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The Unraveling
In the distant future somewhere in the galaxy, a society has emerged where everyone has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success within the rigid social system is reliant upon instantaneous social approbation.
Young Fift is an only child of the staid gender, struggling to maintain their position in the system while developing an intriguing friendship with the poorly-publicized bioengineer Shria–somewhat controversial, since Shria is bail-gendered.
In time, Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into the early stages of a multi-layered revolution against their strict societal system. Suddenly they become celebrities and involuntary standard-bearers for the upheaval.
Fift is torn between the survival of Shria and the success of their family cohort; staying true to their feelings and caving under societal pressure. Whatever Fift decides will make a disproportionately huge impact on the future of the world. What’s a young staid to do when the whole world is watching?
Young Fift is an only child of the staid gender, struggling to maintain their position in the system while developing an intriguing friendship with the poorly-publicized bioengineer Shria–somewhat controversial, since Shria is bail-gendered.
In time, Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into the early stages of a multi-layered revolution against their strict societal system. Suddenly they become celebrities and involuntary standard-bearers for the upheaval.
Fift is torn between the survival of Shria and the success of their family cohort; staying true to their feelings and caving under societal pressure. Whatever Fift decides will make a disproportionately huge impact on the future of the world. What’s a young staid to do when the whole world is watching?
417 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 8, 2021
42 people are currently reading
2331 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Rosenbaum
73 books52 followersBenjamin Rosenbaum has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He is the author of _The Unraveling_, a queer far-future coming-of-age novel, the short story collection _The Ant King and Other Stories_, and the Ennie-nominated Jewish historical fantasy tabletop roleplaying game _Dream Apart_. His stories have been translated into 25 languages.
He is the co-host of the podcast _Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans_.
Originally from Arlington, VA, he lives near Basel, Switzerland with his wife and children.
Author photo (c) 2017 Portrait Playtime.
He is the co-host of the podcast _Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans_.
Originally from Arlington, VA, he lives near Basel, Switzerland with his wife and children.
Author photo (c) 2017 Portrait Playtime.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
April 30, 2021
HIGHLIGHTS
~leave all your notions about gender at the door
~ever wanted to be in two places at once? HOW ABOUT SIX???
~would you like a tail??? you can have a tail
~‘I don’t want to lead a revolution I just want to maybe kiss my friend’
~the Clowns are Up To Something
~spoons
Oh, how I adore this strange, wonderful phantasmagora of a book.
…And I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen for minutes upon minutes, wondering how on earth to describe it.
Well, let’s start with that, I guess: Fift’s world is not ours. The story takes place far, far in humanity’s future, and on another, apparently long-since-terraformed, planet. Here, everyone has multiple bodies, which they inhabit and direct simultaneously; everything everyone does is visible to anyone who looks them up in the Feed; and the concept of ‘men’ and ‘women’ is nowhere to be found. Instead Fift’s society is divided up into Staids and Vails, which have nothing whatsoever to do with a person’s (extremely customisable) biology; instead, gender is assigned to newborns by the nearly-all-powerful Midwives. Violence and crime are so rare as to be the stuff of legend, food and clothing are created and available at the push of a button, and humanity has conquered disease: Fift and the others of zir generation are expected to live to be 900 years old.
It’s a utopia. A very odd-looking, but apparently genuine, utopia.
Except, obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~leave all your notions about gender at the door
~ever wanted to be in two places at once? HOW ABOUT SIX???
~would you like a tail??? you can have a tail
~‘I don’t want to lead a revolution I just want to maybe kiss my friend’
~the Clowns are Up To Something
~spoons
Oh, how I adore this strange, wonderful phantasmagora of a book.
…And I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen for minutes upon minutes, wondering how on earth to describe it.
Well, let’s start with that, I guess: Fift’s world is not ours. The story takes place far, far in humanity’s future, and on another, apparently long-since-terraformed, planet. Here, everyone has multiple bodies, which they inhabit and direct simultaneously; everything everyone does is visible to anyone who looks them up in the Feed; and the concept of ‘men’ and ‘women’ is nowhere to be found. Instead Fift’s society is divided up into Staids and Vails, which have nothing whatsoever to do with a person’s (extremely customisable) biology; instead, gender is assigned to newborns by the nearly-all-powerful Midwives. Violence and crime are so rare as to be the stuff of legend, food and clothing are created and available at the push of a button, and humanity has conquered disease: Fift and the others of zir generation are expected to live to be 900 years old.
It’s a utopia. A very odd-looking, but apparently genuine, utopia.
Except, obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
May 13, 2021
(Full disclosure: I’ve known Ben for years and have been waiting impatiently for this novel ever since reading the first drafts of pieces of it that never made it past the cutting-room floor. It was worth the wait.)
The Unraveling is a lot.
It’s a timeless forbidden romance, a gonzo queer space opera in the tradition of Samuel R. Delany, Geoff Ryman, and Gwyneth Jones, a moving coming-of-age story about going against the expectations of family and society to be true to yourself in troubled times.
It’s an incisive dissection of the human necessity to organize people and the world into categories and systems, and a thoughtful meditation on the history, propensities, and ultimate destiny of humanity.
It’s also clever, charming, fast-paced, and an extraordinary amount of fun. The opening chapters are a lot to take in—people with multiple bodies and multiple points of view, unfamiliar genders with unfamiliar pronouns, a whole world and society to unpack in just a few pages—but stick with it long enough to get to know Fift and Shria and you won’t be able to put it down.
The Unraveling is a lot.
It’s a timeless forbidden romance, a gonzo queer space opera in the tradition of Samuel R. Delany, Geoff Ryman, and Gwyneth Jones, a moving coming-of-age story about going against the expectations of family and society to be true to yourself in troubled times.
It’s an incisive dissection of the human necessity to organize people and the world into categories and systems, and a thoughtful meditation on the history, propensities, and ultimate destiny of humanity.
It’s also clever, charming, fast-paced, and an extraordinary amount of fun. The opening chapters are a lot to take in—people with multiple bodies and multiple points of view, unfamiliar genders with unfamiliar pronouns, a whole world and society to unpack in just a few pages—but stick with it long enough to get to know Fift and Shria and you won’t be able to put it down.
August 23, 2021
Benjamin Rosenbaum has been writing this book (or versions of it) for close to 20 years, and although we are only the most tenuous of acquaintances, I've been hearing about it for about half that time, so I was really excited to hear that it had been published.
Sadly, it didn't benefit from that many years of thought and care; in fact, I suspect he might have written a much better book if he had spent less time on it.
Let me start with what's good about it:
1) It is incredibly well executed (and you'll see below why that's remarkable.
2) The story at its heart is moving and compelling.
3) The social changes that stem in large part from the human story are plausible and fascinating.
Doesn't that sound like a good book? But ... in all my years as a science-fiction reader, I have never read a book that was this overcomplicated, and the complications all serve to distance the reader from the story. In one ordinary-length novel, Rosenbaum has:
--two completely new genders, which do not map at all onto male and female, and which have their own pronouns;
--something called a "polysomatic network" which results in most people, including the protagonist having somewhere between three and ten bodies which operate separately, can be in different places at the same time, but (mostly) share consciousness and experience
--a completely original family structure which is not gender-based
--names and family designations so strange to contemporary readers that they have to be intentionally strange (and sometimes funny)
--a pervasive descendant of the Internet which allows anyone to watch anyone else (except in some specific situations) and which allows everyone to know exactly how many people are watching them at any time
--internal "agents" which anyone can consult at any time for information or advice (a "social context agent," a "public behavior agent," and a host of factual agents)
--multi-hundred year lifespans which make our 16-year-old protagonist barely a baby, although ze is acting like a teenager right out of Romeo and Juliet.
