used here by permission
Some readers may not know that Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Swords is one of the best science fiction novels of the 1990'sor indeed, of any decade. The book appeared just over ten years ago, following the considerable success of Arnason's Tiptree Award-winning novel A Woman of the Iron People. Ring of Swords was not the break-out sales success the publisher hoped for, and won no major awards (it was only 12th in the Locus magazine poll for 1993), but it continues to attract readers, is mentioned respectfully in critical sources, and is increasingly taught in college courses.
A decade after initial publication seems like a good time for
a reassessment. How well has the book worn? What stands out now
that the glow of novelty has subsided? What new connections does
the story make with events and thinking in the 21st century? My
own sense, on rereading the novel, is that it is a slightly different
book than the one I first readand an even better one. Indeed,
I would now say that is it a classicby which I mean not an
unchanging monument but a text that responds in new and surprising
ways to a shifting reality.
Most readers the first time out were struck primarily by Arnason's
bold experiment with gender. This aspect of the novel has been
ably discussed by Joan Gordon, Wendy Pearson, and Veronica Hollinger.
In Ring of Swords, humanity has come in contact with a
race called the hwarhath. Among the hwarhath, the
sexes are almost completely segregated. Women and men have their
own separate occupations, living space, political structures,
cultural institutions, and sexual arrangements. As the hwarhath
developed space travel, the men moved out into the perimeter looking
for new enemies, while the women and children stayed on the home
world. As a result, the earth's first impression is of a warlike
race dominated by men. Only later do humans begin to discover
other aspects of hwarhath culture, including the fact that
female authority trumps male.
Though she draws on a number of earthly cultures in her invention
of the hwarhath, from ancient Greek family life to Japanese
noh theater, the society Arnason has created is convincingly
alien. In the past decade, more glimpses of hwarhath life
have appeared, including last year's splendid story of art and
evolution, "The Potter of Bones." In these stories (which
are seriously overdue for reprinting in a collection) we get an
ever-deepening sense of the history, cultural differences, personalities,
vicissitudes of love, and geography of the hwarhath home
world. Even in their first appearance, however, Arnason's aliens
came across as a richly imagined, consistent, historically grounded
race, one about which the author clearly knew more than she had
occasion to tell. In this respect, Ring is in the best
anthropological SF tradition of The Left Hand of Darkness
or The Fifth Head of Cerberus.
But what about the storytelling? After we have added this bold
thought-experiment to our way of thinking about gender, has the
novel completed its task? Some SF books make a big splash and
then disappear once we have absorbed their single message. Othersstories
by Philip Dick and Cordwainer Smith, for instancedon't make
as much impression at first but continue to gain influence and
reputation. I would place Ring of Swords in the latter
category for two reasons. One is that it is a remarkably well
crafted novel, one that demands and rewards re-reading. The other
reason is that the images, events, and characters gain resonance
over time, as the world supplies more ironies and dilemmas for
the story to interact with.
As a way of tracing some of these resonances, I suggest three
different readings of the book, each of which brings out slightly
different kinds of excellence. I call these Jane Austen in
Space, Slashing Heinlein, and The Scottish Novel.
Jane Austen in Space
As it begins, Ring of Swords looks like it's going
to be a piece of biological extrapolation. One of the lead characters,
Anna Perez, is studying a possibly intelligent life form in the
seas of an alien planet. We gain a strong sense of the landscape
and ecology of an alien planet, and we get drawn into the question
of whether the complex behavior of the organisms Anna calls pseudosiphonophores
can be called true intelligence. Almost immediately, though, Anna
is swept up into a story of intelligence-gathering and military
skullduggery, and the book looks as if it's going to turn into
space opera. Neither of these emphases goes away entirely, but
both are ultimately wound into the primary narrative line, which
is a most improbable comedy of manners.
The importance of manners is signaled early on: first in the guise
of diplomacy, as the humans and hwarhath negotiators haggle
over such details as the proper height of furniture, and then
as a whole series of blunders, misinterpretations, and painful
explanations. The primary explainer is Nicholas Sanders, former
captive of the hwarhath, now more or less absorbed into
the male culture and serving as translator for their diplomats.
