A Billion Eves

[cmdr_zoom]

I found the 2007 Hugo Award novella winner, Robert Reed's A Billion Eves, available online. So I read it.

It squicked me a lot, and I'm a guy, who's never had to deal with this stuff personally. By the end, I found myself hoping that the fruit of this fucked-up psuedo-Mormon colonial tree would encounter explorers and colonizers from Old Earth - more organized and, with the benefit of further research into dimensional travel, capable of reliable two-way communication with home - who would straighten things out and/or cut it off at the root. I also found myself thinking maybe it would have been better in the long run if that first group of abductees, and their sleazebag of an abductor, had simply died out.


It's good SF if it makes you angry, right?

Comments

[kireishojo.livejournal.com]

that is thought provoking

[caluche.livejournal.com]

This, or something like this, has happened throughout history to some degree or another. It's often not outright kidnapping to form a colony, but I'm sure that not all of the wives of the various colonists of the historical world actually wanted to move away from civilization.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I'm not happy about the historical (or current) examples of it either, like the cross-border "bride" trade in China these days - amazingly enough, many native-Chinese women would rather move to the prosperous coast and have a life of their own, rather than being some guy's doting little wifey (especially since that guy is likely to be a spoiled one-child-family "little emperor").

[caluche.livejournal.com]

In some ways the abduction described here is actually considerably more merciful than real-world examples which do occur all over the world now. There is considerable person-trafficing in which women are abducted or held against their will in a foreign country and used for (you guessed it) sex. At least in the story the women are turning more or less into equal citizens of a new nation.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I would not call the women in that story equal citizens, except perhaps in the same sense as black Americans circa 1865-1965.

And as noted above, I'm aware that this is going on today, as it has throughout recorded history (and non-recorded, too). I hate it, yet fester in my inability to change it or do anything meaningful about it (posting here in this journal does not count, really).

[caluche.livejournal.com]

It's a little difficult to tell from the story (though I read it quickly) exactly what the function of the women in that society is.

I find it interesting that you reference black Americans 1865-1965 when of course you have a more relevant and direct example - American women prior to suffrage (1920), but that's a side point.

Without being able to determine the government structure and the relationship of the "religion" to the government, it's difficult to tell if they are full citizens with equal rights who are simply not exercizing their power or because of a religious arrangement (apart from the government) or a social arrangement or some other factor.

The story hints at other factors than outright forceful subjugation being the ultimate cause of the situation of the women. As it starts to hint at, the initial colonists were taken against their will and were unarmed, but vastly outnumbered their captor, an impromptu coup d'etat wouldn't have greatly changed their ability to colonize the world (the guy is going to have sex with them and therefore produce children no matter if he is making the rules or they are) and some of the dialogue shows that this is considered.

Do we really think that several dozen women from a socially, economically, and technoogically advanced society would be taken captive and remain subjugated by a single or just a few men?

Presuming that a group of women from the modern US are taken in the same way, and presume that those women don't have any predefiend religious beliefs that would immedately set them as socially inferior - even if the small number of captors are armed when the entire group is initially cut off from the world - do we really believe the women would remain in a subjate state? Is that in fact the message of the story? Even if vastly outnumbered that men will rise to the top of a social situation?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

But they didn't stay vastly outnumbered. And apparently the sons took more after the First Father than their mother(s).

[caluche.livejournal.com]

What was the ratio? 1 sorority house (30? 40?) vs 1-5?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Please read again what I said.

The evidence is that the sons and grandsons (and so on unto the nth generation) took control of the society, with the at least passive consent of their mothers, and that house mother Claire and her attitudes are forgotten except as a secret testament passed down on the women's side.

[caluche.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know, my point is that perhaps for the first time in human history (in the story), women have a direct power advantage over men yet still after generations have gone by, men are in control and the women are in a poor social position.

Claire and Owen arrived at a makeshift sort of truce, the girls don't kill him after they no longer need him, he turns over all his weapons and food. It seems that this is indeed what happened. What happens after that? A young democracy is born, one person, one vote? How do we get from that point in the story to the point where women are routinely kidnapped and even when that doesn't happen, suffer a fairly poor position in society.

The story drops some hints that in a society in which the population needs to grow as rapidly as possible, men might have a social advantage (99 men and 1 woman produce 1 child in a year, 99 women and 1 man produce 99 children in one year, so the saying goes) but after the first several generations that initial imbalance will be equalized. The story takes place 18-odd generations after the First Father's generation.

You postulate that the sons took after the First Father, but in those first couple generations women will numerically outnumber men for a time. Why do the men have the social power? Simply because of the need to reproduce as many humans as possible as quickly as possible? Is that what the story is telling us?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

One, it seems that most of the 18-22 year old sorority girls were not made of the same stuff as Claire, and/or were more concerned with their own offspring, including the male ones.

Two, one of the online reviews I've seen noted that a theme of the story seemed to be a lack of social diversity as well as genetic. The circumstances of the initial abduction seem to have set the tone and/or constricted the conceptual space for all that followed. The same pattern occurs over and over - sometimes with the proper rituals and the blessing of society, but often illegally and almost exactly. The story appears to be saying that (with a very few brave exceptions) we cannot escape our origins.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I read it when it was new. That was a disturbing one. I really had ahard time believing the women wouldn't overpower him and set up a saner society, but it was easy to believe trhat once men achieved supremacy, they'd go to lengths to keep it.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

They might have been able to control Owen, but their own precious sons?

That's where it fell down, IMO.