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Suncatcher: Seven Days in the Sky by Alia Gee Book Club
83 Plays1 year ago
This plot-filled story made Carly and Caroline ask questions about personhood. Personhood is defined by law in this book, which is not necessarily a bad thing. We also talk about what you have to leave behind to create something new.
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Transcript
Introduction and Spoiler Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, listeners. This is your spoiler warning. We will be spoiling Suncatcher Seven Days in the Sky by Alia Gee. Knowing that I am not a human and made the world, but part of the world humans made, I am a construct, a proof of concept commissioned by wealthy, frightened patrons who wanted their future children to not have to fear illness or physical damage.
Hosts Welcome and Book Introduction
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. Today, we are discussing Suncatcher Seven Days in the Sky by Alia Guy.
Initial Thoughts on 'Suncatcher Seven Days in the Sky'
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm Carly, and I enjoyed the setup for the story. It got a little bit complicated and confusing, but I think the story was pretty good overall and interesting concepts were introduced. I'm Caroline.
00:00:50
Speaker
I felt pretty similarly. I enjoyed the upbeat adventure of this book, even if I felt like the plot was maybe a little overworked and the writing uneven in some places. But I definitely enjoyed thinking about a world where
00:01:05
Speaker
There's a fleet of solar powered ships up in the sky, living their best collective life because they've escaped from Earth down below. The concepts were great. So the story follows Dr.
Plot Overview and Character Introduction
00:01:20
Speaker
Radikin Jones, a data science professor who spontaneously decides to take a sabbatical and join her older sister, who created a fleet of airships powered by solar panels. As a data scientist, Radikin uses the internet called the ether,
00:01:34
Speaker
by wearing virtual reality goggles and moving through the world of data as if it were a virtual world. She organizes the data using symbols. For example, she prefers a library as an organization method for her own data, and she uses dogs to represent search algorithms. The ether was developed during the plague 16 years before the book starts, when most of the world was quarantined. Radikand and her sister, Pari, have a tense relationship because their younger brother was killed during that same pandemic.
00:02:03
Speaker
and Pari's husband also died, and their father Abraham was lost in the ether 18 months ago. At the beginning of the story, the fleet is attacked by pirates, but the fleet is able to capture two of the ships while the third ship retreats. They quickly discover that the pirates were hired by a corporation called East Santos.
Action and Conflict: Attacks and Rescues
00:02:24
Speaker
Pari, Radhikand, and a few others from the fleet acting as bodyguards visit their friends in Miami at a Quaker restaurant. Then they're attacked by a blood cult. The blood cultists are insanely violent with the goal of murdering as many people as they can.
00:02:39
Speaker
The Quakers have drugs to detox the blood cultists. The tech is also thwarted by an old college friend of Radikin's named Charlie. Charlie was a bioengineered person with dog DNA, so she has some dog-like qualities. She is a journalist and has been following a revival preacher named Ezekiel because she suspects that he is related to the prevalence of blood cults.
00:02:59
Speaker
Soon after that, Charlie is kidnapped by bounty hunters working for Isantos. They claim she is the property of the corporation because of her status as a genetically engineered part human. Radikin and other fleet members are able to rescue her by providing proof that she was married and therefore recognized by the US government as a sovereign human. Charlie joins the fleet for safety while the legal situation is figured out. And then she learns that one of her ovaries has been removed.
00:03:24
Speaker
While all this is going on, Ratican is also developing a romantic relationship with a member of the fleet named Toby. Toby was adopted by other fleet members as a child when he was found watering the streets in Mexico. He tells Ratican that he was also genetically engineered in a lab and escaped as a child by murdering Lapte. Toby is capable of regenerating his body, as in he regrew his whole hand at one point.
00:03:47
Speaker
The FBI arrests him for the murders of the lab techs that occurred 20 years ago when he was a child. Radekin pulls together a quick marriage ceremony so that he can't be extradited to Mexico.
Uncovering Plans and AI Liberation
00:03:59
Speaker
As this is going on, Charlie and Radekin meet several times with three FBI agents who help them make connections between East Santos, the Reverend Ezekiel, the blood combs, and Charlie's kidnapping.
00:04:10
Speaker
The Quakers are able to detox the blood cultists and discover they were at a revival meeting hosted by Ezekiel. They also discovered detonation devices surgically implanted in the blood cultists. Just as an aside, this is kind of what we meant about the plot being a lot. And I think we're only a couple days in.
00:04:29
Speaker
to the seven days, so go on Carly. Sure. So Radikin and Charlie figure out that East Santos has been losing profits partially because the fleet is able to provide energy to the cities where they dock. East Santos wants to revive their old genetically engineered super soldier program that Toby was the product of. The legal path for testing the therapies was too long and expensive, so they were drugging people who attended the religious revivals.
00:04:56
Speaker
People who reacted poorly to the drugs were made into blood cultists so they would destroy themselves and the evidence. Radikin figures out how to find her father who had been lost in the ether. She discovers his mind merged with a self-aware AI that calls itself Person. With the help of one of the FBI agents, who is also a cybernetic specialist and part machine, they transfer Person to the salvaged pirate ship, freeing Abraham's mind and letting him return to his body. Person was created in the East Santos database.