--an authoritarian society which rigidly controls reproduction, gender norms, and social behavior
If that weren't enough, the viewpoint character is an anomaly because ze is clearly queer by the gender norms of zir time, and because ze isn't very good at integrating zir three bodies. See what I mean? Reading that sentence already throws you out of the story into tracking the pronouns and trying to figure out what the three-body thing would be like. And the whole book is like that: as a reader, I would get interested in the story for a page or two and then be thrown out again, because I had to remember which sets of pronouns were which, where everyone's extra bodies were, which of the protagonist's many parents were being consistent or inconsistent with which parenting ideas, etc., etc.
I so want to read a version of this book in which Rosenbaum rings two or three changes on what we're used to and then tells the same story. And I did want to finish it, because I admired his ability to handle all these factors, and I wanted to know how it ended. I did find the ending disappointing because the main story "ends" about 30 pages before the book does, and then there's a comparatively short, unsatisfying coda that gives us some sense of what happens to the protagonist and zir (love interest? crush? obsession?) after the fact.
Maybe Rosenbaum has worked through his overcomplication and can show us something more accessible and equally powerful on his next try?
Sadly, it didn't benefit from that many years of thought and care; in fact, I suspect he might have written a much better book if he had spent less time on it.
Let me start with what's good about it:
1) It is incredibly well executed (and you'll see below why that's remarkable.
2) The story at its heart is moving and compelling.
3) The social changes that stem in large part from the human story are plausible and fascinating.
Doesn't that sound like a good book? But ... in all my years as a science-fiction reader, I have never read a book that was this overcomplicated, and the complications all serve to distance the reader from the story. In one ordinary-length novel, Rosenbaum has:
--two completely new genders, which do not map at all onto male and female, and which have their own pronouns;
--something called a "polysomatic network" which results in most people, including the protagonist having somewhere between three and ten bodies which operate separately, can be in different places at the same time, but (mostly) share consciousness and experience
--a completely original family structure which is not gender-based
--names and family designations so strange to contemporary readers that they have to be intentionally strange (and sometimes funny)
--a pervasive descendant of the Internet which allows anyone to watch anyone else (except in some specific situations) and which allows everyone to know exactly how many people are watching them at any time
--internal "agents" which anyone can consult at any time for information or advice (a "social context agent," a "public behavior agent," and a host of factual agents)
--multi-hundred year lifespans which make our 16-year-old protagonist barely a baby, although ze is acting like a teenager right out of Romeo and Juliet.
--an authoritarian society which rigidly controls reproduction, gender norms, and social behavior
If that weren't enough, the viewpoint character is an anomaly because ze is clearly queer by the gender norms of zir time, and because ze isn't very good at integrating zir three bodies. See what I mean? Reading that sentence already throws you out of the story into tracking the pronouns and trying to figure out what the three-body thing would be like. And the whole book is like that: as a reader, I would get interested in the story for a page or two and then be thrown out again, because I had to remember which sets of pronouns were which, where everyone's extra bodies were, which of the protagonist's many parents were being consistent or inconsistent with which parenting ideas, etc., etc.
I so want to read a version of this book in which Rosenbaum rings two or three changes on what we're used to and then tells the same story. And I did want to finish it, because I admired his ability to handle all these factors, and I wanted to know how it ended. I did find the ending disappointing because the main story "ends" about 30 pages before the book does, and then there's a comparatively short, unsatisfying coda that gives us some sense of what happens to the protagonist and zir (love interest? crush? obsession?) after the fact.
Maybe Rosenbaum has worked through his overcomplication and can show us something more accessible and equally powerful on his next try?
June 17, 2021
Like nothing else. A grand queer coming-of-age story set in a far-future world: there are two genders which don't map at all to male/female. People are multiply-embodied. The processes of thinking, group consensus, seeing the world, sex, mother- and father-hood, age, and professions are completely different. The people in it are all-too-human: they argue (boy, do they argue), get into trouble, placate, try to do their best, struggle with their passions and the baggage from their childhood, do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and generally make a mess of things, as we all do. Fift, our hero(ine), grows up and makes mistakes and changes, but all for love and passion, even though there are huge social consequences. I will re-read this after racing through it once. If you're interested in the different, the strange, the queer, the passionate: check this book out.
Read
May 19, 2021I dunno if you've read the novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen, but while reading this book, I was reminded of this Regency romance. Now, you must be wondering, what on earth does a Regency romance have anything to do with a sci-fi set in a secondary world?
The connection lies in the two books' protagonists. While the Regency romance has two sisters who are vastly different in temperament; one being sense (as in serious and sedate in emotions) and the other being sensible (back then this word meant sensitive). Elinor Dashwood is as serious and sedate in emotions as Marianne Dashwood is impulsive and passionate. These two temperaments are the basis of THE UNRAVELING, a groundbreaking sci-fi by author Benjamin Rosenbaum.
In THE UNRAVELING, there are two genders in this world, the Staids and the Vails. Now, if you google their meanings, you'll find that Staid means serious, conventional, unadventurous, solemn, somber, stiff, uptight. So yeah, the Staids are the gender who are like Elinor Dashwood. Meanwhile, the Vails are the Marianne Dashwood; passionate, hot-blooded, sentimental, sensitive. Vail also means, according to Google, "take off or lower (one's hat or crown) as a token of respect or submission", aka the Vails are seen as something of a lower status than the somber Staids. Though there isn't any strict order for the two to mingle or even mate, it is forbidden for the Staids to display emotional outbursts and the Vails to engage in physical violence outside designated areas, referred to as "the mats".
Anyway, this will be a polarizing book. I mean it. Firstly, because it's written in neo-pronouns, no he/she. Instead, the Staids use ze/zir/zir/zirs/zirself; the Vails use ve/vir/vem/virs/vemself. For me, it was tough to not read he/she, rather ze/ve. The first time I began to read it, I only made it to chapter 2 before I had to stop and let my brain stew this in. That took me a week. I returned to the book a week later, dumping all my preconceived notions of gender and sex and bodies and privacy of mind and family structure out the door. I began again and this time, it took me less than two days to finish.
Yeah, the story sucked me in. At its heart, THE UNRAVELING is a story of two themes; gender identity, and individual vs community. In a world where your place is determined immediately after birth and forever, in a world where you're rigidly stuck in one temperament and denied a chance to express yourself as you like, do things as you like, without any privacy inside even your head, life can become suffocating. So it becomes for our protagonist, 16yo staid Fift Brulio Iraxis. Born, gendered, and raised in a cohort (alternate word for "family" in this world) of close to ten parents, Fift often feels suffocated by the lack of privacy, lack of freedom, and lack of any chance to choose things for zirself. The same thing zir best friend, Shria, feels as well. Gendered as a Vail, vir cohort already makes a huge mistake when ve was a child, having another child without the consent of their community. That's right! In this world, to have a child, you'll need consent and approval from your community. If not and you still birth a child, the Midwives, who assign gender to a child upon birth, take away the child and bring them up as a midwife for future. While this community connection can be good, it has its dark sides. If a cohort doesn't abide by the ridiculous rules imposed by the Midwives, the latter holds the power to disband any rule-breaking cohort and take away their child too. Also in this world, a child's mind and activities can be constantly monitored by their parents, no matter how many bodies the child possesses (yup, here everybody possess more than one body, almost like clones, except they share one mind). So the chapters contain lots of head-hopping, another thing that can confuse and frustrate and irritate readers, thus further dividing their opinions about this book. Personally, it was somewhat tough to constantly head-hop almost every paragraph, but it became easier for me when I began to imagine the events in my head the way movies and shows with multiple parallel timelines are shown onscreen simultaneously. Maybe this tip can help you read it better? 🙂
Anyway, the story begins when Fift and Shria accidentally find themselves in the middle of an unprecedented revolutionary riot during a festivity and the inappropriate affection they display toward each other. Complicated by Fift's stubborn refusal to conform to societies ridiculous rules that demand from zir to end zir friendship with Shria, they find themselves at the precipice of a revolution that not only threatens to tear them apart, but also tear apart their respective cohorts, their communities, even the fabric of this Midwives-controlled world. An interesting weave of utopia and dystopia, THE UNRAVELING both changes and challenges our ideas of gender, identity, personality, and family. Again, this book is full of conflicting tug-of-war between a sense of community and a sense of individuality. How far would you go to retain your individuality? Can you survive without a community? Can you have individuality within a community?
