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I'm going to re-read The Merro Tree, probably somewhat slowly. This is a book I like I haven't read in a while. It's out of print, but copies are cheap. I recall liking it, or more... appreciating it? It's really about an artist, who is an alien, in space. I recall thinking a lot of the worldbuilding and character-building was clever, and that it was good and enjoyable time. I gave away the ending in the "Summarize Sci-Fi Books" thread, but it's a compelling question, and we'll get to it in due time. It's not military, or related to conquest in any way. It's really a question about art. (In space!!) There's no war in this book! I don't even think there's any shooting! It really is about a dancer guy in space who does dancer guy things. His challenges are in the realm of space-dancer-guy stuff. This book is also weird, but not like "Alien Honking Turtles Spilled My Crab rear end!!" wacky-random weird. It's got a fair bit of weird stuff in it. My one major complaint that I do remember is the prose is a bit purple but more than that, the dialogue is too purple. But it's also about artists--you know how they are. So maybe it's fine? And it's just as good if not better than most sci-fi dialogue. I'll take it! This was the author's first book (1997), and she did one other, which I read one time and admit didn't really resonate with me. Anyway, I also give this book a lot of stylistic leeway as a result of it being someone's first novel. I certainly think things like this would have been refined with experience, and it's honestly a lot less rough than the early works of a lot of "golden age" sci-fi writers etc. (E.g. I love the story "Victory Unintentional", an Asimov story, for its... story, but the actual written style of it and god forbid dialogue is very very very clumsy.) The Merro Tree:  The very first part of the book is about the character's sad and bad childhood. And this sounds lame as hell, but I actually think it's... very well done for that being what's going on? And we can't really hold tragic backstories against anyone. I mean Harry Potter's is worse and for some reason no one seemed to particularly care about that. Let's read-a-long:         
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Jun 10, 2020 02:50
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Anyway, the next thing that happens is his dad comes back for a brief visit. Far from being an abusive parent per se, he's just sorta "hey sport" and he's like "what's something you'd like, champ" and Mikk is like "please send me to boarding school" so his dad is like "yeah ok." And he does. I sort of like how benign the exchange is, like his dad doesn't really give a gently caress. That's what the kid asked for so yeah sure whatever. But he's not like a comically bad dad, he just isn't present. I don't remember if we see either of the parents again after this first chapter. I don't think we do.
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Jun 10, 2020 03:41
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We end up at the Academy.  etc etc Pretty soon we realize that Mikk's problem is essentially that he's autistic. This word is never dropped as such but it's a very obvious analogue. He's sensitive to noises and certain things he has to observe a number of times, and he can't understand/communicate quite the same way as the other kids there.  The Dean gets a good read on it pretty fast and is a friendly guy. Not even in a "and then we find out... he's evil!" way. He's legitimately pretty nice and trying to do his job decently. He tells the teachers to give Mikk a bit more leeway in his learning style and to understand he's not being obdurate on purpose. He also recognizes that Mikk comes from an abusive home. Perhaps a bit strangely, pretty much everyone seems to? He's not bullied about it and everyone mostly sees it as "too bad" but not their problem. So for all that Chapter 1 really lays it on, his time at the Academy seems to be far more normal. None of the other kids are mean to him at all. It ends up making Chapter 1 work better even in immediate retrospect. "No, it's not going to all be like this--but yeah his mom situation, not great". Mikk mostly gets it together and his teachers figure out how to deal with him so this situation works out quite well, thanks Dean. We then hear that Huud is going to come visit the school. He's basically a superstar of the stage.     Huud ends up impressed enough that he takes Mikk on as an apprentice.  
Pick fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 04:13
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The next thing that happens is I'm reminded that this book is not purely in chronological order. You find out that Mikk is currently in prison. You also find out that one of the people who will be testifying is named Thissizz, and he is very distraught about the fact that this person is going to be providing evidence against him. You don't have long to wait until you find out who Thissizz is, since he's in the very next chapter as Master Huud goes on his performance tour. Pick fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 04:33
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Seeing as it's genre fiction, you're probably immediately expecting Huud to be evil or a bastard or a child groomer or whatever. But as far as I've read (and as well as I remember), he's actually a pretty decent dude. Again, perhaps one of the oddest things I'm recalling about this book is it really frontloads the crappy-parental-figure angle. Not really sure why. Maybe the idea was to get it out of the way, but I think it sets the wrong tone overall. Mikk goes to Droos, the planet where Thissizz lives. Mikk meets the native Droos species there, who are snake people. He picks up their language extremely quickly (which, if you recall, we did set up in advance). It might seem like a "superpower" but I genuinely think it was done in the reasonable interests of later stages of this book, where we see him go to a lot of different planets and need to plead his case in different ways to a variety of alien races.  Anyway: snake people. They're snake people! They're really, really snake people. Not like "snakey eyes" or whatever you're thinking, they are big snakes. They are snakes that are big. No hands. Cobra hoods. Hundreds of teeth. Prehensile tips of their tales. They live in caverns but seem to be fairly advanced. Thissizz is one of the snake people.