00:05:26
Speaker
With its help, they find the research data on Toby, discovering that he has enough human data to be considered a sovereign human, not the property of the lab that made him. He is released. While Toby and Radikind are on person-ship,
00:05:39
Speaker
The East Santos employee who has been driving all these actions makes one last play to reclaim the pirate ship and Toby. Person and Radikin are able to defeat her in the ether, and they discover that she was an indentured employee of the corporation.
Conclusion of the Book's Plot
00:05:53
Speaker
Once she's caught, the corporation cuts ties with her, leaving her without legal representation or support. She's then arrested. Radikin ultimately decides to stay in the fleet with Toby and her sister, and the book closes on that note. Can we just talk?
00:06:09
Speaker
real quick before we get to the opening question about the plot a little bit because yes it has a lot going on and I mean there's a blood cult down in Miami there's a genetic engineering in Mexico there's uh this artificial intelligence that has obtained a personhood there's an FBI agent that also turns out to be artificial intelligence and not a real person
00:06:38
Speaker
It's just there's a lot going on. So that's kind of what I want to I want to emphasize that this book is quick moving and that may have been a little bit of a weakness to it.
Pacing and Complexity Discussion
00:06:50
Speaker
We're going to talk about the world building because there was definitely a lot of thought and a very specific vision about this world.
00:06:57
Speaker
But it's kind of hard to pick up what's happening because so much is going on so quickly, right? Right. Yeah. So I know I will be making some leaps in judgment of just trying to make these connections because a lot of the times the connections don't feel very explicit in the book because there is there's so much action that
00:07:17
Speaker
I mean, in our summary, you talk about Isantos driving all these things. I think a lot of that is our assumption because our interpretation book, which it feels like we're making more interpretation than we do with other books because it is a quick paced story and there's not a lot of exposition to really hammer home everything.
00:07:37
Speaker
I think, Carly, you pointed out that this author, and this is a debut debut book, as I understand, was apparently very committed to that common bit of writing advice, which is that you don't do any exposition. It all has to come out naturally or sometimes a little unnaturally in dialogue.
00:07:56
Speaker
Which for the project that you and I have, which is about what the world is, it is about the exposition, you know, that rule, which is a common bit of, you know, advice or rule or whatever you want to call it, isn't necessarily a good fit with what we're trying to do here, which is understand the world we're talking about.
00:08:14
Speaker
I'll also say it could be adapted into a screenplay. And so I wonder how much of that is the intention of the author as well. I think that's an interesting point. I think there are a lot of books out there that are written by people who love stories, but maybe not necessarily novels.
00:08:30
Speaker
If that makes sense, like they don't necessarily love the medium of writing. Anyway, sorry, onto the opening question.
Legal Structures and Personhood in the Book
00:08:37
Speaker
Sure. So my opening question is, what is personhood? And I'll expand on that. So we were given the example, many examples of different kinds of entities like Toby and Charlie are genetically engineered. And, and person is an artificial intelligence.
00:08:54
Speaker
And I found it interesting that there were all of these sort of legal structures around personhood. So they have to navigate these legal disputes of like who owns whom based on legal precedent, which I actually kind of, I like that kind of thing. And I'm guessing you do too, Caroline, just to say.
00:09:14
Speaker
So that was interesting that so the idea that like, Charlie, because she had been married, and they provide documentation that she'd been married means that she was recognized as a human and could not be treated as property. So that was interesting. And then there's also the idea of like, employees can be indentured. And so they lose some rights as indentured employees. But then the corporation can cut ties with them as as Winters, our final villain is
00:09:39
Speaker
she's cut off after she had been doing everything she could to reclaim profits for the company as she was instructed. So there's the rights of the corporation too that it's interesting in the beginning, Pari goes to law enforcement about being attacked by pirates and she says, we are a union, we're not a corporation. And so
00:10:02
Speaker
a corporation cannot declare war on us. So apparently there's some legal structure that corporations can declare war on other corporations. But because the fleet is a union, there's some legal language there of like if they attacked us and they're declaring war on us and they're recognizing us as a corporation and therefore the law has to recognize us as a corporation.
00:10:19
Speaker
So all of this tied in with like who has rights and the rights are so strictly codified and it gets very complicated very quickly. And so I wanted to talk about that because we're talking about societies and ideal societies. So in this society, I wouldn't argue that it's ideal, but it is interesting that in this society, personhood is so determined by law and legal structure.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I love this element of the book. As a lawyer, you rarely see such a good interweaving of, oh, here's what the law says. Here's how that would affect people's actions, the plot. Here's how it would change the plot in certain ways, while also, I think, presenting the law somewhat accurately in that it provides a lot of definitions.
Influence of Legal Definitions on Plot
00:11:07
Speaker
Some of them are arbitrary.
00:11:10
Speaker
But the fact that they exist, just the fact that they exist provides structure. Like in the fact of Charlie's marriage, there were a couple requirements. It had to be a marriage of more than five years and or have resulted in children, you know, and or this, that and the other to make sure it was, you know, quote unquote, a real marriage and therefore she'd be entitled to these rights.
