Conference noted::sf

1237.0. "Slonczweski's Daughter of Elysium" by MTWAIN::KLAES (No Guts, No Galaxy) Mon Aug 08 1994 17:09

Article: 646
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Slonczewski: Daughter of Elysium
Sender: [email protected] (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 21:35:42 GMT
 
Joan Slonczweski's "Daughter of Elysium" is something of a sequel to
"A Door Into Ocean" -- set centuries later in the same milieu.  The
milieu is more important than the story, which at times seems to serve
as little more than a vehicle for allegory.  Primarily, the story
provides viewpoint characters:  Raincloud, a linguist who has been
brought to Elysium because she is one of the few who can speak the
language of the warlike Urulites, her husband Blackbear, who has been
invited to participate in an immortality- research project, and their
young children. 
 
Elysium itself is a community of twelve cities floating on the ocean
world of Shora.  Its inhabitants are bioengineered for longevity:  the
oldest of them are now about a thousand years old.  A side-effect of
longevity is sterility, and children are lab-born and raised
communally.  Elysium is exceedingly wealthy, and functions as an
interstellar center of banking.  (It's not clear what the source of
Elysium's wealth is, unless it's the banking itself.)  Most of the
services in the cities are provided by intelligent machines. 
 
(A weakness of the novel is that, possibly because the author is more
interested in the ecological implications of longevity, little effort
is made to explore permanent or social implications.  You can't tell
whether the characters are forty years old or forty decades old from
the way they act, and aside from the scarcity of children, most of the
quirks of Elysian society seem to be a consequence of wealth, rather
than longevity.  For the most part, the only way we can tell that
we're dealing with quasi-immortals is that we're told so.) 
 
The parallels between the milieu of the Fold and our own world are
drawn aggressively.  L'li, for instance, is a caricature of the third
world, as seen from the first:  It's desperately overpopulated,
desperately poor, it's a sinkhole for public-works loans that wind up
in private hands and then get defaulted on and 'rescheduled', and it
even has interstellar boat people who embarrass all concerned by
trying to sneak onto wealthier worlds.  (Its inhabitants are
dark-skinned, which, for story purposes, is made to vaguely matter.) 
 
L'li is only the most overt expression of the population pressure
which all the worlds face.  Urulan, the poorest and most marginally
habitable world, maintains an equilibrium through infanticide and war
-- for which it is condemned by the other worlds.  Bronze Sky, a
recently terraformed world, has a frontier ethic of large families
which is going to cause serious trouble in a couple of generations. 
 
Elysium itself is an odd case:  We learn in passing that their treaty
with the Sharers (who gave them their longevity techniques and
permission to settle on Shora) limits them to one child (defined as
being under the age of twenty-one) for every ten adults.  This
translates (back of the envelope) to a population growth of about 0.5%
per year (assuming minimal death from accident or illness), which
means that their population is approximately doubling every century
and a half.  If longevity proves to break down after a millenium or so
(there is evidence that it might), this becomes a doubling every two
centuries or so, which is still not a sustainable rate. 
 
A concern for the sanctity of life and for the rights of sentients and
potential sentients makes choices more difficult.  Aside from the fact
that emigration doesn't have the potential to relieve planetary
population pressures -- just create new ones -- terraforming involves
wiping out the old ecosystem and replacing it with a more
user-friendly one, and this is sort of slaughter is frowned upon.  (It
might be more accurate to say that the Sharers, who are horrified by
it, have managed to exercise something of a veto.  Though there is
evidence that the Sharers themselves bioadapted the Shoran lifeforms
to better suit humanity.)  Urulan's use of Sims -- intelligent
human/ape hybrids -- as slaves is deplored, but Elysium routinely uses
Sim fetuses for biological experimentation, as this is perceived to
yield the benefits of human experimentation without the ethical
difficulties.  And now the machine intelligences (who, btw, have sown
the seeds of a population explosion of their own) are demanding their
rights. 
 
The only society we see with long-term prospects for stability is that
of the Sharers, but we have little basis for judging whether they
represent an example that could work for us.  Theirs is an all-female
society in which pregnancy requires a medical intervention, which
makes population planning practical.  They maintain a small population
base, but they are also assumed to have a biotechnology advanced
enough that more aggressive cultures can't shoulder them aside.  As
part of their balance of nature, they accept dangers to human life
which our society does not. 
 
If plot, character, and story seem to be getting lost in this
discussion of background, much the same is true in the novel, as well.
The novel opens, rather effectively, with a portrayal of the Windclan
family as culture-shocked newcomers from a small village on an
as-it-were small planet.  Fairly quickly, however, they are relegated
to the position of viewpoints from which we can listen to speeches,
read philosophical texts, watch newscasts, and sit in on
negotiations..  "Daughter of Elysium" is a thought-provoking book --
worth reading for that reason, and well written besides -- but the pot
of message doesn't leave much room for a story, so readers who prefer
more character- or plot-oriented novels should be warned. 
 
%A Slonczewski, Joan
%T Daughter of Elysium
%I AvoNova
%C New York
%D August 1993
%G ISBN 0-688-12509-3
%P 521 pp
%O hardcover, US$25.00
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]  [email protected]
 
   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"