I have read a lot of space opera by American female science fiction writers. Indeed, some of my favourite space opera novels are by American female science fiction writers: Susan R Matthews, Jay D Blakeney, SN (Shariann) Lewitt, CL Moore, MK Wren, Sydney J Van Scyoc. I’ve read and enjoyed space opera-like works by James Tiptree Jr, Melissa Scott, Jo Clayton, Joan D Vinge, Julian May, even Elizabeth Moon before she went Islamophobic, not to mention one-offs like Michelle Shirey Crean. I’m not sure I’d classify CJ Cherryh as space opera, but her novels remain favourites. At some point during the 1980s, although it was never advertised, the US published a large number of science fiction novels by female writers, many of which could be considered space opera. Some proved successful — Elizabeth Moon, Lois McMaster Bujold— but most quickly faded into obscurity.
Any claims that women have never written science fiction, or, as Brian W Aldiss once said, that one in fifty science fiction writers were female, is complete nonsense. Even before the first issue of Amazing Stories was published in 1926, the most popular science fiction author in the US was female. Her name was Gertrude Barrows Bennet and she published under the name Francis Stevens. Her career has been mostly forgotten, and her stories often lack the rigour expected by modern science fiction readers; but in her time, she was huge.
What has certainly changed in the last couple of decades is that more women science fiction writers are being recognised, and reviewed, and awarded, for their stories and novels. This is obviously a good thing. Even though female book readers, across most genres, have outnumbered male readers for probably more than half a century. And female sf writers have not seriously had to disguise their gender — CL Moore, CJ Cherryh, JK Rowling, etc, notwithstanding (I’m note sure if Andre Norton or Julian May count in this argument) — since the 1950s. Anyway, in the last ten to fifteen years, space operas by female authors have become much more prevalent on award shortlists and recommended reading lists.
Megan O’Keefe is best-known for a space opera trilogy, Velocity Weapon (2019, USA), Chaos Vector (2020, USA) and Catalyst Gate (2021, USA), which, to be honest, sounds more like military sf than space opera — but then so does a lot of twenty-first century US space opera. In other words, her name was known to me, but her books had never seemed like they might appeal. But O’Keefe followed up her Protectorate books with a new trilogy, the Devoured Worlds, which read sort of like heartland science fiction, perhaps even hard sf. And that struck me as much more appealing.
So I gave the first book a go.
Tarquin, implied to be a trans man, is the youngest son of the Mercator family, who control the supply of relkatite, an important mineral used for power supply, FTL, and “patterns”, the subdermal circuitry which allows people to reincarnate in “prints” (new bodies) and upload skills and abilities. Unfortunately, every human-habitable world, known as a “cradle world”, where relkatite has been found is subsequently taken over by the “shroud”, a lichen which kills everything. Rendering the entire planet uninhabitable.
As the novel opens, the shroud has been linked to the mining process used to extract relkatite, and a protest group — more like a political, anti-corporate, terrorist group — has appeared, dedicated to preventing relkatite mining. Tarquin, a trained geologist, is on a mission to the newly-discovered sixth cradle world, but on arrival it’s discovered the shroud has already killed the planet. Then the two Mercator ships on the mission attack each other, and the survivors manage to make it onto the planet’s surface. Where Tarquin learns the truth about relkatite, the shroud, the death of his mother, and the true identity of his personal bodyguard, Lockhart.
I wanted to like this book — and I did, to some extent. But, please, enough of the corporate slavery space opera futures. Iain M Banks had the Culture, a post-scarcity civilisation, but US space opera authors seem incapable of imagining any kind of future which is not ruled by heartless corporations and psychopathic CEOs, often dynastic. US established wealth may be based historically on chattel slavery, and more recently on wage-slavery, but that doesn’t meant there aren’t alternative drivers for economic growth in mid- to far-futures. Banks, an old school Scottish lefty, was certainly capable of imagining a society where it was no longer an issue, but many US authors seem to have trouble conceiving of anything other than late-stage capitalism. The irony is, the US is the oldest democracy on the planet, and yet the future it supposes in its fictions are mostly not democratic.
I’m sick to fucking death of these corporate slavery futures. It’s a complete failure of imagination — in a genre that is allegedly notable for its imagination. There are other futures. And many of them are not systemically unequal. Because, strangely enough, such societies exist on planet Earth even now. They’re not perfect, but they’re not as broken as present-day USA — and it shows a singular paucity of imagination in building future worlds that are as shit as the US in 2024. Universal healthcare is not implausible, it exists. Public transport works in many countries. So does the welfare state. Every trial of Universal Basic Income has shown it makes people’s lives better and benefits the economy. US science fiction should not be a tool to promote the injustices and inequalities of US society.
One might also complain about systemic racism, or homophobia, and transphobia. True, science fiction in 2024 continues to push against those boundaries, to the extent online genre conversations, and awards, privilege works that stretch those systemic limits. This is a wonderful thing. But what good is DEI in a genre that still sees chattel slavery as the default economic model to deploy in space opera stories?
Back in the 1950s, we had Men in Hats science fiction, in which all future worlds bore a remarkable resemblance to 1950s USA, especially when it came to people wearing hats. Even in near future sf, like Arslan (1976, USA), by MJ Engh, the US apparently changes over from cars to horses and carts without a problem, which would be actually impossible in the 1970s, when the book was written and set — but not in the 1930s. As I have repeatedly said, no one wears fucking hats anymore. In Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity (1955, USA) an agent is sent to to the 223rd century to sabotage a clutch on a vehicle, because of course they would still have cars with gearboxes 20,000 years from now. Men in Fucking Hats science fiction is my shorthand phrase for science fiction that embodies all the prejudices and social aspects of the time it was written despite being set in the far future.
It would be unfair to declare The Blighted Stars guilty of this. Some elements, yes; its world-building still supposes a corporatised future in which people live in chattel slavery in all but name. But The Blighted Stars, the entire trilogy, is also hard science fiction, and here it has its moments. The origin of the shroud, when revealed, is unexpected; as indeed is the identity of the villain of the story. Unfortunately, the villain, and I’m not about to spoil the reveal, is implausibly powerful — although again, we’re back to that corporate future.
The Blighted Stars makes rebels of its core cast, and the blurbs of the remaining two books in the trilogy indicate the story lies with them. That makes me feel much more kindly towards the three books. I liked the hard sf situation The Blighted Stars set up, and I thought the explanation it presented was clever and fit the world as described. The tendency to give major characters abilities over and above those available to the rest of the cast struck me as a less desirable characteristic of the subgenre — I don’t like it, I think it weakens the story, but I accept it’s built into the template.
However, the thing about The Blighted Stars is that it harkens back to those female space opera writers I mentioned in the opening paragraph of this review and many of whose books I still love. It’s a twenty-first century equivalent of them in several respects. And I enjoyed it for those reasons. I can’t like this need to invent a future based on the worst excesses of US capitalism, and would sooner see worlds that show a little more political and economic and social invention — Joanna Russ and John Varley were booting this shit out of the park back in the 1970s — but I am, I admit, an old lefty, like Banks, and I want to read about people in the future having lives I can envy, not lives that are worse than mine. Because I don’t understand what that’s trying to tell me. True, there’s little opportunity for drama in a utopia, and stories require drama. But it’s still possible to tell a science fiction story in a world which is better than the Here and Now.
And, once upon time, science fiction was actually known for doing that.