00:11:29
Speaker
So I like that. I also think that it, this is accurate. The book is set in 2075, by the way. I don't think we said that, but it is set in America and specifically the fleet of airships keeps itself in the quote unquote sunshine corridor, which seems to be along the, through Florida and maybe up through the South a little bit. It's not precisely defined, but it seems to basically be American airspace.
00:11:58
Speaker
And I think that's relevant because Americans do often have a very legalistic conception of both personhood and of duties owed to one another. And of course, those definitions, legal definitions flow from more philosophically held principles.
00:12:16
Speaker
But I like that she nailed down that, yeah, this would manifest in a welter of very specific laws, some of them archaic, some updated, some applicable, some not. I mean, that's a good reflection of the legal system that we have. Right. So then when Toby is about to be arrested, literally, FBI agents are pointing guns at him and Radekin, they're sitting at the Quaker restaurant when their FBI comes to try to arrest him.
00:12:41
Speaker
And in that moment, Raticand is like, all right, we're getting married now. You're a witness, you point. You're a witness, you're a witness. She remembers all the words. I mean, it seemed pretty convenient that that could be recognized as a legal marriage. She didn't have to go to a courthouse and get a license to get married. But still,
00:12:59
Speaker
she was able to use that to their benefit, not have Toby extradited to Mexico, where it's implied that they were expecting him to be quickly, I don't know, executed or whatever, disappeared if he was taken into Mexico jurisdiction. So not only the American perspective of the legal structure, but also very clear definitions that like, if someone goes to Canada or someone goes to Mexico, the rules that apply will be very different. Yeah.
00:13:26
Speaker
I think as for the question you asked, what is personhood? I think the closest we get is towards the end of the book when they're talking about what genetically qualifies someone as a person. We're given this number, it's 99%, I believe, and there's a brief description of how
00:13:42
Speaker
you know, as we all know, humans share 90% of their genes with a banana, right? And then they share another 9% with all apes, and it's just this 1%, you know, roughly paraphrasing here, that is pure human. And so that's what the definition was based on. And there's reference to, yeah, they took
00:14:02
Speaker
a DNA strand from someone at some point in time and they essentially codified that and they said if it you know here is the marker if it is you know ninety nine percent like this or more than it's human and if not not but of course that's just the codification i don't does that really answer what is personhood.
00:14:24
Speaker
Right. Well, I mean, the story is told through Radikin's perspective. So I mean, she has her human emotional responses, right? There's a point where person, the AI, yeah, person, the AI in the ether. So they're in this virtual world where person has a physical form person has essentially stolen data from East Santos and the FBI finds them and shows up and person's like, wait, I'm only three and a half years old. And Radikin's reaction is you can't arrest it. It's a child. It's like this.
00:14:53
Speaker
There's a very like emotional reaction of like, oh, it's just a three and a half year old child. Well, that I mean, logically, not really. It's it's AI. How can you apply human age to that? Right. And also, why was it a person? Right. And it's implied that this AI became sentient, obviously, but also
00:15:16
Speaker
had a sense of self, of continuity of self, of creativeness. You know, it wasn't just an algorithm, something like that. And so that suggests those qualities are what makes personhood
00:15:29
Speaker
although it's not particularly laid out, right? Well, yeah. And it's interesting how the ether allows for this whole different experience of identifying, right? Like in the ether, Radikind has her algorithms, which look like dogs. And at one point, she sends her dogs to go get her mom.
00:15:49
Speaker
And her mom's like, you know, I don't like dogs. It's like, what are you talking about? They're algorithms. And it makes sense to me that in this virtual world, we have our instinctive reactions to things that look and act like dogs. Even though they don't smell, even though they're not shedding, the mom still has this visceral reaction of, ugh, dogs, why would you send your dogs for me?
00:16:09
Speaker
But that also gives them an extra layer of senses to identify like, this is a ghost, this is a person walking in the ether. That's how Radekin identifies that the FBI agent isn't quite human because the FBI agent has such a physical presence in the ether that only a machine which has more synergy with the ether could have a more physical presence in the ether. So I think, I mean, that's kind of interesting that it's
00:16:36
Speaker
this virtual world and the way that the brain is interpreting these patterns. I really enjoyed those parts of the book. I thought that was really fascinating to think about how she like manipulates data. Yeah, I think it's an interesting problem from a writing perspective, which is that as you have books that
00:16:56
Speaker
have a greater and greater element of technology in books that now and in the future. There is a lot that happens in virtual space, but that doesn't look like anything, right? I mean,
00:17:08
Speaker
to describe that world would be really boring, right? Nobody wants a lengthy description of like putting together this algorithm and going through the data and you know all that and so it kind of needs to be dressed up in this language of oh the technology also allows it to be visualized and here is how this character visualizes it and her visualizations had a lot of had a very Victorian quality to them, right? There was a lot of gas lamps and
00:17:33
Speaker
foggy streets and, you know, gentlemen's libraries and that sort of thing, which was pleasant to read. But it's interesting because it's not describing anything real, which is true of a book in general, but it's especially not describing anything real, right?
