Rosie, Rosie.
As the sect spreads, as Angels get into positions of authority, it becomes a danger. Because “Nothing exists outside the ship. Nothing exists but the Voyage,” is a chilling idea to anyone who knows about entropy! The ship was not designed, could not be designed, to voyage forever.
There are different phases of the tale, but they all circle around ideas of how we create meaning in our lives, what is a good life - and how do we adapt those concepts when circumstances change? Also, does history always need to repeat? Can we leave behind the bad parts of our humanity, or will we always carry them with us? To that latter question, I think LeGuin answers: some yes, some no. After considerable tension, the story does reach a happy ending and a new beginning, at least for our two main characters.
1. ‘Second Earth’, as opposed to Ti Chiu,‘Earth’ in Chinese.
2. Good lord, now that I come to write out their respective traits…no wonder I always related to this character!
2. Learning history, Hsing thinks: “The words are archaic…receptacles were filled with ‘dirty’ ‘garbage’ that was…carried to ‘trash dumps’ to ‘throw away’. What does that mean? Where is ‘away’?
3. “The arrangement is unfair to men, who have to persuade a woman to bear a child for them. The arrangement is unfair to women, who are expected to spend three-quarters of a year of their life bearing somebody else’s child. To women who want a child and cannot conceive, or whose sexual life is with other women, so that they have to persuade both a man and a woman to get and give them a child, the arrangement is doubly unfair…Sexuality and justice have little if anything in common. Love and friendship and conscience and kindness and obstinacy find ways to make the unfair arrangement work, though not without anxiety, not without anguish, and not always.”
Overall: If you think space-based sci-fi is too grim or too technology-focused for your taste, try this lovely, extremely human-focused tale! It is also a good one to read if you are interested in ideas that might be relevant for improving our relationship to our own “spaceship earth”.