Nick's role as mediator causes him to be seen by the hwarhath
as a security risk and by Earth's military as a turncoat. His
is a painful role that can be summed up in the Italian saying,
traduttore, traditore: the translator is the traitor.
Hwarhath and human mores equally come under scrutiny. Nick
explains to Anna such odd facts about the hwarhath as their
lack of swearwords, their disapproval of public eating, their
discomfort at being stared in the eye, and their constant awareness
of lines of kinship. For their part, human peculiarities include
keeping too many secrets, living in tiny isolated family groups,
and promiscuously mixing the sexes. All of these differences are
viewed by officials on both sides as potentially damning, so much
so that the hwarhath are seriously considering genocide
as a solution to cultural difference.
So where is the comedy? Everywhere. Every false assumption, every
misunderstanding, is also a potential source of amusement. Nick,
in his diary entries, sardonically dissects a number of gaffes,
including his own. The unobtrusive narrator of Anna's sections
of the text refrains from making direct comments but lets juxtapositions
flower into jokes. When Anna is first trying to figure out Nick's
role, for instance, she has a conversation with another scientist:
She didn't share Katya's passion for intrigue, which Katya said
she got from studying plants. "They are wonderfully complex
and devious, a constant inspiration to me. Those who cannot run
must find more interesting ways to survive."
All of which had nothing to do with the man who called himself
Nicholas. (29)
No, of course not.
A comedy of manners must do more than set up ironies and clashing
mores. Austen's style of comedy calls for characters whose conversations
demonstrate wit and perceptiveness while unwittingly revealing
vulnerabilities and blind spots. Of Arnason's characters, Nick
is the wittiest and the most vulnerable. Many of the novel's funniest
lines fall flat when quoted: their humor is dependent on immediate
context and on our knowledge of the character who speaks them.
When, for instance, Nick shows Anna a hologram of the planet of
the pseudosiphonophores, he asks, "What did you call it?"
"Reed 1935-C."
"That sings." (29)
And it is nearly impossible to explain why Nick's line is so funny.
It has to do with his aesthetic dandy-ism, with Anna's single-minded
pursuit of knowledge, with human bureaucracy, with the dangerous
position both Anna and Nick are in, and with the growing rapport
between them.
The most poignant pieces of dialogue are never spoken. They involve
entries in Nick's diary and annotationswhich Nick will probably
never seeby Ettin Gwarha, the general who is Nick's lover
and protector. Talking about a hwarhath martial art, Nick
writes, "I don't like mirrors or moving slowly. But it's
a good discipline, and I guess I'm in favor of discipline."
Gwarha responds in a parenthetical note, "No. You endure
it when you have to and avoid it when you can. You never take
it in your arms" (255). We see here that Gwarha knows Nick
better than Nick does, sees his flaws, loves him anyway, but fears
that in taking Nick into his own arms he has offended the spirit
of military discipline that is his other passion.
No two main characters sound alike in this novel. Even brief walk-ons
have distinctive voices--especially the booming bass voices of
the older hwarhath women we meet toward the end of the
book. When Gwarha's formidable aunts begin to speak their minds,
we know that everything will come out right, because they have
decided it should.
For, as in any comedy of manners, the right ending is a marriage.
In this case, it is not a marriage between individuals but between
alien species. The entire book is a courtship between proud hwarhath
and prejudiced humans (or perhaps it is the other way around).
The two races need each other as much as they misunderstand one
another, and it requires all of Anna's good sense and Nick's sensibility
to bring the courtship to a satisfactory close.
Slashing Heinlein
An entirely different level of comedy in Ring stems
from its rewriting of a couple of classic SF scenarios. One of
these is the first-contact/alien-war story. The first meeting
of humans and aliens in the novel is a violent one. To earth people,
the hwarhath are "the other, the unknowable, the people
in ugly stubby faster-than-light vessels that came into our space
and ran if our ships found them or fought and were destroyed"
(23). Humans must figure out why this alien race is attacking
so mercilessly: they must find a key to the alien psychology and
a defense against a seemingly unstoppable attack. This is the
set-up for any number of classic stories, of which the touchstone
is Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
The second story trope is the kid-in-space story, in which a young
man leaves home and gets himself swept up galactic intrigues.
