Tuesday, March 3, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang (Translated by Ken Liu)




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 14, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 Reading Science Fiction or Fantasy originating in other countries is something I highly recommend, as it shows you fiction of ideas from people whose backgrounds and worldviews are very different from one's own (the same of course is true for domestic authors from different backgrounds as well).  Given that most of the genre is based on the use of future and different worlds to discuss and explore ideas reflecting our own world, the fact that these different backgrounds result in different ways of exploring ideas makes them especially interesting.  This is almost more true of translated SF/F, if only because only the most interesting and promising such works tend to get translated and published over here, for obvious reasons.

All of which is to say Vagabonds, written by Chinese Author Hao Jingfang and translated by Ken Liu, is an incredibly fascinating piece of work and like few other works I've read.  It's a book set in a future in which Mars has been colonized, revolted against the Earth in a harsh long war, and now the two planets live in an uneasy peace with very different political systems - an ultra-capitalist but disorganized Earth and a fully socialist oligarch ruled Mars.  The results is a piece of SciFi with heavy thoughts and questions about the meaning of freedom, the meaning of home, and the worth of revolution, and very few clear answers.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
40 Years ago, the Martian War for Independence ended with an uneasy cease fire.  Trade between the two worlds has uneasily resumed, with a new round of negotiations about to take place between representatives from Earth, traveling on the ship Maearth to Mars, and Martian representatives on the red planet.  But also on board the Maearth is another group - 20 students, now aged 18, who were born on Mars but spent their last 5 years obtaining their education on Earth, and are only now returning to their birthplace.  Known as the Mercury Group, everyone on Mars, expects the students to reintegrate themselves into Mars culture naturally and easily, with the group being the right age to pick their ateliers - the field/workplace they are likely to work for the rest of their lives.

But after 5 years of the capitalist freedom of Earth, the Mercury Group finds themselves uneasy with what they find on Mars and unable to fit in to the controlled environment there.  One such adrift teen is the dancer Luoying, a girl who is the granddaughter of Mars' most powerful politician.  Luoying has spent the last 5 years traveling the Earth, sometimes with a dancing troupe, other times with others with more radical goals of revolution.  Now back on Mars, Luoying and the Mercury Group find themselves unsure of what their place in Mars and whether they can fit in, and whether they should try to take drastic measures to change things based upon their experiences on Earth.

To determine what she should do, Luoying decides to try and research her the past of both Mars and her family - her powerful grandfather and her dead exiled parents.  But what she finds is that the past may in fact be repeating, and that their actions seeking a place they can comfortably call home may be all that's needed to restart conflicts once bloodily settled.
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Vagabonds is a really difficult book to describe, as the book shifts directions quite a bit, and not every plot conflict really matters how you think it would.  For example the first third of the book essentially splits the story between Luoying and an Earthborn filmmaker named Eko, who comes to Mars to figure out why his mentor once stayed on the planet, and finds in the central repository of art/IP a system for promoting and showing creativity that he could only dream of in the profit obsessed system of Earth.  Eko disappears* after the first act of this book, having left Mars, and has no further impact on the plot other than a few communications he sends to Luoying which contribute to her sense of disorientation - so I didn't mention him in the above plot summary....and yet he's basically a main character for a good third of the book!

 *A cynical side of me wonders how much Eko exists in the plot to show the flaws in a Western style capitalist world to show Chinese readers that the book isn't going too hard against an idealized Chinese version of utopia, but upon reflection I don't think that's quite what's going on here. 

 This is because Vagabonds is dealing with a lot of ideas - about living, about love, about plans for the future, about revolutions, about what it means to be home, about what it means to be free, etc.  It's not a particularly focused book on these ideas, but the questions it asks about each of them tends to be fascinating and thought provoking, in ways I didn't quite expect.  The basis for this exploration is its two different worlds, which each carry elements you can see in today's governments.  The Earth in this book is ultra-capitalist, with everything being done for the sake of profit and nothing else, and where squabbling governments may still exist but are secondary in importance to the billionaires and corporations who have real power.  Still, it's a world where everyone is certainly free to choose whatever life they wish to lead, to the extent they can stay out of poverty, and partying, rebelling, or altering the way one expresses themselves are an expected and ordinary part of life.

Mars on contrast is far more centralized and socialist, to the point of utopia.  Ruled by an oligarchy of politicians (although individuals can somewhat move into the governing counsel from outside), everyone has all their needs provided for on the planet, with creativity and innovation promoted for its own sake from a young age - and where everyone's creativity is available for anyone to purview in a central archive.  Still, it's a world where individuals are expected to choose their vocation from a young age, and are expected to stick to that vocation - their atelier - for the rest of their life, with freedom to move about and drift between career paths highly discouraged.  And the world is starved for resources, leading to a potential major shift away from the physical structure of the settlement being discussed by the people, and to potential firebrands supporting a potential new war with Earth to pave the way for such a transition.

It's in this contrast of worlds that Luoying and the Mercury Group find themselves dropped.  Being basically the only ones to have seen both systems, they find themselves uncomfortable with either - how can they constrain themselves to one path after five years of being free to wander?  How can they enjoy the freedom of Earth if nothing they do can be worth it unless it leads to profit?  And they find themselves desperate to both change things and try and ensure that no new conflict can occur to destroy either world.  But the only people who can understand this are the members of the Mercury Group themselves, leading to further estrangement as they discover more truths about themselves and their pasts....and the group itself is hardly monolithic, with different ideals about revolution, about ways forward, and about love among each other.

The resulting plot is fascinating to read, although rather depressing in resolution.  Vagabonds has very dim views about the prospects of revolution doing anything other than causing a short term change in the status quo until another revolution arises in the old one's place, with revolutions frequently being hijacked by outsiders for their own goals.  It suggests that the past tends to repeat itself as a result, with people forgetting the mistakes and wishes from the past to the point where one time's desires are another time's horror.  And it's a book that suggests that finding a home for oneself can in fact be impossible at times, especially for those who have had the fortune or misfortune to have spent significant time away from the place they were born and have a contrasting sense of ideas that no longer fits in any particular place.  And as these ideas are all explored, characters encounter substantial moments of heartbreak as their individual ideals clash with realities of the past and present.

"Sometimes the fight over the treasure is more important than the treasure itself" is a quote from a character in the book's first few pages, and that appears to be Jingfang's major theme here: that for an individual it is the fight that matters, not the cause, as causes themselves lead to nowhere.  It's a depressing theme, and one in which its not clear Jingfang herself even buys into, but its all that's left after the end.  Do I agree with that idea?  I don't, no, but Vagabonds makes a case from a worldview I don't have, and is worth your time to read.
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