books – Page 8 – Triple Take

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Tom Angleberger)

The Plot
Tommy isn’t exactly the coolest boy in the sixth grade, but he knows he’s cooler than Dwight. Which is why it’s so very confusing when Dwight, who has committed many crimes against coolness, produces an origami Yoda. And not just any origami Yoda, but a Yoda who gives great advice (if in a poor imitation of the actual Yoda’s voice). If Dwight is so incredibly out of the loop, how does Yoda do it? Is the Force really at work here or is it something else?

My Thoughts
The title of this book alone made it required reading, and then the cover (with its picture of an origami Yoda made by the author) just clinches the deal. But other than those things and the cover blurb, I didn’t have much more information about it going in.

The setting is a U.S. middle school, a fairly liberal one, as the kids seem to have plenty of time to congregate out of class (not a feature of the junior high I went to – though at least we still got a long enough lunch to have some recess time after eating). Tommy is a kind of middle of the road kid, perhaps on the less popular side of average, and his friends mostly occupy the same social stratum. Dwight is a boy on the fringe of their group — he’s considered borderline acceptable even by them, due to his behaviors and habits which are considered odd by the other kids.

Dwight, however, doesn’t seem to care or notice that he’s looked down upon by the others. He seems oblivious for the most part to the horror he creates when he wears a weird outfit or eats his food in an odd fashion, or talks to a girl without agonizing over it. It’s not clear to me as a reader if Dwight is meant to be socially awkward and unaware of the views of others or if he’s completely aware of their shock, but is just above petty social games and confident enough in himself to behave the way he wants. In the end it may not matter (we spend the book in Tommy’s head, not Dwight’s) but it’s an interesting question which I don’t entirely feel was resolved.

One day, Dwight shows up having made a Yoda out of origami. He puts it on his finger and does a Yoda imitation and thus proceeds to give advice to the others. Most of the time, this advice seems to be very wise, and most of the other kids find this completely incompatible with their view of Dwight as clueless. (Though it fits better with the possible second view of Dwight which none of them have entertained.) Tommy is one of the most concerned by this seeming divergence from expectations (perhaps because it forces him to think he may have mislabeled and underestimated Dwight?) and so he attempts to compile a dossier of the advice Yoda has given and the results which ensued.

The various scenarios presented are all reasonable, realistic and all that (well, maybe — do they really still have middle school dances? they were lame 20 years ago and not many people went), and the premise is a fine one. The only place where the story falls down a bit is in the fact that all the kids (except for Tommy’s cynical “friend” Harvey, who as far as this story actually has an antagonist, is it) sound exactly the same, even though we’re supposed to be getting stories from a variety of perspectives. Perhaps the stories are meant to have been filtered through Tommy before being written down. I’m not sure. But I would have liked to have seen a bit more variety in voice.

The other issue I had was with the girls. And in the context of the story, it’s not really a fault, it’s just a POV that’s so common I’d really like to see some effort to make it new again. And that is the view of girls as alien beings impossible to comprehend, a view which most of the boys seem to share. I’m not sure how one would make this new, but I do know it wasn’t exactly ‘new’ here.

Overall, this was a pleasant little story. By the end, Tommy seems to have learned a lesson, everyone is happy (except Harvey) and it ends on a feel good note. There is a sequel coming, which I find I’m actually interested to read, because it seems like it’s going to focus on Harvey and his reaction to all of these events.

In Short
Though The Strange Case of Origami Yoda doesn’t exactly break new ground in tween books, it’s still a decent story with some interesting characters. I really like the idea of the origami Yoda, and really it was that which attracted me to the book in the first place. (And shows what you can do with a kickass title.) Though most of the characters felt pretty generic, Dwight and Harvey (and to a certain extent Caroline, a hearing impaired student just slipped in there for no moral value at all — nice work!!) stood out as being unique constructs. I’ll be picking up the sequel to see what happens next.

Origami Yoda
Edited to add my not so great attempt at making this version of Origami Yoda. The only origami paper I could find in the house was small and rainbow colored, neither of which helped.

