Tepper, Sheri S. - Grass

[oyceter]

A plague threatens humanity throughout the universe, save on the planet Grass. Sanctity, the church that rules Earth, sends the Yrarier family to Grass in hopes that their affinity for horses and horseriding will somehow allow them to get closer with the aristocracy on Grass (the bons) to hopefully find a cure for the plague. However, the humans on Grass are limited to a small area due to the bons' unwillingness to kill too much of the ubiquitous grass that covers the planet. Unsurprisingly, there's a surprise regarding the planet and the bons' strange predilection for hunting, albeit not quite with horses, hounds, and foxes.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Westriding Yrarier's marriage is falling apart and the trip to Grass stresses it further.

I thought this was all right, albeit with frustrating characters, until the big reveal. Marjorie is almost never wrong, her husband is a two-dimensional ass, her daughter is just like her husband, and the son who resembles her is just like her. The brothers and elders at the Grassian Church are more interesting at least.

Also, much of this felt like Speaker for the Dead to me, only less interesting.

Spoilers for Grass and Speaker

I suspect I would have been more into the slug-things to hounds to Hippae to foxen reveal had I not read Speaker before, with its central transformation from pequenino to tree. However, I haven't read a lot of SF, so this could very well be a trope that I don't know, so I was willing to give that a pass. And then, the big reveal is that... the Hippae are malevolent and evil! Just like they are hinted to be from the very beginning of the book! Not only that, there is no reason for them to be malevolent and evil except for the fact that it was a random mutation down the line. Unimpressed!

Also, when I can predict that the Hippae are spreading the plague in the form of the dead bats about a hundred pages before the characters have figured it out, something is wrong. I normally am terrible at figuring out things ahead of the big reveal, so I am fairly sure this was pretty obvious.

I did like the message about the foxen's fence-sitting being damaging and the metaphor of humans as viruses, but mostly I was incredibly annoyed that there wasn't a big reveal behind why the peeper-hound-Hippae-foxen transformation was the way it was (no explanatory planetary trauma sparked by a DNA-unraveling virus), and no larger reveal to why the Hunt save that the foxen would eat peepers.

So... did I miss something really huge? I do not understand why this is supposed to be groundbreaking ecological SF? (My copy has a quote saying "a subtle, complex meditation on ecological disaster.")

Comments

[emceeaich]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that, and thinking "you know, if you're going to criticize Mormons, just write a contemporary novel to do it."

[oyceter]

Wow, I totally missed that, thanks.

[tevere]

Oh, this is the book I read about fifteen years ago that I still have images in my head from! I always wondered what the hell it was. I have no memory whatsoever of a plague, which also shows what my brain prioritises: all I remember is vaguely sadomasochistic scenes where people are riding evil not-quite-horses. I don't think I'll read it again, but I'm glad to finally know who it was by.

[oyceter]

Yes! And limbs go flying! And eventually the Hippae get into their heads so much they are like zombies riding these terrifying horses!

[sanguinity]

I read it on someone's recommendation that it was ecological/biological SF. I hated it. And hated it like I hated Speaker for the Dead: how the hell do you manage to have an ecology with only two to four species? And even most of the apparent species aren't even different species!?

Bah.

And it wasn't even fun, either, just blah blah Marjorie angst blah.

...let me take that back. I kinda liked the evil Hippae. I liked them because they were evil. Which made them the best thing in the whole book.

[oyceter]

Haha, when I read Speaker I thought it was extremely cool... but then, I also read it when I was 14 or so. (I just reread it to try and compare it to Grass, and man, the stuff in there about marriage and community is so skeevy!)

Marjorie made me want to whap her over the head!

The Hippae were totally the best part of the book, except they weren't even smart and evil! They didn't even realize they were spreading plague until the aliens told them! And they were over-the-top mind-rapey evil!

[rachelmanija]

I was mostly interested in the fucked-up logistics of the hunt and how all the humans were being played by the Hippae and then constructed this whole society to justify it... which was only about 20% of the total book. Maybe there wasn't that much ecological sf at the time the book was written.

I tend to be annoyed by Tepper's politics (even when I agree with her!) but I read a lot of her fantasy years ago and generally enjoyed it. So Grass might have gotten extra critical attention more because it was a departure for her than because it was groundbreaking in general.

[oyceter]

ME TOO! I was really interested in the beginning despite hating the characters because the hunt was so messed up. And then the big reveal was... Hippae are evil! They mindrape for no reason save that they are evil! They spread plague solely because they are evil! The big mysterious sign they write on the ground is... "Yay! Killing is fun!"

[daedala]

I find Tepper's politics annoying especially when I agree with her. "Why are you on my side with these really annoying and easily deconstructed arguments?"

[rachelmanija]

Heee!

[coraa]

I don't know Tepper, but I know that feeling well! "Get off my side! You are making my side look boring, preachy, irritating, and kind of stupid!"

[daedala]

I've been feeling that a lot lately.