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Jun 10, 2020 04:45
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I can't think of anything meaningful to contribute to the discussion but this book seems good so far.
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Jun 10, 2020 04:47
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Cat Army
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 So anyway, I'm going to talk about the worldbuilding a little, though obviously I'm not going to scan this entire book. The worldbuilding is very alien, and I appreciate that. It's not particularly technical, if that's something you're into. I mean, beyond explaining how certain species have their own types of ladder/harness/whatever to accommodate them under x/y/z circumstances. But nothing like getting into alloys and warp drives and General Products hulls. However, it goes into the culture of quite a few of the different worlds. And indeed, the snake people are big, the crab people can be tiny, I know there's an octopus-woman later (I think she's the one whose genitals turn out to be corrosive and with whom Mikk has a genital-burning time. haha spoilers.), and there are species that live an extremely long time (Mikk is one), and ones who live a very short time. It really does run the gamut, and the author tries to commit to the alien-ness of it all, without making it seem alien to the aliens. They live in a universe where they're used to a bunch of other alien cultures that, if I'm recalling correctly, basically get along. I mean, Huud's booking loving stage tours around the galaxy so things can't be too fraught. I like this about the setting; the universe is comfortably multicultural. That said, part of what makes the book a bit weird is that the characters treat things as not-weird that, to the human reading-a-book audience, are weird, and the book doesn't really gently caress around with trying to make you, the audience, think it's not-weird. The characters, living in their universe, don't think it's weird, and if you think it's weird, that's your problem. My point is, Mikk and Thissizz are both teenagers at this point and they're already flirting egregiously and the book doesn't even suggest they're not going to gently caress eventually (when they're older). This I remembered. I totally forgot that Huud also briefly references that he and his old friend there, who he's talking to, also a snake person, also hosed at some point. nobody cares. I don't even think 'sexuality' comes up. So though I would rate this a,... uh, pro-LGBT+ sci-fi book, I don't recall it ever really being about that or talking about it in those terms. Everybody just fucks whatever. Maybe it's because they're theater kids, I don't know. I know that sci-fi has often gotten a relatively free pass but I always felt with books like The Forever War there's still like a bit of a tone to it? When they're talking about it? This book does not give a poo poo.
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Jun 10, 2020 05:17
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poo poo. i forgot. i like this book and I forgot how much i like huud < >
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Jun 10, 2020 05:40
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Okay, so we get to a major point in the book: The intergalactic union of artists sold off administrative control to a group of entrepreneurs. As a result, to have access to the bookings on other worlds, performers are subject to content controls. If they refuse to abide by them, their are only permitted to perform on their respective homeworlds (where the owners of the association don't have jurisdiction). This also includes royalties and other such things, and many of the administrators are corrupt or take advantage of performers. (this is a weird alien premise that would only happen in space) Huud hates their asses and does have a bit of a Reputation because he actually successfully had one of the administrators tried for embezzlement of funds. The guy, of course, got his job back after having paid his debt to society, but despises Huud. Anyway, back to snakefucking: Mikk and the-- okay, going to take a second here--we actually don't really know what Mikk looks like. I assume because he's not described that much (in like, 'is this alien-shaped?' terms) that he's mostly human-ish looking. We know he's lithe, red-haired (though it is in-universe said to be really fakey-looking), and his skin is gray-gray. Huud is the same species and his hair is gray, his skin is gray, and he's apparently barrel-chested and more on the stocky side. They have eyes that 'ink over' if they're agitated. I think there was a reference to them having claws maybe. There's an image of Mikk on the cover of the book but I'd sort of discourage looking it up because I'm actually not 100% convinced he actually is supposed to look like that. Anyway, NOW back to snakefucking: The tour on Droos is pretty long. They're there a couple of months. Mikk and Thissizz are still just being flirty teens. But Huud gets a sort of bad feeling about the whole thing and when the tour ends, he takes everyone off to the next planet. Mikk is devastated because he really likes Droos (and there are other Droos characters, like Thissizz's sister and a few others). Huud promises they'll be back--Thissizz in particular is also a performer, but is too green to be doing intergalactic exhibitions--but also thinks Mikk kind of has a distorted sense of self and maybe some issues he needs to control better before he should be going the direction he's going. Mikk and Thissizz are still allowed to correspond and they're not, like, discouraged from doing so. This is never portrayed as malicious on Huud's part and actually comes across as deliberately responsible. In a reverse-Star-Trek, Mikk and Droos are both from long-lived species so I'm trying to work this out but if we go by the in-world calendar the time skips are chonkers. Bear in mind Huud is 900-something by the present calendar and he's at "high end of retirement age". But we already know other species are much more short-lived than this.