[Yoda uses the force to prevent his picture being taken]

[Yoda’s force powers are overcome by sunlight]

J’s Take on The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger isn’t exactly what I was expecting. But it was surprising in a good way.

I thought it would be shorter. I also thought it would be paperback. It’s not overly long, but it wasn’t something I could read on one bus trip or lunch break. And it’s a very nice hardcover. Reminds me of the Doctor Who tie-in novels and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities which you should totally buy, yo. A very nice look and feel to it.

Also, how can you resist that origami Yoda on the cover?!

For bonus points, I read this while listening to Weird Al’s “Yoda”. Yo-yo-yo-yo Yoda.

This book is laid out as case files, as the main character, Tommy, tries to work out if Origami Yoda is magic, or what. Origami Yoda is a Yoda origami puppet that a strange classmate of his, Dwight, made and designed himself. He wears it around on his finger and it gives sage advice to those who ask. In a bad Yoda voice with questionable Yoda syntax. (But the book makes a point of pointing that out!)

Other classmates have contributed to the case files, and added their thoughts and comments. And doodles.

I really have very little negative to say about this book. I liked that the pages were all crinkly (well, the design on them was of crinkly paper, the paper wasn’t actually crinkly). There are little tie fighters and X-wing fighters in the corners of the pages. The doodles are believably drawn by a kid, and funny! The one of the squirrels struck me particularly.

The book was just geeky enough for me, with Star Wars references, Shakespeare quotes, mention of Tycho Brahe. There are girls in here who don’t come off as idiots. (Although they do seem the goal of most of the male characters.) There’s even a hard-of-hearing girl, though she doesn’t get to write a case file herself.

So to my two problems with the book. First, the kids are in sixth grade, and they seem rather obsessed with girls and a PTA Fun Night dance that happens every month. That’s not the sixth grade I remember. (Though admittedly I am far from typical.) I wonder if it’s because it’s part of a middle school, whereas my sixth grade was still elementary school.

My origami Yoda — Imagination you must use

The other is the origami Yoda instructions at the back. I was worried I couldn’t follow them well, but in the end, I think I came out with a decent origami Yoda. I didn’t cut the paper in half and in half like it said, so he’s a large origami Yoda. He’s also not green.

Buuuut… it’s also not the Yoda(s) in the book. If you expect to make one like the Yoda on the cover, you’ll be disappointed. I wish the author had included two different versions of Yoda instructions. One easy one and one more complex one that looks nicer. I probably would’ve failed to make the good one properly, but hey.. I could try!

There’s a sequel out soon (already?) and I’m rather interested in seeing the return of the origami Jedi.

Skyfall (Catherine Asaro)

The Plot
The Skolian Empire stands on the brink of war, with only an important vote in the ruling Assembly to decide which way the decision will turn. Roca Skolia, the Foreign Affairs Minister and daughter of the current rulers of the Empire, is desperate to get back and cast her votes against the war. But she knows her son Kurj, head of one of the military branches, is just as determined to keep her from arriving in time so he can cast her votes for her. She attempts to avoid his agents by taking a roundabout method back and accidentally finds herself stranded upon the world called Skyfall. What happens next may end up having an even more profound effect upon the Empire than the war ever could.

My Thoughts
I was first introduced to Catherine Asaro’s Saga of the Skolian Empire sort of by accident. I was with friends in Boston, and we stopped by Pandemonium, a science fiction and fantasy bookstore. I was not feeling very flush with cash at the time, so I lingered near the door while they shopped, trying to avoid temptation. At a table near the entrance were some books and also their author, who I ended up talking to, because I felt awkward just standing there and ignoring someone. It was Catherine Asaro, and she gave me a pen. And then I felt guilty for taking the pen, so I also bought one of her books, The Last Hawk, which she told me was probably the easiest to read as a standalone. I took it home and read it and enjoyed it, and even went so far as to figure out which book I ought to read next, so I read that one and liked it too. And that’s kind of where things stood, because I knew even though the two I had read were enjoyable, I still felt like there was a multitude of backstory I had missed and which I needed to properly enjoy the later books in the series. I am a freak for timelines.

