There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
I’ve recently reread the Alliance-Union novels as well as the Faded Sun trilogy. Having heard that the latter fits in with the former, and that it takes place a long time after the events described in the A-U novels, I searched for pointers in FS as to how it relates to the A-U world. For the life of me, I couldn’t find a single clue. Would appreciate some enlightenment on this. Are the Mri descendants of Atevi (if the Foreigner sequence also fits within the A-U world), or perhaps crossbreeds between Humans and Atevi? I know that Humans and Atevi are not supposed to be able to breed (so far), but perhaps this is going to happen (e.g. Bren/Jago)?
I’ve recently bought several of these books for my sister (Downbelow Station, the Chanur sequence and Faded Sun), and would like to tell her how they are related. I understand how the Chanur books relate to A-U.
My recollection could be way off as it has been some time and many books since I last read the Faded Sun books, but I thought they used A/U jump technology. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Don’t think it says anywhere that it is specifically A-U jump technology. Couldn’t the same type of jump technology have been developed independently in both situations?
I seem to recall (hazy as my memory is) that the Foreigner books are specifically NOT in the Alliance/Union universe. Although, with space being as big as it is, they easily could be, and just never overlap, which is I guess the same as not being in it.
If you have a copy of Angel with the Sword, there is an extensive timeline placing events from different books in the Alliance-Union context. From memory:
2300s Company War
2500s Expansion
2600s Contact with mri. 40,000 in Gehenna referenced. Serpent’s Reach settled
2700s Mri Wars. Alliance capital Haven established. AlSec referenced
3000s More Serpent’s Reach stuff, more Merovin stuff, Hunter of Worlds and Brother’s of Earth stuff
While I remember it, a poster on one of the Cherryh posts over at the tor.com blog shared an interesting theory about the mysterious forested destination of Corinthian at the end of TRIPOINT.
I had always wondered what happens to these people and this planet in the Alliance-Union future. Because we do have novels set hundreds of years subsequently. Who are they? Where are they?
I had two theories. First, that they simply fail, therefore disappearing from the narrative. Or second, that they are mentioned in order to foreshadow the territorial expansions of the next period of Alliance-Union history. (On this theme, there is also Gehenna, and Merovin, and more recently we learnt more about Eversnow. By the time of SERPENT’S REACH there were fifty human stars, as one character says.)
But this poster over at tor.com connects the forested Mazianni planet with the planet Haven, from the Mri Wars period. The location certainly could fit this theory, since the Mazianni planet is quite a distance from the centre of Alliance space–and we know that Haven was selected as the wartime Alliance capital because it was much closer to the frontline.
But more than anything else, it’s the name which makes me suspect this theory may be correct 🙂
Interesting theories – thank you. Shall think on it.
Another theory: perhaps the Mri novels were stand-alones, not meant to be connected with the Alliance-Union culture? Perhaps the same applied to the Chanur sequence? (It’s some time since I’ve read these books, but there are background references to Tully’s origins, and I believe other humans turn up from somewhere at the end of the final book. I don’t remember whether there are references to Earth-Alliance-Union specifically.)
The key reference you may be thinking of is in, I think, Chanur’s Venture or The Kif Strike Back, where Tully speaks of “three human Compacts.” Naturally, the translator spits and we don’t catch his exact terminology. Ah, just looked. In TKSB, paperbound, page 221.
“Ships go from Earth, from homeworld, they make # self # law, make # self # Compact. They don’t like Earth. We fight # long with these human. Now we get no trade # be # to Earth. There be two human Compacts.”
A bit more conversation, then Pyanfar says “Two human Compacts,” and Tully says
“Three. Also Earth. My homeworld. We got trouble # two humanities.”
–
CJ, I hope you don’t mind me quoting the books….
‘The key reference you may be thinking of is in, I think, Chanur’s Venture or The Kif Strike Back, where Tully speaks of “three human Compacts.” ‘
Yes – got it, thank you. I recently reread the Chanur books and found the reference. In fact, the three human Compacts are mentioned more than once in the Chanur books, so that all makes sense to me now.
