(no subject)

[skygiants]

I have formed a vague & probably untenable ambition of reading all the Nebula nominees this year, the first of which I managed to get round to (that I hadn't read already) was The Terraformers.

This book is a sort of multigenerational saga on a planet that's being gradually prepared for habitation by humans [and others]; the first section takes place while the planet is still a protected zone inhabited only by terraforming staff, the second section focuses on urban planning during the very early stages of settlement, and the third section focuses on corporate land grabs and gentrification on the now heavily settled planet.

Conceptually this is a very cool premise, I really enjoy science fiction that explore cultural shifts over the long term and the book is dealing with a number of ideas that I find extremely interesting! I am really glad to have read it, I think it's an ambitious project, I am always glad to read books that give me things to think about and argue with and this book certainly gave me a lot to think about and argue with, as everyone who has had the pleasure of communicating with me in the past three days now knows in excruciating detail because I have not been able to shut up about it.


This book is really really profoundly concerned with personhood and who gets it. Wonderful; I too am concerned with this question.

We are in a far future space in which all reproduction is conducted by 3-D printing various sapient creatures to design. Do not worry about the casually eugenicist implications of this concept. Or, I mean, do worry about it -- the author is very worried about it, because the bad corporate entities are unethically 3-D printing unintelligent people to do service instead of printing everyone out as properly intelligent, and by people I mean 'moose' -- our first major plot point in this regard involves a romance between a pair of sentient moose, one of whom has been printed out with a lower intelligent rating than the other, to great concern for all.

The moose text [with their brains]. They sound exactly like human beings when they do so. The less-intelligent moose's human partner is deeply concerned that the smarter moose is just using her friend for sex. I explained this to genarti, who said "....does she know about rutting behavior?" We neither know nor care about rutting behavior. Once we give creatures human level sapience there is no difference between a texting human and a texting human in a moose suit.

Okay, so the basic argument being made here is "if we can 3-D print everything with human-type sentience, then we have a moral obligation to do so." This results in a number of wild and frankly extremely funny plot elements like:

- intelligent dogs learn about the history of domestication, get extremely angry about it, and leave in a huff to perform their own science on another continent
- intelligent moose from evil corporate town visits egalitarian paradise, asks for barn to stay in, and is met with politely appalled reactions: why a barn? why not an apartment like everyone else??
- intelligent cat gets cannot pay rent on apartment, stays with friends for a while, but then starts feeling self-conscious about freeloading

(genarti, upon having these plot points to explained to her: has this author ever met a dog?? has this author ever met a cat??? is this a PETA tract????)

Eventually it's revealed that the less-intelligent moose is not in fact less intelligent in any way except for the fact that there is an artificial inhibitor in his brain that prevents him from using words of more than one syllable, which gets fixed by the end of the section!

the book, posing a question: hey, do we have a moral obligation to imagine different kinds of intelligence and treat beings with lesser intelligence by our standards or different ways of experiencing the world with respect and dignity?
the book, answering it: no! we have a moral obligation to make sure everyone can talk exactly like a human! problem solved!!!

At some point in the second section, the protagonists stumble upon a community that is working to give intelligence to earthworms, but have run into a problem where the earthworms won't talk to them.

"Ah," I thought, "we are complicating this at last! We've given intelligence to earthworms but they aren't interested in communicating like humans, and why should they be!"

but no, this is just a software bug and once they fix it the earthworms also start acting exactly like humans in earthworm suits.

(this does set up a very funny sequence in the third section where the protagonists go to a game jam and the earthworms are working on a video game for earthworms that's a bee simulator. 'earthworms make a bee simulator' is a great gag! if I wasn't so irritated already at the book's whole attitude towards animal intelligence I would be so charmed by this!)

When explaining why they felt compelled to give intelligence to earthworms, the scientist on the project says, "We were working with them on soil sustainability and infrastructure maintenance for the colony. It didn't seem right that we couldn't talk to them."

Later in this same section, the protagonists (one human and one intelligent cyborg cow) come across a (free-range) dairy farm populated by normal non-augmented cows and are shocked, horrified, appalled, made physically ill by the concept. And like -- sure, the point is that in this world where everyone is people, they are reacting like we would if we found a farm full of human women with cow-level intelligence being milked on the regular. Now, cows do experience the world in a different way than humans. All animals in fact experience the world in different ways than humans, and there is a lot of interesting science writing exploring our best understanding of those experiences. But not in this book! where everyone should experience the world exactly like humans do and if not we are doing something wrong!

This section takes care to point out that there are animals with animal-level intelligence wandering the terraformed planet -- but that's different, because they're part of a natural ecosystem. The point seems to be that humans cannot interact with other creatures ethically unless they can talk like us to express consent like us. We're not part of the ecosystem, I guess. We're exempt. By virtue of controlling the 3-D printers and being able to make everyone that we interact with specifically to design is this a bit eugenicist DO NOT WORRY ABOUT IT!!!!!

