Re: (Meetpoint) Brothers of Earth by C J Cherryh

On Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:04:03 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
Nicoll) wrote:

In article <4oj2ojlu1lbm3iacgkdvjrtk1kdggqkkl4@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person  <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

On 10 Jan 2025 15:03:17 GMT, Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>

On 2025-01-07, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

On 7 Jan 2025 14:12:27 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>

>
Brothers of Earth  (Hanan Rebellion, volume 1) by C J Cherryh
>
Castaway Kurt Morgan will live the rest of his life among the humanoid
nemet. The rest of Morgan's life might not be long. Nemet know humans
as would-be conquerors and brutes. Why trust Morgan?
>
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/when-the-rains-came-tumbling-down

>
Although /some/ of her series make sense and might even be
intentionally set in the same future, I suspect that others are the
result of the publisher's wanting every book to be in a Series.
>
I don't recall /ever/ believing that /Brothers of Earth/ and /Hunter
of Worlds/ had anything in common except the author.
>
A lot of mine were SFBC editions, some quite early. Indeed, my first
CJ Cherryh was a genuine series: The Faded Sun. After that, anything
she wrote was a mandatory purchase/read.
>
Being this tight with SFBC may or may not have affected availability.

>
I agree, I never saw any relationship between her first two novels and
I don't think she did either at the time.  I met Cherryh at the only
SF convention I ever attended, just after _Hunter of Worlds_ was
published.  She talked about her upcoming series and a common
technological background that she wanted to work with, but not that
everything was the same universe.
>
Cherryh is probably my favorite author, with many more of her books on
my Favorite bookcase than any other author (though neither of the
first two is there). I think I have all of her books except her
translations.  Even with that background, though, I wonder how James
is going to get through this project.  I really don't see that the 22
books of the _Foreigner_ series is worth the effort of
reading/rereading and writing a review for each book.  A
bit of a waste of James' talents. The series as a whole may be worth
several reviews, but the theme doesn't change throughout, just
incremental developments.  Still, James is managing to review Japanese
manga with much the same problem, so perhaps...

>
The _Foreigner_ series is, basically, a soap opera. There is no
conclusion possible (except to just stop). Well, short of having the
Humans show up and vaporize the planet, anyway.
>
But even without them, there are a /lot/ of novels. An interesting
idea might be to trace the concept of the Azi from, say, /Serpent's
Reach/ to /Regenesis/. There are quite a few books, listed in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azi_(clone)]. This page exhibits a lot
of doubt as to whether or not it should exist, but just ignore that
and keep scrolling down.

>
I am going to mostly stick to chrono order, which is a bit interesting
where the Azi are concerned. In Cyteen, the idea seems to have been
that the azi were a temporary measure, a peculiar institution that
would surely whither away as the economy and population matured. But
Serpents Reach, which predates Cyteen by a decade, makes it clear
that's never going to happen. Slaves to order are just too convenient.

Which is the sort of thing I had in mind: the slow revelation that the
Azi are, in fact, fully human, just controlled by Tapes.

/Serpent's Reach/ instead focuses on genetic engineering, with the
slaves have shorter lives than the "normal humans", but both being
engineered. Only the People in Charge are actual humans with an
indeterminate lifespan.

In /Port Eternity/ they are playthings of the Rich and Self-Indulgent
-- doomed to be put down at 30 (not just die from genetic
programming), when they are no longer beautiful. But then something
strange happens.

And so on, until /Cyteen/ finally reveals the Awful Truth: that they
are as human as anyone else; it is the Tapes that make the difference.

/Forty Thousand in Gehenna/ had a major clue that that was the case,
BTW.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"