So when we decided to read one of Asaro’s books for Tripletake, I seized upon the chance to finally have an excuse to (1) figure out the internal chronology of the series and (2) buy all the rest of the books. Skyfall comes chronologically first (for now, at least) in the series, though it was not published first.

In Skyfall, we’re introduced to Roca Skolia, the second daughter of the current rulers of the Skolian Empire and the Empire’s Foreign Affairs Councillor. As the story opens, she’s realizing she was tricked by her son Kurj into leaving the seat of government just before an important vote will be called — a vote which will determine whether or not the Empire enters into a war with their rival empire, the Eubian Concord. With Roca out of touch, Kurj will be able to cast her votes as proxy and thus swing the result in the direction he desires. In order to thwart his plans, Roca devises an extremely roundabout method of returning to the Assembly. She lands on the world of Skyfall a few days before her next connection and promptly finds herself swept off by a group of the planet’s inhabitants. Though her kidnappers don’t mean her harm, an unexpected blizzard keeps her from getting back to the spaceport in time to make her flight, and she is stranded. Then, to make matters worse, she finds herself in the middle of a siege when the stronghold where she is staying is attacked by a group seeking to overthrow Eldrinson Valdoria, the current man in charge.

That Roca and Eldrinson find themselves mutually attracted is probably not a surprise. But what was a nice surprise was the effort made to make the residents of Skyfall (aka Lyshriol) actually different, even though they were of human stock. Instead of five-fingered and toed appendages, they have four fingers which bend in the middle to oppose one another. They think and count in base 8, and their vocal abilities have been enhanced so that they can make more sounds than a normal human. But somehow they can’t grasp the idea of a written record. Though they’re human, they’re still very alien — it’s hard to imagine them or get in their heads. And that was interesting to me, much more than your typical degenerate colony. It also seemed fairly self-consistent to me, more logical than say, the ancient colony/experiment which we visit in The Left Hand of Darkness.

Now, meanwhile, Roca’s son Kurj, though pleased with the voting results he’s achieved with his machinations, is increasingly agitated over his mother’s disappearance and consumed with the guilt of knowing it would not have happened but for his schemes. He devotes fantastic amounts of time and resources into trying to figure out where she’s gone, hoping to rescue her and also to punish anyone who might have been involved in keeping her away from him.

Along the way of this, we get a good amount of information about the history of the Skolian Empire, the leaders, the current political situation, the distribution of humans in this particular future, and various technologies which are unique to Asaro’s universe. As an introduction to the series, I came away from Skyfall feeling far less confused by the cast of characters and the setting than I recall feeling after the other books I read. There was plenty of information provided, but the number of main characters was not excessive and I was able to keep track of them and their relationships to one another without any trouble.

I’m looking forward to going through the series now in chronological order, and I expect that when I do hit the two books which I’ve already read, they’ll make a lot more sense and have more meaning once I can place them within a bigger context.

In Short
Though I had read a couple of books from the Skolian Empire series several years ago and found then enjoyable, I had been a bit confused by all of the names and places flying around because they took place quite far along in the series’ internal chronology. Skyfall is currently chronologically first and thus serves as a very good introduction to the characters and the setting, laying the groundwork for the rest of the books. Though it wasn’t published first, Asaro did a very good job of not expecting people to have read any of the other books before this one. I’m looking forward to continuing with the series from here.c

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

From the back cover:
Meet Dwight, a sixth-grade oddball. Dwight does a lot of weird things, like wearing the same t-shirt for a month or telling people to call him “Captain Dwight.” This is embarrassing, particularly for Tommy, who sits with him at lunch every day.

But Dwight does one cool thing. He makes origami. One day he makes an origami finger puppet of Yoda. And that’s when things get mysterious. Origami Yoda can predict the future and suggest the best way to deal with a tricky situation. His advice actually works, and soon most of the sixth grade is lining up with questions.