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Jun 10, 2020 06:31
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so I spent a lot of today thinking about this book And I recall thinking: oh yeah. This book is actually a really interesting look at art and the performance world (in space), how it intersects with business, how it exists in a context of multiculturalism, and how these people behave and communicate and what they value. The book takes an anti-censorship stance but then creates a very credible scenario where censorship makes sense and seems genuinely compassionate, and then asks you whether it is moral to balk that censorship, whether it's morally necessary to do so, and whether it's more or less necessary because it's a sensitive edge case where censorship might "make sense". We'll get there eventually. And then I recall thinking: shame about all the snake loving which makes this book basically impossible to recommend to anyone. Like it's not explicit but it's erotic and there are so many good qualities of this book that I just cannot share because this author just goes too hard on loving snakes. Then I realized: holy poo poo. I read this book. But I didn't read this book. It's actually not the same book without something "weird" and uncomfortable about it that isn't directly harmful. I mean, rest assured, they're big snakes, but they're big snake people. That's never in any question. But every time you're like "yeah but it really seems like you, the author, are really into snakefucking, and like, could you tone it down a bit?" you're falling into the loving hole! You're doing it! You! I'm doing it! In fact, it's kind of ironic that the book sort of lampshades this by having this particular relationship (though not all of them, or even all of Mikk's) be a homosexual relationship when, there's nothing that compellingly asserts that it "needs" to be. But why not. The only reason would be, "well, it is weird. it is weird to have a book where a guy is flirting with a snake and he is going to gently caress him." Same reason that a lot of people whine about gay characters, or gay relationships on tv. "Well, does he have to be gay? Why?" "Does this relationship have to be interracial? Is it necessary?" "I would like this show, but only if there weren't so many lesbian scenes. Or if they could at least tone it down!" Now, don't get me wrong. you don't write this much snakefucking unless you find something, personally, not-unappealing about it. But you know, there's no really good reason to be... against it. And it's not really a better book with less of it. It's a different book. It would be a book with, like, less of this thing that makes it hard to recommend. But in no way does it act against the point the book is making. It... supports the point the book is making. The point the book is making is lame and toothless if it refuses to engage with the point it is making. Oh no! It's a brave book! And it's fun to read! And I'm an rear end in a top hat! And I was reading it wrong the whole time!! < >
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Jun 10, 2020 21:54
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Doododoodoo, now we're at a stage that is more of the "stuff happening" section of the book. By that I mean, just exploring the world and characters. I don't mean to disparage that, it's the book filling itself out and it's enjoyable to read. So anyway, Huud has Mikk at his main house on the Belia planet. There he has the equipment and the space and materials to teach different styles of performing art. One interesting this is: there are humans in this book! I forgot. But there are references to "Terran jazz" and to the "Punch and Judy puppets". So Earth does exist, though we haven't been there or met any humans. Skipped my mind I guess. On arrival, we meet Mapa and Maya. They are housekeepers. They're octopus people, and again--I don't mean that in the video game fantasy race "so they have 2 tiny tentacles next to their huge cans" kind of way. They're octopuses. They have beaks and tentacles and big wobbly bodies. Maya, the daughter of Mapa, originally hates Mikk and tries to make his life difficult. However, he discovers that she likes costume design, and mostly resents him because he is taking chunks out of her free time now that she has to do chores for more people. He requests to do his own chores and asks that paper and art materials ordered for Maya. After this, Maya treats him with some affection. Mikk is actually not a great student and flubs quite a bit, and Huud gets frustrated at times, and they generally have a good master/apprentice thing going on but Huud's not perfect and neither is Mikk. Pretty well-balanced. Huud is definitely arrogant and he does go on a bit (privately) about how he's not a parent, he's a teacher, and Mikk has some problems that Huud's not really experienced at resolving. This is interspersed with Huud's statements about art and performing, which are all so measured and recognizable from art-people that I wonder if that's what this author actually did? In some way, she seems very familiar with this field. Huud's weirdly unromantic about art, he seems to see it as a profession first and foremost, but he's exceptional at it and thinks it has value. Anyway, Mikk and Thissizz correspond a bit but it's not detailed. Pretty soon, Hom shows up, one of Huud's former students. Hom is a "longchild", which is a mutation which affects his telomeres. He basically doesn't age, so he will live a very long time, but always be a child. I know,  anime skeeze alert , only there's none of that. It seems more to be a vehicle for discussing the natural passion that children have for art, and how to properly assign direction to it. Anyway, the character concept is an "eternal child prodigy" and all that entails. So, again, it's a way to look at a concept in art/performing and this one is legit not a sex thing at all. Anyway, Hom is not really a "teacher" but Mikk gets to observe him during his visit and how he is able to perform without a lot of structured thought, and the primal place his artistic drive comes from.
