Necessity - Jo Walton

Time travel, robots, Olympian gods and Plato's Republic, how do you manage to stuff those elements into one coherent story. In Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy she  attempts just that. The first two novels, The Just City and The Philosopher Kings, both published in 2015, turned out to be some of the most unusual works of speculative fiction I've read in ages. Necessity, the third book, took a bit longer to write and contains the conclusion of a story that takes us from Iron Age Greece to a far future exoplanet. In many ways, it is just as fascinating as the previous two volumes but you also get the feeling Walton nearly tripped over the implications of time travel in this book. Even the gods have trouble keeping things straight it would seem.

Forty years ago the cities were moved from Iron Age Greece to a planet circling a distant sun. All of the masters have died of old age by now and the children are very old men and women. When the inevitable happens and Apollo's mortal body gives out, he returns to his divine self only to find his sister Athena missing. He soon finds out that her curiosity has driven her to explore the nature of the universe beyond the bounds of time, a thing expressly forbidden by their father Zeus. A desperate search for Athena is about to begin. On the mortal plane another potentially dangerous development is taking place. A space ship has entered orbit around the planet and it is carrying humans. The Just Cities are about to rejoin the wider human society.

Since mortals can't really influence the labours of the gods that much, you'd think they would be more concerned with the end of their isolation. Most of the book deals with Athena's antics and theie consequences however. There is quite a bit of Ancient Greek cosmology and the nature of the gods. Subjects the ancient Greeks seem to have disagreed on quite a bit themselves. The gods exist out of time but can visit it if they want to. They are not bound to any period in history but can visit each moment only once. It is quite possible that a god meets a mortal who have already met them before in their experience but the god in question still has to visit that particular point in time. When this happens, the gods feel the pull of necessity. An urge to make the moment in time they just visited come about by performing a task earlier in time. Encounters like these wreak havoc on the timeline in the story and only with great difficulty has Walton managed to make something comprehensible out of it. It is another fine example of why time travel is not one of my favourite tropes. It just keeps tying itself in knots.

The gods get to have their fun in this novel but first contact seems to be a very muted affair. After a lifetime of trying to make Plato's republic a reality, the community on the planet has drifted quite far from the human main stream. Language is the first obstacle but not as it happens an insurmountable one. Although you can feel the tension among the characters in the book, they are prepared for this eventuality and it is dealt with, with a minimum lack of fuss. I would almost say that a stoic couldn't have done it better.The conclusion of the series feels like a bit of an anti-climax but that may have more to do with me not liking the other main subject of the novel that much.

The one main character that was with us for all three novels, Apollo, is also not quite as interesting as in the previous two novels. In those books Walton uses him to explore issues like consent and sexism, but also loss and sacrifice. In this novel he is done learning and mostly broods over how his new-found knowledge fits into his wider view of the universe. By regaining godhood he has lost some of his humanity, making him a more bland character than he was in previous novels.

All of that doesn't sound very positive, but there are more than a few things to enjoy in the book too. Walton again included numerous references to history and art in the novel. She discusses the importance of art partly through the point of view of the robot Crocus, who has managed to become quite a philosopher and artist in the years since we've last encountered him. Walton deftly avoids making him want to be human. Crocus is striving for excellence, not humanity and is enough of a thinker not to confuse the two. In fact, robots - not distracted by the sexuality Plato so deeply misunderstood - may be much more suitable to achieve the Platonic ideal than humans are.

On the whole, I don't think Walton finishes the trilogy as strong as she starts it. It is not a book that adds that much to her vision of Plato's republic. I enjoyed reading it quite a bit but not as much as the previous two volumes. As a whole, the trilogy is a work to remember though. Walton takes on complex subjects and ideas in these books and yet manages to keep them very accessible. I would not be surprised to see a few people pick up some of Plato's works (note that Walton does not recommend starting with The Republic). Walton pushes herself in these books but she also pushes speculative fiction as a whole in a new direction. There are not many authors that can claim to have done that. Maybe she falters slightly on the home stretch but it is still a noteworthy work of fiction. I recommend you read it.

