The Green and Growing

by Erin K. Wagner

In this intriguing tale of the clash of two worlds and cultures, Miquita, one of the forty-two daughters of Commander Hritrar, is sent to the Rubruii after their defeat at her father's hands. Hampered by diplomatic etiquette and a thoroughly alien culture, Miquita struggles to understand the destruction her father has leveled against the cities and orchards that depend on a failing artificial intelligence. Can she help repair the terrible damage her father's forces have inflicted? Perhaps more importantly: should she?

Genres: Science Fiction

110 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2019

About the author

Erin K. Wagner (also E. K. Wagner) is a professor by trade, a medievalist by discipline, and a writer of speculative fiction by design.

She lives in upstate New York, a storied and story-making place, but her roots are in Appalachia, since she grew up in rural southeast Ohio. Presently, she teaches an array of literature and composition courses in the SUNY system as an English professor. Her interests, both academic and creative, lie in examining how the human responds to the nonhuman (whether that be AI, religion, or nature).

Reviews

[Paul (Life In The Slow Lane) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I better start talking to the trees...more than I already do!


There's no doubt that Erin Wagner has done extensive study of medieval literature; it shines through in her writing. The concept of the monarchs of two formerly warring nations swapping their offspring to "seal" a peace treaty is the basis of this story. Fans of George R.R. Martin might remember Bran Stark becoming one with the roots of the weirwood tree and giving him access to all the weirwood's memories. That idea is borrowed (possibly) here also.

There are a lot of concepts in this short story that tax the grey matter (the ending not the least of them). What was the "box" in the heart of the forest? Was it an AI? Was it responsible for giving the trees sentience? There are a lot of concepts that are interesting: the Rubruii are capable of thought transference. Similar to Vulcans, they can do this transfer of thoughts without physical contact. In fact, they can use it as a weapon against their enemies.

The writing is condensed and very rich. It requires a bit of thought, and even then, there are still a lot of loose ends. There may be an allegory for global warming, women's rights and gender swapping. Read it and let me know what you think. Regardless, it is a beautifully written story and captivated me.

Aqueduct Press produced a series of short stories which are under the banner of "Conversation Pieces". This is number 65 in that series and while I haven't read any of the others (yet) this one would be hard to beat. Also of interest is Aqueduct Press' mission statement: "Bringing challenging feminist science fiction to the demanding reader". Don't let the "feminist" part of that statement put you off. Go explore the other books in the series. You can find them here: http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/97...

[Quartzen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what to think of this novella. I've marked this whole review as containing spoilers because this is a story that's told nonlinearly, slowly revealing things, because most of my mixed feelings come from the ending, and because I have to recount what I'm getting from the story to talk about it. Overall there were some cool worldbuilding ideas here, but I wasn't sure at all what to take away from the story thematically.

Miquita is one of forty-two daughters of the conquering Commander Hritrar. After Hritar's latest conquest, an assault on the planet their people call Rubrum for its reddish appearance in the night sky and its people, Miquita is sent to Rubrum as part of the treaty with her own people taking the son of the Rubruii Prime Minister in exchange. She quickly discovers that her people's attack, a violent psychic one that weaponized the Rubruii's psychic interconnection against them, damaged the Rubruii's common intelligence network, quite literally rooted in trees given sentience who are also part of the psychic interconnection and critical to the infrastructure of their world, and becomes determined to fix it.

The part that feels muddled to me is that the novella sets up a deconstruction of the idea of the colonizer turned savior: Miquita's motives and entitlement to Rubruii memories are questioned, up to and including pressuring the ambassador who's nominally in charge of her care and safety to mentally link with her to share personal experiences of Miquita's father's attack. The ambassador and the Prime Minister, whose son is at grave risk if Miquita comes to harm, whether or not she brought it on herself, take Miquita to task for her arrogance in believing she can fix the common intelligence network where their own people have failed, but Miquita presses on despite them, determined to make something useful of herself and increasingly attached to the idea of sacrificing herself to physically become part of the plant-based common intelligence, something that may or may not work and may even make things worse. She learns that the Rubruii call themselves the Prasinut, but even after learning that doesn't make the mental shift away from calling them Rubruii.

Given all of this build-up, I expected her attempt to sacrifice herself to end badly, but, in an ambiguous ending, it doesn't seem to- to my reading she succeeds, though at the cost of her humanity. She joins the common intelligence network physically and mentally, and in a timeskip chapter presented out of sequence we learn that the Prime Minister's son is returned to her safely, but to my reading we don't know how given the consequences threatened if Miquita was harmed. We don't find out if she restores the network, or what the Prasinut who so discouraged her felt about the matter, or if her efforts led them to be able to fight back against the Commander or gave them an advantage in the treaty negotiations to get the Prime Minister's son back or what. I feel like I must have missed something or overlooked something in one of the more symbolism-heavy passages, but even rereading them didn't give me any more clues.