Another cool thing about this book is that the pressure and expectations to conform to this world's standard of gender identity is eerily similar to our own. In real life, anything other than male or female is considered an oddity. Although at present, the binaries of gender identity has been pushed and broken a few many times, the idea still stands. In THE UNRAVELING, you'll find similar rigid, arbitrary expectations and pressure from society. The Staids cannot express emotions, the Vails cannot access into the Long Conversation, a detailed, erudite collection of this world's intellects. Although unlike ours, this society does not bestow gender identity based on one's sex, the dark side of the binaries still stands. Gender identity in our world is assumed upon arbitrary attributes, same as the world of this book. The author does not reveal what makes the Midwives assign one child Staid gender and another child Vail, and by keeping this vague and somewhat arbitrary, the author is asking us to ask those same questions to ourselves, about our society's way of assigning gender to a person. Just the same way Vails can be stoic and Staids can be expressive and both can be both or neither, men can have vagina and women can have penis and both can have both or neither as well.
With such deep thematic exploration, this book will divide people. Some will love it, some will hate it, some will hate it with love, some will love it with hate. But it'll make all its readers think and perform some serious brain work to figure out the machinations of this book's world.
Thank you, NetGalley and Erewhon Books, for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
The connection lies in the two books' protagonists. While the Regency romance has two sisters who are vastly different in temperament; one being sense (as in serious and sedate in emotions) and the other being sensible (back then this word meant sensitive). Elinor Dashwood is as serious and sedate in emotions as Marianne Dashwood is impulsive and passionate. These two temperaments are the basis of THE UNRAVELING, a groundbreaking sci-fi by author Benjamin Rosenbaum.
In THE UNRAVELING, there are two genders in this world, the Staids and the Vails. Now, if you google their meanings, you'll find that Staid means serious, conventional, unadventurous, solemn, somber, stiff, uptight. So yeah, the Staids are the gender who are like Elinor Dashwood. Meanwhile, the Vails are the Marianne Dashwood; passionate, hot-blooded, sentimental, sensitive. Vail also means, according to Google, "take off or lower (one's hat or crown) as a token of respect or submission", aka the Vails are seen as something of a lower status than the somber Staids. Though there isn't any strict order for the two to mingle or even mate, it is forbidden for the Staids to display emotional outbursts and the Vails to engage in physical violence outside designated areas, referred to as "the mats".
Anyway, this will be a polarizing book. I mean it. Firstly, because it's written in neo-pronouns, no he/she. Instead, the Staids use ze/zir/zir/zirs/zirself; the Vails use ve/vir/vem/virs/vemself. For me, it was tough to not read he/she, rather ze/ve. The first time I began to read it, I only made it to chapter 2 before I had to stop and let my brain stew this in. That took me a week. I returned to the book a week later, dumping all my preconceived notions of gender and sex and bodies and privacy of mind and family structure out the door. I began again and this time, it took me less than two days to finish.
Yeah, the story sucked me in. At its heart, THE UNRAVELING is a story of two themes; gender identity, and individual vs community. In a world where your place is determined immediately after birth and forever, in a world where you're rigidly stuck in one temperament and denied a chance to express yourself as you like, do things as you like, without any privacy inside even your head, life can become suffocating. So it becomes for our protagonist, 16yo staid Fift Brulio Iraxis. Born, gendered, and raised in a cohort (alternate word for "family" in this world) of close to ten parents, Fift often feels suffocated by the lack of privacy, lack of freedom, and lack of any chance to choose things for zirself. The same thing zir best friend, Shria, feels as well. Gendered as a Vail, vir cohort already makes a huge mistake when ve was a child, having another child without the consent of their community. That's right! In this world, to have a child, you'll need consent and approval from your community. If not and you still birth a child, the Midwives, who assign gender to a child upon birth, take away the child and bring them up as a midwife for future. While this community connection can be good, it has its dark sides. If a cohort doesn't abide by the ridiculous rules imposed by the Midwives, the latter holds the power to disband any rule-breaking cohort and take away their child too. Also in this world, a child's mind and activities can be constantly monitored by their parents, no matter how many bodies the child possesses (yup, here everybody possess more than one body, almost like clones, except they share one mind). So the chapters contain lots of head-hopping, another thing that can confuse and frustrate and irritate readers, thus further dividing their opinions about this book. Personally, it was somewhat tough to constantly head-hop almost every paragraph, but it became easier for me when I began to imagine the events in my head the way movies and shows with multiple parallel timelines are shown onscreen simultaneously. Maybe this tip can help you read it better? 🙂
Anyway, the story begins when Fift and Shria accidentally find themselves in the middle of an unprecedented revolutionary riot during a festivity and the inappropriate affection they display toward each other. Complicated by Fift's stubborn refusal to conform to societies ridiculous rules that demand from zir to end zir friendship with Shria, they find themselves at the precipice of a revolution that not only threatens to tear them apart, but also tear apart their respective cohorts, their communities, even the fabric of this Midwives-controlled world. An interesting weave of utopia and dystopia, THE UNRAVELING both changes and challenges our ideas of gender, identity, personality, and family. Again, this book is full of conflicting tug-of-war between a sense of community and a sense of individuality. How far would you go to retain your individuality? Can you survive without a community? Can you have individuality within a community?
Another cool thing about this book is that the pressure and expectations to conform to this world's standard of gender identity is eerily similar to our own. In real life, anything other than male or female is considered an oddity. Although at present, the binaries of gender identity has been pushed and broken a few many times, the idea still stands. In THE UNRAVELING, you'll find similar rigid, arbitrary expectations and pressure from society. The Staids cannot express emotions, the Vails cannot access into the Long Conversation, a detailed, erudite collection of this world's intellects. Although unlike ours, this society does not bestow gender identity based on one's sex, the dark side of the binaries still stands. Gender identity in our world is assumed upon arbitrary attributes, same as the world of this book. The author does not reveal what makes the Midwives assign one child Staid gender and another child Vail, and by keeping this vague and somewhat arbitrary, the author is asking us to ask those same questions to ourselves, about our society's way of assigning gender to a person. Just the same way Vails can be stoic and Staids can be expressive and both can be both or neither, men can have vagina and women can have penis and both can have both or neither as well.
With such deep thematic exploration, this book will divide people. Some will love it, some will hate it, some will hate it with love, some will love it with hate. But it'll make all its readers think and perform some serious brain work to figure out the machinations of this book's world.
Thank you, NetGalley and Erewhon Books, for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
August 10, 2021
Dear Readers, Aliens and Creatures, What in the abandoned void is happening?!
Official title: The Unraveling
My title: When Children go Wild
Author: Benjamin Rosenbaum
Publisher: Erewhon
Fav character: Pip / Have
Type: Book
4.7/5
.
The author put a considerable amount of work into this story, and it shows in its layered reality, detailed pronoun use, intricate family structures and multiple story perspectives. It also raises an intriguing discussion on gender and sexual identities.
In this world, humans have travelled to the far regions of the universe and have created a society which resides underground, has two genders (which basically describe whether you are a fiery person or a calm person 💁) is governed by public opinion through the all-seeing ‘feed’ of your life’s actions, has an economy which focuses on public opinion and influence, consists of neural linked clones of a person, people with orange, red, blue, green, lilac skin hues, but little to no darker shades. Disappointmentttttt.
Since humans now live until they’re about 800+ years old, what is considered childhood is separated into two parts and can go until you’re about 80. What is more, being born means that your PARENTS (sometimes 80+ of them - one ‘mother’, other are all fathers) received special permission and are deemed suitable by the Midwife Mafia.