Book Details
Title: Necessity
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 331
Year: 2016
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7902-3
First published: 2016

The Philosopher Kings - Jo Walton

In January Tor released The Just City by Jo Walton. It is one of the most difficult books to categorize I've ever come across. Who would think to combine time travel and robots with Plato's philosophy and Greek mythology and hope to end up with a decent story? Walton pulled it off though. The Just City is one of the most interesting books I've read this year. It is also the first in a trilogy. The Philosopher Kings is the second. It appeared in June, less than half a year after the first volume. The third book, Necessity, is scheduled for June 2016. I will be keeping an eye out for that one. The Philosopher Kings is just as strong as the first volume and takes the story in interesting new directions.

Twenty years have passed since the Last Debate and Athene's abandonment of the Just City. The population has split up in five factions, founding four new cities, each with their own views on Plato's utopia. One group even decides to leave the island completely. The five city-states have various disagreements, most notably about the distribution of art taken from various times and places in history. Most of it remains in the original city but other cities constantly raid them to get their hands on some of it. In one of these raids Simmea, one of the main characters of The Just City, is killed. She leaves behind a grieving lover, a daughter and several sons, all struggling in their own way with their grief and the impossible position the city finds itself in.

Of all the characters in the first book, Simmea probably gets closest to Plato's ideal of the Philosopher King. Her life is dedicated to striving for excellence and even in death she has things to teach her loved ones. Her lover Phyteas is Apollo reincarnated in a mortal body. By killing himself he could have regained his powers, after which healing her would have been easy. She stops him from doing so however, leaving him behind to deal with grief and the inevitability of losing loved ones. It replaces his quest to understand consent in the first novel if you will. Simmea's death is a very powerful scene even if Walton writes it in a very understated way. It's an event that echoes through the entire book, relentlessly driving the characters to correct the issue that caused her death in the first place.

Like the previous volume, Walton offers us three points of view. Apollo and Maia, both of whom we met in the first novel, and Arete, daughter of Apollo and Simmea, who takes over from her mother. Through their eyes we see how the cities risk  sliding further and further away from Plato's ideal. It takes a trip off the island to see where it could lead though. On the various islands in the Aegean, the main characters get to see how easy it is to slide down the ladder of Plato's five regimes and what the consequences would be. Arete's point of view is especially clear on this. Used as she is to a city where striving for excellence drives everyday life, she is very sensitive to matters that will lead away from this ideal.

Walton uses the trip around the Aegean to add some more history to the novel as well. We know that the Just City was founded some time before the Thera volcanic eruption, at the tail end of the Minoan era in Greek history. What Walton doesn't tell us is when exactly this is. Possibly because the actual date of the Thera eruption is still uncertain. The characters speculate they were taken to a time shortly before the Trojan War. The novel mentions Laomedon as king of Troy. In Greek mythology he was the father of Priam who would be king during the war. The timeline strikes me as a bit strange. The most widely accepted dates for the historical events that may be the inspiration for Homer's Iliad are several centuries after the Thera eruption. It makes for a good story though. The characters are constantly wondering if some mythological figure might not be alive and walking one of the islands they are about to visit.

The trip, starting with the question of whether or not to make it in the first place, is subject to much debate. Without the guidance of Athene, who has not been seen in the city since the Last Debate, it is unclear if and how their trip will affect history. Athene's reason for placing the city on Thera is that the evidence would at some point be wiped out by the volcano. Why would the philosophers accept that they or their children will fall victim to this disaster in the name of an experiment of the gods? One Athene childishly abandoned after losing a debate, leaving her guinea pigs to their fate. The answer to that question is the climax of the novel and, I suppose, the foundation for the next one.

Both on their trip and at home the characters are confronted by the influence of Christianity. In the previous novel it was kept out as much as possible but both on their trip to other islands and at home, this religion is making inroads. It's a strange experience to see Christian theology show up more than a millennium before the birth of Jesus. On Thera, the work of Thomas Aquinas drives this development. I have the feeling that quite a bit of what Walton wanted to say with this part of the story went right over my head. This is probably a result of my minimal religious education and lack of interest in such matters. Other readers may do better with this part of the story.

