HADRON AGE SF (72)
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October 18, 2023
One in a series of posts about the 75 best sf adventures published during the genre’s Hadron Age era (from 2004–2023, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s Hadron Age Sci-Fi 75 list (a work in progress), click here.
Ann Leckie’s Translation State (2023).
A standalone adventure set in the far-future world of the Radch — to which the author introduced us via the space opera Ancillary Justice (2013) and its two sequels, as well as via a previous stand-alone, Provenance (2017). Here we meet three POV characters: Enae Athtur (hir pronouns are sie/hir), a lonely and frustrated middle-aged human unexpectedly offered a commission as an accredited diplomat, and sent to find out what happened to a Presger Translator missing these last two hundred years; Reet Hluid (he/his), an adolescent human maintenance worker on a space station who may or may not be biologically a Presger Translator; and Qven (genderless they/them), an adolescent Presger Translator, to whose feral and disturbing (quasi-cannibalistic) typical upbringing we’re privy. The never-seen Presger, about whom we’ve heard in Leckie’s previous books, are a truly inhumane alien species, described as taking enjoyment in “pulling apart” ships, stations, and even humans; only a treaty with the Radch keeps them at bay. Which helps us to understand why everyone is so nervous about Reet; will he start vivisecting others? The Translators, who can only survive to adulthood by merging with another person, thus becoming a single new person in two bodies, are tasked with communicating between the Presger and other species. When Enae’s questions about Reet’s origins lead to his arrest, she joins force with his adoptive family to argue for his right to determine his own fate. Qven, meanwhile, is ordered by the Translator authorities to merge with Reet; but Qven, who is the survivor of an identity-assault, instead seeks to define their own fate… and insists that one’s genetics are not one’s destiny. This is a courtroom drama in which the stakes are one’s identity and personhood; the legal precedents for all of this were established in the other books. When a terrorist organization disrupts the meeting assembled to determine whether Reet and Qven have the right to declare themselves humans, a far-out multidimensional puzzle-adventure transpires.
Fun facts: Qven and Reet bond by watching a trashy pulp adventure series, Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons, a trope from which (“princex in disguise”) inspires Qven’s subsequent actions. In an interview, Leckie has described Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons as a “hat tip” to Martha Wells’s soap-opera obsessed character Murderbot, “because I love Murderbot so much.”
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST HADRON AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES.