Glory Season (88 page)

Earlier, she had declared herself free of duty to the legacy of Lysos. That assertion had nothing to do with returning to ancient sexual patterns, or preferring the bad old terrors of patriarchy. Those were separate issues, in her mind already settled.

What she had decided was that, if she could not live in a time of openness, of ideas and daring, then she could at least
behave
as if she did. As if she were a citizen of a scientific age.

She wasn’t alone. Others surely had the same thing in mind. Brill had hinted as much. The “token” concession won by the guilds—regaining for men the right to fly—would change Stratos over time, and there were doubtless other moves afoot to nudge society in subtle ways. Gradually diverting the ponderous momentum of a dragon.

Renna set things in motion. And I had a role, as well. For both his sake and mine, I’ll keep on having one.

Still, the Upsala and the Nitocris might be surprised by her reaction, when they made her an offer. She would listen, politely. But, on the other hand …

Why not do what
I
want, for a change?

It was the final irony. She faced the challenges of independence willingly, equipped to stand on her own, while at the same time ready to share her heart. It seemed a natural stage in her personal renaissance, cresting from adolescence to true adulthood.

Stratos
might take a while longer, but worlds, too, must waken from dreamy illusions of constancy. The cradle built by Lysos no longer protected, but constrained.

Reaching a turn in the road, Maia came upon an overlook facing west. There, slowly setting beyond the mountains, was the great nebula that Stratoins called the Claw—known in Phylum space as God’s Brow. Somewhere in the cold, empty reaches between, vast crystalline ships were bearing down to finish an isolation that Lysos must have known would end, in time. Only then would it become clear if humans had achieved a kind of wisdom here, a new pattern of life worthy of adding to a greater whole.

Suddenly, the surroundings were illuminated by a sharp glow from above. Maia turned to look upward, where a single, starlike glimmer pulsed, throbbing rhythmically as it brightened, until it shone more radiant than any moon, or even summer’s beacon, Wengel Star. Wavelike patterns of color stabbed her eye, causing her to squint in wonder.

At first, Maia felt she had this marvel to herself, amid a city of a hundred thousand souls. Then came sounds—doors banging open, people flooding out of houses and holds, murmuring as they faced skyward and stared. Women, children, and the occasional man, spilled into the streets, pointing at the heavens, some fearfully, others in growing awe.

It took hours before anyone was certain, but by dawn all could tell. The spark was moving away. Leaving the folk of Stratos alone again.

For a time.

T
his book began with a contemplation of lizards. Specifically, several species from the American Southwest that reproduce parthenogenetically—mothers giving birth to daughter clones. Perfect copies of themselves.

From there, I discovered aphids, tiny insects blessed with
two
modes of reproduction. During periods of plenty and stability, they self-clone, churning out multiple duplicates like little Xerox machines. But when the good times end, they quickly swing back to old-fashioned sexual mating, creating daughters and sons whose imperfect variety is nature’s mortar of survival.

These miracles of diversity prompted me to wonder, “What if humans could do the same?”

The idea of cloning has been explored widely in fiction, but always in terms of medical technology involving complex machinery, a dilettante obsession for the very rich. This may serve a pampered, self-obsessed class for a while, but it’s hardly a process any species could rely on over the long haul, through bad times as well as good. Not a way of life, machine-assisted cloning is the biosocial counterpart of a hobby.

What if, instead, self-cloning were just another of the
many startling capabilities of the human womb? An interesting premise. But then, only female humans have wombs, so a contemplation of cloning became a novel about drastically altered relations between the sexes. Most aspects to the society of planet Stratos arose out of this one idea.

These days, nothing is politically neutral. The lizards I referred to earlier have recently been cited in a thought-provoking, if inflammatory, radical feminist tract posing the question “Who needs males, anyway?” Many times, over the ages, insurgent female philosophers have proposed independence through separation. Given the plight of countless women and children in the world, they can hardly be blamed. In fact, the name “Perkinite” was taken from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose novel
Herland
is one of the best and pithiest separationist utopias ever penned. Her brand of sexual isolationism is far gentler than the extremist doctrine I depict, which shamefully misuses her name on planet Stratos.

Unfortunately for gender segregationists—though not, perhaps, for men—biology appears to thwart simplistic secession. Mammals seem to require a male component at a deeper level than do insects, fish, or reptiles. Recent studies indicate that “male-processed genes” initiate important fetal-development processes. So even if self-cloning without machines became possible, conception might still require at least cursory involvement by a man.

Anyway, stories excluding men altogether seem almost as bombastic as those that crudely turn the tables, in naïve role-reversal fantasies. (Amazon warriors, dueling over harems of huge but meek bimbo-males? The sub-genre is a dandy source of giggles, but bears no relation to the way biology works in
this
universe.)

On the other hand, there are no scientific reasons not to show males relegated to the sidelines of history, a peripheral social class, as has all too often been the lot of
women in our own civilization. Men are still men on Stratos, give or take some alterations. Their society isn’t designed purposely to oppress them, only to end the age-old domineering and strife that accompanied patriarchy. In consequence, the folk of Stratos miss some of the joys we seek (and sometimes find) in monogamous family life. They also avoid much familiar pain.

