Book: Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon

I read this fairly quickly over the last two days. Overall I enjoyed it, but I thought the last third of the book detracted from the pleasures of the first two-thirds by being about as subtle as a brickbat in delivering its message.  This review gives a pretty good overview of the plot.

The story is very simple but also hard to categorize and describe. It's one of those books that says a lot with few words. Laconic authors often feel parsimonious to me—their worlds lack sensual detail or their characters are two dimensional—but RP is one of the rare few that I actually found engrossing. Moon created a rather soul crushing history for Ofelia with a few short lines sprinkled in the text (she never defied her parents again after whatever they did to make her give up her scholarship; she wouldn't hide in the bathroom because it was always worse if her husband had to drag her out of hiding).

There are hints of some communal pleasantness. The community made extra meals available for the sick, the women working in the sewing rooms seem to have a nice old-fashioned sewing/chat circle vibe. But overall, the lives and culture of the colonists seem rather bleak and repressive—not because of the many disasters that kill them off, but because of what they do to each other. Again, major events (like the murders of the liberal doctor and the town slut and the colonists’ conspiracy to cover them up) are covered in a few sparse lines. Ofelia is so embedded in the colony’s misogynistic culture that she seems to feel only an indifferent, “too bad, she should have known better” sorrow for the doctor and none for the slut. In truth, I am not sure how horrible the colony was because Ofelia is not an entirely reliable narrator.

The chapters where Ofelia is living on her own, free for the first time in her life, are a breath of fresh air. These are the chapters I enjoyed most. There was one section where she is painting beads and thinks if she had let herself play more as a younger adult, she might have been a better mother. That section really hit me as the best message in the book. It was a natural, organic realization and it really moved me. I think Moon did a good job of not making Ofelia into a paragon and I really enjoyed watching her discover the joys of playing and self-determination.

The chapters where Ofelia meets the aliens and learns to communicate with them are what they are. I empathized with Ofelia’s annoyance that they were intruding on her. But they were interesting and amusing “day in the life” type glimpses into what it might be like to be on the receiving end of alien (or anthropological) study. Ofelia and the aliens learn to communicate with each other fairly easily, which is all right by me as that could have been boring and repetitious if it went on too long.

At times, the presentation of the aliens as half toddler, half noble savage reminded me of certain condescending interpretations of race and colonialism.  But I liked the sections from the alien POV—their conversations feel alien with an interesting communal stream of consciousness.  I have to take dispute with the cover art, though: why do they have owl faces? They aren’t really described, but Moon does mention they have lips—so, no beaks. I pictured them more as lemurs.

The final section where humans come back to the planet were heavy-handed. Moon didn’t make Ofelia a paragon, but she had no such qualms about the noble savages—I mean aliens. The aliens and the new humans are fairly one dimensional in this section. Basically the message of this section is that westerners—I mean humans—have forgotten the importance of respecting their elders and that it takes a village (of elders) to raise a child. Fortunately, the aliens are there to show us a better way by treating Ofelia with more reverence than any human ever did. I’m not saying it’s a bad message, just awkwardly delivered. Also, I think after seeing Ofelia discover the joys of living for herself, to have her existence, indeed the whole purpose of society (at least a higher functioning, happier society), be defined in terms of reproduction and childcare was a letdown. Thank god for babies, if it wasn’t for them, we’d have no reason to exist, much less have a society.

The new humans especially annoyed me. It makes a certain sense that in a colony setting or a city tenement, humans might revert to repressive gender roles enforced by violence and peer pressure. Though I have to wonder why there are horrible, crowded city tenements in civilization with power plants that can make energy (and “fabricators” that can make anything else) out of sewage and trash. If anything, the poorest of the poor should be farmers and foresters, as food and wood seems to be the one thing they can’t make out of nothing.

However, the human expedition was an academic, scientific and diplomatic group. The second in command was supposed to be a woman. Yet the two women from the group act like servile nitwits and engage in the same peer pressure repression of Ofelia’s self-will as the women in her colony and childhood. Yes, I understand that educated academics can be as petty and ignorant as the rest of us, but… These are anthropologists, linguists and xenobiologists. Shouldn’t they have a little training and self-awareness about imposing their culture and cultural expectations on others?

Also, I’ve always found it really hard to swallow (in this or other stories) that a culture that has FTL capabilities and is presumably descended from our own culture has the gender norms of the 1970s. (The book was written in 1997.) I’ve never walked into a room and had someone expect me to serve them a drink, yet hundreds of years from now I would be? When the male leader of the human group is killed at the end, it’s a man who takes over—not the woman who was the nominal second in command. In fact, this woman is so out of touch with herself, she has to be told by Ofelia (wise old woman that she is) that she is in love with and wants to have babies with the guy who takes over. Again with the friggin’ babies, don’t these FTL-travelling academics have test tubes?

Anyways, the end of the book is kind of fast and has a lot of hand-waving. I’m especially curious (not really) how the aliens magically start mass producing goods without the negatives of industrialization.