Fift, a Staid with Vailish tendencies, will challenge all of this on his quest to becoming best friends with benefits 😒 and maybe cohorts with Shria. Zir will bring down the whole system of the world because zir parents said zir should wait a bit before talking to Shria - talk about a TANTRUM.
A book full of amazing and fantastical things, much food for thought, colourful characters and wild wild children who cannot consider consequences.
I recommend. The world building is amazing, even if the children are frustrating.
(Much more on blog). 😬
Official title: The Unraveling
My title: When Children go Wild
Author: Benjamin Rosenbaum
Publisher: Erewhon
Fav character: Pip / Have
Type: Book
4.7/5
.
The author put a considerable amount of work into this story, and it shows in its layered reality, detailed pronoun use, intricate family structures and multiple story perspectives. It also raises an intriguing discussion on gender and sexual identities.
In this world, humans have travelled to the far regions of the universe and have created a society which resides underground, has two genders (which basically describe whether you are a fiery person or a calm person 💁) is governed by public opinion through the all-seeing ‘feed’ of your life’s actions, has an economy which focuses on public opinion and influence, consists of neural linked clones of a person, people with orange, red, blue, green, lilac skin hues, but little to no darker shades. Disappointmentttttt.
Since humans now live until they’re about 800+ years old, what is considered childhood is separated into two parts and can go until you’re about 80. What is more, being born means that your PARENTS (sometimes 80+ of them - one ‘mother’, other are all fathers) received special permission and are deemed suitable by the Midwife Mafia.
Fift, a Staid with Vailish tendencies, will challenge all of this on his quest to becoming best friends with benefits 😒 and maybe cohorts with Shria. Zir will bring down the whole system of the world because zir parents said zir should wait a bit before talking to Shria - talk about a TANTRUM.
A book full of amazing and fantastical things, much food for thought, colourful characters and wild wild children who cannot consider consequences.
I recommend. The world building is amazing, even if the children are frustrating.
(Much more on blog). 😬
August 15, 2021
A literary masterclass in world building
I cannot overstate how much I loved what this book does. It's so strange to me that the story itself doesn't pan out to a fulfilling end (will probably become a series?). But the fact that I reached that sort of narrative dissatisfaction alone through the complexity of a multi-bodied neo-pronoun gender defined society is a miracle itself. It's one thing to say a story is about gender, and switch up a few pronouns, and call it a day. It's another to really make a story about gender enforcement, perceptions, how that frames a society's other channels such as economic means of subsistence, language, culture and the notion of attachment.
I love the style of the storytelling as well. The interludes do a lot to really ground the reality of the world and the work. Rosenbaum taps into the common fragility of a teen romance and gender confusion so gently and appropriately, that the wonders of the world aside, you can really relate to these characters.
Strongly recommend to anyone who loves non-traditional science fiction, and deep down inside has experienced the pain of a teen crush that they never really got over.
I cannot overstate how much I loved what this book does. It's so strange to me that the story itself doesn't pan out to a fulfilling end (will probably become a series?). But the fact that I reached that sort of narrative dissatisfaction alone through the complexity of a multi-bodied neo-pronoun gender defined society is a miracle itself. It's one thing to say a story is about gender, and switch up a few pronouns, and call it a day. It's another to really make a story about gender enforcement, perceptions, how that frames a society's other channels such as economic means of subsistence, language, culture and the notion of attachment.
I love the style of the storytelling as well. The interludes do a lot to really ground the reality of the world and the work. Rosenbaum taps into the common fragility of a teen romance and gender confusion so gently and appropriately, that the wonders of the world aside, you can really relate to these characters.
Strongly recommend to anyone who loves non-traditional science fiction, and deep down inside has experienced the pain of a teen crush that they never really got over.
April 25, 2021
I love this book!
June 16, 2021
Rosenbaum, Benjamin. The Unraveling. Erewhon, 2020.
If science fiction has one persistent structural issue, it is exposition. How much information does a reader need to understand, say, life on a distant planet in the far future? Some writers, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, provide large infodumps that orient the reader but break the narrative flow. In The Unraveling, Benjamin Rosenbaum operates very differently. His approach is to require a reader to gather information about his narrative world inductively. The narrative thus proceeds without interruption, but it risks confusing some readers. This is especially true in The Unraveling, because Rosenbaum is at pains to put the trans in trans-human. Our protagonist, Fift, has five parents and three bodies in which Fift is simultaneously conscious. Gender is no longer divided into male and female, because one’s genitals and their associated plumbing are now a fashion choice, easily combined and changed. Gender is now divided into staid and vail, each with its own set of pronouns. Reproduction is now a group decision, and interactions between staid and vail genders is strictly limited by community secrets and taboos. Understanding how all this works (or doesn’t work) engages more of the reader’s attention than the plot. One hardly notices, for example, that buried somewhere in it is a rather good coming of age story. The only book to which I can compare The Unraveling is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. That is rarified company for a novel to share. It’s worth the work. 4 strong stars.
If science fiction has one persistent structural issue, it is exposition. How much information does a reader need to understand, say, life on a distant planet in the far future? Some writers, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, provide large infodumps that orient the reader but break the narrative flow. In The Unraveling, Benjamin Rosenbaum operates very differently. His approach is to require a reader to gather information about his narrative world inductively. The narrative thus proceeds without interruption, but it risks confusing some readers. This is especially true in The Unraveling, because Rosenbaum is at pains to put the trans in trans-human. Our protagonist, Fift, has five parents and three bodies in which Fift is simultaneously conscious. Gender is no longer divided into male and female, because one’s genitals and their associated plumbing are now a fashion choice, easily combined and changed. Gender is now divided into staid and vail, each with its own set of pronouns. Reproduction is now a group decision, and interactions between staid and vail genders is strictly limited by community secrets and taboos. Understanding how all this works (or doesn’t work) engages more of the reader’s attention than the plot. One hardly notices, for example, that buried somewhere in it is a rather good coming of age story. The only book to which I can compare The Unraveling is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. That is rarified company for a novel to share. It’s worth the work. 4 strong stars.
May 4, 2021
I think the best recommendation for a book, is whether when you get to the end you immediately pick it up and read it again.
Which I did with the Unraveling, like about 4 or 5 times in a row now!
Rosenbaum loves genre fiction but then he loves to flip it, invert it, transform it and let it leap over itself. There are so many ideas, deeply woven into the far future setting of the Unraveling that it' easy to lose track of that it's basically a heart driven, human story about love, belonging, making your own way, growing up and asserting one's own identity apart and alongside one's family.
The characters are fully realized people with wonderful rich relationships to each other which is what really makes a book sing.. AND yes... even though they are networked to one another, have 3-6 bodies, 4-12 parents, with genders established with something closer to the Myers Briggs than by one's genitals, in a universe is populated with Orphan tech ambassadors vainly struggling to keep us from destroying ourselves... despite all of those differences, the protagonists Fift and Shria remind us of what it' like to be young idealistic and brave.
An absolute instant classic in my opinion. A brilliant, splendid, and transformational first novel.
Which I did with the Unraveling, like about 4 or 5 times in a row now!
Rosenbaum loves genre fiction but then he loves to flip it, invert it, transform it and let it leap over itself. There are so many ideas, deeply woven into the far future setting of the Unraveling that it' easy to lose track of that it's basically a heart driven, human story about love, belonging, making your own way, growing up and asserting one's own identity apart and alongside one's family.
The characters are fully realized people with wonderful rich relationships to each other which is what really makes a book sing.. AND yes... even though they are networked to one another, have 3-6 bodies, 4-12 parents, with genders established with something closer to the Myers Briggs than by one's genitals, in a universe is populated with Orphan tech ambassadors vainly struggling to keep us from destroying ourselves... despite all of those differences, the protagonists Fift and Shria remind us of what it' like to be young idealistic and brave.
An absolute instant classic in my opinion. A brilliant, splendid, and transformational first novel.
