Laith
A group of interstellar travelers, ordinary people, find themselves stranded after their starship suffers a warp-drive malfunction and disintegrates way off course. The scant survivors are stranded on a barren planet with no hope of rescue; equipped with dwindling resources and no sure method of obtaining more, the survivors band together to overcome the odds and tame the vast wilderness for future generations. All but one survivor, that is. The narrator has done the math: if thirst doesn't kill them, hunger will, and if hunger doesn't kill them, then in a few generations, inbreeding will; they are doomed. The narrator decides she'd rather die with dignity, opting to flee from the others as it becomes increasingly clear that they intend for her to carry out the mission of populating the planet whether she wants to or not.
There's no way to get around it, this is an unpleasant book to read. I'll be upfront, whether you find some enjoyment in this will hinge entirely on how much you buy into the premise and the prose because it's unlike most other books I've read. We Who Are About To is delivered as a transcript of an audio diary, with all the weird punctuation, ramblings, and cut off thoughts that go along with such an idea. It's not comfortable to be locked into the perspective of a suicidal pessimist who by the end of the novel is/is going insane. Opinions are generally split, some people hate it and others think it's a work of genius that plays by its own rules- I'm not sure which camp I personally fall into because I while didn't hate the prose I do agree that it's a bit boring and difficult to read. But I give it a pass because so much of what's "wrong" with the book is clearly by design.
We're going to get into spoiler territory now. Because I buried the lede, while our narrator flees the group seeking to survive on rations and eventually transition to death in her own time she is not left unmolested. The surviving men of the group track her down, aiming to impregnate her on their return so they can begin their colonization attempt. She resists, brutally murdering her pursuers and returning to the camp where she kills the remaining survivors, her fellow women and a 12 year old child. Left alone she begins to lose her grasp on sanity, suffering hallucinations she is haunted by her victims and specters of her past. Weak from hunger she kills herself, the final line "well it's time".
It's odd to characterize a Novella as a slow burn, but that's what this is. It's a slow, cold, burn- and a lot of that has to do with the narration, how seemingly detached her perspective is from the present moment. Given the narrative device (the transcription of an audio diary) at nearly all times it is a story told from hindsight- it lends a reflective element and psychological edge to even the most horrifically violent moments. Initially told with only a slight delay between event and transcription there is a significant shift towards the midpoint where most of the story is being back-filled, given color by the time that has passed since the narrator committed herself to the project of dying.
So much of the second half of the book is devoted to the ennui the Narrator experiences, to her and to the reader it is torturous to get through. This is of course by design, while this is not the first book to explore boredom as torture it is one of the few (if not the only) that turns into a slog to prove its own point. It's really quite bleak by the end and as we're increasingly left alone with the narrator and her thoughts you can't help but to ruminate on the hopeless realities at play. Whether it's the narrator philosophizing with her past self or reflecting on the morals of her actions, you get a visceral sense of their absolute desolation by the time you reach the final page.
This is hailed as "Feminist Science Fiction" and I get that label, but I more so saw this as a reflection on this genre and these types of stranded/colony stories writ large. I think it's totally a matter of time and progress that I don't find this all that feminist, to me the narrator's desire for bodily autonomy and outright refusal to be raped/impregnated is more of a cut and dry "you shouldn't do that to people AND of course she gets to make that decision" sort of thing; that probably wasn't the prevailing sensibility in 1975- particularly within the conventions of Sci Fi. More-so I saw this as commentary on the types of books in this genre that would largely forgive the delusion of the group, the manifest destiny impulse that causes them to shed their civilized clothes and rush in beastly and feudalistic directions. If you asked me what I found most feminist about the book id say it's Russ' outlook on the point of living and reproducing, the break from the mainstream view that the reason we exist is to reproduce, because that's patently not the point of living to the narrator. She views reproduction as a means to perpetuate and mend our present mode of civilization, that to reproduce means choosing to continue life as it is it; if that life is not worth living, neither is reproduction.
I think this is a worthy if difficult read, difficult because of the style but also because of the content. It will leave you grappling with quite a bit or it may put you off entirely. It came highly recommended to me, so despite rather liking it, I thought I would love it and I didn't.
