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asakiyumeThese thoughts will make most sense if you've already read Ann Leckie's Translation State. They may be comprehensible even if you haven't--but you have to not mind spoilers. With that warning...
The Presger Translators from Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe are interesting creations. Biologically, they’re essentially human—practically indistinguishable. This gives them the equipment to interface with humans and, apparently, other aliens who are more like humans than they are like the Presger.
But there are also non-human things about the Presger Translators, as we see in Translation State. For example to become fully grown, they need to merge with another of their kind. The merged being occupies two bodies. This goes along with what we’re told about the Presger: that they can’t or don’t really conceive of humanity (and other alien beings) as individuals. To them, we’re a mass noun, like soup or space or happiness.
Then there’s the fact that juvenile Presger Translators have a habit of dismembering and sometimes eating vulnerable peers. They do this not out of malice but out of insatiable curiosity about what’s inside. And eating a peer allows you to have some aspect of their consciousness, so that’s also a sort of knowing. In fact, Qven, the juvenile Presger Translator character we follow, wonders why they can’t just eat a teacher to acquire knowledge rather than go through the tedium of classes. The fact that adult Presger Translators can swallow a broken thing and then regurgitate it whole shows another difference between Presger Translators and ordinary humans: their knowing a thing in this visceral way somehow gives them the ability to reconstitute it.
The Presger also have a different relationship with space than humanity and the other humanlike aliens, as evidenced by the Presger Translators’ ability to make paths, pocket spaces, and portals as needed (the three p’s—paths, pockets, and portals). Absolutely not a power ordinary humans have.
So that’s the stress and struggle inherent in growing up a Presger Translator: you have human hardware and elements of human mentality (like establishing hierarchies, making many familiar human ills, like favoritism and envy, possible), but also a fair dose of Presger mentality, and some Presger skills. The fact that these two things sit together so uncomfortably makes for the plot of a good third (and more) of Translation State.
We readers are humans, not Presger, so it’s understandable that Ann Leckie should approach the Presger Translator characters’ plights and feelings from a human perspective, as in this reflection on the part of Qven regarding dismembering peers:
There’s some pretty clear judgment here: Adults shouldn’t let children dismember each other. We human readers readily agree … but apparently it’s seen as an ordinary part of growing up among most Presger Translators.
The equation of this behavior with bullying in our own world is clear in the following:
We readers know what’s wrong with that line of thought, and Ann Leckie knows we know. We’re being tacitly assured that it’s all right for us to deplore this mentality and behavior among the Presger Translators, just as we would among humans. Furthermore, since we witness another character who’s biologically a juvenile Translator manage to control the urge to dismember and consume, we’re also being invited to imagine that there’s no need for the Translator culture to be the way it is.
After all, IRL human cultures change all the time, and one way they’ve changed is that by and large, they’ve have moved away from condoning victimization of the weak. We’re still kind of on the fence as a species when it comes to victimization of outsiders, but at least in principle, most cultures agree that hurting people should be avoided as much as possible.
(Not that anyone in the story ever suggests that Presger Translator culture should or will change. The story is about individual cases. But that’s how change begins.)
I feel weirdly conflicted about this situation, and maybe like arguing with the worldbuilding a little. I wish Leckie had portrayed the juvenile behavior as more than just urges which, with effort and better adult oversight, they could control. I wish there was more cost to the choice not to engage in that behavior. Because as it is, it feels a little bit like a bullying-is-wrong lesson meets Green Eggs and Ham: you mustn’t do it in a box, you mustn’t do it to a fox, you mustn’t do it here or there, you mustn’t do it anywhere. Which, okay! True! But when I’m being shown people who have some truly alien characteristics, I don’t want the alienness to be snatched away, all so I can apply human standards of behavior to them.
In the same way that dismemberment and cannibalism map onto bullying, other key events in Qven’s late adolescence map onto other typical human misfortunes (actually, they straight up are those things): suffering an assault, being lied to by authorities, feeling trapped by unbearable alternatives. Storywise, that’s fine, but worldbuilding-wise, it’s a bit disappointing. All the Presger Translator characters’ motivations are so entirely comprehensible, so entirely recognizably human, and so completely devoid of any reference to or thoughts about the Presger side of things that we might as well be dealing with just another human civilization. These guys are our interface with the incomprehensible and dangerous Presger… but we don’t feel that or see any evidence of that.