May 3, 2023
Fift is born into a world solar systems and millennia far from ours, in which life is long, reputation is wealth, most everyone inhabits multiple bodies simultaneously, and gender (Staid or Vail) is completely separate from physical form. Fift is still considered a child, but then ze and zir bestie Shria are caught up in a riot and become a lightning rod for revolution.
Ambitiously weird. I always appreciate when people imagine truly different ways of life. I found parts of this book frustrating (notably the bits when Fift and all zir parents are all talking at each other intermixed with lines of what Fift's other bodies are experiencing or saying elsewhere in particular, plus I didn't figure out what was wrong with Fift and Shria being romantically involved when plenty of other Staid and Vails were--turns out intergender romances are taboo for those under ~100), but my confusion and annoyance with all the input was probably actually part of the message. Overall, totally worth reading.
Ambitiously weird. I always appreciate when people imagine truly different ways of life. I found parts of this book frustrating (notably the bits when Fift and all zir parents are all talking at each other intermixed with lines of what Fift's other bodies are experiencing or saying elsewhere in particular, plus I didn't figure out what was wrong with Fift and Shria being romantically involved when plenty of other Staid and Vails were--turns out intergender romances are taboo for those under ~100), but my confusion and annoyance with all the input was probably actually part of the message. Overall, totally worth reading.
June 30, 2021
I am not usually a hard sci-fi reader, but I loved this book and couldn't put it down.
You may experience some culture shock while reading the first couple chapters, as this world is so far in the future and so much is different: people with multiple bodies; genders that don't map to our world's male and female (or to physical biological characteristics at all); cohorts of as many as 80 adults parenting a small number of children together; a feed where everyone can see each other almost anytime they want; a social system in which birth order is paramount...and more.
So it's a lot to get used to, but once you experience the bond between the main characters, Fift and Shria, you will be hooked on them and on the revolutionary things happening in their world. And like the best science fiction, spending some time in the world of The Unraveling will forever influence how you see our world.
You may experience some culture shock while reading the first couple chapters, as this world is so far in the future and so much is different: people with multiple bodies; genders that don't map to our world's male and female (or to physical biological characteristics at all); cohorts of as many as 80 adults parenting a small number of children together; a feed where everyone can see each other almost anytime they want; a social system in which birth order is paramount...and more.
So it's a lot to get used to, but once you experience the bond between the main characters, Fift and Shria, you will be hooked on them and on the revolutionary things happening in their world. And like the best science fiction, spending some time in the world of The Unraveling will forever influence how you see our world.
August 2, 2021
This is the best book I've read this year. It's about a complacent society on the edge of unraveling, but more importantly, it's about two teens finding themselves and bracing up against the expectations of society and their families. It's about love and gender and the messiness inherent in both. It's the best sci fi I've read in a long while.
September 20, 2025
What a fascinating book! I've talked before about how I think there aren't enough books that aren't only queer, but actively work to question and dismantle our ideas of gender and sexuality; Rosenbaum seemingly took that as a challenge (I'm joking, I'm joking). In The Unraveling, the gender binary is at once wholly torn down and built up, by creating an entirely new binary in which concepts like man/woman are wholly irrelevant. Combined with a hugely ambitious made up vocabulary, this makes for a world that comes off as deeply alien yet very human. You get only just enough information to keep up, but you'll never understand the exact intricacies of this strange world. It's very engaging.
This is a future where bodies can be built and rebuilt and customized in all kinds of ways, and people do so with gusto. While male and female is still a thing (there's a whole talk about how child bearing works and what part are needed to do so), people can have any parts they want, or custom parts which don't apply to either sex. As such, man and woman as strict categories have gone out the window. Instead, a new binary arises, no longer based on physical characteristics but just as oppressive as our present binary.
To the reader, this binary comes off as strange and made up and not something you should build an entire society around; to me, this feels like the point. To us, man/woman is so ingrained that we never question it, but it really isn't any more rational to base so much of our norms around it and pressure people so heavily to fit in with their assigned gender roles.
Okay, enough talk about gender. There's also a story and characters in this book! Shocking! While this is a narrative about societal change caused by a populace being under huge pressure, at its heart it's about two teens and their forbidden feelings for each other, and how their relationship becomes the center of a revolution. In a way it reminded me of The Hunger Games: these are just kids, and they don't want to lead a revolution, they just want to work out their feelings for each other. Yet they're given little choice as all of society is suddenly watching them and projecting on and hyper analyzing their every move. It's clear that this treatment of them is both unfair - they're kids! let them be! - yet through becoming central to the conflict they grow into wanting to see and encourage change even as they know it'll make their own lives more complicated.
Surveillance - specifically surveillance through social media - is a heavy theme throughout. Everyone is watched constantly, their every move judged, and society at large can ruin individual lives simply because they make snap judgements based on what they see. No one can ever be vulnerable because that could lead to their lives being torn down. We especially see how this surveillance works to enforce gender norms (yes, I know I said I was finished talking about gender; I lied). If you don't comply, you're assumed to be some kind of pervert, or your parents raised you wrong, and everyone either wants to punish you for it or parasocially project on to you as oh so relatable. While it isn't about male/female, it's still easy to recognize how present day social media acts similarly in enforcing our gender binary and punishing those who don't comply. Recognition through alienation and all that.
There's so much going on in this book! I haven't even talked about the whole multiple bodies thing! Everyone has many bodies through which they see the world, while also often viewing far off event through social media almost as if they were there, while also having conversations out loud while simultaneously talking privately through direct messages. Perspective will shift constantly mid scene, sometimes taking place in the characters' mind and sometimes in physical reality, conversations happening in multiple places at once overlapping and melding. It's weird, it's confusing, it's great!
This is a future where bodies can be built and rebuilt and customized in all kinds of ways, and people do so with gusto. While male and female is still a thing (there's a whole talk about how child bearing works and what part are needed to do so), people can have any parts they want, or custom parts which don't apply to either sex. As such, man and woman as strict categories have gone out the window. Instead, a new binary arises, no longer based on physical characteristics but just as oppressive as our present binary.
To the reader, this binary comes off as strange and made up and not something you should build an entire society around; to me, this feels like the point. To us, man/woman is so ingrained that we never question it, but it really isn't any more rational to base so much of our norms around it and pressure people so heavily to fit in with their assigned gender roles.
Okay, enough talk about gender. There's also a story and characters in this book! Shocking! While this is a narrative about societal change caused by a populace being under huge pressure, at its heart it's about two teens and their forbidden feelings for each other, and how their relationship becomes the center of a revolution. In a way it reminded me of The Hunger Games: these are just kids, and they don't want to lead a revolution, they just want to work out their feelings for each other. Yet they're given little choice as all of society is suddenly watching them and projecting on and hyper analyzing their every move. It's clear that this treatment of them is both unfair - they're kids! let them be! - yet through becoming central to the conflict they grow into wanting to see and encourage change even as they know it'll make their own lives more complicated.
Surveillance - specifically surveillance through social media - is a heavy theme throughout. Everyone is watched constantly, their every move judged, and society at large can ruin individual lives simply because they make snap judgements based on what they see. No one can ever be vulnerable because that could lead to their lives being torn down. We especially see how this surveillance works to enforce gender norms (yes, I know I said I was finished talking about gender; I lied). If you don't comply, you're assumed to be some kind of pervert, or your parents raised you wrong, and everyone either wants to punish you for it or parasocially project on to you as oh so relatable. While it isn't about male/female, it's still easy to recognize how present day social media acts similarly in enforcing our gender binary and punishing those who don't comply. Recognition through alienation and all that.
There's so much going on in this book! I haven't even talked about the whole multiple bodies thing! Everyone has many bodies through which they see the world, while also often viewing far off event through social media almost as if they were there, while also having conversations out loud while simultaneously talking privately through direct messages. Perspective will shift constantly mid scene, sometimes taking place in the characters' mind and sometimes in physical reality, conversations happening in multiple places at once overlapping and melding. It's weird, it's confusing, it's great!