Compared to the first novel  I guess The Philosopher Kings has a bit more plot and a bit less debate. That doesn't make it any less enjoyable though. The mixture of time travel and Greek mythology again works very well. Despite taking on some very difficult ideas the book is not a hard read. Its greatest strength is probably that Walton manages to make philosophy very accessible in this book. It doesn't end on such a dramatic cliffhanger as the previous novel but it is quite clear that the story is not quite finished. It will be very interesting to see what our Philosopher Kings can achieve in the final instalment.

Book Details
Title: The Philosopher Kings
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 348
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3267-7
First published: 2015

The Just City - Jo Walton

I read Jo Walton's love letter to science fiction, Among Others, in 2011. That was my first encounter with Walton's fiction. The book is not autobiographical but it does borrow elements from Walton's life. Most notably her reading habits. Walton read an awful lot of science fiction and Among Others is riddled with references to them. One of the things that stood out in that novel, is a number of references to the works of Plato, to which she was pointed by Mary Renault's historical novel The Last of the Wine. Plato must have impressed the young Morwenna/Jo because in The Just City we return to him. It's another novel that is hard to categorize. It contains philosophy, Greek mythology, robots and time travel. Sounds like a book that is very hard to market to me. Tor thinks they can do it though. The Just City is the first in a trilogy and the second book, The Philosopher Kings, is scheduled for publication in July. Walton is currently writing the third volume, Necessity, which is expected for some time next year.

The Just City is based on Plato's idea of an ideal city-state. He put it forward in his most famous work: The Republic. Athena, the Greek god of wisdom, takes an interest in these ideas and decides to start an experiment. In a time before the Trojan War, she founds a city on the island of Thera and populates it with people who have read The Republic in the original Greek and prayed to her. From all over history, people are taken to the city to lay the foundations of Plato's ideal and become the teachers for the first generation of citizens. Then thousands of 10-year-old enslaved children are taken to the city to grow up in a community unlike any other in history. Their goal is to pursue arete, which Walton translates as excellence but more commonly translated as virtue. Plato's ideals are not without their flaws though. Gradually, cracks begin to appear.

Walton tells the story from three different points of view. The first is Apollo, god of the sun and brother to Athena. After his adventure with Daphne, a nymph who chooses to turn into a tree rather than have sex with him, he decides there are things mortals can teach him. Reborn as a Greek boy he is taken to the city to live among the children of the Just City. Maia, is a 19th century woman and talented scholar who after the death of her father wonders what to do with her life. Society makes it impossible for her to pursue a career in academia and so she prays to Athena to take her to Plato's utopia. The goddess takes her to become one of the masters in the Just City. One of her pupils is Simmea, freed form slavery some time between the 6th and 11th century in Egypt. Scarred by her experiences as a slave, she thrives in the city which stimulates her curiosity and challenges her to excel. She is not blind to the discontent around her though.

These three points of view show us Plato's ideal and its problems, or, to put it in other words, show us Walton's reaction to Plato. The author has done a very good job of keeping the book accessible. I have read a bit of Greek mythology but as far as philosophy goes, I've never progressed beyond Sophie's World which does contain quite a large section on Socrates, another important figure in this novel, and Plato himself. I had no trouble following the story although you might get more out of it if you do know a bit more about the source material. What the novel did do was have me look up a number of references to artworks that are scattered throughout the text and read up on the historical figures that populate the city. I probably spent more time on that than reading the actual book. There are quite few historical characters, usually under a name adopted when they joined the Just City, making their identity a bit of a puzzle for the reader. Walton knows how to trigger the reader's curiosity, that is for sure.

The novel is something of a dialogue in the Socratic sense. It is not so much about the characters rather than the position they take in the debate. And that is what the Just City is, a long-running debate. Walton's two major criticisms of Plato's ideal are in essence that a 10-year-old is not a tabula rasa as he supposes and that he severely misunderstands human sexuality. Pile on top of that all the little practical things The Republic does not mention and you can see the whole thing start to slide from the very first moment. That is not to say they don't achieve anything, but Plato's ideal seems a long way off by the end of the book.