Two other things bothered me in Qven’s storyline (actually, both these things spill over into the other storylines as well). The first is the way it leaned into the right to individual self-determination.
“What? Asakiyume, don’t you believe in the right to individual self-determination?”
–why yes, I absolutely do. So much so that for me, it doesn’t even feel like a real issue unless you add something to make it an issue. And we don’t get that here. (There are obstacles, but they’re legal or technical, not intellectually or emotionally compelling.) We super-duper don’t get it with Reet’s storyline: he’s lived an impeccable life as a human; I highly doubt any readers feel ambivalent about whether or not he should be allowed to continue to do so. But even with Qven, the parallels in Qven’s life to human experience are so overwhelmingly strong and Qven’s misery so palpable that of course readers are going to want out for Qven as well. So the story reinforces the point of view we’re culturally predisposed to have. I mean, the novel’s definitely not alone in that—most novels, movies, etc., do too—but I guess I believe that Ann Leckie could do more/better if she felt like it.
The other thing that bothered me was how inexorable the salutary effect of family love was. Reet’s loving family extends physical and figurative embraces to Qven … and that turns out to be exactly what Qven needed.
Well dang! They love you AND they respect your choices.
Don’t get me wrong: I do like Reet’s family. But for me the effect of those scenes strayed close to “We just need to get you away from your savage upbringing and treat you right and all will be well.” I know that’s the farthest thing from Leckie’s intention. So it makes me wonder if maybe I’m reading the Presger Translators exactly wrong: maybe what the story is hinting at is that there shouldn’t even be Presger Translators—not if having them means the wholesale mistreatment of beings who could, in other circumstances, grow up with love, warmth, etc. Maybe there needs to be a different sort of interface with the Presger. This isn’t anything that gets discussed in the book, but maybe that’s what’s implied by the storytelling choices. I came looking for alienness, but maybe what Leckie really wanted to show was another sort of enslavement.
Sometimes I argue with a book, but it’s a fun kind of arguing. That’s how I felt about Translation State. Thanks for coming along for my musings.
The Presger Translators from Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe are interesting creations. Biologically, they’re essentially human—practically indistinguishable. This gives them the equipment to interface with humans and, apparently, other aliens who are more like humans than they are like the Presger.
But there are also non-human things about the Presger Translators, as we see in Translation State. For example to become fully grown, they need to merge with another of their kind. The merged being occupies two bodies. This goes along with what we’re told about the Presger: that they can’t or don’t really conceive of humanity (and other alien beings) as individuals. To them, we’re a mass noun, like soup or space or happiness.
Then there’s the fact that juvenile Presger Translators have a habit of dismembering and sometimes eating vulnerable peers. They do this not out of malice but out of insatiable curiosity about what’s inside. And eating a peer allows you to have some aspect of their consciousness, so that’s also a sort of knowing. In fact, Qven, the juvenile Presger Translator character we follow, wonders why they can’t just eat a teacher to acquire knowledge rather than go through the tedium of classes. The fact that adult Presger Translators can swallow a broken thing and then regurgitate it whole shows another difference between Presger Translators and ordinary humans: their knowing a thing in this visceral way somehow gives them the ability to reconstitute it.
The Presger also have a different relationship with space than humanity and the other humanlike aliens, as evidenced by the Presger Translators’ ability to make paths, pocket spaces, and portals as needed (the three p’s—paths, pockets, and portals). Absolutely not a power ordinary humans have.
So that’s the stress and struggle inherent in growing up a Presger Translator: you have human hardware and elements of human mentality (like establishing hierarchies, making many familiar human ills, like favoritism and envy, possible), but also a fair dose of Presger mentality, and some Presger skills. The fact that these two things sit together so uncomfortably makes for the plot of a good third (and more) of Translation State.
We readers are humans, not Presger, so it’s understandable that Ann Leckie should approach the Presger Translator characters’ plights and feelings from a human perspective, as in this reflection on the part of Qven regarding dismembering peers:
We found a way. The first Middle I saw opened up was an unpopular, inoffensive creature whose only crime, I thought, was being weak. Now I suspect their real crime was being not sufficiently zealously protected by those Adults who’d cared for us when we were Tinies and Littles and Smalls.
