SF/F Review - The Terraformers
The Terraformers, by Annalee Newitz
Synopsis: A satire focusing on a 21st century environmentalist cult that survives 50,000 years into the future. Written as three novellas following three cult members with century+ gaps between them, as the world they’re on is terraformed.
Book Review: OMG this is epic. Imagine a modern-day hardcore environmentalist group, who reified their culture and priorities into a religion-ish belief system, and kept it unchanged fifty-thousand years into the future. How do you possibly have that make any sense? Answer: you write a satire that deadpan lampoons the hell out of them.
The book starts out great, we meet a Ranger and her talking-moose mount, tasked with protecting a planet that’s being terraformed. They encounter a trespasser screwing up a valley with poaching and dumping. This dude is a self-entitled prick who thinks he has rights to the whole planet due to his human heritage, and eventually our Ranger shoots him dead and moves on (it’s OK, he deserved it, plus the human body is a remote drone, the actual person is off-planet and fine). This is awesome and we cheer.
In drawing us in with this excellent Justice Well Served scene, Newitz perfectly sets us up for the twist of this first section of this novel. Because by the end of it we realize that this prick was a mirror being held up to our protagonist. She is also self-entitled and thinks her group has rights to the whole planet due to their heritage, and seizes as much of it as she can by force because she thinks it should be hers. It’s a brilliant turn-around.
The other two parts of the three-part novel aren’t quite as good, because the set ups and twists don’t have the same flair. However there are non-stop send ups of the absolute absurdities of an environmentalist cult, which made it fun to read anyway.
The thing about all this is, a majority of my book club didn’t realize this was a satire. So lets dig into that part for a bit.
OK, wow, that got way too long. I’m making “Yes, Obviously The Terraformers Is A Satire, I Mean Come On” into a separate post. It has spoilers. I’m not sure how much they matter… the fun of something like Harrison Bergeron or Idiocracy isn’t any sort of reveal (“dumb people do dumb things” isn’t a surprise), its in watching the shenanigans (It’s What Plants Crave!). But for the record, it has spoilers.
To summarize, it’s a decent satire, with a number of truly outlandish gags that made me actually lol while talking about them in book club. But it feels a bit too heavy-handed, probably because we don’t have a good view-point character that we can sympathize with. Whisper (the sidekick talking moose) was the best character, and wasn’t around for much. The decision to switch protagonists with every novella was strange, because its unnecessary in a world without aging, and didn’t serve the story in any way. Even worse, Newitz didn’t put in the work to make us care about the protagonists of parts 2 and 3, and I’m not sure why. (Maybe in an earlier draft the novel did follow the same character the whole way through so it wasn’t necessary?) Also, aside from a delicious taste in the first few chapters, we got almost nothing about any aspect of terraforming, whether it be technical, economic, or societal. That’s fine for a satire, but I really would have enjoyed more of that.
So, while it has its moments, overall Not Recommended.
Book Club Review: I cannot stop grinning when I think about the meeting we had. It was so much fun! Everyone agreed the book is ridiculous, including the Newitz fans (apparently her previous work is astounding, and I plan to read it!). The big debate was “Is this intentionally a satire??” And like… Obviously It’s A Satire! Every time someone brought up another crazy absurdity I would nod and say “Yeah, exactly! How are you not seeing this?” I think ultimately a great time was had by all, because it’s impossible not to laugh at some of these things (biodegradable train tracks!!!) regardless of how you feel about the intent.
A lot depends on how charitable your reading group is. If everyone is happy to have a good time and take silliness as a sign of a writer having fun, this’ll work well. If people are feeling threatened by culture war stuff in their social group, they might be more inclined to just be exasperated. It is yet another example of Poe’s Law—that parody and fanaticism are indistinguishable to an outside observer. Which, in itself, is kinda fun to witness again. :) I think likely Not Recommended for most people in 2023, but in a few years time, or if you have a solidly fun group, could tip over into Recommended!