Sexism is the most obvious obstacle in achieving Plato's ideals the book tackles. The situation is a bit curious to put it mildly. For most of history across many societies women were not seen fit to pursue careers in art, science or the military and that attitude is shared by many of the teachers Alhena brings to the city. Plato (and Socrates) argue that in utopia such discrimination would not exist and so the city teaches both genders the same things. That doesn't change the attitude of many of the men present in the city however, something the female main characters run into time and again. It is not always out in the open but throughout the book examples of how the opinion of women are not taken as seriously can be found and how the women have to find a way around it to get things done. Walton's portrayal of the position of women in the Just City is one of a more subtle kind of sexism than what most of the characters would have encountered in their own time but it is still depressingly obvious.

Where Plato's ideas on equality were revolutionary, his ideas on relationships and sexuality and raising children are plain odd. This is a hugely complicated part of the novel as the ancient Greeks use terms like love, affection and friendship in different ways than we are used to. Walton uses the Greek terms agape, eros and philia in the novel to keep apart the various relationships between the characters. There is a fourth word in ancient Greek to describe love, storge, but that kind of love plays a minimal role in the novel. These four kinds of love, and especially agape are later used by Christian philosophers in a slightly different context than the ancient Greeks did and that muddies the waters a bit.

The idea behind the city is that people do not form pairs but that procreation is arranged in such a way that the strongest possible offspring is produced. The children are then raised communally and not by their parents. This idea is very distasteful to the modern readers in the light of Nazi racial theories but most of the characters are from earlier times in history and they don't see it that way. It does disrupt the desire to form families and, not surprisingly, the restrictions the city imposes on sexual activity and relationships are broken by just about everybody. Being forced to have sex with people selected though a (rigged) lottery results in some positive but also, inevitably, negative experiences for both sexes. It is without a doubt the most problematic element in the Just City. Walton uses it to discuss issues like birth control, upbringing of children, rape (including a scene where Apollo is forced to do something despicable), sexual freedom and relationships. It would seem that the Just City cannot come about until humanity settles these issues, which makes me wonder if it ever will.

The Just City is without a doubt one of the most interesting books I've read in ages. It combines a story that is highly readable with an enormous amount of food for thought. I could probably go on for quite a while on all the influences, history and philosophy that went into it. I haven't even discussed the importance of art for instance. Or the debates on what constitutes intelligence. Or the ever present question of how much of Socrates' teachings is Plato putting words into his mouth. It's quite clear that Walton is not finished with this creation and that there is plenty of material left for the second and third book. While the novel itself ends with a satisfying climax (a debate of course, it could hardly have ended another way) I look forward to delving deeper into Walton's thoughts on Plato's Just City. The Just City is one of the 2015 books you do not want to miss.

Book Details
Title: The Just City
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 368
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3266-0
First published: 2015

Among Others - Jo Walton

Among Others is one of the novels that was suggested for review number 200 earlier this year. I decided to go with another book eventually, because I was looking for something I was unlikely to pick up spontaneously. Among Others looked so interesting that I ordered a copy of it as well and it has been waiting on the to read stack ever since. I've read an awful lot of Walton's writing but none of it is actually fiction. She writes a column on Tor.com, lots of reviews on older works of science fiction and fantasy as well as a discussion on the Hugo Awards nominees and winners. Next Sunday 1999 will be discussed. I don't always agree with Walton but her reviews are usually well worth reading and she has added more than a few titles to my to read list. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Walton added to the list again with this novel.

Fifteen year old Morwenna has grown up in a town in South Wales. When we first meet her, she has recently lost her twin sister and has run away to a father she barely knows. He is sending her to Arlinghurst, a boarding school in England, something that is not going to be easy on Morwenna. She is an outsider. Everything sets her apart from her fellow students; her accent, her bright intellect, he peculiar family and the fact that she is a cripple. As a child, Morwenna used to find refuge in two things. Her connection with the spirit world, something her mother is completely caught up in, and reading science fiction novels. The library become a refuge, but there is no magic at Arlinghurst however, and attempts to introduce it, only leads to unwanted attention from her mother. A reckoning with her past in unavoidable for Morwenna. She will have to come to terms with her loss and settle affairs with her mother.