This section, by the way, is primarily composed of figuring out how to design a public transit system for the planet. Someone comes up with the idea of making trains that can fly and are intelligent! What a brilliant idea! Everyone in our consensus-based idyllic model community of free citizens on the planet is so stoked about this!

One (1) character -- the POV character's love interest -- raises a concern about the idea of creating a sentient species to fill a public infrastructure problem. What if we make trains specifically to be trains and they don't want to be trains?

Not only is this roundly shouted down -- the trains can be anything they want, but it's normal that creatures created to be good at a thing will want to do the thing, so probably many of the trains will enjoy being trains and others can be scientists or ballerinas if they want to! and obviously we will not compel the trains in any way, they will be their own self-governing union! no problems ever with maintaining infrastructure in consensus-based model community! -- but the POV character immediately starts ghosting the love interest, "repulsed" by the fact that he would even raise concerns about such an obviously cool and ethical solution to the problem, until the love interest makes a sincere and profound apology for his poor behavior.

I'm so mad about this in particular because conceptually I love sentient trains. I was all ready to adore the sentient trains. I cannot believe this book ruined sentient trains for me by forcing me to ask questions and then answering them with "if everyone acts ethically it will be fine, do not worry about it, and if you worry about it you're Bad and Wrong."

And the thing is, like -- a lot of this book is profoundly silly, intentionally so, viz. earthworms making a bee simulator. None of this would make me that angry if it wasn't so clear that it is also intending to be a Big Ideas book, "a feat of revolutionary imagination" (Publisher's Weekly), "a primer for how to embrace solutions to the challenges we all face" (Scientific American), etc. etc. etc. This is a didactic book. Even the bits that are silly are didactic. More than anything else, it really profoundly reminded me of the work of Sheri Tepper -- another author with a delightfully creative imagination who had a lot of Big Progressive Ideas, a real determination to explore Solutions to our Current Problems through Science Fiction, and an unfortunate tendency to accidentally slide from ecofeminism towards ecofascism with a little bit of eugenics thrown into the mix for flavor.

I am in no doubt that the author of this book and I agree in most of our political and cultural opinions. I too am concerned about the climate and the bad actions of corporations, I too would love to imagine a queer and trans-inclusive future, I too feel bad about eating animals! But I do think any progressive science fiction author runs in danger of falling into the trap of believing that they have hit the endpoint of human thought and moral behavior; that they can easily and without friction inscribe that onto a far future world and society in which all good and sympathetic characters are representing good behavior as we understand it here, now, in 2024. To me, this is both boring and annoying, EVEN WHEN it doesn't result in a take I disagree with as profoundly as "it's unethical to interact in any way with any living creature that can't communicate with you in complex sentences in your own language (! !! !!!)"

I have not listened to the author's podcast but my understanding is that it is called Our Opinions Are Correct. From reading this book, that is exactly what I would expect.

Comments

[strikeslip]

Oh god, I want sentient train ballet so badly now. But written by an author who has not been consumed and then digested by scrupulosity, because, yeah. Pretty much what you just wrote about erasing all actual complexity from a problem/system/society. I'm not sure eugenics is exactly the word for it, but boring is certainly the word for it.

[rachelmanija]

I also want the sentient train ballet! I actually love the idea that creating sentient trains may mean that the trains don't want to spend their lives transporting humans. I want to see the sentient train society where some of them unionize and demand to be paid for their labor, and some of them fuck off and do train art.

[genarti]

I just want the world to know that I am four (4) pages into this book and I have emerged four (4) times already to rant at skygiants about things making me actively angry. (Granted, one of them related to spoilers.) So that bodes well!!!

[rachelmanija]

Please rant in comments here! I love it!

[rydra_wong]

the book, posing a question: hey, do we have a moral obligation to imagine different kinds of intelligence and treat beings with lesser intelligence by our standards or different ways of experiencing the world with respect and dignity?
the book, answering it: no! we have a moral obligation to make sure everyone can talk exactly like a human! problem solved!!!


*sighs*

I wonder if the author is aware that there are humans with intellectual disabilities existing right now, and some of them do not have especially complex language use, and some of them do not use language at all.

[ambyr]

This is also immediately where my mind went on reading this review! I do not think “making every being equally intelligent” is a solution to any of the world’s problems; “convincing humans that intelligence doesn’t equate to value” is the challenge. Which doesn’t seem like something this book is interested in exploring….

[brownbetty]

alsdfj;jsdflk

Okay, I failed out of one of this author's other books because I was not getting really grabbed by it and one of the robots was like "what if I regender myself to make myself sexier to this human? What a cool use of autonomy!" (author is trans, so maybe the one not getting it is I? But I super did not get it.)

