Moon, Elizabeth: Remnant Population
Remnant Population (1996)
Written by: Elizabeth Moon
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 325 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: Ever since reading The Speed of Dark, I've wanted to read more of Elizabeth Moon's work. I gotten the Vatta's War series under my belt, but was thrilled to finally score a copy of Remnant Population to read, because it's her only other stand-alone title. That it's a Women of SF book club selection is just a bonus.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days -- until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.
With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over -- for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again -- in ways she could never have imagined. . . .
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. Since it's a book club selection, spoilers will abound in the review and the comments. But seriously, it's an SF book about an old woman. Do you really think spoilers are going to be THAT big a deal? If so, skip to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
So I've rather got mixed thoughts on this book. There are things I like and appreciate, and then there's things that frustrate me, while other things leave my scratching my head.
What I liked: it's rare that a speculative fiction book features an elderly person as its protagonist, let alone an old woman. So that was rather charming at first, and I enjoyed too how it was the old woman saving the day at the very end of the book, because again, that rarely happens. Old women are all too often shunted to the side in science fiction and fantasy, either crazy or so super-wise that it becomes a caricature of age. I was reminded of an Ursula K. Le Guin essay found in Dancing at the Edge of the World, entitled "The Space Crone," in which Le Guin explains why, if she had to pick one person on Earth to send to the stars and make first contact, she would pick an old woman. The crone. It's a great essay, and having that tucked away in my reading conscious made for a nice extra dimension while reading this book.
I also rather appreciated just how Ofelia viewed her aliens. So often, she refers to them as children, as toddlers, and she treats them as such. Sometimes I cringed at that, simply because I, as a reader, knew this was an intelligent race, but yet other times, it just made sense. These aliens were learning her world, and like children, they needed to be taught. They just ended up being super-smart brainiac children, lethal ones at that.
The People (the aliens) were fascinating as well, and I was definitely engaged in learning about their culture, why they attacked the second colony, and why they were so attached to Ofelia. All of these things I've mentioned cumulated into a rather satisfying conclusion, so while I was a little impatient for the book to wrap up, I quite enjoyed the ending.
However, the beginning was slow. And I don't mind slow as long as there's something to carry me through those pages, yet I kept wondering, over and over, how easily a reader could relate if they didn't fit that stereotype of a woman being one with nature. Ofelia's a gardener, and I don't begrudge her that (in fact, those scenes were entertaining at times), but I couldn't relate to her. Ofelifa's the stereotype of what women are "supposed" to be in certain belief systems, and while I appreciate the story is about her breaking out of that mold while retaining those skills she needs to survive, I still found it difficult to relate to her.
It also made me wonder: is it an age thing? I read The Dazzle of Day by Molly Goss a few years ago, and surprisingly didn't care for it. I've now come to the conclusion that I was too young to read it, despite being in my twenties. It's the kind of book I feel I could've appreciated more if I were older, like in my forties or so, and I wonder if Remnant Population may fall into the same category. The older you are (especially if you're a woman), the more you get out of it, the more you appreciate it, the more you like it.
I liked this one well enough, but I couldn't relate the way I wanted to. I'm no gardner. I don't have children. I've not lived at the mercy of doing whatever a male authority figure tells me to do. So it was really, really frustrating at times to read Ofelia's story. That said? I would've totally died on that planet by myself, and she had all the tools at her disposal to survive just fine.
Still, it's so hard to swallow the world and culture that Ofelia's lived through, that she's a part of. This was written in the mid-nineties, and I always wonder what authors are thinking when they craft futures and cultures that are so backwards and demeaning to women, especially in this case, where it seems to be the norm instead of the exception. I know that cultures in SF tend to reflect something about the culture of the present day, that the societies created may some times reflect the author's fear of the future and where things are headed, and I'm not sure that's the case here. I just know I was never happy about it. I'm not saying, either, that Moon believes that all women should have a certain place in the world, and that place is a lower station than a man's (I've read her other fiction, so I know it's not a common thread), but I was just endlessly frustrated, and there's not much more I can say about that without repeating myself, so let's move on.
Perhaps, though, the point of such a repressed culture is to show how Ofelia if finally able to break free and grow, to become her own person. We, as readers, needed to be able to fear what she might be forced to go back into. I'm not sure how this story would've played out if women were equal in this world, but it wouldn't have been the same story, I know that.
Yet . . . over and over, other humans think Ofelia is dumb and uneducated and they dismiss her because of that opinion. Yet, I don't think we met a single human character, outside of Ofelia, who was actually considered smart, especially in the investigation team. Certainly, THOSE people thought they were smart, yet their actions indicated otherwise. Like the so-called language expert? Please. The comment she made about whether or not the People had brains on page 273 made me want to smack her. Or even the anthropologists, who kept they understood what was happening and refusing to listen to the asset they had, Ofelia, who'd lived with the aliens for far longer. It was maddening, and I'm not sure what Moon's point here was, short of creating a sort of cheap tension so that the reader rooted for Ofelia and the People, and not anyone else.
My Rating: Good Read
It's a good read, but it's a slow read, and if you pick it up, make sure you're in the mood for a lazy-day read, if that makes sense. It's not a beach read in the sense you tear through the pages, but the pace is literally kind of lazy, so be ready to take your time. Ofelia's an interesting heroine whom I certainly appreciate; after all, it's not often we get an old woman at the center of her very own story, and she's certainly heroic in many different ways. I admired her at times and was frustrated with her at other times, but by the end, I was very satisfied by how everything turned out. No doubt, it's not a perfect book, and it's not even my favorite by Elizabeth Moon either. So far, nothing of hers I've read comes close to The Speed of Dark, but she's a solid writer and I know I'll get something out of her fiction, though some books I enjoy more than others. Remnant Population is not a book for readers who need a lot of action or even a lot of intellectual discourse. Instead, it's a quiet book about first contact and what it means to still be human, even when others consider you anything but.
Cover Commentary: I love how pretty and colorful this is. The cover doesn't scream SF, but given the soft science fiction nature of the story, I think this works wonderfully. It's just pretty and colorful, and you've got the lone woman walking towards the sunset. Ah, metaphor!
Next up: One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire
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