The novel is entirely written in the form of a diary, with entries set in late 1979 and early 1980. Among Others is not an autobiography, but Walton seems to have put quite a lot of her own life into the novel. She was born in South Wales for instance, turned fifteen in 1979, did attend an English boarding school and read science fiction novels voraciously. Morwenna also shares a lot of opinions with Walton on novels. She's no fan of Philip K. Dick for instance, and has reservations about some of Heinlein's later novels even if she loves his earlier work. I haven't read any of Walton's other novels but I can't imagine them being as personal as this one. For people who are interested in the question to what extend this novel incorporates events from the author's life, I'll refer you to a a very interesting piece Walton wrote for John Scalzi's Whatever blog.

There is no denying it, Among Others is a book for geeks. There are lots and lots of references to science fiction classics. Morwenna reads Silverberg, Le Guin, Delayny, Zelazny, Heinlein, Clarke, Niven and Tiptree just to name a few (a complete list of novels mentioned in Among Others can be found here). It makes the novel something of a gamble. I read a lot but I don't come close to even having read half the titles Morwenna mentions. Walton mostly sticks to the more well known works so I pretty much recognized everything she mentions. Still, a fantasy novel that relies this much on science fiction titles, will put some readers of. In 1979 it might not have been the case yet, but the two genres have developed their own groups of readers with only limited overlap. Still, as a love letter to science fiction and fantasy, the book is a very good read. Morwenna's diary entries are full of entrances that show just how much her thinking is influenced by what she reads. One nice example from early on in the novel:

Robert Heinlein says in Have A Spacesuit, Will Travel that the only things worth studying are history, languages, and science. Actually, he adds maths, but honestly they left out the mathematical part of my brain. Mor got all the Maths.

Morwenna deciding on the subjects she wants to take - Thursday 6th September 1979

The list things Morwenna finds in these novels that connect with this young girl's world is very impressive. It makes you think twice about labeling science fiction as a genre for teenage boys. The fantasy element in the novel is provided by a subtle kind of magic. It's very easy to deny its existence, which is why not many people believe in it in the first place. Magic that Morwenna hasn't quite figured out how to safely use yet. Most of her magical exploits have been linked to the fairies Morwenna sees in the abandoned industrial sites of South Wales. They're nothing like the elves described in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, although Morwenna has a theory on how Tolkien might have arrived at his image of these creatures.With the novel being written from the first person and the fact that magic never really seems to impact anything directly, there is always a slight feel of the unreliable narrator in these sections but at the same time she makes you want to believe Morwenna. Especially since she has her reservations about the ethics of trying to influence events that way.

Under all the magic and science fiction references, Among Others is still mostly a story of a girl trying to find her balance again. When we meet her, things can't possibly get any worse. Gradually, Morwenna decides that despite the pain in her leg, the hole left behind where her twin used to be, her difficult family and being an outsider everywhere she goes, there is still reason to go on. Sometimes she is suborn or plain unreasonable but Morwenna is not given to self-pity or excessive displays of emotion. Her diary entries show a girl whit a more rational mind than most teenagers display, an inquisitive mind, constantly asking questions about what she encounters in the world. Some readers my find it hard to get close to Morwenna, in her diary she usually takes a bit of distance from the situations she describes. Personally, I thought to development from despair and a sense of loss to mild optimism and self-confidence is very well done.  

Among Others is one of those novels I'd like to see pop up in next year's awards shortlists. I'm not sure if it is the sort of novel that has a large enough appeal to actually win one, but I agree with a lot of the critics that it is definitely one of the books 2011 that one ought to read. I can see why some readers might not like it, but for me, it is absolutely one of the most interesting and well-written 2011 publications I've read. For fans of 1960 and 1970s genre fiction, it has a certain nostalgic appeal. Remembering reading a favourite novel for the first time definitely adds to this story. But even if, like me, you haven't read that many of the novels Walton mentions, the novel is very much worth reading. I'd say, give it a try.

Book Details
Title: Among Others  
Author: Jo Walton  
Publisher: Tor  
Pages: 302  
Year: 2011
Language: English  
Format: Hardcover  
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2153-4
First published: 2011