Along the way he finds a wise older man who serves as his mentor
and an elite group of men in really cool uniforms. Ultimately
he renounces family and even Mother Earth and transfers his loyalties
to the space-going corps. This plot is a composite of several
Heinlein titles, such as Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Space
Cadet, and Between Planets. It is also the life history
of Nicholas Sanders.
What Arnason does to these scenarios is to reproduce them lovingly,
respectfully, and in such a way that they are turned on their
heads. She slashes them. Slashers are fan writers who create stories
of homosexual or other forbidden love between characters within
established fictional universes. They pride themselves on drawing
out implications that are already there: if the relationship between
Captain Kirk and Science Officer Spock were not the emotional
mainspring of the original Star Trek series, it would hardly
be worthwhile or even possible to base sexual fantasies on it.
The typical Heinlein story, which in many ways is the typical
SF story of the 1940's and 50's, calls attention to its own inventiveness
and tight plotting while drawing attention away from the emotional
yearning that underlies the color and intrigue. Arnason's novel
reveals the lines of emotional force as a dusting of iron filings
reveals the patterns of attraction around a magnet.
What does a Heinlein hero want? He wants to escape from one group
and join anotherthat latter usually all male, often explicitly
military. He wants to make his way into the innermost circles
of this group, who comprise the secret leaders of society. He
wants to gain an insider's knowledge and the respect of the men
who hold that knowledge. He wants to solve problems that conventional
wisdom would say are insoluble. He wants Dad to accept him, and
he wants to get away from Mom.
In Ring, Nick accomplishes all these goals by joining the
hwarhath, the perfect Starship Troopers. They even dress
the part. When Anna first sees the hwarhath delegates,
she vaguely notices the uniforms they wear. She doesn't pay close
attention because these uniforms conform to human expectations
of space-going soldiers. Only later do we find out that the uniforms
are costumes. Nick explains,
"I told the general that the humans might find it hard to
take people wearing shorts seriously. So we had the Art Corps
design space cadet uniforms. Very nicely done, I thought. I especially
liked the high shiny black boots, though I can't imagine what
they would be for. You don't ride horses in a space station, and
you don't do a hell of a lot of hiking. The snakebite problem
is minimal. Maybe you use them to kick subordinates, while uttering
guttural curses in an alien tongue." (139)
The boots, of course, signify an exaggerated, even fetishized
maleness. Therefore, even though they are a fib, they also tell
a truth about the hwarhath men, whose society is a straightforward
extrapolation from various human images and institutions of masculinity.
The parody is even closer to fact now than it was in 1993 (just
imagine yourself a decade ago saying "Governor Schwarzenegger").
All Arnason has added to the mix is overt sexuality, and even
that shows up in hypermasculine earthly cultureswhat is more
macho than a leather bar?
Perhaps because she gives her masculine society a sexual outlet,
it doesn't have to resort to outright violence, at least internally.
Hwarhath male history is plenty violent, but at the time the novel
takes place, much of this violence is symbolic: channeled into
martial arts or competition for status. One more way she revises
Heinlein is to have her Starship Troopers end up not on the battlefield
but at the negotiating table. In a review in Locus, Russell
Letson describes Arnason's version of the space-invader story
as "chamber military sf, in which the action takes the form
not of battles but of negotiations and conversations and arguments"
(27). When Arnason slashes space opera, it comes out as chamber
music of the liveliest sort.
Like a good Star Trek slasher, Arnason demonstrates affection
not only for her variation on the model but for the tradition
itself. Like Nick, we find these alien space cadets appealing.
They may be overly fond of conflict, but theyespecially Ettin
Gwarha--are honorable, generous, graceful, and capable of self-criticism.
