The In-Between Space

A Review of Lynda Williams’ The Courtesan Prince (Edge, 2005).
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover photo of The Courtesan Prince courtesy of Edge Publications

Cover photo of The Courtesan Prince courtesy of Edge Publications

The Reetions and the Gelacks, two branches of the human race that were separated from Earth due to temporary losses of space travel. The Reetions developed from the first group of people to leave Earth and settle in a colony. Connections to Earth were lost, and they developed into a divergent civilisation. They developed an egalitarian system of government with open policies, public access to information, and general public engagement in decision-making processes.

The Gelacks developed from a second wave of human space travel. They too lost contact with Earth. The Gelacks were a civilisation that had been changed by the intervention of genetic technology, technology that changed certain people to better sustain the biologically damaging effects of space travel. This group became stronger, smarter, and better at healing than the regular human population. Because Gelack population had both genetically modified humans and unmodified humans (as well as interbred populations), a class system developed along feudal lines. The genetically modified populations attained positions of superiority and hegemonic control.

The Reetions and Gelacks had met before, and the results were devastating, with misunderstandings and miscommunications on both sides. Now, both sides have discovered that traders are making jumps between their civilisations and it has become clear that they may need to make formal contact again. In The Courtesan Prince, Lynda Williams explores the diversity of cultures and the misunderstandings that can come from cultural difference. She illustrates to readers that a large part of conflict comes from misunderstandings and the more diverse the populations are, the more effort needs to be put into understanding the cultural gap and communicating effectively with others.

The Courtesan Prince follows the life of Von, a courtesan who seems to be more than he appears to be. Von’s life and understanding of the world is challenged when he encounters the Reetions, and, in particular Ann, who encourages him to understand her on a deeper level and get rid of some of his xenophobic fears and beliefs that human social relations can only be understood through a Gelack lens.

Simultaneously Ranar, a Reetion anthropologist is left among his research subjects, the Gelacks, and is forced to understand their way of life, even if it is both fundamentally different and even hostile to his own. The Gelacks are a fundamentally homophobic people, with a deep and violent hatred for queer-oriented people. Often this homophobia erupts into public torture of gays and lesbians, followed by their murder and the murder of any children they may have had. Ranar, a gay man, is left in a vulnerable position, having to hide his sexuality for the first time in his life. Among the Reetions, sexual diversity is respected and people are encouraged to accept themselves and there is never a question of sexual interest being either bad or problematic in any way. It is simply another form of relationship. With this openness of sexuality, Ranar has to quickly shift his own openness about his sexuality in order to keep himself safe. When one of the Gelack leaders Di Mon develops an attraction for him (an attraction that he hates in himself and that encourages violence from him), Ranar is confronted with the idea that his own sexuality could be harmful to a lover who is part of a system that systemically oppresses queer-oriented people. He has to keep his sexuality hidden not only for his own protection but to preserve the life of his lover, Di Mon.

Unlike many SF authors, Lynda Williams does not just stick to heteronormative SF, but presents homophobia as something that is socially created and that can be resisted. By contrasting two cultures with different treatments of queer-oriented people, she illustrates that our own homophobic culture has been created by our own social issues and is not something that is taken-for-granted (as it is often portrayed by people who espouse homophobic beliefs). By having one culture that has a healthy, open approach to sexual diversity, and another that has a deep-seated hatred of queer people, she illustrates that homophobia is a choice, not homosexuality.

Lynda Williams is willing to do deep cultural critiques, exploring the development of different cultural ideas and contrasting them in societies that essentially descended from the same roots. She is willing to interrogate politics, ideas of social equality, the complexity of sexuality, ideas of privacy, biological change, and technology. And she is unwilling to give the readers simple answers, but encourages them to interrogate these issues, think for themselves, and develop their own ideas. The Courtesan Prince is a pedagogical text in the best sense of the word, not because it gives answers (as many think that teaching does), but because it asks questions, opens things to debate, and encourages readers to be uncomfortable with any easy answers.