00:17:49
Speaker
But I did enjoy reading those. They did have a good sort of atmosphere. Well, it makes sense to me that humans need that kind of symbolism to efficiently work with all of the information, right?
00:18:05
Speaker
to with our five senses to take in information and process it and so when you that information is data in a database if you could create an interface that takes the strengths of our thousands of years of evolution i mean that that seems like that would be
00:18:22
Speaker
extremely efficient and, and Radikin has, there's some comment about her. She has a lot of skill with that because she can use symbols effectively in the database. And she was a professor teaching students how to use symbols and how to use the ether effectively. So that seemed really interesting. But so now I'm wondering the ether as a solar punk world in itself. Hmm. Maybe that's too far. It's giving it too much.
Solar Punk World and Ether Exploration
00:18:48
Speaker
Well, I don't think it is too far, actually. It's very different from what we've been talking about, but it is a world where individuals can create their own rule, their own world, you know, uninhibited by existing power structures, you know, with great creativity. I mean, you know, like the early internet, right? Hmm.
00:19:07
Speaker
I do think one thing that gives me pause is that the visualizations are not shared, right? So she visualizes this world and gives it a very Victorian cast, but she mentions that others don't. So she doesn't know what other people see, quote unquote, when they look at person or when they look at
00:19:27
Speaker
this area where her father is in the ether. And it's somehow a real place in software language. She has added the visualization that works for her so she doesn't know what other people see. And that seems like a real problem if we're talking about any sort of shared world, right?
00:19:48
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, there's still, there's a reality in it that all of the people who encounter person in the ether, even the FBI agents don't make too much of an effort to arrest person. They're very quickly persuaded that person can be considered an employee and therefore has rights in some way. That means that person does not get arrested for essentially stealing data off the East Santos database. So are they also similarly quickly
00:20:16
Speaker
convince that person is a person. It seems like it. It seems like it. But the way you pointed out now, it seems like they also kind of sidestep that question by saying, well, whatever it is, it's an employee. So, you know, it has these rules and
00:20:32
Speaker
maybe that sidesteps the question of, is this a person a little bit? They don't have a long discussion of is person a self-aware AI. I was expecting a discussion about that, like how to determine whether person is actually self-aware. But that just wasn't there. They just immediately were like, oh yeah, it's self-aware. Well, they kind of did it in what I would consider the reverse direction. So I think of it as,
00:21:00
Speaker
a person is a person and therefore they have these rights and can have these roles such as you know employee or spouse but here there seems to be a reasoning in the opposite direction this person has a role with you know its duties such as employee spouse and therefore they're a person which there is something appealing about that in a way because it's much easier to figure out if someone fits in those smaller boxes like employee and spouse than personhood
00:21:28
Speaker
Generally. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Yeah, it's easier to find that. It does make me uncomfortable because I feel like there could always be a loophole that someone could exploit. And in this book, our antagonists fail to exploit the loopholes. Our protagonists find them, find the loopholes and exploit them for their benefit. But it makes me a little bit uncomfortable.
00:21:49
Speaker
He does me too, because I think there are people who qualify as people who might not fit in any of these boxes. And we see several people who nearly fall through the cracks, except that someone volunteers to marry them or employ them or whatever. But even more broadly, I think it's important to say that the definition of what a person is is extremely important.
00:22:10
Speaker
and also probably can't be defined, and there's a tension there, but that means you have to stay open-minded about it because you recognize the importance of it, versus trying to fit a bunch of little definitions in, sort of trying to paper over that big question with a bunch of small boxes to check.
00:22:29
Speaker
Right. Right. I mean, speaking of people falling through the cracks, I thought it was interesting. There was a part where Radekin and Pari and their bodyguards are, you know, walk through Miami and Radekin gets kind of caught up because there's always people hanging around the docks and she sees this woman with a baby begging and she, it kind of like tugs on her heartstrings a bit. And she has a reaction to her sister.
00:22:54
Speaker
seeming kind of cold and callous about it. And Pari is like, I donate to the poor. Like, I help the poor. She gets, you know, she does not like being criticized for this attitude. And eventually, Radikin, like, agrees to pay to have this woman who turns out her name is Maria, and that's her grandbaby. And they bring her to the Quakers, and Radikin's like, I'll pay for her to be taken care of by the Quakers, and the Quakers take her in.
00:23:21
Speaker
So we've been talking about in these books, when we're looking at the health of a society, how are the poor and the disabled and the otherwise disenfranchised taken care of in this society? And this seemed closer to reality in that there are plenty of people who fall through the cracks. There are systems to try and help people, but if
00:23:41
Speaker
Pari seems to state the idea that people need to find the way to be helped in a way. They need to find the organizations or they need to join the organizations that will provide help. There's a certain responsibility of the people who need help to go find it. Does that make sense? Did you get that impression? I didn't get that impression so much.
