The Sixth Sense meets Planet of the Apes in a moving science fiction novel set so far in the future, humanity is gone and forgotten in Lawrence M. Schoen’s Barsk: The Elephants’ GraveyardAn historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds.In a distant future, no remnants … will shake worlds.
In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity’s genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races, and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets.
To break the Fant’s control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend’s son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future.
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Admittedly, I got about halfway through the book before I hit peak annoyance with some aspects and then skimmed the rest because I thought of some possible plot twists that could justify and redeem the things I was annoyed with. As it turns out there is no justification.
I was led to believe that this was the kind of book that explores a concept, but it didn’t introduce its themes until a big reveal at the end. They weren’t explored, they were just stated. The writing style isn’t especially artistic. It’s just like a bland modern dude talking, but with a light sprinkling of obscure words.
But the thing that bothered me the most was the fail matriarchy. I mean, elephants are a matriarchal species. The author evidently knows this because he passingly mentions it and sometimes when there was broad world building he would talk about roving bands of bachelors or how offspring are raised in communities of women. But in terms of actual interactions between characters? Well, most of the main elephant characters are male. They still have the institution of marriage. Everyone talks about how much they respect their father while neglecting their mother despite her investing a lot of energy into taking care of them. Even the character who is literally called “the matriarch” has a bit where it’s mentioned that she really respects her father. Like, there’s more father worshiping in this book than in many books that straightforwardly take place in a moderate patriarchy, and there isn’t any mother worshiping or increased status to balance it out to even equality.
The point where I lost it was when it was mentioned that the anthropomorphic elephants have breasts. Like… I can accept the hands and bipedalism because those have a practical use to sentient creatures and to the plot, but humanoid breasts? I can imagine the scene in the laboratory: “here’s Fred, figuring out how to give the animals hands. Here’s Marsha figuring out how to make the animals bipedal. And here’s Doug, a totally normal guy who is not at all a perv, figuring out how to give these animals the vitally necessary feature of protruding breasts on the females. This totally passed the ethics review, why are you looking at me like that?” Look, there’s one potential plot twist that would have made this acceptable, and it’s humans having modified themselves to look like animals rather than modifying animals to be sentient. Guess what isn’t a plot twist in this book.
Okay, but there is a way that the author could have explained the fail matriarchy and made this book a lot more compelling at the same time and I’m going to put it under a spoiler break.
***SPOILERS***
So, it turns out that what makes the animals sentient is that they were genetically modified to be born already knowing English. If we take the view that culture is embedded in the language and that language has the power to shape culture, then putting a moderately patriarchal language like English into the brains of elephants may shape their culture to be more patriarchal. That said, the author doesn’t talk about this at all, and given the breast thing, I don’t trust that he would have bothered to think this through. Looking at how elephant culture was shaped by the English language would have made this book so much more compelling, but alas.