I do wish Daw would publish the Chanur books with the Michael Whelan artworks on the covers in hardback form, perhaps as ‘specials’ of some kind…
The Foreigner sequence might be fitted in before Alliance-Union, i.e. pre-jump technology. If that were the case, you’d think Union-Alliance would eventually meet up with the Atevi/Mospherians, though space is so very vast…
There could be one big tangle if the different cultures – Atevi, Kif, Mri, Downers, Humans – were ever to meet up in future novels. Probably best to keep them where they are?
Per an email conversation I had with CJ a couple years ago, Foreigner is a completely different ‘verse. I had asked her about the differences between Merchanter Jumps and Foreigner ‘folding space.’ I noted how humans aren’t nearly so discombobulated by folded-space travel as by Jump, and asked if Foreigner was so far forward in time that Jump tech had evolved to be less deleterious. CJ said no, that Foreigner was a different reality.
I see – thank you very much for the helpful reply. It’s all clear to me now (as far as the relationship of all the novels to each other is concerned, anyway).
I’m trying to recall how Union’s clones are produced. A recent review claimed they were “grown in vats,” but my recollection has something more like in vitro / test tube fertilization and surrogate mothers, not something more like the artificial womb tanks of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I do recall that Union in some way has DNA sequences mapped and somehow preselects which genome, so the clone is, for lack of a better term, made to order. I recall there being some classifications given via the ID number, such that there are citizens from among them, as well as more usual worker or soldier azi, and this seems to come from the clone’s intelligence and personality and physical levels. That’s too hurried and simplified a summary, I know.
My question is to ask for confirmation or clarification on how Union clones (azi) are produced, from selection and fertilization, to how they are carried to term. My memory is as I said in the first couple of sentences above. What’s the answer, please?
I seem to recall “grown in vats” being the terminology used by someone not of Union in one of the books, that or at least some sort of similar verbiage. In that usage, I see it as a disparaging comment regarding Union’s made-to-order, designed society. In Cyteen the process is described pretty much as individual artificial wombs, one per customer.
QUOTE…connects the forested Mazianni planet with the planet Haven, from the Mri Wars period…
What a nice idea!! Maybe some sort of reconciliation between Mazian and Mallory? Mallory of course being the founder of AlSec.
While Tully may not directly reference A/U, A/U does reference the Compact. I think it’s in Rimrunners where it say’s that Earth had run into aliens on the far side of Sol.
Cyteen Prolog reference Compact. it is mentioned that earth tryed to expand to the other side and run into trable.
I am currently listening to Cyteen on my MP3 player and have my usual reaction to the concept of the Azi. Such a powerful and dark future for science.
But of course, all teens sigh.
Jonathan
I was doing some catch-up reading through this thread. The conversation about azi going cit, especially the passing reference to the Novogrod subway, reminded me of something I came up with, that was first shared on the Shejidan forum, and then later directly to Herself (which she LOL’d at). So, I’ll share it here for the rest of you:
*** THE AZI 23RD PSALM ***
Reseune is my Contract, naught shall I lack.
2 They make me lie down in Green Barracks,
they Supervise me beside terraformed waters,
3 They replay my tape.
They guide me among the color-coded paths
for Security’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the tunnels of the Novogrod subway,
I will fear no Paxers,
for Security is with me;
their guns and their training,
they comfort me.
5 They prepare a tape machine for me
in the presence of fluxed thinking
They deep-dose me with kat;
my responses flatten.
6 Surely satisfaction and calm will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of my Contract
forever.
Concerning the AZI 23rd Psalm – only until someone decides to terminate. While I understand it, I somehow feel that Ms. Cherryh committed murder when she put down Florian and Caitlin.
THat was a hard one. But—Ollie’s the other side of that question, long surviving his contract, focussed tightly on his job, happy in that, but I’m not sure how happy he is without Jane Strassen. If the first Florian and Catlin had survived, would they have gone tamely off to live the rest of their lives, say, at Fargone, *knowing* eventually that Ari was reborn, and that they would never have access to her?