Tommy wants to know how Origami Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless. Is Yoda tapping into the Force? It’s crucial that Tommy figure out the mystery before he takes Yoda’s advice about something VERY IMPORTANT that has to do with a girl.

This is Tommy’s case file of his investigation into “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.”

Review:
If you had asked me to sum up The Strange Case of Origami Yoda in one word, my initial answer would have simply been â€œcute.â€ When I first finished it, I was left with a pleasant impression but wasn’t sure I had too much to say about it. After a period of mulling, however, I realized that, even if the story itself is fairly straightforward, Angleberger does some interesting things with the way he tells it.

â€œThe big question,â€ protagonist Tommy begins, â€œis Origami Yoda real?â€ The weirdest kid in sixth grade, Dwight, has made an origami Yoda finger puppet, which seems to dispense good advice even though Dwight himself is a big spaz. Tommy compiles a case file of students’ interactions with Yoda in an effort to determine if he’s for real and, therefore, if his advice concerning the girl that Tommy likes should be followed or if it will lead to total humiliation. He allows his friends to add comments and doodles, giving the book a bit of flair.

Origami Yoda offers advice on various topics, like helping a boy not burst into angry tears whenever he strikes out in softball, or helping another kid live down an unwelcome nickname (â€œCheeto Hogâ€). Each chapter recounts a different incident, and though they are nominally written by different students, there is no discernible difference in narrative voice, except in the case of Harvey, Tommy’s obnoxious friend.

Angleberger doesn’t spell out the answer concerning Yoda’s authenticity in detail, but he does show that Tommy gradually gets fed up of Harvey â€œcriticizing everything and everybody all the timeâ€ and realizes that he would rather be friends with Dwight, even if he is an oddball. Everyone probably has a toxic friend like Harvey at some point and must make the difficult decision to stop associating with them, and I thought Angleberger handled Tommy’s revelation in this regard rather well.

He also incorporates themes of inclusion and tolerance with subtlety. At no point, for example, is a racial characteristic ever assigned for any of these characters. We know that Tommy is short with unruly hair, Harvey is perpetually smirking, and Kellen is thin, but that’s it. Too, one of the female characters is described as â€œcute and coolâ€ before it’s revealed a few paragraphs later that she also happens to be deaf. True, characterization doesn’t go much deeper than this for anyone, but I still appreciated the lack of preachiness.

Again, I come back to the idea that The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is a cute read, but I reckon late elementary Star Wars fans would have fun with it. A sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back (in which Harvey is out for revenge), is due out next month.

Nebula Project: The Left Hand of Darkness

What follows is a spoiler laden discussion of the book The Left Hand of Darkness. Beware if youâ€™re worried about such things. This discussion also veered briefly into the sensitive topics of rape and sexual assault.

First Mobile Genly Ai is on the planet Gethen, otherwise known as Winter, to convince the inhabitants to join the interplanetary Ekumen, for mutual benefit and exchange of ideas, etc. Coping with the harsh cold environment is the least of his problems, as he seems poorly equipped to deal with the planet’s governments and its people. The fact that they all exist in a non-gendered state most of the time, until they enter kemmer once a month when they can be come male or female, leaves him questioning his own masculinity.

K: So this month we have The Left Hand of Darkness, by our first female winner for best novel, Ursula K. Le Guin. (Is it Le Guin or LeGuin? I’ve seen it written both ways. On my copy it’s pretty consistently with a space.) And once again we have a book about which I knew little more than its title. In fact, for some reason I have a lot of trouble in my head with ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘Heart of Darkness’. Perhaps because I’d read neither.

J: I’ve seen it mostly with a space, I think the space is the proper way. Which isn’t how I tend to type it automatically. The trouble I have is between The Left Hand of Darkness and Children of a Lesser God. Which they don’t even share a common word except ‘of’! As for me, this is another book that I’ve actually read before. In this case, at least twice, and for two different classes in college. Though I’d forgotten quite a lot.

