HADRON AGE SF (74)
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November 9, 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.
Aliette de Bodard’s The Red Scholar’s Wake (2023).
After the suspicious death of her human wife, Huan, the Red Scholar — director of the pirate alliance’s fearsome Red Banner — a sentient pirate spaceship, Rice Fish, seeks to discover who among the alliance has turned traitor. Having recently captured Xích Si, a bot maker and data analyst turned space scavenger by cruel necessity, Rice Fish proposes to marry her… thus offering Xích Si her life and freedom in exchange for aid in her quest. Even if we didn’t know that this is a romance sf novel, we’d suspect that some bodices would be ripped. Loosely inspired by the South China Coast pirates and their troubled relationship with late-18th century Vietnam, in this yarn we discover that the pirate alliance — whose stronghold, the Citadel, is protected by an asteroid belt — originally came into existence because of the harshness of life under the tyrannical An O empire. (Its rival, the Đại Việt Empire, trains and supports the pirate fleet, which preys on the An O’s merchants and scavengers.) Some of the pirates — including Rice Fish and the late Red Scholar — justify their way of life by working to ensure that the Citadel is an egalitarian social order, and that the pirates obey a certain code in their dealings with captured ships and crews; others are simply bloodthirsty. While Xích Si, who fears for her daughter’s fate, races to ascertain which of the pirates is a traitor, Rice Fish must negotiate political struggles and scheming among her fellow pirates. Will this alliance of convenience turn into true love? Can a ship and a human have a future? There’s a terrific villain, Kim Thông, and thrilling space battles and negotiations too.
Fun facts: De Bodard, who is of French and Vietnamese descent, sets many of her stories — like this one — in the “Xuya continuity,” where Vietnamese culture has become dominant and spaceships form families. Tom Hunter, prize director for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award, had the following to say about this novel: “If there’s one book on this year’s list that… reminds us why we first fell in love with the genre and all its most popular tropes while still being highly original and distinctly voiced, this is that book.”
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.