There’s some pretty clear judgment here: Adults shouldn’t let children dismember each other. We human readers readily agree … but apparently it’s seen as an ordinary part of growing up among most Presger Translators.
The equation of this behavior with bullying in our own world is clear in the following:
They weren’t the only Middle that happened to. But of course it never happened to me. Not even the threat of it. I assumed—if I thought about it at all—that I was just better than those victims. That there had been something fundamentally consumable about them.
We readers know what’s wrong with that line of thought, and Ann Leckie knows we know. We’re being tacitly assured that it’s all right for us to deplore this mentality and behavior among the Presger Translators, just as we would among humans. Furthermore, since we witness another character who’s biologically a juvenile Translator manage to control the urge to dismember and consume, we’re also being invited to imagine that there’s no need for the Translator culture to be the way it is.
After all, IRL human cultures change all the time, and one way they’ve changed is that by and large, they’ve have moved away from condoning victimization of the weak. We’re still kind of on the fence as a species when it comes to victimization of outsiders, but at least in principle, most cultures agree that hurting people should be avoided as much as possible.
(Not that anyone in the story ever suggests that Presger Translator culture should or will change. The story is about individual cases. But that’s how change begins.)
I feel weirdly conflicted about this situation, and maybe like arguing with the worldbuilding a little. I wish Leckie had portrayed the juvenile behavior as more than just urges which, with effort and better adult oversight, they could control. I wish there was more cost to the choice not to engage in that behavior. Because as it is, it feels a little bit like a bullying-is-wrong lesson meets Green Eggs and Ham: you mustn’t do it in a box, you mustn’t do it to a fox, you mustn’t do it here or there, you mustn’t do it anywhere. Which, okay! True! But when I’m being shown people who have some truly alien characteristics, I don’t want the alienness to be snatched away, all so I can apply human standards of behavior to them.
In the same way that dismemberment and cannibalism map onto bullying, other key events in Qven’s late adolescence map onto other typical human misfortunes (actually, they straight up are those things): suffering an assault, being lied to by authorities, feeling trapped by unbearable alternatives. Storywise, that’s fine, but worldbuilding-wise, it’s a bit disappointing. All the Presger Translator characters’ motivations are so entirely comprehensible, so entirely recognizably human, and so completely devoid of any reference to or thoughts about the Presger side of things that we might as well be dealing with just another human civilization. These guys are our interface with the incomprehensible and dangerous Presger… but we don’t feel that or see any evidence of that.
Two other things bothered me in Qven’s storyline (actually, both these things spill over into the other storylines as well). The first is the way it leaned into the right to individual self-determination.
“What? Asakiyume, don’t you believe in the right to individual self-determination?”
–why yes, I absolutely do. So much so that for me, it doesn’t even feel like a real issue unless you add something to make it an issue. And we don’t get that here. (There are obstacles, but they’re legal or technical, not intellectually or emotionally compelling.) We super-duper don’t get it with Reet’s storyline: he’s lived an impeccable life as a human; I highly doubt any readers feel ambivalent about whether or not he should be allowed to continue to do so. But even with Qven, the parallels in Qven’s life to human experience are so overwhelmingly strong and Qven’s misery so palpable that of course readers are going to want out for Qven as well. So the story reinforces the point of view we’re culturally predisposed to have. I mean, the novel’s definitely not alone in that—most novels, movies, etc., do too—but I guess I believe that Ann Leckie could do more/better if she felt like it.
The other thing that bothered me was how inexorable the salutary effect of family love was. Reet’s loving family extends physical and figurative embraces to Qven … and that turns out to be exactly what Qven needed.
“It’s not like with you,” I [Qven] said. “Not like Reet had, not like in the shows. We don’t have…” We didn’t have parents to kiss us and tuck us in. “We don’t have that.”
[later]
Mom looked at me closely, and then put her hand on my shoulder and kissed my cheek. She said, “I don’t want you to, but it’s your choice. Tell us if you need anything.”
Well dang! They love you AND they respect your choices.