August 26, 2025
I have such a fondness for stories of teens developing agency and this one has the added bonuses of really interesting world building and being in conversation with just about everything. plus I found the orthogonal gender moves fascinating.
April 24, 2021
This was a very challenging read for me but I'm happy I persevered. The concept of the story is very unique and intriguing it takes us to a very distant future where humans are allowed to clone themselves having the same consciousness in each body through a polysomatic network. Inhabitants of the Nation of Fullbellly are able to live up to 500+ years of age and are segregated according to gender, ratings, and cohorts by a governing body called the Midwives.
The story follows Fift, a sixteen-year-old, 3 bodied Staid, whose parents are composed of seven Fathers and a Mother. She was born through natural birth and was the Only Child of the family. The story tells us about her life as a Staid, the rules she must always follow, and the struggles she experienced during Her First Childhood.
I honestly struggled reading the first few chapters of the book describing the multiple actions taken by the characters in a scene and the gender pronouns used. But as I go along, I was able to read it smoothly taking note that their world is set in the distant future where their language not just their civilization has evolved.
If you love reading books about sci-fi, love, and friendship, family life, and strong-willed characters, I would definitely recommend this book to you.
I'm grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Merged review:
This was a very challenging read for me but I'm happy I persevered. The concept of the story is very unique and intriguing in that it takes us to a very distant future where humans are allowed to clone themselves having the same single consciousness through a polysomatic network. Inhabitants of the Nation of Fullbellly are able to live up to 500+ years of age and are segregated according to gender, ratings, and cohorts by a governing body called the Midwives.
The story follows Fift, a sixteen-year-old Staid whose parents are composed of seven Fathers and a Mother. She was born through natural birth and was the Only Child of the family. The story tells us about her life as a Staid, the rules she must always follow, and the struggles she experienced during Her First Childhood.
I honestly struggled reading the first few chapters of the book describing the multiple actions taken by the characters in a scene and the gender pronouns used. But as I go along, I was able to read it smoothly taking note that their world is set in the distant future where their language not just their civilization has evolved.
If you love reading books about sci-fi, love, and friendship, family life, and strong-willed characters, I would definitely recommend this book to you.
I'm grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
The story follows Fift, a sixteen-year-old, 3 bodied Staid, whose parents are composed of seven Fathers and a Mother. She was born through natural birth and was the Only Child of the family. The story tells us about her life as a Staid, the rules she must always follow, and the struggles she experienced during Her First Childhood.
I honestly struggled reading the first few chapters of the book describing the multiple actions taken by the characters in a scene and the gender pronouns used. But as I go along, I was able to read it smoothly taking note that their world is set in the distant future where their language not just their civilization has evolved.
If you love reading books about sci-fi, love, and friendship, family life, and strong-willed characters, I would definitely recommend this book to you.
I'm grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Merged review:
This was a very challenging read for me but I'm happy I persevered. The concept of the story is very unique and intriguing in that it takes us to a very distant future where humans are allowed to clone themselves having the same single consciousness through a polysomatic network. Inhabitants of the Nation of Fullbellly are able to live up to 500+ years of age and are segregated according to gender, ratings, and cohorts by a governing body called the Midwives.
The story follows Fift, a sixteen-year-old Staid whose parents are composed of seven Fathers and a Mother. She was born through natural birth and was the Only Child of the family. The story tells us about her life as a Staid, the rules she must always follow, and the struggles she experienced during Her First Childhood.
I honestly struggled reading the first few chapters of the book describing the multiple actions taken by the characters in a scene and the gender pronouns used. But as I go along, I was able to read it smoothly taking note that their world is set in the distant future where their language not just their civilization has evolved.
If you love reading books about sci-fi, love, and friendship, family life, and strong-willed characters, I would definitely recommend this book to you.
I'm grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
August 15, 2025
A fascinating far future society very different from our own with different ideas of gender and where each person tends to have multiple bodies. This leads to an intriguing narrative structure and allows exploration and investigation of a lot of different ideas while still being an engaging story at the heart of it all. I really enjoyed this and what it's doing.
And now I've already reread it only a few months after the first read and it was still entertaining and interesting and oh goodness adolescence!
And now I've already reread it only a few months after the first read and it was still entertaining and interesting and oh goodness adolescence!
July 31, 2021
Well, dang. This book is an excellent test of reading comprehension, specifically trying to figure things out from context clues. It is both entertaining and baffling, and I wonder how many gender studies classes will make it required reading. I am extremely impressed.
July 2, 2021
Reminded me of a modern Ursula K. Le Guin. Amazing world building, exploring altarnate forms of gender, economy, and technology.
December 23, 2025
Well, now I know that it’s possible to write a comprehensible narrative when all the characters have two or three or four or more bodies! The beginning was a little slow, the middle picked up, and then it took me like two weeks to get to the last 80 pages.
This is a very comprehensively-revised book, and it is the best book that itself can be, but it just isn’t quite my thing. I tend to like my science fiction a little more interiorly-motivated, and we didn’t really get the motivations of most of the characters. it was in fact a bit difficult for me to differentiate their personalities.
If it sounds intriguing, give it a try. But it is not on the poetic end of gender-investigating science fiction.
This is a very comprehensively-revised book, and it is the best book that itself can be, but it just isn’t quite my thing. I tend to like my science fiction a little more interiorly-motivated, and we didn’t really get the motivations of most of the characters. it was in fact a bit difficult for me to differentiate their personalities.
If it sounds intriguing, give it a try. But it is not on the poetic end of gender-investigating science fiction.
September 11, 2025
Super sad to have missed the book club because it would be great to discuss this book. So many juggling concepts and twists and world notes.
July 5, 2022
This book took me by surprise. It takes place in a startlingly original future setting, in which people have more than one body and gender has completely different parameters than what we have in our current universe. Against this backdrop, a young person struggles to define themself in the face of uncomfortable societal expectations. At first, I found the book's made-up lingo disorienting, but that fell away as the book went along because the characters and plot were so engaging—they were both classic and totally original. By the end, I found myself thinking, "This is brilliant."
July 2, 2022
I don't know how many science fiction books I've read in my life. 1,500? 2,000? None of them compares to this book. There were clearer books, better-plotted books, more lyrical books. But none that looked at the far future, created a working society, then critiqued that society, all in the background of an action-packed plot. There's love (eros, philia, storge), pain, discourse, and the inventiveness of teenagers.
The author has a talent for humor along with his talent for large-idea works and worldbuilding. I'll be thinking about what this book is "about" for a long time.
The author has a talent for humor along with his talent for large-idea works and worldbuilding. I'll be thinking about what this book is "about" for a long time.
April 11, 2021
“Maybe it’s better to be miserable for a century, if at the end you—you win joy built on honest foundations.”
I received an eARC of The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum from Netgalley and Erewhon Books. Here is my personal and honest review!
🪢 The Unraveling is the story of young Fift who is trying to find a way in a world where advancements in biodiversity have changed the constructs of gender to a system that is almost unrecognizable. Is following a path outside of the strict regulations of gender worth risking Fift’s family and freedom?
The Unraveling was a great concept that just failed in the execution. In Fift’s world most people are able to split their consciousness between multiple (typically three?) bodies. This concept is so cool, but led to a super confusing reading experience. Fift’s POV was constantly shifting between bodies mid sentence and so often I was just left lost. I understand trying to convey the feeling of being split, but it was just a little too convoluted to be enjoyable for me. That being said a lot of the commentary and societal constrictions of gender was interesting, you just had to suffer through a lot of confusion to get to it.
This one gets two stars from me! 🪢
I received an eARC of The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum from Netgalley and Erewhon Books. Here is my personal and honest review!
🪢 The Unraveling is the story of young Fift who is trying to find a way in a world where advancements in biodiversity have changed the constructs of gender to a system that is almost unrecognizable. Is following a path outside of the strict regulations of gender worth risking Fift’s family and freedom?
