Review of Clarie G. Coleman's Terra Nullius

Having read Claire G. Coleman’s The Old Lie, I knew she was an Indigenous Australian who wrote science fiction that commented on historical and present-day treatment of Indigenous Australians. When I started reading her earlier novel Terra Nullius, I was immediately looking for science fiction elements.

The novel starts as if set in the outback of 19th century Australia. It has a few main characters and constantly switches point of view between them. They include Jacky who is on the run from his "master". Then we have a heartless nun in charge of a mission. She thinks the “natives”, who have been stolen from their families and placed under her dubious care, are sub-human and not worthy of her time. Another character is Johnny, a trooper who has deserted after participating in a massacre of natives. There are a few other main characters but describing them will spoil the plot of the novel.  

The first half of the novel really reminded me of the horrors that have been inflicted on Indigenous Australians by their colonisers including: Indigenous Australians dying on mass from diseases the colonisers introduced, the stealing of their land, the use of natives as slave labour, the massacres of tribes, the stealing of children from their parents and attempts to re-educate them into the white man’s ways, the introduction of alcohol and its devastating effects on Indigenous Australians, etc.

It seemed like the perfect book to be reading on Australia Day, or Survival Day as many Indigenous Australians call it.

As a reader of science fiction, I was wondering about the lack of descriptions of certain characters, and the lack of wildlife. The “mounts” the troopers rode as they chased Jacky were not described. So, I began to wonder where and when the novel was set. About halfway through the reader finds out.

I found the narrative gripping and emotionally engaging as I hoped that the “natives”, as the colonisers called them, would survive. But I knew they were no match for the weapons and other technology of their colonisers.

When reading Australian science fiction my interest always picks up when indigenous characters appear as they are rare. When in the hands of white authors, they tend to win in the end. This is probably a result of the guilt white Australians have about what has happened and is still happening to Indigenous Australians. Whereas, Indigenous Australian authors view their future, from my limited reading, as continuing the fight for survival.   

The manuscript and novel deservedly won awards was short-listed for many others, like the Stella Prize.

Terra Nullius is one of the best novels I have read by an Australian science fiction author.

Review of Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

Ancillary Mercy is the third and final novel in Ann Leckie’s award-winning Imperial Radch series. The books are about the adventures of Breq an Ancillary who was connected to a ship that was destroyed. An Ancillary is a human who has been turned into an AI and has their consciousness connected to a ship. They can access its data and see and hear what all other ancillaries are experiencing. They will do whatever the ship’s captain commands them to do.

 The third novel starts where the second novel finished. Breq is still the nominated fleet commander of the Athoek system and is located on its space station. She is trying to fix the station’s under-garden area, which was damaged in the previous novel, as well as fix the station’s complex politics. She has to deal with the agendas of an uncooperative system governor and power-hungry religious leader.

 Her attempts at fixing the station are interrupted when an envoy from the all-conquering Presger arrives to survey humans and to see whether they have broken the “treaty” between the two races. The envoy’s arrival is then complicated by unknown warships appearing in the system.

 This novel is about Breq’s attempt to create a more merciful local system where even AIs, like the Ancillaries that run the ships and the station, get to decide their own fates. She wants them to have the choices that she now has as an ancillary severed from her destroyed ship. She also wants the indigenous population of Athoek to control their future.

 One of the most intriguing features of the novels is that Breq cannot differentiate between female and male, so she refers to every character as “she”, which creates a viewpoint character who does not bring gender into the power dynamics between the characters she deals with. Leckie leaves it to the reader to add genders to characters if they want to.

 I very much enjoyed this novel as it attempted to bring the series to a conclusion, but there were still plenty of loose ends for a fourth novel to explore. It’s probably not as good as the first two novels, as the first was huge on world-building, and the second was more about Breq attempting to redefine herself, but still it is an excellent read.

 

 

Review of Us and Them by Anthony J Langford.

Us and Them is a collection of short stories and poems that will open up your heart to the lives of others and especially the mind of its author Anthony J Langford. The collection will have you thinking about how you interact with others, and had this reader vowing to be more open to what might be going on in other people’s lives.

About half of the stories are autobiographical scenes from the author’s life, giving an insight into events that have influenced the person he has become. They illustrate his quest for adventure and his genuine desire to understand other people.

But among that desire to open up, it is a book of regrets, of things not said and done. In one story he is haunted by a girl crying on the streets of New York and his failure to ask her what is wrong, like all the other people who walked past her. As he says in one of his poems: It is always worth it, To reach out, Even if it doesn’t go well. The collection also ponders aging and its effect on us.  

It is a book about someone looking back at their life and contemplating what he could have done better.   

Collectively, the poems and stories had me contemplating how well I have lived my own life.