Don’t get me wrong: I do like Reet’s family. But for me the effect of those scenes strayed close to “We just need to get you away from your savage upbringing and treat you right and all will be well.” I know that’s the farthest thing from Leckie’s intention. So it makes me wonder if maybe I’m reading the Presger Translators exactly wrong: maybe what the story is hinting at is that there shouldn’t even be Presger Translators—not if having them means the wholesale mistreatment of beings who could, in other circumstances, grow up with love, warmth, etc. Maybe there needs to be a different sort of interface with the Presger. This isn’t anything that gets discussed in the book, but maybe that’s what’s implied by the storytelling choices. I came looking for alienness, but maybe what Leckie really wanted to show was another sort of enslavement.
Sometimes I argue with a book, but it’s a fun kind of arguing. That’s how I felt about Translation State. Thanks for coming along for my musings.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 05:53 am (UTC)What happens if they don't? Do they remain perpetually juvenile or do they just die, like a caterpillar failing to pupate?
I wish there was more cost to the choice not to engage in that behavior.
It would have been neat to link the ability to carry something of a consciousness which you have just consumed to the ability to function as a Translator, in that mode of visceral knowing which you mention in context of broken objects; otherwise it does just sound in-world like an unfortunate side effect of grafting Presger traits onto an essentially human baseline and extra-diegetically like a metaphor. Do adult Translators feel the need to dismember and/or consume their peers or the people they meet?
But for me the effect of those scenes strayed close to “We just need to get you away from your savage upbringing and treat you right and all will be well.”
I hope that isn't the pit into which this narrative has fallen, that it actually is doing something more complicated, because the insistence of so much science fiction that the mainstream mores of the dominant culture which produced the writer are the right way to be human turns me off so fast, I still fight with parts of Star Trek about it.
Your discussion of this novel makes me feel that if I read it, I would come away wanting a little non-judgmental cannibalism, as a treat.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 12:37 pm (UTC)Re: the science fiction pit, well yeah. I kind of feel like it does fall into it, because of trying so hard to insist that biology isn't destiny. In the story, all the bad guys think biology is destiny, bad guys being the Rachaai state, the Presger Translator culture, and radical activists for oppressed groups--these latter not counting as bad guy except when they're threatening everyone to get their way. All the good guys are right-thinking individuals who just know how to appreciate individual rights to self determination ... well, that's not quite fair: there are representatives for entities who benefit from that particular point of view. I guess the negative side of the balance is more salient. It's thumb on the scales when, in addition to voicing the point of view the readers are primed to disagree with, the Radchaai Ambassador is an arrogant, contemptuous jerk.
And honestly, the cannibalism and dismembering really seem in there just to be horrifying. "What's the most horrifying thing that I can have this culture do? Oh, I know!" But it's like the Kate Beaton cartoon about gears on steampunk designs. You want it/them to DO SOMETHING. The one Presger Translator character who's grown up without knowing the truth of his biology has never once dismembered or eaten anyone. And he's Just Fine. And on the one hand, Qven describes this insatiable curiosity you have when you're pre-teen ... but on the other hand, the descriptions of a victimized person are so distressing, and Qven's thoughts about it so judgmental (as shown above) that there's no freedom to see this as other than awful. There seems to be no point to the cannibalism/dismemberment within the story, and extra-diegetically (what a great word, I will now use it freely), the best spin I can put on it is "this way of doing an interface with the Presger is bad because it victimizes everyone who has to act as an interface."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 06:29 pm (UTC)Translator culture sounds full of science fictional premises which I am interested in exploring and Ann Leckie obviously is not, because if a non-Translator can survive the merge, that sounds like an amazing problem for a pair of people to be stuck with.
It's thumb on the scales when, in addition to voicing the point of view the readers are primed to disagree with, the Radchaai Ambassador is an arrogant, contemptuous jerk.
I mean, on the one hand that sounds true to form, but on the other, I understand what that does to the argument.
The one Presger Translator character who's grown up without knowing the truth of his biology has never once dismembered or eaten anyone. And he's Just Fine.