K: The book is pretty much the tale of a ‘first contact’ mission by the interstellar alliance known as the Ekumen with a long lost group of humans. There’s some backstory, obviously, which isn’t really touched upon too much here, though I didn’t find it to hinder the understanding of the story.

J: Yea, I’m not sure how much her Hainish books really tie in to each other or rely on each other. I’ve read a few and they don’t seem to really need you to read the others. Of the ones I’ve read, they seem concerned primarily with introducing you, the reader, to a new society and world.

K: Which means that all we can use to judge the Ekumen by is their sole representative who has any sort of role in this book, an Earthling by the name of Genly Ai. Who I was disappointed to discover was a male, since his name said nothing to me. And who I was further disappointed to discover is something of a jackass.

J: And idiot. Don’t forget idiot. But I was surprised he was black. I didn’t remember that.

K: I was lucky the text kept reminding me at intervals, otherwise I would have forgotten. Not necessarily because I was assuming him to be white but because character descriptions just don’t stick in my head very well. I don’t usually picture characters that way in my head, like a movie.

J: Yea, there’s one part where he’s frostbitten and his face is grey and everything and a little bit beyond that I was reminded he was black and went back to reread that bit. Kind of wondering if she’d also forgotten. But I couldn’t find any evidence she had. I don’t even really picture real people in my dreams. I just sort of know they’re them. I think I’d suck as an artist, even if I had the technical skill.

J: How long did you think he was female for? Because I knew he was male going into it, so I didn’t have a surprise there.

K: It’s not so much that I thought he was female but that for the first part of the first chapter, it’s all told in strict first person with no reference to his gender at all. It’s not until one of the other characters calls him ‘Mr. Ai’ that I knew for sure. And I was sad.

J: I get sad when that happens too. It’s a disappointment when it’s not a female main character.

K: Yeah. And here we had not just a male main character, but one who felt to me as pretty misogynistic. He was constantly disparaging the Gethenians by comparing them to women.

J: Yea, I was disappointed in Earth. :P Get out into space and join the wider galactic community and you still haven’t solved your gender issues.

K: I did wonder if it wasn’t meant to be a symptom of sexual panic – he found the Gethenians oddly attractive and so he had to cast them as women or else the gayness ohnoes!

J: Maybe. Which ties in to one of my major disappointments with the book. No sex!!!

K: For a book that was so very much about talking about this weird sexual evolution of the Gethenians, yeah, there was no sex at all on camera. Almost everyone we actually encountered was strangely celibate.

J: Even when Estraven is in kemmer in the tent, it was never clear to me if ‘he’ had gone female or not.

K: No, it wasn’t. And it didn’t make a lot of sense either — they were traveling for 81 days. That’s not one kemmer, that’s like, three.

J: Yea, it was suspicious that it so happened to be like exactly 26 days into the trip. If she had just said, anywhere, that being in dothe or a hard trek across the ice on low supplies might delay it. Which seems perfectly reasonable, but we shouldn’t have to assume..

K: Since he didn’t seem to be in it right before the trip started. I don’t know. The whole kemmer business seemed biologically unlikely to me. I know the story hints that it may have been some sort of abandoned experiment by the ancients, but… I don’t know. It just seems… unlikely.

J: The plausibility or implausibility didn’t bother me.

K: It did me a bit. Because part of the book was about how the Gethenian sexual cycle — the fact that they were essentially asexual for large portions of the time — came to dominate their society and dictate their progress. Because apparently without sexual urges (the drive for men to impress women??) society progresses at a very slow rate and there’s no real ambition or progress.

K: Le Guin equates asexuality with passivity.

J: And no war.

J: Genly and the woman whose notes we get in one chapter aren’t clear on if the slow progress and lack of war are due to their lack of gender or to the environment of the planet. Do you think Le Guin was maybe being hedgy? Not coming right out and laying it all at the feet of gender.