They are soldiers but they are also scientists. The hwarhath
version of masculinity has room for generals and translators,
technicians and artists (this last being something Heinlein and
the SF tradition he represents too often leave out). What it lacks
is any place for sexual deviancy. Amid the hwarhath, we
see only one real outsider: Nick's friend Eh Matsehar, who is
a misfit not because he is a playwright but because he is a closeted
heterosexual.
The Scottish Novel
Eh Matsehar, Mats for short, is engaged in adapting a human
play for hwarhath tastes. This is not an easy task, considering
the centrality of male-female interactions in Earth's dramatic
tradition. Eventually he settles on Macbeth, because, as
Mats explains:
"The heterosexuality is irrelevant. The womanthat wonderful
and horrible woman!can be turned into a mother or sister.
Then the story is about ambition and violence, which are decent
topics that will not disturb anyone in the audience." (157)
Throughout the last third of the book, as tensions rise and the
line between compromise and betrayal grows ever finer, Mats works
on his play. As one might expect, parallels emerge between Shakespeare's
tragedy and the situation in the novel. Most obviously, Gwarha's
chief rival, Lugala Tsu, a thick-headed warrior with an ambitious
mother, stands in for Macbeth. He threatens to push the negotiations
toward disaster not only for Gwarha and Nick but for the worlds
they represent. Less obvious is the match-up between Gwarha himself
and the Thane of Glamis. Gwarha, like Macbeth, is a leader on
the rise. He is advised by three distinctly witchy aunts. Honorable
motives push him toward dishonorable acts, such as planting a
listening device in Anna's quarters. The further things go, the
fewer options he has, and the more violent the remaining ones
seem to be. And yet, as Mats says of Macbeth, "His courage
is beyond question. He never gives up, even after he has reached
the point of complete despair" (291).
Shakespearean tragedy appeals to the hwarhath because they
already have a similar tradition (within the men's culture) of
"hero plays." Nick describes them:
They are always about men who have to deal with a horrible ethical
problem: a conflict between two kinds of honor, a conflict between
two equal and opposing loyalties. . . . . Impossible choices,
which have to be made in a little over an hour. And most of the
time you die at the end, no matter what kind of choice you made.
(64)
Yet there are other kinds of plays among the hwarhath,
just as there are among humans. There are animal plays, performed
in masks. The primary player in these is often a little scavenger
called a tli, which "lives everywhere. It eats everything.
There is no way to get rid of it. The People regard it with exasperation
and respect" (275). The tli of animal plays is a mythic
trickster. Nick compares it to Brer Rabbit, but Arnason also reminds
us of another human equivalent when Anna distracts herself playing
a computer game based on the Chinese character of Monkey. As she
plays, Anna figures how to cheat the game: "The real Monkey
cheated whenever possible. She figured she could do the same"
(185).
But it is not Anna who is the chief trickster of the story. Nick
has a bracelet, given him by Gwarha, with a jade carving in the
shape of a tli. One of Gwarha's rivals taunts Nick for
being "The cheat, the animal who makes fools of the large
and noble animals" (272). A trickster does not belong in
a heroic story. How can we gasp and grieve at the fate of the
noble hero when we glimpse over his shoulder a monkeyor Monkey--mimicking
his moves for comic effect? How can we empathize with the hero
who has no choices left, while Brer Rabbit demonstrates precisely
how one gets out of an impossible situation? Tricksters don't
accept the rules that lock tragic heroes into their fates.
Nick figures out how to cheat fate. Gwarha is uneasy about the
outcome: "I feel as if I've been tested like a hero in one
of the old plays, and I failed. I could not let Nicky be destroyed"
(325). But at the same time, he admires Nick's unheroic courage:
"He never gives up. When you think he is retreating, he is
only moving to a new position to rest or to find a new way to
resist or attack" (304). Exposure to Nick has ruined Gwarha
as a tragic hero. Even when caught in a seemingly insoluble dilemma,
he considers neither suicide nor explosive violence as ways out.
He has become what the hwarhath call rahaka: the
man who does not choose death over dishonor.