[estara]

You might like Julie Czerneda's standalone In the Company of Others, where there's a plague in connection with terraforming that empties whole planets (and the hero is the son of the terraformer genius mother whose terraforming seems to have started the plague for the first time) - and at the end they find out that it's not really a plague. It's not really transformation of the danger but proper realisation of what the danger is.

[oyceter]

Ooo sounds interesting, thanks for the rec!

[estara]

Yay for interest ^^.

[al_zorra]

In 1993, the year Grass was published, the only really big environmental novel to have come out in the field was Dune, and that was in 1965. Though Dune did have major roles for female characters, the front and center was the young male protag -- and in many, many ways this novel is anti-female, or at least a screed about why the male is superior to the female -- the Kwisatz Hadarach can go - see where the bene gesserit cannot blahblahblah.

This means 17 years ago, if I can subtract correctly. A huge amount has happened since then; Clinton hadn't even been impeached. It also wasn't verboten to speak of overpopulation; the first female secretary of state, Madeleine Allbright (1997) hadn't yet served; the internetz not yet happening except for a few, mostly in government or the computer industry; we hadn't mapped the human genome -- dna wasn't a household word then even and the staple of crime television reveals. The book looked very different then. I didn't see the bat virii thing a hundred pp. in as you did, for instance. I loved the book because I couldn't see what was coming or the answers to the mysteries, unlike almost all the genre fiction that I was already starting to get tired of for just those reasons. Books don't stay the same over time, any more than the people who write them

Love, c

[al_zorra]

Whereas I always loathed everything OSC writes.

Because when I read him first I was already over thirty.

Love, C.

[oyceter]

Yeah, i just reread several of his books and sadly they do not age very well, especially after knowing his politics.

[ithiliana]

Zipping in to say oh yes! So agree! In fact, I wrote a paper on how GRASS was a feminist epic response to DUNE, and at the time, it was incredible (I've been a fan of Tepper's since her first work began being published, and at that time, her stuff was radical.). I also loved the planet GRASS (much more than DUNE), and yes, Marjorie Westriding is a bit limited in my eyes, now, but at the time! (Her first publications, the GAME series, came out in 1983!).

[al_zorra]

How many middle-aged female protags, who are a wife and mother, yet with agency, had we seen at that time in sfnal works? Or even ... now?

Love, c.

[ithiliana]

*thinks hard*

None that come to my mind--I mean some of Tepper's earlier more 'traditionally' structured fantasy (her early novels based on Games) incorporated a bunch of second wave feminist ideas (and it's useful to remember she began publishing after a career in Planned Parenthood which shapes much of her fiction), many of which are problematic (her work is heternormative, and there are colonialist/racist tropes in some of her "not white" cultures), but yes, at the time....Marjorie was outstanding. And Tepper critiques patriarchal institutional religion (Marjorie's conversation with God is one of my personal favorites even now).

Elizabeth Moon's REMNANT POPULATION is amazing because of the protagonist's age (and Suzy McKee Charnas' DOROTHEA DREAMS).

There just aren't that many sf or fantasy novels with women in their fifties or older.

[dorothean]

Hello! I'm new to Dreamwidth and just saw your comment here -- I have recently read Dorothea Dreams and wished it were more widely known now, because it's amazing. So that made me click on your journal, and I really like that so I've friended you.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

As for now, James Nicoll recently asked for "old lady" protagonists and got mostly middle-aged ones: http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2647242.html

[oyceter]

Thanks for the perspective... It's too bad this hasn't aged that well. I haven't read enough to know, but hopefully there will be more middle-aged female protags in the 1970-80s feminist sf I'm trying to read that I'll like better than Marjorie.

[al_zorra]

There's another perspective too as one goes along in life: it is more interesing for protagoinists to be interesting and plausible than likeable. A really terrific character can be someone who isn't like you, who you don't like, who you do not identify with. I love those characters now. I didn't used to, though, or understand the difference -- and I was a grad lit student even!

Also, plots about who ends up with who aren't as interesting any longer once one is ended up. Or maybe that is just me?

I recall after my first novel came out a much younger friend was in the process of reading it and she called me up begging me to tell her if the protagonists ended with blahblahblah -- I answered, "She doesn't end up with anybody. That's not her destiny." My friend got very angry! :) She did read to the end though, and liked the ending after all, though she said she was glad she'd been warned.

Love, C.

[oyceter]

Hrm, I didn't put that well... my problem with Marjorie isn't just that I didn't like her, it was that I found her to be implausibly right all the time as well as rather two dimensional. I suspect the implausibly right would have been forgivable, since many book protags can be, but the flatness of the characterization killed it for me. I've liked quite a few characters who are unlikable or immoral or completely different from me, but sadly, the characters in Grass aren't among them. YMMV, of course, since my dislike of the book in no way detracts from anyone else's opinion of it.

Not quite sure where the plots about who ends up with whom has to do with Grass, and I tend to be very pro female characters not having to end up heterosexually romantically involved to complete their lives.

[al_zorra]

It's been so long since I read Grass. It's not out of the realm of consideration at all that the protag is implausible.

Love, C.

[vito_excalibur]

Books don't stay the same over time, any more than the people who write them

That is one of the smartest things I have heard in a long time.