How is it handled by the culture he's raised by? Just as distressing, intrusive thoughts? Interesting that the merge is biologically inexorable while eating people can be avoided without consequence, even though the merge itself sounds as though it could entail body horror and certainly a complicated sense of self. (Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun contains a mechanism whereby cannibalism confers the lingering shared consciousness of another person, which is what I realized that aspect of juvenile Translator life reminded me of.)
extra-diegetically (what a great word, I will now use it freely)
It's so useful!
the best spin I can put on it is "this way of doing an interface with the Presger is bad because it victimizes everyone who has to act as an interface."
It sounds like a didactic novel either way.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 06:45 pm (UTC)But I'd like the science/ontological questions, too. That was one thing I really loved in The Raven Tower--her look at divinities.
It' really not clear how the Presger translator society handles the urges. On the one hand, when the Presger Translators are young juveniles, minders are always saying things like "don't bite off their finger!" but on the other hand, everyone does do it. Maybe it's a kids-will-be-kids thing? Maybe kind of like premarital sex, or getting into fights? Except that we know what premarital sex means; we understand what getting into fights is about. We know why toddlers grab toys and push each other over. But we don't--well, *I* don't--get what the cannibalism and dismemberment mean.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 07:12 pm (UTC)When I wrote "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts," I decided to keep the Innsmouth practice of human sacrifice, as charged in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." I did think about it: Anson is Jewish, the lens through which the relationship of the Deep Ones and their Innsmouth descendants is written comes obviously from the Diaspora; I did not want to write myself into blood libel. But it was important to me that there be something in their culture that wasn't just a misunderstanding or a canard, even if the sacrifices are chosen from within the community, by lot, from a pool of volunteers—less to defuse the horror than because of my imprinting on the idea that an unconsenting sacrifice has no force; some non-deep beachcomber who doesn't know from the sea's blood does ritually zilch—and would still never have justified the miniature genocide that was the government's destruction of Innsmouth. Practicing human sacrifice does not disqualify a culture from civilization. It just makes everyone very uncomfortable to admit it, especially when they have to acknowledge their own local equivalent. In that sense I wasn't writing anything especially alien, but I did want it to be there.
But we don't--well, *I* don't--get what the cannibalism and dismemberment mean.
Has Leckie talked about it in interviews or on her own blog at all?
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 09:03 pm (UTC)Re: Ann Leckie and commentary, I don't know. I'm not even sure if she keeps a blog--I followed her on LJ, but I don't know if I looked for her here, and I think as the demands of her writing life increased, she stopped posting much. I should look for interviews and see.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 12:00 am (UTC)Thank you. A lot of writing does not feel to me like a process of choices so much as a matter of what feels right and then figuring out why, but in this case there was something to think about.
I'm not even sure if she keeps a blog--I followed her on LJ, but I don't know if I looked for her here, and I think as the demands of her writing life increased, she stopped posting much.
Makes sense. She was keeping a blog around the time of Ancillary Mercy, because I remember reading it, but I don't know if she kept up with it. —Answer looks like yes, but sporadically to the point of years. I wonder how the alien minds panel went.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 12:52 am (UTC)Thanks for the link to this. And yeah, I wonder too: re that panel.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 12:09 am (UTC)He probably would've been a little better off if somebody had been able to explain to him why he constantly thought of eating everybody he saw, but that wouldn't make him fine.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 01:59 pm (UTC)All of her books are thought provoking! She has another novel, The Raven Tower, not set in this universe, that's also good.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-05 11:30 pm (UTC)Your all-in wrestling with a text is my kind of reading, and one that seems very very scarce. I don't know why. But a book podcast* Discord I recently joined is all people listing what they intend to reading, saying what they've just read, coming up with or responding to "reading challenges," or talking about What Book People They Are. Not a place with space for me.
* It's a very good podcast: The Stacks. And I've not only heard wonderful conversations with writers on the podcast, but read loads of excellent books because I heard about them on The Stacks.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-06 12:49 am (UTC)And I'm glad you enjoyed my thoughts. It took me a while to work out what I thought and what I wanted to say.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 03:13 am (UTC)This is indeed the thing! The book feels so concerned with being Humanly Correct about its opinions on these matters -- especially when filtered through Qven -- that it unfortunately does not manage to convince me that there is anything alien about the Presger whatsoever.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 03:23 am (UTC)