Would self-cloning lead kinship lineages to imitate the social life of ants or bees, dwelling in “hives” with like-gened sisters? This notion, too, has been explored before, often by cramming antlike behavior into bipedal bodies. On Stratos, the daughters of an ancient clan would exhibit solidarity and self-knowledge unimaginable to vars like ourselves, but that wouldn’t necessarily make them automatons, or stop them being human.

Try to look at it from their point of view. Our world of nearly infinite sexual-genetic variation might seem too chaotic to be civilized. A society of vars would be inherently incapable of planning beyond a single generation—which is exactly our problem today, according to many contemporary critics. Too much sameness may be stifling on fictional Stratos, but too little sense of continuity may be killing the real Earth of here and now.

Some may accuse me of preaching that genes are destiny. Far from it. Men and women are ingenious, marvelously self-trainable creatures. Stratoin society is as much a matter of social evolution as it is of bioengineering. One of the lessons of Maia’s adventure is that no plan, no system or stereotype, can suppress an individual who is boldly determined to be different.

At the opposite extreme, some early readers said, “Women are inherently cooperative. They would never compete the way you depict.” I reply by referring to the works of animal behavioralist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (author
of
The Woman That Never Evolved
) and other researchers who show that competitiveness is just as common in the female as the male. Women have good reason to differ from men in
style
, but one would have to be blind to say their world is free of struggle. The intent of Stratos Colony was to craft a society in which natural feedback mechanisms
temper
inevitable outbursts of egotism. Its founders sought to maximize happiness and minimize violent disruption. Maia’s exploits are exceptions, occurring in a time of unusual stress, but they do illustrate that a culture based on pastoral changelessness has drawbacks all its own.

In other words, I penned Stratos Colony as neither utopia nor dystopia. Many Westerners would find the place boring, but no more unjust than our world. While I hope my descendants live in a nicer place, few male-led cultures on Earth have done as well.

That sentiment notwithstanding, it is dangerous these days for a male to write even glancingly on feminist themes. Did anyone attack Margaret Atwood’s right to extrapolate religio-machismo in
The Handmaid’s Tale
? Women writers appear vouchsafed insight into the souls of men—credit that seldom flows the other way. It is a sexist and offensive assumption, which does not advance understanding.

This author claims only to present a
gedankenexperiment
—a thought experiment about one conceivable world of “What If.” I hope it provokes argument.

On a different track, the game of cellular automata, which its inventors named “Life,” is a fascinating topic which I chose to graft into Stratoin society for various reasons. I took liberties with the rules, as originally designed by Conway & co. back in the sixties, and described in the excellent books of Martin Gardner. (Plot and story take
precedence over lectury accuracy.) Nevertheless, I am grateful for the advice of Dr. Rudy Rucker and others, in helping correct the worst errors.

Beyond obvious allegories to reproduction, creativity, and ecology, the game allowed discussion of
talent
, and the essential difference between individuals and averages. It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in
average.
What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight. Or that a girl cannot master a game that for generations was the dominion of men.

While I have the floor, here’s a question that’s been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels … that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords?

Why
should
the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, “good” wizard for something
useful
, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern
folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.

Only Aldous Huxley ever wrote a scenario for social stratification that was completely, if chillingly, self-consistent and stable. You get no sense of oppression, or any chance of rebellion, in a society where people truly
are
born for their tasks, as in
Brave New World.

It may be a possible result on Stratos, as well.

Finally, the issue of
pastoralism
deserves comment. Countless bad books—and a few very good ones—have extolled the virtues of a slower pace, emphasizing farming life over urban, predictability over chaos, intuition over science. Often, this is couched in terms of feminine wisdom over the type of greedy knowledge pursued by rapacious Western (read “male”) society. One unfortunate upshot has been a tendency to associate feminism with opposition to technology.

This novel depicts a society that is conservative by design, not because of something intrinsic to a world led by women. (Many fine tales have been woven of high-tech matriarchal cultures.) On Stratos, the founders’ objective was a pastoral solution to the problem of human nature—a solution that has many intelligent and forceful adherents today.

They have a point. Anyone who loves nature, as I do, cries out at the havoc being spread by humans, all over the globe. The pressures of city life can be appalling, as are the moral ambiguities that plague us, both at home and via yammering media. The temptation to seek uncomplicated certainty sends some rushing off to ashrams and crystal therapy, while many dive into the shelter of fundamentalism, and other folk yearn for better, “simpler” times. Certain popular writers urgently prescribe returning to
ancient, nobler
ways.

Ancient, nobler ways. It is a lovely image … and pretty much a lie. John Perlin, in his book
A Forest Journey
, tells how each prior culture, from tribal to pastoral to urban, wreaked calamities upon its own people and environment. I have been to Easter Island and seen the desert its native peoples wrought there. The greater harm we do today is due to our vast power and numbers, not something intrinsically vile about modern humankind.

Technology produces more food and comfort and lets fewer babies die. “Returning to older ways” would restore some balance all right, but entail a holocaust of untold proportion, followed by resumption of a kind of grinding misery never experienced by those who now wistfully toss off medieval fantasies and neolithic romances. A way of life that was nasty, brutish, and nearly always catastrophic for women.

That is not to say the pastoral
image
doesn’t offer hope. By extolling nature and a lifestyle closer to the Earth, some writers may be helping to create the very sort of wisdom they imagine to have existed in the past. Someday, truly idyllic pastoral cultures may be deliberately designed with the goal of providing placid and just happiness for all, while retaining enough technology to keep existence decent.