[glass_icarus]

Ahahahaha! I read Grass back in high school, along with a bunch of other Tepper books. I'm pretty sure that one left the LEAST impression on me. :P

[oyceter]

Any you'd recommend? Otherwise i figure I'll probably skip other Teppers.

[glass_icarus]

Hmm, I wouldn't recommend any of her books without caveats, but I think the two I enjoyed the most upon discovery (back in high school) were Singer from the Sea and... Family Tree? (Raising the Stones is the one I read most recently, and while the religiony bits in there are somewhat interesting, the, um, gendered stuff- among other things- will probably make you want to bang your head against a wall.)

[eta] ... actually there are now a lot of things in her books that make me want to bang my head against a wall these days, so, y'know. Only take those suggestions if you're feeling up to dealing with her particular brands of whatever! :P

[oyceter]

Gotcha, and thanks!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I hearted it, but I was in fact a teenager at the time! Haven't read it in ages; maybe this is one of the Teppers I will now avoid like the plague (which is most of them, despite my username).

[oyceter]

I saw the Jinian series on wiki and was wondering if that was where your username caeme from!

[sunnyskywalker]

I liked the part where the bons were all, "Oh, it's terribly sad that sometimes our kids die on these hunts, but what can you do, it's essential!" Because as silly as it sounded in the book, there actually are plenty of real things like that - you could probably even make an argument for the ubiquity of cars as a parallel. ("How sad that so many thousands of people keep dying while driving to get milk or go to school! But what can you do, society would have serious readjustment problems if we did't let everyone start driving at 16...") But the rest wasn't as cool. Well, except the concept of a protagonist who's a middle-aged mom and still capable of doing interesting stuff, but I didn't care for Marjorie specifically.

In a way, I think The Gate to Women's Country actually works best of all the Tepper I've read (admittedly only four or five books), because in that one, the "good" side admits that yeah, they're kind of awful in their own way, and probably damned. (Plus the main character realizes that her bitchy sister is horribly constrained and frustrated by society, not just randomly bitchy.) So there's room to argue that their whole system isn't a tough but necessary choice but will not either improve anything at all, and that they've just traded one dystopia for another. I liked that (even though I got the feeling Tepper didn't intend it to go quite that far and that she expected us to buy the biological essentialism arguments).

[rachelmanija]

Having read a lot of Tepper, I think she's definitely a biological determinist. There's an incredibly creepy bit in her otherwise charming fantasy True Game series in which "midwives" have the magical gift to sense when babies "don't have a soul" (ie, will grow up to be sociopaths) and smother them at birth. Aieeee!

That being said, I like The Gate to Women's Country. It's both intentionally and unintentionally creepy, preachy, and I disagree with the politics... but I love all the domestic detail and worldbuilding and the characters are mostly very believable.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yikes! That reminds me of the bit in Family Tree where the forest suddenly taking over the cities also seems to be deciding how many children people really need and "absorbing" the rest.

It does have a nice creepy vibe throughout, and I think enough (possibly unintentional) critiques of their system to read it legitimately as a dystopian tragedy.

[oyceter]

I know! I really wanted to Ike Marjorie a lot more than I actually did because i like having moms and housewives as the stars of sf books, especially when it looks at the limitations of their roles, but it was so heavy handed and poorly handled that i was really disappointed.

[al_zorra]

All that said, yes, Tepper has an agenda, as much as Ayn Rand does, but whereas Rand is all about the superiority of people, Tepper is about the effects of overpopulation and religious / political power upon women, children and the environment. Also, she began her writing career after menopause, I think, which isn't how most of us manage, after working, as a women, in the grinders of all kinds of sausage factories, as well as for Planned Parenthood. She saw up front, close and very personal the consequences of what she continues to warn us about. How much more sfnal can you get than "If this continues to happen ....""?
Her agenda seems deeply unpopular, but so was Orwell's and Huxley's yet they are still highly admired. Again, its as if we judge women by different standards than male writers, even we who are women.

That said (again) I gave up mostly reading Tepper too because it was so depressing, and the state of the earth, of women and everything is what I'm so aware of it didn't seeem that I needed to torture myself even more. Sometimes, for the state of one's ability to actually function, you have to limit the intake of bad news.

That said (third time said! :) I very much liked Three Margarets. It was as though she'd gotten back to form. And a bit of light-heartedness.

Love, C.

[seraphcelene]

I haven't read Grass yet, but I did read the third book in the loose trilogy, Sideshow. I actually quite liked Sideshow although it was a little long and weary in places. I keep trying to crack Grass and just don't ever seem to make it very far.

[thomasyan]

I read Sideshow before Grass or Raising the Stones and was somewhat disoriented. Plus, I kept mis-parsing Hobbs Land Gods as the Hobbs variety (whatever that was) of Land Gods (whoever they were). I didn't realize there was a planet called Hobbs Land and there were so-called Gods from there.

It did show me that Tepper might be smoking some good crack.

[oyceter]

I thought the beginning of Grass was better than the end, so I feel if the beginning doesn't grab you, the end probably won't either?