The Unraveling was a great concept that just failed in the execution. In Fift’s world most people are able to split their consciousness between multiple (typically three?) bodies. This concept is so cool, but led to a super confusing reading experience. Fift’s POV was constantly shifting between bodies mid sentence and so often I was just left lost. I understand trying to convey the feeling of being split, but it was just a little too convoluted to be enjoyable for me. That being said a lot of the commentary and societal constrictions of gender was interesting, you just had to suffer through a lot of confusion to get to it.
This one gets two stars from me! 🪢
January 27, 2023
The Unraveling was an extraordinary work of sci-fi. It’s one of my favorite books of the year and is an example of what this genre is capable of and why I love it so much.
In The Unraveling, Rosenbaum creates a very foreign world that stretches the readers imagination while also dealing with important contemporary ideas. The themes of performance and surveillance were ingenious in a far future setting that completely actualizes Foucault’s panopticon. This was especially powerful when paired with the book’s careful examination of queer identity and gender politics. I loved this book and cannot believe it doesn’t already have a wider readership.
In The Unraveling, Rosenbaum creates a very foreign world that stretches the readers imagination while also dealing with important contemporary ideas. The themes of performance and surveillance were ingenious in a far future setting that completely actualizes Foucault’s panopticon. This was especially powerful when paired with the book’s careful examination of queer identity and gender politics. I loved this book and cannot believe it doesn’t already have a wider readership.
July 23, 2022
This is the worst book I have ever read.
It’s like the author was given a template for what a sci-fi novel should be and just filled it I with jargon.
The attempt at commentary on the gender binary is very unsuccessful as the author could not imagine a world without a gender binary so, there are still only 2 genders. And, as we expect from Cishet men, the society is so obsessed with their genitals that they have an entire industry dedicated to decorating them. But since they aren’t penises I guess we’re meant to feel it’s revolutionary? A hard miss there.
It’s like the author was given a template for what a sci-fi novel should be and just filled it I with jargon.
The attempt at commentary on the gender binary is very unsuccessful as the author could not imagine a world without a gender binary so, there are still only 2 genders. And, as we expect from Cishet men, the society is so obsessed with their genitals that they have an entire industry dedicated to decorating them. But since they aren’t penises I guess we’re meant to feel it’s revolutionary? A hard miss there.
Read
October 18, 2021Just a note to myself: I tried it, I couldn't get into it, I gave myself permission to not read a book where the main character is named Fift.
October 25, 2022
I'm pretty sure this book was intended to make A Statement - probably about gender roles and nonconformity, maybe about the wisdom of rebellious youth, I don't know. Unfortunately, the author got so deeply into building this ?future? world and its theoretically sort of human inhabitants that he (ve? ze?) never really got around to telling a story. After I'd finished it - mostly through dogged determination, surely not enjoyment - I discovered a glossary at the back. That might have helped make some sense out of it while I was reading; but by the time I got to it, I didn't even care enough to do more than glance.
Here are the things that can be said with some certainty about this tale: it's set in a future. Maybe ours, maybe not; it's hard to tell. The characters, with one exception whose exceptionality is never made clear, are humanoid - that is, they have arms and legs and faces. But in this future or whatever it is, they have developed the ability to not only alter their appearance on a whim - purple skin with flaming orange eyebrows aren't just for Thundercats anymore! - but also to have multiple (?cloned?) bodies, which all share the same consciousness. More or less.
And oh yes - gender has been completely redefined. And I do mean *completely*. Aside from one parent whose birthing apparatus is rather amazingly still a womb, cervix, and vagina, there are neither men nor women in this world. Instead, the two genders consist of Staids and Vails. Neither adheres to what we might recognize as 'masculine' or 'feminine', but gender roles seem more rigidly defined than our own era. Staids are apparently the custodians of the lore/knowledge/traditions of this culture; they pass it along via something called the Long Conversation, much as rabbis devote themselves to the Torah. Vails, on the other hand, are strictly forbidden from knowing anything about this Conversation, to the point where references to its obscure and complex commentaries cannot be spoken in their presence.
And then along come our heroes(heroines?) to shake everything up. Do they fall in love? It seems so, but then again, this seems somehow taboo. Do they get involved in some sort of artistic endeavour that changes everything? Well, the cover says so; but aside from an overly descriptive and rather impossible-sounding parade, we never learn much about that artistic statement. Instead, we get descriptions of designer genitals. We get names that are as silly as they are long, and never any hint of what the names mean. We get far too many whining, petulant arguments amongst Fift's parenting cohort - couples are no longer A Thing in the future, I guess; everyone lives in some variety of polycule. In short, we have absolutely nothing to serve as a touchstone, nothing familiar, nothing we might relate to other than the woes of young lovers.
How did this society get to be the way it is? Dunno. Why are Fift and Shria's actions so shocking? Because the author said so. Who is the alien, what makes them alien, how can anyone even tell when people are scarlet and silver and have beards and breasts? Ya got me, champ. Reading this book was like wading through a muddy bog with shoulder-high weeds on every side. It takes forever to get anywhere, and when you do, it looks no different from where you started. If there was an intent behind setting this in such a society, it got lost the first time someone took out a spoon for no reason we're ever allowed to know. If you subscribe to spoon theory, be advised it will take more of them than you may have to spare to make any sort of sense out of this one. I recommend giving it a miss.
Here are the things that can be said with some certainty about this tale: it's set in a future. Maybe ours, maybe not; it's hard to tell. The characters, with one exception whose exceptionality is never made clear, are humanoid - that is, they have arms and legs and faces. But in this future or whatever it is, they have developed the ability to not only alter their appearance on a whim - purple skin with flaming orange eyebrows aren't just for Thundercats anymore! - but also to have multiple (?cloned?) bodies, which all share the same consciousness. More or less.
And oh yes - gender has been completely redefined. And I do mean *completely*. Aside from one parent whose birthing apparatus is rather amazingly still a womb, cervix, and vagina, there are neither men nor women in this world. Instead, the two genders consist of Staids and Vails. Neither adheres to what we might recognize as 'masculine' or 'feminine', but gender roles seem more rigidly defined than our own era. Staids are apparently the custodians of the lore/knowledge/traditions of this culture; they pass it along via something called the Long Conversation, much as rabbis devote themselves to the Torah. Vails, on the other hand, are strictly forbidden from knowing anything about this Conversation, to the point where references to its obscure and complex commentaries cannot be spoken in their presence.
And then along come our heroes(heroines?) to shake everything up. Do they fall in love? It seems so, but then again, this seems somehow taboo. Do they get involved in some sort of artistic endeavour that changes everything? Well, the cover says so; but aside from an overly descriptive and rather impossible-sounding parade, we never learn much about that artistic statement. Instead, we get descriptions of designer genitals. We get names that are as silly as they are long, and never any hint of what the names mean. We get far too many whining, petulant arguments amongst Fift's parenting cohort - couples are no longer A Thing in the future, I guess; everyone lives in some variety of polycule. In short, we have absolutely nothing to serve as a touchstone, nothing familiar, nothing we might relate to other than the woes of young lovers.
How did this society get to be the way it is? Dunno. Why are Fift and Shria's actions so shocking? Because the author said so. Who is the alien, what makes them alien, how can anyone even tell when people are scarlet and silver and have beards and breasts? Ya got me, champ. Reading this book was like wading through a muddy bog with shoulder-high weeds on every side. It takes forever to get anywhere, and when you do, it looks no different from where you started. If there was an intent behind setting this in such a society, it got lost the first time someone took out a spoon for no reason we're ever allowed to know. If you subscribe to spoon theory, be advised it will take more of them than you may have to spare to make any sort of sense out of this one. I recommend giving it a miss.
January 22, 2025
For fans of hard science fiction about the structure of societies, this is the real deal.
In the far future a world is settled by, shall we say, proto-humans. People are born and flash-clones are created from stem cells, so that a single personality is instantiated in multiple bodies. Most people have three bodies, some have fewer, a few have many more.