K: I don’t know. I felt the society was pretty uneven: they’ve adapted very well to the cold, even invented super awesome batteries that anyone on Earth now would just kill for. But there’s no sense of industry or advancement, so where did these inventions come from? My experience in our society is that one invention leads pretty soon to another as other people have their ideas sparked by it, and it’s kind of like a snowball rolling down hill as long as there are materials and conditions that allow people to concentrate on inventing. And nothing we’re shown suggests to me that there -aren’t- these conditions, in spite of the difficulty of -travel-, they all seem to be pretty well set otherwise.

J: I think it’s a common theme in stories about all-female societies. Progress is slow or nonexistent and there’s no war. I don’t know what’s up with that! It’s easy to lay war on men, but I don’t believe they have a monopoly on it. Just like they shouldn’t have a monopoly on science, technology, invention, art!

K: No. I think those things might be -different-, but certainly not disappeared. Though I will note that one of the few things Genly can come up with to say about women when asked is that they aren’t usually scientists or inventors! Frankly, society isn’t yet at the point where we can say -what- the potential of women are in those areas, because I don’t think they’ll achieve that potential in the same -way- as males and there just isn’t the right kind of societal support for that yet.

J: Ah, was it him who said that? I knew I’d read it recently, but I’d filled my head with a couple other books and blog posts all around the same subject since I finished reading it. But we already decided Genly was an idiot and a jackass. Why they picked him to be First Mobile, I have no idea. If it were me, I would’ve picked someone intersex or genderqueer. Someone who’d have a chance of not being so gender-biased. And maybe someone who understood politics better. Unless this was all a test of Gethen. ‘Can you handle this guy who’s all caught up in being macho?’

K: It was he who said it. And it made me sad. It made me sad to remember that people were STILL saying the same thing 40 years later (I’m looking at you, Larry Summers) without understanding any better -why- that might be true. Now, as far as Genly’s fitness as First Mobile, I have no idea. Perhaps it was indeed a test of the Gethen. ‘If you don’t murder this dude, maybe you can join us.’

J: *laugh* Yea, sort of.. if you can handle us at our typical (or even sliding towards not-so-great), we’re good to go. But look at what that woman’s report said. “The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation.” And I’m like.. what? Um, no. Not that I don’t think I wouldn’t be surprised and caught off guard if I went to Gethen and was treated not as a woman, but as a person, but I don’t think I’d be bothered by it. My pride would not suffer. Though, really, wouldn’t they treat me like a pregnant woman? And that /would/ bother me!

K: Yeah. It was really that chapter and having a second character say something so idiotic that I knew that my excuses for Genly’s behavior really were just that, excuses, and it probably wasn’t a well-thought out effort on Le Guin’s part to make him that way on purpose to highlight how dumb it all was. Unless she’s trying to say all of human society is blinded by gender and never will manage to get over it. Ever. That’s just depressing.

J: Well, to some extent she probably picked a man with ‘typical’ 60s ideas on purpose. And it was radical only to make him black. That one chapter actually surprised me when it was revealed to be a woman. The whole book up until that point had been male. Even the Gethenians were ‘men’ and ‘he’. So to find it was written by a woman surprised me. I don’t know if it was meant to.

K: I wasn’t sure what to think of it. It seemed a token chapter in an otherwise nearly female-free book. What was its purpose? To show there were female scientists? To shock us with female scientists? To show us something about Ekumen society? Whatever it was I was puzzled.

J: I think.. to give us a female viewpoint of Gethenian society? By.. having her talk about sex. As an excuse for there being none?

K: I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I wonder if there had been sex (which by definition would not have exactly been straight) would the book still have won the Nebula? -Talking- about alternate sexualities and actually -showing- them are definitely not the same thing.

J: I think it would’ve counted as straight. The /relationship/ wouldn’t have been heterosexual, but the sex would’ve been.

K: In any case, it’s a moot point.

J: Well, to mention my other big disappointment with it, was that the male pronouns were continued throughout. It actually surprised me. That Genly would use them, okay. But Estraven? Bah! Estraven’s chapters all read more Earth human than I thought they should’ve.