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Jun 11, 2020 02:53
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dudeness posted:I can't think of anything meaningful to contribute to the discussion but this book seems good so far. Yes, I enjoy reading this thread but have nothing really to add myself. It's a shame threads like this are hard to get off the ground. In the early days of C-SPAM someone tried to get a book club going, but it was practically impossible to keep everyone on the same schedule (though the bigger problem was something like 95% of the people who said they'd read the book never actually did). The forums just aren't well equipped for a simul-read I guess.
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Jun 11, 2020 03:15
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Oh that's fine, I actually don't expect this thread to be much more than me detailing a book I'm reading and then maybe some people going "huh"  As a side note, I did--about eight years back--go on a long kick of reading... oh poo poo, maybe it was more like 10 years (poo poo was it like 12?!)?... a ton of "LGBT+ friendly" scifi. That's a big enough genre now that I wouldn't be able to replicate even the proportional slice I did then. I know you're expecting this to segue into "and this one is one of the books I discovered!!" ... It wasn't. I read this book for a college course lmao. so I actually wrote an essay about this which is, ostensibly somewhere. anyway. My point was actually that I think this book is more LGBT+ friendly than a lot of scifi I've read (PARTICULARLY from the loving 90s, but maybe even moreso the early 2000s when... people started writing it, but, gotta say, for the most part, not in a way I much enjoyed.) Interestingly, though, again--not a focus at all that I recall. Like, not in its own right. Literally not a single person has given a critical about gender or how people of various genders couple whatsoever. It is extremely refreshing. The book clearly knows it's doing this, and why, but integrates it so well that it doesn't feel like a polemic. That said, the book finds pretty careful ways to clarify things like that Huud doesn't sleep with his apprentices (including Mikk), so the book isn't quite doing that weird overreach that well-meaning scifi does where suddenly Heinlein... you know what, let's not talk about Heinlein. Here's some more images   (It's clarified that Huud doesn't see Mikk as an apprentice so much as he sees him as a legitimate successor. And he does find that rather daunting because, again, he's not 100% sure how to train/raise Mikk properly so it's intimidating for both of them.)