Our main character, a 16-year-old named Fift, has three bodies. We see zir briefly as a child, then most of the story revolves around the society-changing activities that happen (and are partly caused by zir) at age 16.
Notice the pronoun. Genders in this society are not based on biology, but on something I would call class. There are two classes, Staid and Vail. The Staids are the upper class, the Vail the lower class, with appropriate social characteristics and personality traits that are embedded (culturally taught?) when the child is 'gendered' by a group of 'Midwives' in early development. Body modification is such that we are never quite sure about genitalia, although there are 'Fathers' and 'Mothers' that raise children as a group. The group is usually half a dozen or so adults, and the right to raise a child is carefully assigned.
The gendering is only one fascinating element. The other is the 'network', a brain modification that allows everyone to monitor everyone else's activity (unless sequestered in the equivalent of a Faraday cage). This means the society is structured around massive social credit and an 'attention economy', with the possible loss of family rights.
The other fascinating element is that a person is always aware of what is happening to their multiple bodies. Since it's one person, the thoughts and emotions are shared although the physical existence is not.
This sets up an amazing style of writing. As we move into the more active parts of the plot, with many things happening simultaneously to the different bodies of a person, the author constantly cuts among the different viewpoints of that person's bodies. This may seem confusing to read, but Rosenbaum does an incredible job of quickly orienting the reader as to which body he is following. The POW can shift from one paragraph to the next but we know, based on the action and the interaction with others, which body we are following.
The plot is actually an old one: A repressive, authoritarian society is disrupted by the younger members of that society, and a type of revolution ensues. That could describe 'The Hunger Games' but this book is about as different as it could be.
So this book simultaneously deals with issues of gender, of networked communication, of family structure and support, and of social class. The plot is necessary to drive the narrative, and it really does, but the issues listed above are what really drives the story. It makes us think about the roles we assign to others by birth and by class, and what the effects are of an incessantly connected social lifestyle.
Rosenbaum is mainly known as a short story writer. So far as I can tell, this is his only full length novel. In an afterword he says he has been working on it for about twenty years, and the care and craft shows. An outstanding contribution to the science fiction of ideas of social development.
In the far future a world is settled by, shall we say, proto-humans. People are born and flash-clones are created from stem cells, so that a single personality is instantiated in multiple bodies. Most people have three bodies, some have fewer, a few have many more.
Our main character, a 16-year-old named Fift, has three bodies. We see zir briefly as a child, then most of the story revolves around the society-changing activities that happen (and are partly caused by zir) at age 16.
Notice the pronoun. Genders in this society are not based on biology, but on something I would call class. There are two classes, Staid and Vail. The Staids are the upper class, the Vail the lower class, with appropriate social characteristics and personality traits that are embedded (culturally taught?) when the child is 'gendered' by a group of 'Midwives' in early development. Body modification is such that we are never quite sure about genitalia, although there are 'Fathers' and 'Mothers' that raise children as a group. The group is usually half a dozen or so adults, and the right to raise a child is carefully assigned.
The gendering is only one fascinating element. The other is the 'network', a brain modification that allows everyone to monitor everyone else's activity (unless sequestered in the equivalent of a Faraday cage). This means the society is structured around massive social credit and an 'attention economy', with the possible loss of family rights.
The other fascinating element is that a person is always aware of what is happening to their multiple bodies. Since it's one person, the thoughts and emotions are shared although the physical existence is not.
This sets up an amazing style of writing. As we move into the more active parts of the plot, with many things happening simultaneously to the different bodies of a person, the author constantly cuts among the different viewpoints of that person's bodies. This may seem confusing to read, but Rosenbaum does an incredible job of quickly orienting the reader as to which body he is following. The POW can shift from one paragraph to the next but we know, based on the action and the interaction with others, which body we are following.
The plot is actually an old one: A repressive, authoritarian society is disrupted by the younger members of that society, and a type of revolution ensues. That could describe 'The Hunger Games' but this book is about as different as it could be.
So this book simultaneously deals with issues of gender, of networked communication, of family structure and support, and of social class. The plot is necessary to drive the narrative, and it really does, but the issues listed above are what really drives the story. It makes us think about the roles we assign to others by birth and by class, and what the effects are of an incessantly connected social lifestyle.
Rosenbaum is mainly known as a short story writer. So far as I can tell, this is his only full length novel. In an afterword he says he has been working on it for about twenty years, and the care and craft shows. An outstanding contribution to the science fiction of ideas of social development.
September 17, 2024
An incredibly thought-provoking, wild trip whose main strength is super complex worldbuilding that slowly unfolds and that you have to build your understanding of over time. I loved how the book made me consider different types of cities, gender structures, relationship to social media, surveillance, individuality, romantic relationships, surreal economic structures, technology, and how perception of the world around you can be influenced by tech and your body(ies).
I love show - don’t - tell - worldbuilding. There were some sentences where I didn’t understand any of the nouns, which was actually kind of awesome. Very little of the world building is explained, so you just have to go with the flow (no pun intended) and let yourself be immersed! It’ll all make sense in the end!
The central plot focused on Fift, who is navigating life as a young 3-bodied Staid (one of the genders). Zir journey is interesting but moves so gradually that if you are looking for something fast-paced, you should definitely read something else. The tension builds kind of slowly and is super related to our growing understanding of the world building and the culture that ze is living in. I didn’t mind that, but I could see how it could make the book feel like it is dragging. On the bright side, I kind of feel like I could see how every scene related to the character development and the worldbuilding. The worst instance of dragging was probably this one scene a third through the book that just kind of goes on forever and has a lot of meaningless onomatopoeia- just grit your teeth and bear it, lol. It gets a lot more interesting.
The themes that the book explorers are pretty cool and they feel “what if” enough to feel like a departure from every day life, even though a lot of them relate to things that we care about here on earth. It may seem like it’s focused on gender at first (and the idea of having multiple bodies), but it actually encompasses a lot more stuff, including but not limited to envisioning different kinds of genders and how a society could still be hyper focused on them in ways that feel strange but also familiar.
Overall, a super mindbending read- a bit long, definitely focused on the world building, and really satisfying! I read it because it was recommended by Ann Leckie, who wrote the awesome Ancillary Justice series and did a cool book talk I attended. I can totally see how her story was influenced by this one, which includes the idea of people having multiple bodies that influence their perception and how they interact with the world.
Don’t be a sluice-blocker! Read it!
I love show - don’t - tell - worldbuilding. There were some sentences where I didn’t understand any of the nouns, which was actually kind of awesome. Very little of the world building is explained, so you just have to go with the flow (no pun intended) and let yourself be immersed! It’ll all make sense in the end!
The central plot focused on Fift, who is navigating life as a young 3-bodied Staid (one of the genders). Zir journey is interesting but moves so gradually that if you are looking for something fast-paced, you should definitely read something else. The tension builds kind of slowly and is super related to our growing understanding of the world building and the culture that ze is living in. I didn’t mind that, but I could see how it could make the book feel like it is dragging. On the bright side, I kind of feel like I could see how every scene related to the character development and the worldbuilding. The worst instance of dragging was probably this one scene a third through the book that just kind of goes on forever and has a lot of meaningless onomatopoeia- just grit your teeth and bear it, lol. It gets a lot more interesting.
The themes that the book explorers are pretty cool and they feel “what if” enough to feel like a departure from every day life, even though a lot of them relate to things that we care about here on earth. It may seem like it’s focused on gender at first (and the idea of having multiple bodies), but it actually encompasses a lot more stuff, including but not limited to envisioning different kinds of genders and how a society could still be hyper focused on them in ways that feel strange but also familiar.
Overall, a super mindbending read- a bit long, definitely focused on the world building, and really satisfying! I read it because it was recommended by Ann Leckie, who wrote the awesome Ancillary Justice series and did a cool book talk I attended. I can totally see how her story was influenced by this one, which includes the idea of people having multiple bodies that influence their perception and how they interact with the world.
Don’t be a sluice-blocker! Read it!
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