I'm also not sure what to make of Miquita's relationship with another character who's like a mother to her, one of her father's other wives. Ria "was one of the unsexed, a dancer from the equatorial steppes, where the scorching heat and other environmental conditions affected biology at birth"; when she came to the attention of Miquita's father, she "underwent the procedure to become female, so that she could bear children to him." In a later scene, Ria says that she misses being nothing, that "before the Commander" she was "nothing," neither a child-bearer nor a child-giver. In later context, it seems like this is meant to be taken as her wishing to be politically insignificant and is something Miquita thinks about when she wants to be (politically) something, but the way it's tied to gender and sex feels uncomfortable to me in the implications. We never find out what becomes of Ria after the ending either.

[Erin S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rated the book within minutes of putting it down at 4 stars. Hours later, I came back and changed that rating to 5, as I became increasingly impressed with the depth and intricacy of the narrative the more my mind had time to fit the pieces together.

Without spoilers: The Green and Growing is a fast-paced, engaging, but challenging novella that complicates and ultimately subverts the savior narrative its main character is trying to live out. Wagner sets up a dynamic that seems straightforward only to upset it subtly and swiftly in the slim volume’s concluding chapters. This is a quick but very rewarding read.

With spoilers: Miquita stubbornly seeks to help the Rubruii and, to the end, does not take the corrections or criticisms offered by Rubruii characters, because she is so sure that she understands their problem and its solution, and because she feels guilty for the damage inflicted by her people, by her father. Readers may want Miquita to submit to that correction and internalize that this is not her place, that she does not actually fully understand them or the intelligent tree network they were once connected to, and some readers may feel that the ambassador's warnings and scolding all fall flat, since Miquita does not learn her lesson and does try to fix their problems. To interpret Miquita as the incorrigible foreign savior of the Rubruii, however, is a gross misreading of the text.

Miquita does learn her lesson—just too late. Her act of sacrifice is not what she expected it to be, and moreover, it fails! The trees are sustained for a while longer, but not healed, and the trees use this influx of energy and material not to rebuild their connection to the Rubruii, but to withdraw from it. Miquita has saved no one, and the Rubruii civilization is no better off for her sacrifice.

The savior narrative is not only subverted by the failure of the plucky foreigner’s insistence that she knows the Rubruii better than they know themselves, but by the complication of the Rubruii’s relationship with their tree network. Early in the novella, this seems like a beautiful relationship that gives the impression that the Rubruii civilization is better, more peaceful, and closer to nature than Miquita’s own people. Near the end, Wagner subtly reveals that things are more complicated: the trees themselves have been exploited by the Rubruii. Miquita’s sacrifice, if it worked as she expected, would have helped the Rubruii by doing further injustice to the trees (again underscoring that Miquita has only the shallowest understanding of the lives she wants to help and would do better to listen and take direction). The dynamic is more complicated than an oppressed people and an oppressing people.

All of this is nicely underscored and punctuated by smaller elements of the novella. Ria, like the trees, was a “nothing” (to use Ria’s own language) turned into a “something,” when she accepted Hritar’s proposal to become female and his wife, but Miquita remembers a conversation in which Ria talks about missing being “nothing,” missing her life as a street performer on the edge of civilization (and, meaningfully, Miquita finds it a little unsettling to imagine Ria as anything but a part of her family). In the same way, the Rubruii introduced sentience into the tree network, but this was not an uncomplicatedly positive change.

This is furthered by the use of color in the naming of the Rubruii. Miquita’s people named them for the red appearance of the planet in their own night sky, but they aren’t red. This emphasis on the gaze of the conqueror is brought up early and fairly often, and initially seems like it is pointing to the importance of the Rubruii's self-naming. The Rubruii name for themselves, we are told late in the novella, has among its meanings the color green (and life, and living), but they aren’t green—though the trees they have built their civilization with are. Their skin is grey, as we are reminded poignantly at the end, when Miquita is linked to the tree-consciousness, and that which is truly green and growing, given the choice, doesn’t really want anything to do with them.

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot in this little novella to unpack. It's an interesting, very narrow perspective on two cultures, the protagonist's own and the one where she has come to be held as part of a peace treaty. It's an interesting exploration of pain and loss and the incompleteness and confusion that comes with it. It asks a question about who has the right to see the wounded soul of a community and the right to try to fix it. It's a little harsh and a lot beautiful.