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Jun 11, 2020 03:42
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Back! OK. Anyway, the book for the time being really takes the time to focus on the characters and universe. It's some really nice breathing room, and since the world is interesting, I don't feel like this comes at anything's expense. We go to a few different planets and their nature is explained. The first, after snaaaaake planet, is a planet, for example, of harsh crags where the people are stoic and logical (very Vulcan) and the art program they're doing there is only stuff that expresses high technical expertise. The native people of this planet appreciate this, but for example, aren't interested by other forms of art and don't commission that to be performed. (This is still a capitalist system although it mostly seems to pertain to luxury goods and services on a galactic level.) On this planet, Mikk invents his "treasure coat" which is a jacket covered in little pockets. Each pocket contains a gift that a child might enjoy, and they're encouraged to ask or take from any of them or as many as they like. He refills it regularly. It boooombs on the Vulcan-ish planet, but Huud encourages him and says it'll be popular with the right audience. He also has one of his Huud Moments (these are "Right Opinions about Art" moments but they are right opinions about Art) where he talks about the importance of art that is specifically for children, differentiated from art that is accessible to children, and how it is significant to produce art that is designed for the sensibilities of children. We also learn about the Kekoi, who I take it to be either like wookies or werewolves. They seem overwhelmingly to be jesters in the troupe and they like comedies, primarily. But we also encounter Kekoi on other words who seem to be skeezy normal businessmen. No race is a monolith, although certain races have apparent tendencies or dominant cultures. Special attention is paid to the Stomalites. Okay, so--here's a thing. When these cultures are inspired by Earth cultures (by the author, I mean this in a meta way), how good or bad is that? Especially if they're making a point about these cultures in a meta way and how their art is perceived and consumed? That's hard to answer. Snake People Planet seems to have a very Native American/Aborigine? sensibility. In fact, the way that the snake people go through predictable color morphs as they age seems to be a Rainbow Serpent reference. (Yes, Quetzalcoatl is a snake also but they don't seem very Aztec or anything, so I don't include that one.) The Stomalites, though, feel very much like... maybe the Himba or the Oromo? I do not know enough about African tribes to make a good guess. I feel the author knows more about this than I do. But I feel that's very deliberate, and it would be hard not to see the parallels that are drawn there, even though they have dark green skin (and tightly-curled black hair). Okay, so this is not Star Trek, by the way: they visit planets with cultures and economies that don't have FTL travel or even their own space travel. (People seem to mostly use Belian ships.) So the snake people (Droos) and Stomalites both don't seem to have this level of technology on their own, but the Droos at least are happy to use it. Don't know what they traded for it or whatever. But the Stomalites don't seem to have advanced technology or use it. You can go to their world and visit, and there's a spaceport, but it's mostly (completely?) inhabited by aliens. Many of the aliens are trying to sell tchotchkes and various other things that capitalize on the Stomalite culture and the mystique that surrounds it. The Stomalites apparently have this amazing form of dance that's basically perfect, and they can achieve spiritual peace (but not all of them) and are then known as Peaceful Ones. Mikk encounters a Kekoi who lives on this world who is mangy and has pulled a lot of his hair out because he's actually tried to understand their culture and appears to have gone a bit mad over it. Mikk is actually there to perform for the Stomalites, who appreciate it, but in their own kind of odd and reserved way. He also meets a Stomalite friend of Huud's who agrees to teach him some of their special dance, but asserts that it's mostly self-directed, not taught, and there's only so much he can do. He explains that the dance allows one to tap into spiritual emptiness. Mikk gets interested in that dance and learns a bit but certainly doesn't master it. He becomes interested in a specific woman there, a mother of eight, who doesn't talk to him but messes with him a bit by showing off pieces of the dance. They don't have sex. Anyway, this section is written in an interesting way, it actually seems to be forgiving of people who come to observe but very harsh on those who come to capitalize. Oh, also we learn there are only seven million Stomalites, so not a ton over the whole planet. They live in stone huts and farm. They don't seem to have any particular interest in doing anything else. Is this condescending from an author whose race admittedly I din't know and didn't look up? who's to say. There's also Default Space Elf Planet, the Belians. They're blue and have five-jointed hands. Their culture seems pretty accessible to us, they like dramas and a broader range of art. this is the planet where Mikk burns his dick!
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Jun 12, 2020 04:40
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Turns out, humans are considered genuinely short-lived, it does come up. And it hasn't been very long since First Contact, so not every alien species is welcome or wants to go there. But we haven't gone to Earth yet, we just happen to be told this in passing. So bear that in mind when I say, it's one hundred years, approximately, before Mikk returns to the Snake Planet of Droos and gets to see Thissizz again, who is now not coral-colored but is blue-colored. they loving nail each other! you go, book!! yeah!! you committed to this as part of your premise and you do NOT mess around! I applaud your bravery. also good for you, because scifi genre fiction has a lot of weird sex, but this is happy weird sex that isn't really... ethically askew. but oh my gosh, they're basically like "oh thank christ you're back leeeet's do it" and then they go into, like, a bit of detail of being like "okay though admittedly let's be careful because anatomically this is some pretty new ground we're going to be navigating with one another lmao!" I get it now. Good job, book. It's our own personal cowardice that makes us afraid to recommend this book to other people we know, like, in real life, predicated on them talking about safe snake loving. And I accept that. (I'll post more bits and pieces directly, later.)
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Jun 12, 2020 04:45
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moments of octopus person Maya as she helps mikk with his dick burns 
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Jun 14, 2020 01:42
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I was trying to find a reaction gif to appropriately capture my reaction to that last page, and stumbled on this one. Pretend the lady/armadillo monster is the book and that truck is me.
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Jun 14, 2020 22:54
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hey the book's good lmao
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Jun 25, 2020 05:36
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