A Door into Ocean

***MINOR SPOILERS IN REVIEW***

I loved this book. Once I got started on it, I was captivated by the world building, the contrasts, the ethical questions the book asks and it was one of those books that was never far from my side whilst reading it.

'A Door Into Ocean' has been described as eco-feminist science fiction, but I think the book intersects with explorations of pacifism, anarchism and also has strong LGBTQIA+ themes too. Indeed, I picked this book up as part of my LGBT speculative fiction reading challenge (as a total aside, the books I picked for this challenge also have ended up touching on a lot of themes I am interested in such as anarchism and gender roles and faith or spirituality). This is also the third book in two months I have read which have explored non-heterosexual reproduction (the other two being Ammonite and The Left Hand of Darkness)

'A Door Into Ocean' contrasts two civilisations coming to a head, the war like capitalist Valor - a planet of tentatively aligned nation states, with some with high access to resources and technology and it's aquatic moon Shora, inhabited by a female only species of humans evolved to live with their environment. The novel identifies the two civilisations have contact with each other through trade / sharing (depending on your point of view) but largely they keep well apart from each other.

The Valorians are ruled from afar by a Protector, who is initially presented as a human ascended godhood who rules planetary systems through a violent dictatorship. When a visit from an Envoy from the Protector brings the two civilisations together we see essentially a clash between two very different cultures. On the one hand the Valorians want to bring the Shora to heel and subjugate them to swear fealty to Valor and the Protector, on the other hand the Shora have no concept of submitting to another and only want to learn-share - effectively get to know each other and share what they have to give.

What follows is (mostly), Realgar, the General of the mission to Shora increasingly using more and more desperate measures to control Shora and get them to submit. It can be tough reading at times and it eventually descends into a series of increasingly frustrated war crimes. The Shora however, respond not with violence but with non-violent resistance and attempts to get the Valorians to see that they are the ones who are afraid.

I'll get my only criticism out of the way early. At times the actions of Realgar become almost cartoonish, or beyond comprehension. The book tries to depict him as a confused, frustrated child as we view him through the lens of the suffering Shora. As the book developed I began to see him and the closest thing to his Shora counterpoint Merwen more and more as caricatures rather than well-rounded characters. It didn't detract from my enjoyment too much but once I noticed it, it struggled to leave me.

I kind of have distilled the book into a conflict between senseless violence to subjugate and non-passive non-violence to try and get others to see, but there is plenty else of interest. There are Valorians who try and integrate into Shora society (from a Shora point of view it is a test to see if Valorians 'really are human'). There's a love interest angle (which jarred a little in it's heterosexual depiction - it kind of stuck out how heterosexuality is everywhere!) and there is a an interesting theme of 'awareness of biological science'. The Shora have no concept of human-on-human violence, they call it 'death-hastening' (indeed, they only eat the plant and animal life on the planet because it is 'lesser human' - I don't think Slonczewski went there, but it did make me think of speciesist arguments - the author did highlight that some animal life killed because they had to, and humans have 'choice'). So what we end up with is, yes the Shora do have the capability to wipe out all of Valor with a biological weapon but they have no concept of doing so, so the Valorians in a way 'should' be afraid and it all hinges on whether one considers another community / nation / race 'human' or not.

The Shora is also an anarchist society (never explicitly said in the book). The Shora have no hierarchy, no property rights and therefore no wealth. They share what they have, and their decision making is via Gatherings which no-one is committed to. People have homes, but they move between them. Whilst this all sounds idyllic (and there is some criticism aimed at the book for an idealised vision of women) this doesn't mean they don't disagree - over tactics, over action, over how to live. They have a concept of Unspeak, which is essentially to refuse to talk (or learn-share) with a person if they transgress but even that - considered the worst a person can do to another isn't permanent. I liked this vision, because it shows that even in anarchist societies people won't always agree or even like each other and that conflict is a part of life - it doesn't mean it is necessary to impose power on another.

The non-violence of the Shora is also interesting. At times reading this book, even though I sided with the pacifists and got the message shared, I just wanted the Shora to unleash their 'weapon' and dispose of the Valorians. It was coming from a place of anger, of injustice. It's the point being made in the book. When you are seeing rape, imprisonment, torture, indiscriminate killing of unarmed people I was screaming for revenge as I read. It really made me think. Recently I have been involved in some discussions in social justice and anarchist circles about violence. I always took the view that violence was necessary as self-defence but in recent years have thought about preconfiguration and how the means become the ends and what the implications are for violence. I'm still not sure the price paid by the Shora was worth it, but when Merwen was looking in Realgar's eyes, I also felt she was looking into my own.

The world building is good and the Shora are well crafted, the characterisation is decent too, the story is a page turner but one's interest in this will hinge on how much they want to explore the themes of the book. If you want some ethical considerations in your sci-fi - this is a good one, if at times a little simplistic in it's approach.

Recommended