K: Yes, that was odd. I guess we have to assume the Estraven entries were originally in Karhidish and they had a pronoun which we don’t, and the translation made it ‘he’, but the fact is they kept using Karhidish words like shifgrethor, so there was no reason they couldn’t have just used the proper pronoun.

J: And things like ‘man’ or ‘son’ which could’ve easily been ‘person’ or ‘child’. I know Le Guin has since stated that the one thing she’d change about the book is to use some gender neutral pronouns of some sort. And I wish they’d release a version like that.

K: Yeah, there was really no reason to be using man and son in the non-Genly chapters especially. I’m not usually a big fan of revisions in older books, but this one would actually improve things.

J: Well, an author revision.. where people could still read the old version if they wanted. And this wouldn’t be dumbing it down for the sake of kids, which a lot of them are. My favorite parts of the book are actually the folktales. Which are also male pronouns. Sigh.

K: Ahh yes the folktales. I didn’t dislike them, but their inclusion, and then the abrupt shift to Estraven’s POV in Chapter 6 did make me far more aware of the -structure- of this book than I normally am when reading. So I broke it down hoping to see some sort of pattern, but there wasn’t: Ai, Tale, Ai, Tale, Ai, Estraven, Science Chick, Ai, Tale, Ai, Estraven, Tale, Ai, Estraven, Ai, Estraven, Tale, Ai, Ai, Ai

J: During that long slog across the glacier, I wish there’d been more than one interruption with a folktale. Even if it was Estraven telling it to Genly while they were hanging out in the tent. I suspect the only pattern was ‘I need to tell people about this now, and this the best way to do it’.

K: Maybe so, though I do wish they had been more tied into the text if that was the case. If they really are just random infodumps, they may be creative, but they’re barely disguised.

J: I guess I mostly liked it because I knew the next chapter was likely to be different from the one I was reading. The whole story from Genly’s point of view would’ve been dull.

K: That is definitely true. And incomplete, since there were things going on of which he was not at all aware.

K: Though that comes back again to how unsuitable he seems to have been for the position of First Mobile.

J: Yup. I bet he wasn’t even from Iceland or Canada, which also would’ve made some sense.

K: Hmm. Now I feel like he said where on Earth he was from, but I can’t remember when he said it and skimming through I can’t find it.

J: I don’t remember him saying. Probably something stupid like Hawaii or the Sahara Desert.

J: Shall we talk about things with didn’t disappointment me, but annoyed me quite a lot instead?

J: Minor annoyance – the word ‘bisexual’ to mean a society with two sexes. Is that the right word, even though it sounds wrong? Larger issue.. the Zanies, which are referred to in the same paragraph as ‘insane’, possibly ‘schizophrenic’, and then, bizarrely ‘psychopaths’.

K: Well, I think ‘bisexual’ does mean that, in the same way that ‘bipedal’ means moving about on two feet. But the more common usage has shifted lately to mean being sexually interested in two sexes.

K: Actually I stand corrected. Bisexual used to mean the same as hermaphrodite. So it’s not used correctly.

J: So McCoy was right that tribbles are bisexual?

K: Apparently so!

K: So I’m not sure if there is a single word that describes the fact that humans have two sexes. Binary sexes is the closest that springs to my mind.

K: The issues of insanity and madness was pretty strangely treated. Genly insists that the King of Karhide is ‘mad’, but I didn’t really see why he felt that way.

J: Yea, the king didn’t seem very mad. Oh, you know it bugged me we never got to see him pregnant. He was pregnant, but we never got to see it.

K: In fact, he went into complete seclusion while pregnant. Why? We’re not told if this is normal, if being pregnant is somehow considered unclean or embarrassing, or what. It didn’t make any sense at all except to make him look weak (because he was now a woman?). And then to top everything off, the baby died. Of what cause we don’t know.

J: You would’ve thought, if the kingship was passed down biologically, that there’d be a lot of pressure on him to get pregnant. So why did he wait so late? For one thing, couldn’t he have deliberately put himself around males in kemmer to make sure he was female?

K: It does seem like, even if Karhide wasn’t into the hormones the way the other countries may have been, there were ways to make himself end up female in kemmer. It definitely shouldn’t have been left to chance until he got biologically elderly.