A group of interstellar travelers, ordinary people, find themselves stranded after their starship suffers a warp-drive malfunction and disintegrates way off course. The scant survivors are stranded on a barren planet with no hope of rescue; equipped with dwindling resources and no sure method of obtaining more, the survivors band together to overcome the odds and tame the vast wilderness for future generations. All but one survivor, that is. The narrator has done the math: if thirst doesn't kill them, hunger will, and if hunger doesn't kill them, then in a few generations, inbreeding will; they are doomed. The narrator decides she'd rather die with dignity, opting to flee from the others as it becomes increasingly clear that they intend for her to carry out the mission of populating the planet whether she wants to or not.
There's no way to get around it, this is an unpleasant book to read. I'll be upfront, whether you find some enjoyment in this will hinge entirely on how much you buy into the premise and the prose because it's unlike most other books I've read. We Who Are About To is delivered as a transcript of an audio diary, with all the weird punctuation, ramblings, and cut off thoughts that go along with such an idea. It's not comfortable to be locked into the perspective of a suicidal pessimist who by the end of the novel is/is going insane. Opinions are generally split, some people hate it and others think it's a work of genius that plays by its own rules- I'm not sure which camp I personally fall into because I while didn't hate the prose I do agree that it's a bit boring and difficult to read. But I give it a pass because so much of what's "wrong" with the book is clearly by design.
We're going to get into spoiler territory now. Because I buried the lede, while our narrator flees the group seeking to survive on rations and eventually transition to death in her own time she is not left unmolested. The surviving men of the group track her down, aiming to impregnate her on their return so they can begin their colonization attempt. She resists, brutally murdering her pursuers and returning to the camp where she kills the remaining survivors, her fellow women and a 12 year old child. Left alone she begins to lose her grasp on sanity, suffering hallucinations she is haunted by her victims and specters of her past. Weak from hunger she kills herself, the final line "well it's time".
It's odd to characterize a Novella as a slow burn, but that's what this is. It's a slow, cold, burn- and a lot of that has to do with the narration, how seemingly detached her perspective is from the present moment. Given the narrative device (the transcription of an audio diary) at nearly all times it is a story told from hindsight- it lends a reflective element and psychological edge to even the most horrifically violent moments. Initially told with only a slight delay between event and transcription there is a significant shift towards the midpoint where most of the story is being back-filled, given color by the time that has passed since the narrator committed herself to the project of dying.
So much of the second half of the book is devoted to the ennui the Narrator experiences, to her and to the reader it is torturous to get through. This is of course by design, while this is not the first book to explore boredom as torture it is one of the few (if not the only) that turns into a slog to prove its own point. It's really quite bleak by the end and as we're increasingly left alone with the narrator and her thoughts you can't help but to ruminate on the hopeless realities at play. Whether it's the narrator philosophizing with her past self or reflecting on the morals of her actions, you get a visceral sense of their absolute desolation by the time you reach the final page.
This is hailed as "Feminist Science Fiction" and I get that label, but I more so saw this as a reflection on this genre and these types of stranded/colony stories writ large. I think it's totally a matter of time and progress that I don't find this all that feminist, to me the narrator's desire for bodily autonomy and outright refusal to be raped/impregnated is more of a cut and dry "you shouldn't do that to people AND of course she gets to make that decision" sort of thing; that probably wasn't the prevailing sensibility in 1975- particularly within the conventions of Sci Fi. More-so I saw this as commentary on the types of books in this genre that would largely forgive the delusion of the group, the manifest destiny impulse that causes them to shed their civilized clothes and rush in beastly and feudalistic directions. If you asked me what I found most feminist about the book id say it's Russ' outlook on the point of living and reproducing, the break from the mainstream view that the reason we exist is to reproduce, because that's patently not the point of living to the narrator. She views reproduction as a means to perpetuate and mend our present mode of civilization, that to reproduce means choosing to continue life as it is it; if that life is not worth living, neither is reproduction.
I think this is a worthy if difficult read, difficult because of the style but also because of the content. It will leave you grappling with quite a bit or it may put you off entirely. It came highly recommended to me, so despite rather liking it, I thought I would love it and I didn't.