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A Memory Called Empire Q3: Aliens
The book gives us not one but two new civilisations to explore, and they're in a state where both of them are out of balance. Given Martine's day job (historian of Byzantium) I wouldn't dream of asking whether the cultures are "believable". But how well were they communicated? Did you understand the mindsets of the different people, and how their cultures motivated and guided their actions? Did you understand the status quo people were trying to preserve or change?
Mahit goes to Teixcalaan. Eleven Lathe went to the Ebrekti. Three Seagrass idolises Eleven Lathe. What should we take from these parallels?
Could Martine have told a story of Teixcalaanli politics without the viewpoint character being an outsider? Would the story have worked if told from the viewpoint of Three Seagrass or Five Agate?
Comments
Most believable, I thought. I felt utterly absorbed in both worlds. There were, naturally, coincidental echoes between Teixcalaan and the Aztec world we read of recently in Aztec Century, but here they were elaborated with much more thoroughness and beauty,
Interestingly, neither was really alien in the sense of other life-forms, only in the cultural sense. (The Station reminded me a little of Iain Banks's Culture, though at a very much earlier stage). The only real aliens we meet - or rather we don't - are the ones who are the Big Bad Ogres on the fringes.
Presenting from say Three Seagrass's perspective would have led to a very different story, I think. It could easily have been just as absorbing, but certainly different, and Mahit's was sufficiently similar to ours to make the entry point easier.
The question of viewpoint is interesting. I’m generally a proponent of outseider viewpoint characters in cultural stories and games, and this one is no exception. Would it have worked with an insider viewpoint? I think so. It worked for Severian, didn’t it?
Interesting that you both thought of Teixcalaan as mainly Aztec. I read them as fundamentally Byzantine, but with bits of Aztec surface flavour (names, flower motifs). But that doesn't address the question of why we have Byzantines in space.
I think both cultures could have been bewildering to us, had we not had an interpreter like Mahit to make things comprehensible to us. On the other hand, a totally Teixcalaan-internal story could work. It's somewhere worth returning to!
So I don’t find a Byzantine type culture or government to be far fetched. I do find an Aztec speaking space culture to be far fetched.
Unless it is deliberately resurrected.
Yes - this was communicated brilliantly! I loved every bit of the cultural content! I got the Lsel Stationers and I got the Teixcalaani. It all worked.
Perhaps that there is a reason Three Seagrass was what she was?
It could have worked, but it would have been a very different story with a different viewpoint. Again, “You and I remember Budapest very differently..."
It's not something I've got a good answer to in the novel. Martine took some effort to invent the parallel story of the Ebrekti. It's mentioned it throughout the novel, both as comments by the characters and snippets from Eleven Lathe's memoirs. But after all that effort, I'm not sure what purpose it served in the novel. Would the book have been weaker without it? What themes or events was it there to illuminate or contrast with?
Perhaps it is meant to show that despite Teixcalaan's essentially self absorbed culture, it can relate and communicate with very different beings?