Mindscape

This surreal, intricately woven book deals with an earth that is fundamentally changed by the appearance of a phenomenon called the Barrier, a web of mysterious energy that divides the land into regions that can only be left via seasonal corridors through the Barrier, or under the guidance of mystics who can commune with the Barrier to open pathways through.

The zones thus divided have grown independently, with divergent cultures and technologies, and more than anything, values. And these values lead to conflict.

It is beyond me to summarize this book. It is a fever dream, a mesh of languages ranging from German to Igbo to variations of English and more, a refusal of mere plot, arc or story. It shifts in perception and reality and show more detail until it becomes less about what is happening, and more about the language itself. There is a beginning, and there is an end. There is a journey here, but the value is in each individual footstep along the way, rather than the destination.

It is a challenging read, and confusion is to be expected, but the value in engaging with the challenge cannot be denied. show less

In my last WOGF reading challenge review, I remarked on how one of the main points of Native Tongue gets bogged down amidst all the other plot threads Suzette Haden Elgin tries to bring together. That point being the attempt of a group of women Linguists to create their own language, a necessary thing given their oppression. Andrea Hairston brings up a similar point in her 2006 debut novel Mindscape and does so in one sharply written paragraph–one amongst many.

All the thugs is laughin’ at me, but I don’t go off. I take a deep breath, work calm in my center, like Ray Valero do to act. Ethnic throwbacks be like the ole Israelis bringin’ back Hebrew after two thousand years, after so many words was fightin’ against ‘em. Why

show more

anybody wanna speak the truth, raise they children, know themselves with gas chamber language? Survival be havin’ words to call home, havin’ idioms and syntax to heal the Diaspora. In your cultural rhythm and rhyme, that’s where the soul keep time. — Lawanda Kitt, p. 51

The rest of Mindscape is like that: a lot of heavy things said that, at least to me, doesn’t get lost in a stew of wobbly prose.

Mindscape is a complex tale of a future Earth dealing with the aftermath of the invasion of some sort of alien/magical barrier that has cut the planet into several regions that can no longer interact with each other except for when seasonal corridors open up in the Barrier. All of these regions are constantly at war until a seer/prophet/something named Celestina convinces everyone to sign a peace treaty, ushering in a new era, presumably. She is then assassinated.

So much for the prologue.

The rest of the book concerns the aftermath of the treaty signing. Like I said, it’s complex and Hairston leads us through with the help of five perspectives: Elleni, Celestina’s spirit-daughter who might not be completely human; Lawanda Kitt, an ambassador called upon to interact with the rulers of a rival region; The Major, a man of mixed loyalties, one of which is Lawanda; Ray Valero, a celebrated actor who finds himself in the position of having to be a real hero; and Aaron Dunkelbrot, an entertainment producer with an interesting past.

Through these five people, Hairston shows us a dystopian world where epidemics rage, poor people who don’t have the “right” appearance become Extras in snuff films, “ethnic throwbacks” fight to not be disappeared while gene-art mutations flourish, and a chosen few try to communicate with the Barrier to figure out its plans.

I enjoyed Mindscape quite a bit. Hairston’s prose is delightful and her characters are strong and interesting. The story carried me right along, and her insights into race and culture never felt preachy or heavyhanded. My only complaint might be that the ending felt a little rushed with a ton of plot threads coming together all at once. It’s a minor complaint, though, and I’m looking forward to reading her novel from 2011, Redwood and Wildfire. 4.85/5 show less

Multi-dimensional barriers slam down on Earth, splitting the planet into discrete, nigh-impenetrable cages. Nations, geography, and civilizations as we know it crumble, replaced by gang-run city-states. But out of this chaos and violence also come chimeric healers known as Vermittler, who have the ability to create safe passages through the Barrier. One healer, Celestina, uses these passages and crafts a Treaty between different realms--but on the very day the Treaty is signed, she is assassinated. In the wake of her death, a number of individuals each struggle in the newly connected world. Aaron, a movie producer/gang lord who skin-switched into a white man after being a brutalized black woman, and has never come to terms with his show more past. Lawanda, who has purposefully reclaimed an ethnicity and culture everyone else would like to forget, who is nominated as a Treaty Ambassador to harm the Treaty but proves to be its greatest advocate. The Major, torn between the mind-bombs placed in his head by his superiors and his love of Lawanda. Ellina, Celestina's apprentice who seeks to finish what she started. And Ray, an actor in Aaron's latest project; no one is sure whether he's just acting like a hero, or actually is one--not even himself. Their struggle to reconcile the Barrier with Earth, and the fractered pieces of Earth with itself, progress through tangled schemes, vision quests and flash-backs.

As a story it is exuberant, irrepressable, far-reaching, very smart and knowledgable but simultanously unashamed of believing whole-heartedly in mystical koans. The characters have a tendency to communicate in epigraphs that don't quite connect with each other, and it took a while for me to get the hang of what is going on. There's a lot of magic floating around, and none of it is explained. But there's so much energy and power and feeling to this tale that I couldn't quite give up on it, even though I had no idea what was going on for the first quarter of the book. show less

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/04/the_2007_philip.shtml

Andrea Hairston's Mindscape is an intriguing first novel. Her future earth has been divided into feuding zones by the alien-imposed Barrier—shades of Greg Egan's Quarantine or Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, but with the planet itself being geographically fragmented rather than merely isolated from the rest of the universe. The Barrier itself can be crossed, but only by people with the correct training, which of course includes our viewpoint characters. The future world is richly realised and politically complex, with a strong African element in its culture and a cynical take on the future development of the entertainment industry. It is easy to read into it a metaphor show more for the continuing apartness of black and white in contemporary America—the dividing Barrier is difficult to cross, but music is one of the ways of crossing it.

But there were a couple of elements that I found improbable. I would have liked a better sense of how large the zones are supposed to be and how (if at all) they fit together geographically. The entire premise of the book is that an interzonal peace treaty is both necessary and fragile yet it seemed unlikely that given the resources available and the impenetrability of the Barrier, serious conflict could ever really break out between the zones rather than within them. Indeed, most of the violence in the book is perpetrated by on one another by people who are coresidents of the same zone. The second point is about language: Hairston's use of English is great, and one character memorably affects twentieth-century African American dialect. But her characters also use plenty of Yoruba and German phrases, and while these are always (as far as I can tell) in context and used with confidence, the presence of these combined with the complete absence of any other African or European languages from her future world struck me as anomalous. show less

This was a really complex and beautiful book. Something I definitely will go back and re-read in the near future to see what other magic I can pull from it.

I have read and enjoyed a lot of science fiction, and I have never ever before read a scifi novel whose underlying rhythyms and music feel right to me. I didn't even know what I was missing, the edge of discomfort I feel reading all the other scifi, until I read this book.

I don't know how to describe what I find so ... right about the underlying landscape of this book. It's beautiful and I don't know why.

Not a very good review, huh? It makes sense to me at least.