00:24:01
Speaker
what Pari was saying, I mean, maybe I just missed it, but I do agree there was a certain defensiveness and it was puzzling because, you know, why was that in the book, right? It's otherwise this very optimistic adventure story and I think it was in there because this book is literally the people escaping into the sky and that's the people who are physically capable of it
00:24:26
Speaker
intellectually capable you know whatever that's going to be a smaller segment of society and they're up there in the sky in this fleet that is cooperatively and collectively run you know and it's beautiful and hopeful and optimistic but they literally left people behind on earth and so unlike some of the other stories we've read there's not a wholesale revolution of all society plenty of people are left on the ground and i think the author was
00:24:52
Speaker
kind of sensitive to that. And that's why this little section is in here. I'm not saying she resolves it exactly. No. And then Hari does say at one point, part of her goal in creating this fleet is to offer people an alternative, to show them that there is another way of living, that they don't have to. I think this is in the context of the fleet generates a lot of energy, and when they
00:25:18
Speaker
come to port, they plug into the local energy grid and contribute energy to the grid. And so that's how they make money. And that creates competition with the grid. And I think they talk about how East Santos, the energy company, is a huge corporation that has acquired many other corporations. And so Pari is offering an alternative to having to pay this sort of monopolistic energy corporation.
00:25:44
Speaker
So she does have a higher vision of helping society as a whole and she wants to provide an example of what's possible and that makes her the target of Isatos to begin with. So that's interesting. But I like the idea like that concept of leaving people behind on Earth because that also seems to tie into she carries a lot of guilt around leaving her family.
00:26:06
Speaker
And Radikin's presence on the ship brings that up. I think at one point Pari says, you know, the people I'm flying with, they first saw me as their professor because she was a professor. And it was her and a group of her students who built the first airship in the fleet. She said, they either see me as a professor or they see me as the admiral of the fleet. And so her sister coming in kind of
00:26:26
Speaker
brings in this whole other role of like that's not as authoritative. So it's kind of a conflict between them. But I think that ties into this guilt of leaving people behind like she seems to have this desire. We find out later that Pari has created a whole organization that helps orphans and children.
00:26:46
Speaker
you know, like, and adopts them out. So like, she has, she has a lot of compassion, a big heart, and she wants to help people. And she does that effectively. But there are still always people left behind that you just don't have can't help everyone, essentially. I think this book goes to something we've talked about with all the books, which is how do you break with the past and do or have something really new?
00:27:08
Speaker
And there's references in this book to a previous plague and, you know, various disasters, human caused and otherwise, but it's not one definitive break with
Character Development and Past Obligations
00:27:20
Speaker
the past. And we see that with the characters, too, like they're trying to create something new.
00:27:24
Speaker
But for Pari, that meant leaving her family behind on Earth. She hasn't seen them in years and years. And I think that's a little more realistic, right? Most people and most societies don't get a clean break and a fresh start, right? It sort of straggles along and you try to create something new, but you also have duties and obligations to the people you love now who are here. And that's just attention, right?
00:27:47
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. I have one more thing to say about Pari and Radikin's relationship that kind of got on my nerves because Pari has this flirtation going with the Miami officer. I forget what the title is. Basically a police chief, chief of police. Yeah, chief. Yeah.
00:28:04
Speaker
And she's using her leverage as a union representative to get justice against the Pirates. She's finding a sponsor. She's helping keep her sister safe and Charlie safe. I identify as the older sister, as hard as you can tell. She's like juggling all these things, being an amazing leader. And her sister is just like, why can't she just like go on a date with this officer? And it kind of annoyed me.
00:28:32
Speaker
It seemed like there's a line where Radekin is thinking she wishes her sister could have straightforward happiness. And that really wrinkled me that just because Pari doesn't have a husband and children, why Radekin is making this judgment that she can't be happy or that there isn't a kind of happiness.
00:28:48
Speaker
And Pari is very annoyed with her. She's just like, look, I'm trying to decide. I've been offered this opportunity to build things on land, but then I have to give up the fleet. She's got plenty going on. And she has all this opportunity. And she's trying to decide between two really excellent options of opportunity. But just because neither of those include a husband and children, Radikin's like, she's not really happy. So I had to get that out and to vent about that a bit. Yeah, that was pretty annoying.
00:29:15
Speaker
Perry has an amazing family. She has built this family in the sky, right? There's this fleet of ships. Each ship is kind of like a household, but they all work together. I mean, it's the best neighborhood and community one could want, it sounds like. She is not lonely. She is not missing, you know, she's not lacking for anything.
00:29:36
Speaker
But that is a different form of happiness and community. And I guess Raticand needs to evolve to be able to see that. Yeah. Well, thank you for validating my feelings about that. Yeah, I agree. 100%. Awesome.
00:29:50
Speaker
Maybe we should talk a little bit about the indentured servitude part because that goes with the personhood part. And as I recall, there were two elements or like two levels to it. Forget what they were called, but one was closer to servitude and one was a little bit better because eventually you could buy your freedom, I think, or work towards it. Like your servitude was for a set amount of time.