I think Ari One’s azi would tear out the walls to the rafters until they Got the Enemy, and then guard over the Project until Ari Two’s birth. Then a graceful denouement . . . but not to Fargone.
But just before Ariane’s murder, there is a discussion about her putting down a 7 or 9 year old AZI. Also mentioned is her apparent putting down AZI’s for no apparent reason. It is made abundantly clear that AZI’s have no legal rights. A bad supervisor will be flayed or fired, but an AZI who is not operating properly and who can’t be retrained or fixed – well, just too bad. I find the whole concept chilling. Well written and very readable but still chilling.
An azi who can’t be retrained or straightened out is in serious trouble not for any legal reason—if there were any hope at all, they’d certainly be of interest to those whose job it is to straighten out a mess. But when one proposes restructuring the human mind and then making an irresolvable mistake—an unfixable mistake—there you get into a serious dilemma, and an unfortunate azi in irresolvable mental anguish and confusion. A bad supervisor can be fixed by not allowing him to practice. Ever. Period. And possibly questioning whoever passed him and made him a supervisor. But a truly messed up azi is going to be in far, far worse shape than Grant was after the Paxer incident.
That reads just like a quote from Ari One’s notes. 🙂
😉 yep.
There’s a reason for that…
I figured that AE1 deep-planted the stealth termination order for three reasons: 1) F1&C1 were so deeply-keyed to AE1, they wouldn’t *want* to go on living; if they hadn’t wanted to go, does anyone honestly think Reseune’s basic Security — or even someone like Abban — had a *chance* of holding them? 2) preventing someone like Denys from Supervisoring/”therapy-ing” them into surrendering AE’s secrets. 3) preventing any chance of them beserking, either from vengeance or grief.
Any termination is not to be undertaken lightly, and this wasn’t. AE1’s reasoning, however ruthless, was completely correct.
And what if you apply Ms. Cherryh’s remarks of March 10 at 4:41 PM to non-AZI? We have a lot of people in the here and now who might qualify as “an unfixable mistake”. Eugenics? Forced sterilization of “mentally defectives”? Poor old Uncle Bill just sits around and drools? If the AZI are NOT human then we can do anything to them – kill them out of kindness. Ari justifies the AZI out of necessity – and to an extent quite convincingly. She does make the point that in her future the need for the AZI will diminish and perhaps vanish. The ultimate abolitionist?
Some of the discussions between Justin and Grant are quite interesting – what indeed is a natural born man?
If a good book makes you think then Cyteen is a very very good one.
An azi supervisor has legal and moral authority and responsibilities towards his azi that taken as a whole are unprecedented. The custody of a child or the lord to serf relationship have similarities but are short of the combined breadth, depth and/or potential duration of the supervision. The supervisor has a contract and license on file with Reseune and one of its prime specifications is the mental health of the azi. His implied moral contract with his azis is as nearly absolute as his power over them. In fact, the powers of the supervisors range from virtual demigods at the lowest level to the true Olympians working on azi genetics and sets at Reseune. Various people are directly responsible for the entirety of an azi’s universe from environment and occupation to his genes and every skill and motivation that he has. The dilemna of the azi who can’t be fixed is due to two things. 1) The people reasponsible for him already have control of every conceivable input with the exception of incurable medical issues and 2) excepting the alphas, the azi have zero experience at integrating their own personalities, so a spontaneous or serendiptious cure would be unlikely at best. Conflicting drives and attitudes are simply torture to an azi, and there is no longer any purpose, pleasure or hope in his existence. A born human is capable of transcending hopelessness, the azi can only suffer. Terminating the azi is the lesser evil, repugnant as it may be.
As is Regenesis, absorbing stuff.
The period of time covering the introduction of FTL interests me; you get hints of it sometimes – I’m thinking specifically of Rimrunners where she’s horrified by the thought of ancient graffiti being removed. There would have been people, whole crews of people (Families) who lived all the way through that period and beyond due to the extreme time dilation you’d get in a slower than light ship.
That would make a magnificent book, (hint to cj..) getting to know the ship’s Family against the backdrop of the enormous changes brought about by FTL.
Mike