Gelacks and Reetions are contrasted with one another in a way that pushes readers into an uncomfortable intergalactic, in-between space, stuck in the limbo between different ideologies. And this is a hugely powerful creative space where readers are made aware of how much their ideas and thoughts are socially defined and they are encouraged to get rid of cultural trappings and question things freely. The Reetions focus on the idea of honesty, and everything being public… but with that comes the limitations on privacy and the sense of living in a panopticon where everything can be easily seen. The Gelacks are more private, but lying is culturally entrenched to maintain secrets. The Gelacks have a population with bodies that are stronger, heal faster, and survive better… but the power of these bodies have meant tight restrictions on mating practices and the social control of “common” people by a small minority of physically stronger people. The Reetions don’t genetically modify people to be stronger, which means they are able to attain an egalitarian civilisation… but because of this their pilots often have short careers, damaged by the ravages of space travel which destroys normal human bodies. The Reetions are more comfortable with technology… but this means that they are also willing to modify people’s minds through psychotherapy. Whereas the Galecks consider certain forms of technology taboo, which prevents healing adaptions… but they are able to reduce the construction of any weapons of mass destruction. Nothing is easy in The Courtesan Prince and neither civilisation is portrayed as the model of perfect human society. Both have flaws, and these challenges make Lynda Williams’ novel more complex, more rich in substance, and portray the idea that the struggle for perfection is culturally defined and that one person’s ideal may be another’s horror.

The Courtesan Prince is book 1 in Lynda Williams’ Okal Rel Saga, to find out more about it and other books in the series, visit Edge’s website at http://www.edgewebsite.com/index.html . To find out more about Lynda Williams and the Okal Rel universe, visit her site at http://okalrel.org/ .

Little Tremours of the Weird to Shake Up the Mundane

A Review of Postscripts to Darkness 2 edited by Sean Moreland and Aalya Ahmad (Ex Hubris Imprints, 2012).
By Derek Newman-Stillepstd2cover

Postscripts to Darkness 2 is a fantastic sequel to the first volume, continuing the trend of infusing the familiar with the odd. The contributors to this volume illustrate an incredible ability to condense narratives to their bare essentials, creating worlds and characters in ultra-short stories. It is always challenging to try to create a story in a sparse number of words, but Sean Moreland and Aalya Ahmad chose stories by authors that were able to shape worlds and forge character identities using an economy of language. The result is an incredible diversity of narratives that provoke ponderings about the world and the role of the Weird in challenging the way we view the ‘normal’ world. By creating a volume with diverse short narratives, the reader is encouraged to engage with the intersections of stories, the points of commonality and recognise the importance of diversity and the richness of diverse genres of the fantastic. Moreland and Ahmad created a volume that produces little tremors unsettling reality.

The stories in this volume engage with mythic underpinnings to the world, exploring the point of connection between the living and the dead, zombies and ghosts, sympathetic monsters, werewolves, vampires, the power of wishing, gnomes, communication from objects, gateways to other worlds, the powers of gods, and, of course, magic, which permeates this volume. But, the stories also explore real world issues like drug use, yuppie arrogance, the haunting power of guilt, the horror and consumptive power of the ‘recession’ (and the use of the term ‘recession’ to justify morally questionable actions), capitalism and social control, the dangers of social networking, the horror of a bad reputation, prostitution, ideas of memory, the predatory quality of seeking a dating partner, stalking behaviour, obsession, loneliness, social pressures to create an obsessive maternity, the power of our environment and the objects around us to take over our lives, secrecy, the social obsession with youth, the obsessive desire for knowledge and its consequences, and the general disturbances that lurk in urban and suburban life. The volume reveals that sometimes the monsters are not the key points of horror, but rather the horrors live in our society, naturalised and often ignored.

Like the previous volume, Postscripts to Darkness 2 provides a composition that includes short stories, illustrations, and interviews, showing the diversity of speculative formats that exist and engaging the reader visually as well as through literary media. The reader is encouraged to use a multi-sensory approach to exploring the Weird and the addition of interviews encourages the reader to think about the author as a part of the medium that is the story.

The illustrations contained in this volume contribute to the dark, smoky atmosphere,

Artwork by Mark Slater, from Postscripts to Darkness II courtesy of the editors.

Artwork by Mark Slater, from Postscripts to Darkness II courtesy of the editors.

increasing its murky, dark aesthetic and the moral grey areas that it encourages the reader to enter. Stories and images enter into a mutual reciprocity, feeding each other. The stories contribute to the visual aesthetic and interest in the image – in particular, Cynthia Colosimo’s Portrait outlines the power of painting to change the world around it and Chris Willard’s What a Picture Doesn’t Say illustrates the importance of the visual in the creation of the ‘freak show’ – challenging ideas of visual aesthetics.

Rather than a full meal of the weird, this volume provides a sampler plate of diverse Weirdness appetizers, short sips of the macabre and bizarre to spice up the mundanity of life.

You can read more about the Postscripts to Darkness volumes at http://pstdarkness.wordpress.com/ .