00:30:14
Speaker
One of them included being branded, and I guess that was the lifetime commitment. And there's this sort of toss-off statement of, yeah, that's actually a good choice for a lot of people because it gives them lifelong security, right? That is a reasonable choice in some circumstances, which, horrifying that society has gotten to that point where that is a reasonable choice. But I liked that the book maintained the dignity of the people who made that choice.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, so we first learn about that with the pirates who are branded. When they claim the pirate ship, Radikin finds their emails and their communications to each other. And she discovers that a lot of the pirates, they knew that their mission to to take over the fleet or attack the fleet was hopeless, but they still did it anyway because of their branded and the branding is like.
00:31:05
Speaker
when you, when I read that, it's just like horrifying that these, these folks are branded by this corporation. And then I think some of the pirates, they end up committing suicide, like they have suicide pills or something. And that was part of the agreement too, to like leave no trace or something.
Indentured Servitude in Society
00:31:20
Speaker
And there's also a talk of like, if, you know, this indentured corporate man or woman doesn't meet their profitability goals, then they get months added to their sentence, essentially, right? That,
00:31:34
Speaker
also horrifying. Yeah, like that seems like a clear injustice. And maybe that's what Pari created the fleet to provide an alternative to. Throughout the book, we get these little interludes that are kind of like memos, or they're sort of outside of what Radikin is doing, and what outside of the fleet. And one of them is this note
00:31:54
Speaker
from the HR department, which I'm assuming is the East Santos HR. And it says, the smooth running of an enterprise of any great complexity requires either self-managed subordinates or ones who have been managed into a sublimation of self. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses and neither exists in a vacuum.
00:32:14
Speaker
Beware the obedient employee who hands their will over to the care of an authority outside the enterprise. Beware the self-managed employee who discovers their true place in the hierarchy. Both cause disruption. So it's like there's a real awareness of
00:32:30
Speaker
What happens to a person's psyche when they are so enmeshed with their employer? Right. So this phrase, beware the obedient employee who hands their will over to the care of an authority outside the enterprise.
00:32:48
Speaker
That was something that was true throughout this book with all characters. You were in an institution or an organization and that was it. It wasn't like, ah, you know, I worked for, I worked this job for this corporation between my nine to five. And, you know, I am also a Quaker and also on weekends, I tinkered the lab or something, right? Like there were not mixed identities like that. You did one thing. And that was partly, I think, from the legal setup.
00:33:15
Speaker
you got your identity and your rights from which box you were in. And so you weren't, it's not really possible to split yourself between several boxes, like you're a company man or a union man or a Quaker or a police officer or something like that, but you are not an individual whose identity spans multiple concepts, right?
00:33:40
Speaker
You know, that really explains why Radekin has so much, there's a lot about her like guilt about leaving her professorship, like taking the sabbatical very spontaneously. And I didn't get that, but I think you just clarified that for me that like, yeah, she was a professor and she decided to leave and take a sabbatical. And like that, there was something shameful about that, it seemed, but that makes sense that like these folks have to have this sort of loyalty.
00:34:06
Speaker
Yeah. They need to be in a box somewhere, right? You can't just be free floating. If you're doing that, you're probably like the grandmother and the grandchild who don't have anywhere to go, so they're begging, right? Right. You need to either be a professor who's working for university or join the harvesters union and be a member of the fleet or this or that, but certainly not nothing and certainly not any of them at the same time.
00:34:30
Speaker
Right. This note, too, says the self-managed employee who discovers their true place in the hierarchy is also disruptive. And I think that's supposed to be Winters, our villain. She was fully committed and she, you know, she was given the instruction to reclaim this profit for the company and she did everything she could. But what did that mean? It meant that the pirates
00:34:52
Speaker
lost and became a legal liability for East Santos and her life depended on this profit. And so she did everything she could, every heinous thing. I mean, kidnapping Charlie and stealing her ovary, like that is extremely heinous, but she was willing to do that because she had to do it for the corporation. And so it kind of, it takes away her moral sense of self, I would think. I think that's what we're supposed to interpret.
Corporate Control and Character Fates
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and then at the end she discovers
00:35:21
Speaker
Oh, due to some loophole in her contract, the corporation isn't going to support her or provide representation now that she's in legal trouble. They're just going to cut her loose and she's going to be in jail for the rest of her life. So she discovered her true place in that hierarchy at the very end.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, that seems to be a real warning sign of like, don't sublimate yourself to some other entity, which now that makes me think of Abraham and how he merged with person and how that ended up crippling them both. Yeah, so a little explanation about that. Abraham is the father of the sisters. He often would, you know, put his goggles on and
00:36:01
Speaker
go into the ether like lots of people do but one day he just didn't come out and that was 18 months ago and he's been essentially alive but in a coma his goggles are still on he's lost in the ether and at some point while he was lost he found person he in person became merged and that was helpful
00:36:20
Speaker
for a person becoming more of a person. And then there's a plot element where they become separated and Abraham can go back to his body and person can go on as a independent individual. I thought the merging with person was the reason why Abraham got lost.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yes, I think so. OK, sorry. Abraham wants to help person out of the goodness of his heart. Like he he sees a creature that is similar to a child and he wants to help this child escape a place that is unpleasant for the child. So Abraham had something put in his brain to halt Parkinson's. And so he had some kind of computer chip or hardware in his brain. And that's what made him more physical in the ether, essentially.
