##34, 35: The History of Mary Prince, Nova

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#34:The History of Mary Prince, by Mary Prince

Thanks to Project Gutenberg (and a memory nudge from spiralsheep), I read The History of Mary Prince during slow periods at work over the past few days. It's a short but very vivid slave narrative, part of the tradition that includes the life stories of Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano, among others. Mary Prince was enslaved in the West Indies and worked under very brutal conditions, both as a domestic servant and in a saltworks. If you've ever wondered why "saltmines" are synonymous with gruelling labour in horrible conditions, Mary Prince's account will enlighten you (and probably horrify you). The Project Gutenberg text includes a short and harrowing account by Louis Asa-Asa describing how he and his fellow villagers were kidnapped by slavers, as well as an afterword and many footnotes appended by Mary Prince's patron in the Anti-Slavery Society. It's instructive to see the excuses made and lies told to justify the appalling treatment Mary received at the hands of her masters, including at least one instance of "but they're such nice people!" Plus ça change...


#35: Nova, by Samuel R. Delany

I believe I've mentioned before that I have powerfully ambivalent feelings about Samuel Delany. His ideas are so clever and his writing is so good -- and sometimes he falls in love with the cleverness of his ideas, and shoves his hand up the ass of one of his characters and uses them as a sockpuppet to deliver a lecture to the reader about whatever cool speculation has most recently captivated him. And sometimes I forgive him for that, if the speculation is cool enough; and sometimes it just irritates me. Nova mostly stays on the "forgivable" side of the line, partly because of the way he treats the "lecturer" character. Katin just loves to give lengthy speeches about the origin of cyborg studs, the nature of interstellar culture, the reason why Tarot readings are totally reliable and not superstitious in any way, what he had for breakfast that morning, et cetera. But while these speeches sometimes go on for several pages at a time, there's a tendency for the narrative to deflate his grand theories, either by having the other characters blatantly ignore Katin (sometimes to the point of rudeness), or providing immediate evidence that Katin's insight into How Things Are is not necessarily correct.

Nova is a deeply fascinating novel in many ways -- more than I have time to adequately explore. It's about space travel and economics, and the way a sudden increase in supply of a previously limited resource can have massive effects on society; and it's about the way cultures change and change and stay the same. And if that's not good enough for you, it's about a ragtag bunch of space pirates questing for treasure. The plot is a bit baggy and it does threaten to turn into Samuel R. Delany's Collected Lectures On Cultural Transitions at times, but overall it's a profoundly impressive piece of work.