Ring of Swords shows how powerful genres can be. The scenarios
we carry in our heads determine our behavior. Those who see themselves
as heroes, whether tragic or triumphant, can justify any sort
of behavior: lies, evasions, invasions, suspension of the rights
of those they label enemies. Now, even more than in 1993, too
many leaders around the world see themselves as heroes. We need
more tricksters, translators, traitors like Nick to remind us
how the hero's story ends up and to show us unexpected ways out.
At the end of the novel, Nick comments that a couple of dramatic
deaths would look better in a play than the embarrassments and
reconciliations that have actually come about:
"But I can't say that I've ever wanted to be in a tragedy.
. . . Comedy is difficult, life is messy, and Gwarha and I are
rahaka. So where does that leave us?"
"With a mess," said Anna. "That may or may not
be funny, and with a lot of secrets that may well bite us in the
ass." (363)
Anna is perfectly happy with the outcome. Neither hwarhath
nor male, she has not bought into the tragic scenario. She is
delighted with Mats's interpretation of Macbeth: for all
of the hero's posturing, it is ultimately a play "about greed
and bad manners" (333). But Macbeth's tragic fall does have
one happy outcome: it helps the hwarhath recognize that
our peculiar race may indeed be intelligent beings and not merely
clever imitators.
Macbeth, in Shakespeare's rendition, is tripped up not only by
ambition and greed, but by insecurity about his manhood. Lady
Macbeth, who knows which buttons to push, tells her husband that
"When you durst do it, then you were a man," but whenever
he shows any sign of doubt or compassion, he becomes something
less (I, vii, 49). She herself wishes she might be unsexed, so
"that no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell
purpose nor keep peace between/ Th'effect and it" (I, v,
43-45) No wonder Macbeth tells her that she should "Bring
forth men-children only;/ For thy undaunted mettle should compose/
Nothing but males" (I, vii, 72-74).
Lady Macbeth can be read as Macbeth's own internalized sense of
gender: the inner voice that tells him if he wants to be a real
man, he has to kill the king, buy a Humvee, smoke Marlboros, invade
Iraq. In Macbeth, the expulsion of the feminine from court
and from the psyches of both Thane and Lady leads to a distintegration
and death. Once everything exhibiting non-masculine qualities,
including Lady Macbeth, is banished or extinguished, there is
nothing for Macbeth to do but kill or die.
Here is where a good trickster is needed. One of the qualities
of a trickster is gender ambiguity: divine tricksters like Loki
or Coyote not only change sex but even give birth. Tricksters
bridge gaps, deny difference, and move freely through all conditions.
And in doing so, they bring about change.
The implication at the end of Ring of Swords is that life
will not be the same, among humans or among the hwarhath.
After Nick's intervention, the rigid separation that separates
the male defenders from the female hearth will start to break
down. The Lady Macbeth-like Lugala Minti and her son fail in their
efforts to halt these changes. Gwarha and his aunts, who are more
open to change, are able to negotiate a solution that leaves nobody
dead, though it also leaves everyone at least a little uncomfortable.
In a tragedy, nobody has to face consequences, especially embarrassing
ones.
Ring of Swords is about genres as much as it is about genders:
about science fiction as a metaphor for maturation, about tragedy
as a scenario for defending one's masculinity, about animal fables
as vehicles for transforming society. Another way to put this
is that it is a book about gender in much the same way Macbeth
about gender. Both play and novel reflect upon, rather than merely
reflecting, the sexual divisions that simultaneously enable and
restrict action. The tricky author of Ring of Swords, like
her trickster hero, shows how such fundamental categories can
dissolve in the wink of an eye, leaving us free to reinvent ourselves
and our stories.
Works Cited
Arnason, Eleanor. Ring of Swords. New York: Tor, 1993.
Gordon, Joan. "Incite/On-Site/Insight: Implications of the Other in Eleanor Arnason's Science Fiction." In Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Ed. Marleen S. Barr. Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2000. 247-58.
Hollinger, Veronica. "Feminist Theory and Science Fiction." In The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 125-36.
Letson, Russell. "Reviews by Russell Letson." Locus 392 (Sept. 1993): 27, 29, 71
Pearson, Wendy. "Science Fiction and Queer Theory." In The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 149-60.
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