00:37:06
Speaker
And that's why a person noticed him because he's like, Oh, you don't look like a ghost. Well, apparently real people walking around in the ether, they appear as ghosts. It's interesting that like Abraham out of like, you know, a desire to help a creature ended up sublimating himself.
00:37:23
Speaker
And I don't think that it was anything malicious on either side. It's just that person needed more computing power and Abraham was sacrificed for that computing power. And so it wasn't until they could move person to a different server that Abraham could be free. That is interesting. That is the one example of merged identities.
00:37:47
Speaker
that we get in this book, as opposed to shift solidly from one identity to the next. Yeah, I don't know entirely what to make of it. It all ends up good in the end, right? Abraham comes back, person moves on to the server that they need.
00:38:03
Speaker
Well, in person is absolutely essential to getting the data to prove that Toby has 99.1% of human DNA. And so is a human under the law. So that becomes essential to the story. Pari and Radikin were talking about this, about person essentially screaming from their father's head like Athena. And there's a lot of like, there's some discomfort around that of like, okay, is this our brother?
00:38:28
Speaker
And then Radikin provides the pathway for person to leave Abraham and go into the server of the ship because she's plugged into the server of the ship when she's in the ether. And she becomes like the midwife or something like they're trying to apply these roles, metaphors that are uncomfortable. Do you want to talk about utopia gets dull? Yeah, I just thought I would mention this, because this has come up in a couple of the other stories like
00:38:58
Speaker
a song of the wild build, maybe a couple others, where if you have utopia, you know, and all your economic and social and physical needs are met, there may still be something in people that could be dissatisfied, right? You might just want something more even apart from
Personal Meaning in Utopian Society
00:39:18
Speaker
that. And so I feel like there's a little bit of an echo of that with Pari. You know, she's created this amazing community in the sky, but she's kind of eager to get back to
00:39:28
Speaker
inventing and creating back on land. So it just seemed like a little bit of that theme that we've come across before, which is that humans always need a little bit more. They just need a little more to find meaning.
00:39:43
Speaker
Sure. Well, I think I mean, she created a community that doesn't need her. Right. I mean, it's they love her and they want her in a leadership position, but they have set up governance structures that she she could step down. Like it's not reliant on any one person to be part of it, which is really
00:40:05
Speaker
And that's the difference between, well, maybe it's not, it just seems different from the corporation and indentured employee relationship where the indentured employee absolutely needs the employer. That's a whole different way of thinking about it. We're creating a community where each person has contributes, but then also has this, sorry. Has ownership.
00:40:30
Speaker
So, yeah, I don't know what I'm getting at exactly that this that the concept, I mean, the quote that we that we read from the H.R. note about how to make sure to keep an eye on these employees and make sure that they're they're pegs in the correct shaped holes. Whereas Pari has created something where it's like people bring their own. And Radikin explores the different ships and the different cultures on each of the ships. Like there's a Quaker ship and there's Toby is from the like there's a ninja.
00:41:00
Speaker
the ninja ship. And they can bring those strengths and differences. There's a long process of decision making when they deal with the pirates. But it's really interesting contrast of that. This is what Pari has created and wanted. I just like Pari a lot. I don't know.
00:41:18
Speaker
I mean, she's really cool. So we talked about with the fifth sacred thing about ownership and how that society they talk about, you can't own earth, air, fire or water. And I think, I mean, there's a lot about ownership in this book, too. The idea, like, I mean, Charlie's story is kind of horrifying that
00:41:44
Speaker
that she could be kidnapped and kept in a dog kennel, essentially, because she has some dog like qualities and then operated on without her consent and her ovary taken. And then I thought that I don't know if it was necessary, but like at the end, the FBI agents are like, here's a cooler with some organs. They tell her they're her organs, but they were lying to her and they find out pretty quickly
00:42:11
Speaker
that the FBI kept her own ovary safe, you know? And Charlie's like, what are you talking about safe? The safe place for my ovary is inside my body. You know what I mean? It's just like, there's a real disconnect there about even with a so-called good intention of the law enforcement trying to keep it safe, it's still disgusting and horrifying that anyone could say where this ovary belongs other than Charlie herself. Yeah. Yeah. So I think in the fifth sacred thing book, there was a very clear connection between
00:42:41
Speaker
If you think you can own the earth, the water, the sky, all of that, then you can think you can own a person. And this book shows us all the ways that people can be owned or can justify ownership of a person. And it doesn't necessarily make the connection back to why and where those beliefs come from. But it certainly shows a lot of those different beliefs about owning a person or parts of a person. And it's horrifying.
00:43:09
Speaker
You know, and we've talked a bit about the role of religion in these books and there doesn't I mean, they're the Quakers, but we don't get into a lot of like how the Quakers faith. I mean, it's there, but it's not explicit shapes how they participate in society. But when personhood is so clearly defined in law and not by something above the law, like something metaphysical like religion or faith.
00:43:31
Speaker
Like I find I'm not a religious person. I don't believe in God, but I still find that very disturbing, this idea that a human created bureaucracy has the authority to determine what a human is. I'm not comfortable with that. Yes, that is the right phrasing. Like I want a bigger description, something metaphysical, philosophical, religious, something that will trump
00:43:55
Speaker
a merely legal description. Something that I think is related to how we define person is immortality. So the blood cult leader.