But hahah wow. NOT how I would explore animal uplift. This seems less like animal uplift and more like... consciousness colonization?

[brownbetty]

(and to be clear I failed out of author's previous book and have no idea how any of the things were resolved! Maybe in a way that would have made me go "author, I misjudged/misunderstood you, my bad.")

[pauraque]

You are the second person I've seen roundly pan this book on DW, which is too bad because I'm trying to read more nonbinary authors and Newitz is on my list. Maybe their other books are better? D:

[skygiants]

Entirely possible that their other books are better! I probably won't be reading them without a really compelling reason, but I hope you have good luck if you give them a try.

(....if you have a link to the other DW pan, I'd love to see it. >.>)

[evewithanapple]

I feel like genarti hit the nail on the head when she called it a PETA tract. It sounds like one co-worker I had who refused to eat honey because it was, and I quote, "exploiting the bees' labour."

[skygiants]

Frankly I'm SHOCKED this book didn't get around to creating bees that can text, but perhaps the hive consciousness thing would have stretched the 'just humans in bee suits' believability a little too far ....

[castiron]

they are reacting like we would if we found a farm full of human women with cow-level intelligence being milked on the regular

I have read that Piers Anthony story and am now going to try to forget it again.

[sholio]

ME TOO AND I REGRET IT.

[raven]

Someone comes up with the idea of making trains that can fly and are intelligent!

Minister, I would like to raise some concerns about this policy. Many of them are about slavery, and things rail infrastructure lawyers are not typically equipped for but luckily we are recruited on our soundness in public law I guess so hello.

(I have picked this book up a couple of times and put it down for the pedestrian prose and now can't believe the reasons I've missed out on for putting it down!)

[skygiants]

THANK YOU I was really hoping that we'd have the benefit of your professional expertise on the proposal under consideration!!

(THE PEDESTRIAN PROSE REALLY IS THE LEAST OF ITS SINS)

[osprey_archer]

Thank you for reading and reviewing this, because the review is extremely funny and I think exactly the level of engagement that I want to have with this book, because the book itself sounds like something I would want to light on fire. Possibly to the point of considering ways to light my Kindle on fire if I was reading it as an ebook.

[skygiants]

Once I had started Beth kept asking me if I was committed to finishing, and every time I seriously considered it, but I truly did not think I could accurately assess the thesis without soldiering on ... and occasionally I would think "ah, a new talking animal has not appeared in a couple of chapters! we are getting better!" and every time, IMMEDIATELY, something would prove me wrong.

[philomytha]

Oof, that sounds like an infuriating book, it sounds like the author really didn't think things through. I'd have thrown it at the wall early on, but then, I can't reliably interact with my own son in his or any other language, and I'm pretty sure he's still a person.

but it's normal that creatures created to be good at a thing will want to do the thing
Hello Aristotle...

[skygiants]

There is simply more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in this philosophy!

[shati]

I'm still not over your explanation that the sentient trains are not trains with minds but flying transport without set routes or schedules and with a Snowpiercer person inside somewhere.

[rachelmanija]

Wait, what?!

[ursula]

Hmmm, I think I read this book differently because my assumption after reading Autonomous (which has two separate and deliberately contrasted situations in which someone without a lot of power gets into a sexual relationship with someone with much more power because that seems like the best of a set of bad options, one being human/human and the other being human/robot) is that fucked-up power dynamics go straight to Newitz's id, and it doesn't feel nearly as preachy once you mentally apply a "dubious consent [gleeful]" tag.

[rydra_wong]

I definitely felt that Autonomous was intentionally exploring fucked-up power dynamics, but from skygiants' description, this seems to go in the opposite direction into "any relationship with people/creatures who are not exactly as intelligent and exactly like us is fucked-up."

[lannamichaels]

My big overwhelming question: is everyone in this book vegan? Including all the animals?

[skygiants]

Indeed they are! We get a lot of loving descriptions of vegan meals, including the cat's artificial protein.

[adrian_turtle]

Somebody once asked what you'd get if you crossed a Sheri Tepper book with A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Every time a good joke crosses the author's mind, in it goes!

[skygiants]

djflkdsjlfk I must say it would never have occurred to me to wonder this

[sholio]

This was far more entertaining to read than I suspect the book would have been, which is really too bad because: SENTIENT MOOSE. But a human in a moose suit is not what I want from sentient moose at all!

[skygiants]

It feels hypocritical of me to say it, given -- as pointed out above -- I really have no idea what moose are actually like, but I still would prefer a moose that felt somewhat like a moose!

[rachelmanija]

I have not listened to the author's podcast but my understanding is that it is called Our Opinions Are Correct. From reading this book, that is exactly what I would expect.

LOLOLOLOL this review is the greatest.

[rachelmanija]

humans in earthworm suits.

