Translation State by Ann Leckie

Published by Orbit on June 6, 2023

As liberals and conservatives argue about whether the constructs of male and female are inflexibly determined by biology at birth or have a gender identity component that might be more important than external genitalia, Ann Leckie continues to project the argument into the future. In her future, humans have largely moved beyond what it means to be male or female and are contemplating what it means to be human. Is human identity, like gender identity, a product of a deep inner feeling or does it depend only on genetics?

As Leckie’s fans know, the Presger are not human. They are driven to eat humans and members of other species. A treaty with the Presger took humans and some nonhuman species out of the Presger diet. To communicate with humans, the Presger and the Radchaai (the most powerful group of humans) created Translators — sort of a hybrid of Presger and human — who go through a growth and maturation process that teaches them to interact with humans without eating them. Qven has gone through that process without being eaten by his peers and is approaching the next stage of a young Translator's life.

But then there’s Reet Hluid, the apparent offspring of a human and Presger Translator. He was adopted by a human family after he landed on Zeosen. He has recently been suspected of being a Schan, a lost scion of the ancient rulers of a branch of humans called Hikipi who have long been exploited by a branch called the Phen.

Reet doesn’t think of himself as a Schan or as a Presger Translator, although he comes to accept that a Translator might have been his biological parent. He liked to bite when he was a child but it’s under control now, apart from an occasional urge to rip someone to shreds. Is he human or Presger? Does anyone other than Reet have the right to answer that question? And should he be forced to choose between being human or a Translator? Can’t he choose to be himself?

The parallels to contemporary debates about the right to be who you believe you were born to be are obvious, which is one reason sf fans on the far right are so disdainful of Leckie. After all, the traditional sf hero is a straight white male human who protects weak human females from dangerous aliens who are bent on conquest. There is little room in that mythology for stories that value women or members of other racial/ethnic groups, much less changing notions of sexual identity. Leckie freaked out those fans when she started writing award winning fiction that played with pronouns. It’s ironic that a genre based on opening minds to unexpected possibilities has a vocal minority of fans who believe they are defending tradition by keeping their minds firmly closed.

A number of humans (Hikipi in particular) don’t believe the Presger even exist. The Presger Deniers believe the Radchaai invented the Presger to control the rest of humanity through fear. Perhaps Leckie is mocking people who refuse to believe any fact that is politically inconvenient. The Hikipi seem to have invented a conspiracy theory to explain away facts they don’t like. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

In any event, the Presger Translators must decide what to do about Qven, who has reached an age where he can match (or merge) with another person in a process that— well, as I understand it, the two beings eat each other until they recombine as a single entity that occupies two new bodies. Qven began that process (against his will) with another Translator juvenile and is now regarded as defective.

The Translators would like to dispose of Qven, but they would have to admit that his lineage was a failure and other members of that lineage are loathe to make that concession. They decide instead to give him a chance to match with Reet, whose half human parentage might give him unique insights into human behavior. Neither Qven nor Reet are keen to match with anyone, but they feel comfortable with each other in a way they don’t with anyone else. The theme of feeling isolated as an “outsider” who doesn’t belong to a recognized group is advanced through certain nonhuman characters, as well.

Reet petitions the diplomats at the Treaty Administration Facility to recognize him as a human and to shield him from the Translators. Qven likes that idea, declares himself human, and adds himself to the petition. If people cannot decide upon their own identity, Leckie seems to be asking, does the government have the right to choose their identity for them? Ron DeSantis seems to think the answer is yes.

A Presger Translator argues that if Reet is allowed to live among humans without matching, his offspring may be unable to develop the self-control needed to keep them from eating humans. The story calls to mind objections to interracial marriage, spiced with beliefs that members of certain groups are too uncivilized to let loose in society.

The other key character is Enae Athtur. Forced to uproot after the death of an elderly relative for whom she was caring, Enae is given a cushy job investigating the disappearance two hundred years earlier of a Presger Translator. The Translator, of course, is Reet’s biological parent, a circumstance that eventually puts Enae and Reet together in the Treaty Administration Facility. The novel works its way to a conclusion after the hearing to determine whether Reet is human is disrupted by an assassination attempt and a threatened Hitipi attack upon the facility.

Leckie is an amazing storyteller whose stories of the future reveal important truths about the present. Despite her detractors, it’s heartening that Lecke has so many admirers. She is an imaginative, original writer whose characters are easily relatable (even to many of us cisgender white male readers) because they ask the question that is central to science fiction and perhaps to all literature: What does it mean to be human?

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Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Published by Orbit on October 1, 2013

There are echoes of C.J. Cherryh, Iain Banks, and Frank Herbert in Ancillary Justice. The novel is both familiar and fresh. The writing is powerful and tense. The plot -- about which I will say little, lest I risk spoiling it -- is intelligent and surprising.

The Radchaii are human but they consider themselves superior to other humans. The Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, controls Radch space with the help of thousands of genetically identical, linked bodies. Extra bodies seem handy (wish I had some) but they prove to have unforeseen consequences. The Radch rule by conquest, annexing other human worlds and forcing their inhabitants to join the Radch or to surrender their bodies to be used as ancillaries, otherwise known as corpse soldiers (an ancient practice that has been mostly abandoned). They justify their actions with the belief that they are imposing order and justice on the universe. They control annexed planets by coopting the privileged class, allowing them to retain their social status provided they embrace the Radch. The one exception is Garsedd, a planet the Radch destroyed because the Garseddai posed a threat the Radch could not tolerate.

The protagonist of Ancillary Justice, having been manufactured by the Radchaai, is sometimes a ship called Justice of Toren, sometimes an ancillary called One Esk, sometimes other ancillaries. As the novel begins, however, the protagonist is called Breq. All of those identities should be the same, but Justice of Toren/One Esk/Breq is having an identity crisis. No longer endowed with the abilities of an AI, Breq has the weaknesses of a human ... without quite being human. In the first pages, Breq saves a Radchaai named Seivarden (who once served on Justice of Toren) from hypothermia. The story then alternates between the present (Breq is tracking someone in order to obtain something ... more than that I won't reveal) and a past in which One Esk was serving the Radchaai, who had just used ruthless means to annex a planet called Shis'urna. The final element of the story is the Presger, a race of aliens who once made pests of themselves by dismantling Radch ships.

The novel's background is more intricate than I've sketched out here. It is initially confusing ... but initial confusion caused by complexity is better than boredom caused by pages of exposition. Everything falls into place well before the novel's midway point. Ann Leckie plays with gender and culture in ways that are interesting but subtle. Her prose is robust.

The story builds upon a familiar moral struggle -- whether to follow unjust orders if the penalty for disobedience is death. If doing the right thing will have dire personal consequences, is it best to do the right thing only when it will make a difference? And how does one know whether doing the right will make a difference? These are difficult questions and Ancillary Justice brings them into sharp focus in different ways. More than one character, not all of them human, must make a choice of that nature. Ancillary Justice makes the point that virtue is easy to achieve in the abstract but easily vanishes when the lives of the "virtuous" are at stake. It makes the equally salient point that it is easy to judge when it isn't your life that is at stake. At the same time, this isn't a preachy novel. Leckie leaves it to the reader to draw whatever lessons might be taken from it. The blend of philosophy and adventure, the imaginative culture-building, and the strong characters all add up to an impressive work of science fiction.

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