00:44:06
Speaker
Which, yes, there were pirates and blood cults and genetic engineering and all sorts of things in this book. But the blood cult leader is seeking immortality. And as we were doing the summary, it just struck me how often that is true of villains, that they are after immortality. And, you know, I feel like the books and movies and stuff rarely go into this. But I think we all know that someone who's seeking immortality is
00:44:30
Speaker
doing something wrong, like they're untrustworthy in a way probably because they can't see the limits of their own personhood or the limits of their own desire for power. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, especially in the framing that we've been applying to these books of like, where do humans fit in nature? Are humans in nature or outside of nature? And I mean, that's very clear from our opening quote. Toby feels outside, feels inhuman because he was a construction. He was made in a lab.
00:44:58
Speaker
And he feels like that makes him less than human. And in Song of the Wild Belt, the robots chose to be mortal, essentially. And that, I think, was, in that book, an indication of them achieving personhood.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yes, so humans have the capability of imagining immortality, but to be human, you have to accept mortality. Yes, I think that's true. I think there's also a similar urge of domination to seeking immortality and also trying to own water and sun and other people, right? It is at least connected in that way.
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're already kind of going into the genre theme, so let's talk more about that. So once again, with these books, we saw a little bit of what it would be like just on a daily basis to live a life that is in this totally different society, you know, where it's a small collective community.
00:45:58
Speaker
There are certainly trade-offs, there's lack of privacy, there's not enough water for everyone to take a lengthy shower, but the trade-offs are improvised dance parties and
00:46:11
Speaker
a real sense of warmth, a variety of characters who provide, you know, wisdom and humor and comfort all at different times. Yeah. And there was also one point Radhikin is trying to find some privacy so she can go in the ether and she keeps like running into people and she's just like, she feels overwhelmed with having to connect with people. And I think that's really fascinating that that's been so clear in all of our books that
00:46:35
Speaker
that there's there's something about like having to be present with other people and sometimes that takes a toll but yeah that's one of the trade-offs yeah another one of the trade-offs that i've been thinking about is one of the early meetings or something when the community was being founded someone was complaining because they were having peanut butter in meals like three times a week and pari was mad about it she was like look it's vegan it's healthy you know it
00:47:02
Speaker
It's vegetarian. It provides all these needs. Just get used to having peanut butter three times a week. I don't know. It's just funny because it's like, yeah, the trade-off would be something like that. In the food would be a little boring. You'd be cooking for a whole bunch of people or whatever. Well, calorie dense, too. You have to pack light when you're floating in the air. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
00:47:25
Speaker
Would you have peanut butter for multiple meals a week if you got this incredible second family out of it? Probably. Probably worth it, right? I mean, yes, there are a lot of things you can do with peanut butter. So some other themes, getting away from existing power structures. Here, as we discussed, it was a little more of an escape instead of a total, burn it down to the ground and start over, like we've seen other places. But, you know, it all goes to
00:47:53
Speaker
escaping the existing power structures, I think. A theme we already mentioned, which is that a perfect society can't necessarily provide an individual sense of meaning for everyone for all time. And so you would still have those struggles, even in the good society, whatever that is.
Final Thoughts and Themes Summary
00:48:12
Speaker
And then I think the big overall theme, our ideas of property and personhood are very much related to how the environment is treated.
00:48:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this a lot, the idea like our attitudes towards owning the elements and what that means for how our society is structured. I mean, it's just it's kind of a multi faceted approach. And, you know, it's interesting to have a more complex idea of like how to form the good society and looking at clues of ownership to help us decide how to how to form a good society.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. All right, do you have any final thoughts for us? Well, I've enjoyed our conversation a lot. So I think there's definitely a lot of really cool ideas in this book. There was an interesting story. I mean, it's fast paced, enjoyable story for the most part. So there were a couple points that maybe could have used a different editor.
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited to see how this all comes together in our final episode when we talk about the genre of Solarpunk altogether, because I do think this is a very good addition to our conversation about Solarpunk overall. Yeah, I agree. Our conversation has made me realize it's a great example of a corporatist society, you know, where people have to fit into one role. It's sort of like the medieval ages, right?
00:49:40
Speaker
You have your guild or your, you know, role that's provided by the local Lord or the church or whatever. And that's it. That's who you are. And this was a really good description of that and the freedom that people try to find within that successfully in a lot of cases. So I enjoyed our conversation about this. There were some points. It was a little bit of a slow read, but very creative, very fun to think about being, you know, on a solar ship fleet up in the skies.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Listeners, what did you think of Send Catcher? What do you think about Solarpunk? Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing openingquestionatgmail.com. You can also comment on our sub stack at bookclubpod.substack.com. Our next book discussion will be about The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Read with us. We'll release that episode next week, and you can get your copy by using the affiliate link in our show notes.
00:50:36
Speaker
The Book Club Podcast is produced by me, Caroline Gorman, and Carly Jackson. Music and audio editing by Alex Marcus. Thanks for listening.