LOLOLOLOLOL.

This book really does sound very much like a lost Sheri S. Tepper novel.

[skygiants]

I kept thinking it more and more if I went on! I don't think the Sheri Tepper we had could ever have written this book in particular, but a Sheri Tepper born forty years later and reared in today's writing milieus absolutely could and would.

[mecurtin]

I've been too lazy to do this post myself, but THANK YOU SO MUCH. "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."

My personal issues started with the geography & biogeography, which make NO SENSE. Why would you design the Eel River like that? Where is the water supposed to come from?

Why are the most important companion species moose and beaver, boreal forest specialists? When we learned about what had happened with dogs, I also went, "No. That is not how dogs think." And that was before we got to *cats* feeling *guilty* about *freeloading*, which can only be meant for comedy.

I'm now going to read other people's comments, then come back.

[skygiants]

I don't know enough about the geography and biogeology to raise complaints there -- I kept plaintively saying to my friends as I read "I think it's possible that the climate science is good!" -- but the animal stuff threw me every single chapter. Every time I started to get comfortable because no animals had texted anything in the last ten minutes, suddenly! out of the blue! another wild take would appear!

[sovay]

the book, answering it: no! we have a moral obligation to make sure everyone can talk exactly like a human! problem solved!!!

Aside from joining the consensus of twitchiness with what this solution seems to say about different kinds of human intelligence and communication, it seems a singularly joyless way to think about sharing a planet with different kinds of non-human intelligence and communication. The idea that humans aren't part of the natural ecosystem isn't Anthropocene reckoning, it's just inverting the Puritan wilderness. I am sorry this book did not supply you with a union of ballerina trains.

[genarti]

it seems a singularly joyless way to think about sharing a planet with different kinds of non-human intelligence and communication. The idea that humans aren't part of the natural ecosystem isn't Anthropocene reckoning, it's just inverting the Puritan wilderness.

RIGHT. This isn't the only thing that gets me about this book (obviously), but it seems like such a wildly missed point that's fundamental to the premise (and also, admittedly, a general bugbear of mine so I'm primed to get mad about it).

[sushiflop]

If you dig into the dirt with a shovel and slice an earthworm in half is it manslaughter now?

[skygiants]

under the logic presented, absolutely!

[passingbuzzards]

SO WEIRD, SO CURSED, thank you for reading this book so none of us have to (and also for this extremely funny review)!

ETA: I showed this post and its comments to my sister, who is a huge fan of Sentient Train Musical Starlight Express, to which her reply was "this is so unbelievably topical to me that i feel like you just truman show'd my ass," SHE TOO HAS BEEN PONDERING THE SENTIENT TRAINS QUESTIONS and has similarly come to far more thoughtful conclusions, Annalee Newitz is simply not trying hard or weird enough,

[skygiants]

sl;dkfjdl please tell your sister I would gladly hear any sentient train conclusions that she chose to share

[alias_sqbr]

Do they all talk like humans with roughly the same cultural background, too? Like... even Star Trek TOS has some situations where sentient beings can't communicate perfectly via universal translator, and even humans from different cultures have some communication friction they have to work through, but this feels like the sort of story where, no, anyone worth talking to can be entirely understood within a 'standard' cultural and linguistic framework.

But yes the disability and animal rights implications are... oof. Thank you for this review so I can boggle from a safe distance!

[skygiants]

Yeah language and culture are NOT even a question, which is pretty funny given that increasingly settlers are coming from all across the galaxy whereas our idyllic model community of free citizens have no way to communicate with anybody off-planet

[kalloway]

For a brief and very confused moment, I was convinced I'd completely mis-osmosed Terra Formars. And then I scrolled up again and thankfully realized my mistake.

[skygiants]

I had never even heard of Terra Formers!

[troisoiseaux]

Huh. That's.... huh. I've seen this book around, and I don't know what I thought it was about - well, technically, I do, but it turns out I'd gotten this one mixed up with Claire Coleman's Terra Nullius - but I would not have guessed....... any of that?

[skygiants]

NEITHER DID I BEFORE READING.

(I knew that there were three sections that covered different characters but that was pretty much it -- I truly thought I was in for some Kim Stanley Robinson-esque very hard sci-fi.)

[chestnut_pod]

Ohhhhhh my god, this book would drive me insane. Thank you so much for protecting me from it. Maybe utopias just suck, have we all thought of that? I feel like UKLG firmly and permanently closed the book on utopias, tbh. Why even bother trying if you're going to be like this about it?

Ironically, I am currently reading/listening to a FANTASTIC book on the evolution of animal intelligences, laid out with great sensitivity and imagination by Peter Godfrey-Smith -- Metazoa. I recommend it to you as a palate-cleanser!

[skygiants]

thank you, that sounds incredible and frankly very soothing after this!