| Article: 454
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: Unnumbered Reviews #2: "Courtship Rite", by Donald Kingsbury
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 10 Dec 93 02:36:59 GMT
Unnumbered Reviews #2: "Courtship Rite", by Donald Kingsbury
Donald Kingsbury published "Courtship Rite" (****, on an uncalibrated
four-point scale) in 1982, and didn't win the Hugo award for best novel.
Don't ask me why not. It's one of those rare books that creates a society
that really is different -- and manages to tell a good story in the process.
One suspects, though we aren't explicitly told, that Geta was settled by
colonists who couldn't travel farther and find a better prospect. They
were only able to transplant the thinnest and most fragile of ecologies --
a handful of Earth plants, bees, and humans. Native plants tend to be
inedible or poisonous. Geta is an arid world, and famine is never far.
It's a world which could generate powerful evolutionary pressures --
biological and social.
Geta is also a world where the nation state never took hold. There are
clans -- think of them as inbred, semi-autonomous guilds -- but they are
often geographically dispersed. Warfare never took hold, either. If a
clan of priests (the nearest thing there is to political leadership) wants
to attack another clan, it has to do so itself or, at best, pursuade other
clans to help. (Priesthood is only marginally a religious matter. The
term also comprehends genetic engineering and -- during famines -- deciding
who gets to eat and who gets to be eaten.)
"Courtship Rite" focuses upon a critical time in Geta's history -- one
which sees rapid technological, social, and philosophical change -- and
upon one family, the Maran Kaiel.
The Kaiel are a priest clan which rewards foresight: Those who are most
able to negotiate workable policies, and to correctly predict the results
of those policies, become leaders, and also get to make the greatest
genetic contributions to future generations. The least able get to
contribute more immediately, via the stewpots. (Other clans think the
Kaiel carry this to extremes, but a clan's internal eugenic arrangements
aren't really seen as anyone else's business.)
The Maran are one of the most successful Kaiel families. As the book
opens, the five of them (three husbands and two wives) are courting
the preeminent physicist of their generation, when the Prime Predictor
forbids the marriage. He plans to expand Kaiel influence to the sea and,
to further this goal, he orders the Maran to court Oelita -- a heretic
of considerable prestige. (Her heresies? She's an atheist: She believes
the God of the Sky to just be a natural satellite -- though any competent
astronomer can see that it doesn't always obey orbital laws. She believes
humans to be products of natural evolution -- though any competent
geneticist can see that this is impossible. She doesn't approve of
cannibalism.) The Maran do not take kindly to this interference, and
decide to test Oelita's worth with a Courtship Rite.
The rite has a certain charming simplicity: If the person being courted
can survive seven attempts on her life, she's worthy. (You may appreciate
that the rite is not very popular, and isn't often used. If nothing else,
it's likely to sour the target on the people doing the courting.) Nothing
else turns out to be simple, unfortunately, not least because another
priestly clan is also trying to extend its influence into the same region.
"Courtship Rite" comes out of the best tradition of thought-experiment
sf, and presents a society which is not just a variation on old themes --
without sacrificing story to message. It's a society whose customs we
might sometimes find distasteful, but the characters who people it are
sympathetic. The book also has a great deal to say about our own society,
without doing so too intrusively. (Kingsbury also wrote the less
successful "The Moon Goddess and the Sun" (**), a near-future sf novel in
which lectures and expositions *do* overwhelm the story.)
The machines mainly supplied the creches but Noe, Oelita
thought, would be the kind of woman who would use a surrogate
mother to carry her own children. She'd have a batch of maybe
six and keep the finest of the lot for herself after careful
tests had sent the remaining five to a temple abattoir. How
was it possible to reach a woman like that?
Disclaimer: Don't think of this as a review series. It's just unnumbered
to help me keep track.
%A Kingsbury, Donald
%T Courtship Rite
%D 1982
%I The Pocket/Timescape paperback appeared in 1983
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Dani Zweig
[email protected]
Watership Down:
You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew!
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