threemonkeys (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threemonkeys) wrote2007-09-10 01:54 pm
threemonkeys) wrote2007-09-10 01:54 pm
Entry tags:
Tightrope
Justina Robson’s Living Next Door to the God of Love fits into a grouping of books which has often frustrated me. That is a group which involves characters who are supposedly vastly superior to humans. We are talking about books where gods, superior aliens or hyper evolved (transcended) humans are core or even POV characters in the book. You can immediately see where the problem lies – how do you present the thoughts of a character who is by definition so beyond us that its motivations are beyond your comprehension. I’m borrowing from the vocabulary of such books in using these terms.
One common way to handle this is to declare godhood and then ignore it. Treating the powerful as if they are ordinary people, or more commonly, spoiled children. Another approach is to handle the incomprehensible by writing in an incomprehensible fashion. This approach is usually characterised by lots of vague or undefined terms or streams of fragmentary consciousness. Another way to go is to ignore the consciousness aspect altogether and concentrate on the mechanical super-power aspects. None of these are really satisfactory but then you have to ask, is it really possible to do justice to the indescribable?
So how does Justina Robson handle the four dimensional aspects of beings which operate in seven dimensions in an eleven dimensional space which does not include a conventional time dimension and which can accommodate the simultaneous consciousness of all the intelligences which have been assimilated into it? All this as the humans involved inhabit a bubble universe which changes its aspect to reflect the subconscious of those it houses. The answer is “surprisingly well”. By taking elements of all the above approaches and multi-threading the narrative so that the thoughts of the superbeings are contrasted with the humans they interact with, a tale of personal discovery can be told.
Sure, it is a bit of a talk-fest where the narrative gets bogged down a bit. Sure there are a few moments where the constraints to keep the scope human seem a bit arbitrary. Sure there are a few magic-like moments where explanation is replaced by unexplained terms. But the overall effect is pretty damn impressive. I really enjoyed this book – both for the tale being told and the sheer skill demonstrated by the author in keeping the balance between the needs of the more-than-human story and the human audience.
One common way to handle this is to declare godhood and then ignore it. Treating the powerful as if they are ordinary people, or more commonly, spoiled children. Another approach is to handle the incomprehensible by writing in an incomprehensible fashion. This approach is usually characterised by lots of vague or undefined terms or streams of fragmentary consciousness. Another way to go is to ignore the consciousness aspect altogether and concentrate on the mechanical super-power aspects. None of these are really satisfactory but then you have to ask, is it really possible to do justice to the indescribable?
So how does Justina Robson handle the four dimensional aspects of beings which operate in seven dimensions in an eleven dimensional space which does not include a conventional time dimension and which can accommodate the simultaneous consciousness of all the intelligences which have been assimilated into it? All this as the humans involved inhabit a bubble universe which changes its aspect to reflect the subconscious of those it houses. The answer is “surprisingly well”. By taking elements of all the above approaches and multi-threading the narrative so that the thoughts of the superbeings are contrasted with the humans they interact with, a tale of personal discovery can be told.
Sure, it is a bit of a talk-fest where the narrative gets bogged down a bit. Sure there are a few moments where the constraints to keep the scope human seem a bit arbitrary. Sure there are a few magic-like moments where explanation is replaced by unexplained terms. But the overall effect is pretty damn impressive. I really enjoyed this book – both for the tale being told and the sheer skill demonstrated by the author in keeping the balance between the needs of the more-than-human story and the human audience.
Some unsolicited opinions...
Human religions flourish in part because deep in their hearts most theists don't really believe their gods are actually gods. They think they are just more powerful, and sometimes idealized, humans. It is often explicit in the religion that we are made in the form of the gods, justifying this similarity, by us being merely weaker version of the gods.
IMO the way to write god-like beings is not to write incomprehensibly, or to water them down, but to not to attempt to justify or apply human morality to the being's actions and not make the being's actions neccesarily comprehensible.
For instance your average incomprehensible being might prevent the destruction of the planet by alien invaders, cure someone's cancer, and then proceed to dissect a small girl in front of her mother, leaving the bloody remains in her hands.
You can have humans in these stories attempt to provide justification for the being's actions, Or you can have the being explain themselves, if they can be bothered, which would need to be filtered and analogized so the recipient can understand, as any competent super being would both know and be able to do. If such a being is giving you incomprehensible explanations, it is probably doing it on purpose. Or it's not as clever as it would like you to think it is.
Just don't try to write a story where the being is a point of view character, unless you're going to give the being a reason to try and explain the sequence of events in the story to a human or similar.
BTW the bible is actually quite good at this. The one argument for the veracity of the bible I can accept is that the creature called "God" does not act in ways that make sense to a moral human. While this makes me not like the creature, it is far more believable as a god-like being that way. :)
Re: Some unsolicited opinions...
Or, you can view the bible as a reflection of how the definition of "moral" for human society has changed since the time the bible was written. This requires the view that morality is the product of society and not an absolute.
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What is the basic story with this one?
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Sorry, I'm not big on plot outlines and sometimes I forget that others like them. Part of the reason I don't really consider what I write to be reviews - just some personal musings.
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Just asked because I had seen a couple of people mention her recently in a non-cyborg elf context as being good, which was why I was interested.
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