#thevela — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #thevela, aggregated by home.social.
-
Speculative Anthologies That Get Creative With Gender
Here are 5 fantastic speculative fiction anthologies that get creative with gender concepts.
The post Speculative Anthologies That Get Creative With Gender appeared first on Reactor.
https://reactormag.com/speculative-anthologies-that-get-creative-with-gender/#Blog #anthologies #bookrecommendations #EmbodiedExegesis #gender #genderqueer #InaraLightofUtopia #LGBTQ #LoveaftertheEnd #queerSFF #TheVela
@indieauthors -
So, maybe that makes a difference? At least for me, it makes "The Vela" feel a bit like a story stuck in "good, pure country folk vs. spoiled exploitative city dwellers' mode, especially as the rural outer planets are not responsible for the sun's demise and the terrorists are criminals in other ways as well.
"The Expanse" has a bit of that dynamic in the Martian attitudes too, but it's different: the Martians are neither innocents nor oppressors.
(4/n, n=4)
-
In "The Expanse", we meet the Belters as workers, as an industrial proletariat: as welders and mechanics and miners, represented by unions, and organizing as terrorists as well as a political arm. They live in built, "urban" spaces.
In "The Vela", we meet the outer planet folks a country dwellers: as farmers, hunters, foragers, as living in clans and extended family groups, as singers of songs and tellers of folk tales. Their landscapes are important to them.
(3/n)
-
Living conditions in the outer planets are hostile, so the inners are seen as soft and spoiled, freeloaders having it easy.
So that's a similar setup, isn't it? And we have refugees and ex-military running around in it in both cases, as well as a big technological disruption.
But "The Vela" felt different, and I wondered why.
And I think part of the reason is how and as what we meet the outer planet folks. That makes for different tales.
(2/n)
-
So I managed to find a reason why #TheVela feels so different from #TheExpanse.
The world's framework feels similar: a solar system, with sublight interplanetary travel possible, but usually not fast, using both gravity assists and high-g burns. The outer planets as basically colony worlds, exploited by the inners for water and other materials. Refugee waves if something goes wrong, and prejudice against outer planetary folk in general. Political systems not being democratic.
(1/n)
-
But it's not all grimdark. There are characters who care, even though they make messy compromises. There is stark beauty in different landscapes, in poetry, sweets and family ties. But they are small glimpses against a hostile world.
I liked the gritty realism, even if it's not really what I want right now: the many disabled characters, the many hurts and pains. I liked that literally everyone we know something about is queer. And the major plot twist is neat.
(4/n, n=4)
-
The "Vela" is a refugee ship gone missing, and very probably more than it seems to be - as is Niko, the hapless privileged sidekick of a hard-boiled soldier. And both of them are sweeped up in the system's politics and struggle for the future.
"The Vela" is a climate change allegory, and a depressing one at that. Everyone tries to survive, even if that means leaving others behind; even the ending is nothing more than a desparate scramble of getting out first.
(3/n)
-
As this affects the outer planets first, there are many refugees from the outer into the inner system. Which is being dealt with by letting their scrap ships come apart and putting the ones who make it into overcrowded camps in orbit.
Amidst this backdrop, we follow what's on the surface a rescue mission: Asala (mercenary who's also a refugee from outer planet Hypathia) and Niko (hacker kid of inner planet Khayyam's president) are tasked with finding the "Vela".
(2/n)
-
So, "The Vela", a collaborative science fiction novel written in relatively self-contained chapters by @slhuang, @deuceofgears, Becky Chambers, and Rivers Solomon.
Set in a solar system with many inhabited planets, each with its on distinct politics and culture - without them being monocultures.
But there's a problem here: the sun is slowly going out, because some inner planets overdid the Hydrogen harvesting. This renders the planets uninhabitable one by one.
(1/n)
-
All that quoted poetry between sisters gives me Lieutenant Awn and Basnaaid feelings. Even if the dynamic is quite different, the sibling's connection isn't. (💙)
-
"None of them deserved it, these planets full of bystanders who could only react to a carefully curated window into someone else's game."
Yes.
Don't care much about making this point amidst a rich oppressor city-dwellers vs. good, poor, hard-working farmers dichotomy, though. That's one overused trope, and overused by the wrong people at that.
-
Yeah, that's a grim but probably accurate vision of how we might get to the stars. Not sweeping up by a joint effort, not by a lone scientist's flight of fancy, but... fighting over scraps, everyone trying to leave the others in the dust as they scramble to the lifeboats.
Per aspera ad astra, they say, and here the hardships surely are of our own selfish making.
-
Oh that's a NEAT plot twist, and well-prepared. Given how academia works, it's not quite plausible they managed to keep this quiet, unless it was a military lab doing the research - and I'm not sure the outer planets have the resources for that. On the other hand, who knows? Maybe just no one cared what comes out of there. Even though the scientist had a reputation, apparently. Hm.
-
I like the amount of physical disability we see here. It's reasonable, giving the hard living conditions of so many of these people.
I'm also thinking about #TheExpanse, which is kind of an obvious comparison given the scope and also inner-outer planets power differential. So far, it /feels/ very different, but I can't really out my finger on the why.
Food for thought!
-
"'To my little sister, on her birthday, with love from Dayo'. The words sister and her were written in slightly different ink on neatly cut rectangles of glued paper, which Dayo had covered the original misnomers with a year or so after the gift had been given, after an important conversation had been had."
Awwww 💙 that's the kind of support family should give. Acceptance, pure and simple.
-
"Being in transit was about as close to a vacation as she ever got."
Oh, I get this sentiment, even if coming from a very different angle at it than an aging mercenary - but after starting to work again after K1's birth, that was what I felt like about my commute. An hour just for myself, with neither work nor baby demands. A vacation indeed.
-
I think I like these two characters: the hard-boiled refugee turned mercenary after military service, and the very young, very naive nonbinary rich kid who's into politics and hacking. Both are types, sure, but types done well.
-
Hey, look, it's a climate change allegory! Folks harvesting hydrogen from their sun, slowly destroying it in the process. Their planets becoming uninhabitable one-by-one, creating a slow-burn crisis with waves of refugees from the outer planets coming in.
And everyone knows it'll be their turn at some point, and everyone ignores that.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
-
"People always said Gan-De society was in love with their robots. 'They should use refugees for some of those jobs instead,' some Khayyami liked to say, shaking their heads sadly"
Tells you a lot about both societies, what resources they have, what problems they have, what attitudes exist, I think. Nice.
-
I've finally decided what book to read next: "The Vela", a science fiction novel by @slhuang, Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, and Rivers Solomon. I really like the first two authors (haven't read anything by the others yet), and this sounds like a cool space opera thing?