J: Right!

K: So was there anything else that annoyed you?

J: Hrm. Annoyed or puzzled.. back to that chapter written by practically the only woman in the whole book. How is rape impossible?

K: I asked myself that same question. And I came to the same conclusion as you: Uh, what? Because there was no reason given, just this random assertion.

J: I’ll quote. Not that it’ll unconfuse us. “There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well timed.”

K: That still doesn’t even make any sense. I don’t think the very fact of going into estrus is the same thing as invitation and consent; that opens up a whole other can of worms which is, are animals sentient enough -to- consent. I’m not philosophically or biologically or ethically equipped to answer that question. But I do wonder why they are trying to equate the Gethenians to ‘lesser’ mammals.

J: Right. Being.. ready for sex and interested in sex is not.. being willing to have it with a particular person! Plus.. I don’t see any reason someone in kemmer couldn’t rape someone not in kemmer. It does not require a vagina. Which we don’t even know if they have or don’t have when not in kemmer, because we don’t have quite enough detail about that.

K: Yeah. Do they have a smooth area? Are they Ken? But it doesn’t matter, since as you say, rape doesn’t require a vagina. Any kind of orifice will do, and of course sexual assault or molestation doesn’t even require that much.

J: “The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly.” Which says to /me/ that they have something on the outside, but Estraven says something to contradict that later.

J: You’d think forcing someone into kemmer would also be a form of sexual assault. Whether you did it chemically or by putting them in proximity with someone else in kemmer.

K: Yes, I agree. And these are sentient beings — humans — so just because they’re essentially in heat doesn’t mean they /have/ to have sex or want to have sex with /you/. I saw no evidence (and a lot of direct contradiction) that they were overwhelmed by lust with no control over themselves and willing to have sex with whoever was there.

J: Yea. Vulcans they’re not.

J: One last thing I had. Estraven dying seemed abrupt and pointless. I didn’t see it coming. (And since I’ve read this at least three times now, I should’ve!) Just.. dying for the sake of the main character learning something about himself. Or something. :P

K: It did seem kind of useless. Aside from Genly not having to go visit Estre at the end, I’m not completely sure what the use of the death was. Genly’s non-death was what brought about the change in governments; his ship was called before Estraven went on his suicide run; no one other than Genly seemed really to care.

K: Speaking of which, were we ever told why the Gethenians were so against suicide?

J: I don’t think so. Does that sort of thing need a reason?

K: Yes! The taboo against suicide in Catholicism is because you’ve committed a grave sin (murder) without being able to repent of it and confess and be cleansed. So you have no chance of going to heaven. Entirely logical if that’s your belief system. If you don’t have some reason, why would anyone care?

J: Well, I could theorize reasons. Harsh environment and low birth rate means everyone able to work and/or contribute to society is needed. But yea, I don’t think it’s explained.

K: Well, on the flip side, if you kill yourself, they no longer need to provide for you. So you’ve saved them energy and food and resources. So I’m not entirely sure that works — in any case, I just thought it was a weird little thing that got thrown in.

J: I think that about covers everything I wanted to say. I have a book of Joanna Russ reviews and essays and there’s at least two places in that where she talks about this book. So I’m interested in reading those and seeing her take on things.

K: I’m still not sure what I really think of this book. It definitely had a lot of different ideas in it, but on the other hand, I cannot say I enjoyed it or found the story coherent enough to pass my own personal threshold of ‘good’.

J: I liked it less this time than before. Well, maybe. I saw more flaws. But I also saw other things I’m sure I didn’t see before. All the political stuff that was going on and how the two nations were different.

K: Yeah. She did illustrate that pretty well, though in the end it wasn’t clear to me what the government of Karhide actually did for the people.

J: Threw parades for them.

K: Heh. So the next one up is Ringworld, which is another one I confuse with other books. Riverworld and Discworld both sound too similar!

J: It doesn’t just make you think of Ringworm?

K: That too.