The Sword and Laser discussion

I was captivated enough by this book that I got the Kindle ebook version as well as the audio book. My brain processes text and verbal/audio very differently (and I tend to absorb text quickly) and I wanted to check my perspective on some things from the audio. (It's also easier to go back and find specific things in text than audio.) I was surprised to find a Reading Group Guide for discussion at the end. I thought the questions were thought provoking. Some of them are related to things Emily Tesh shared in the Listen In conversation. Anyway, I thought I would share some of the questions I found particularly interesting here. I'll mark them as spoilers since some of them contain information from the novel.

(view spoiler)[1. Many stories, especially space operas, are told from the perspective of a likable underdog. How did it feel to be so deep in the head of a protagonist who was cruel to others?

2. Kyr's understanding of Gaea's history and society is based on lies, making her an unreliable narrator. At what point did you realize that her understanding of the world was flawed? Did this make her character more or less sympathetic?

4. How do you think Kyr's life will go after the end of the book? Do you think she can move past her history as a violent extremist? How might her relationships with those she's hurt in the past -- the Sparrows, Yiso, Lisabel -- develop after the end of the book?

6. What methods were used to give the children of Gaea their worldview? How is this kind of propaganda and programming used in the real world? Did some of what was on the page resonate with your own experience?

9. Just about everyone is raised with some beliefs, unspoken or not, that they question later in life. What kinds of beliefs have you been taught that you're now trying to unlearn?

10. The question of Earth's destruction haunts the whole book. Do you think the Wisdom made a justifiable choice? Who can make those kinds of choices, and why?

11. The theme of self-destruction runs heavily through this book. What are the different ways in which young people raised on Gaea try to destroy themselves? What is the difference between suicide and self-sacrifice? (hide spoiler)]

This book really did engage me in a way comparatively few fiction books do. I read a lot, fiction and non-fiction, even in years where other aspects of my life might make reading more challenging. I have done so since my earliest years. I normally read fiction as more of a release and a way to feed and settle my intense interests. Some bring more emotion or make me think more while others are pure escapism and comfort, but rarely does a novel engage parts of me as deeply as this one did.

While I mostly focused on a few key elements in the threads I started and spent most of my time writing about my thoughts in those areas, I did find the questions in the Reading Guide intriguing and in some cases thought provoking along rabbit trails I hadn't pursued. Mostly for my own benefit to finish processing the thoughts, I want to engage some of the questions one at a time. It helps me to structure my thoughts in writing. I welcome other thoughts, but most people have probably moved on to the October book, which is a fun one, so I don't really expect it. Still, there's a chance some will still find it interesting. Either way, writing helps me process.

1. Many stories, especially space operas, are told from the perspective of a likable underdog. How did it feel to be so deep in the head of a protagonist who was cruel to others?

This topic came up in multiple ways and was raised during the podcast discussion. Emily Tesh also discusses this point in various interviews. There's always a reason when an author decides to write from the perspective of a protagonist with whom you are not intended to feel united in purpose or sympathetic in actions or intentions. That's often what it means when a character is described as unlikeable. And that was absolutely Tesh's intent and I believe she accomplished it quite well.

But Kyr isn't cruel and awful to others in a vacuum. Tesh is using Kyr to illustrate what it feels like to be shaped and formed within a toxic, abusive, and controlling situation. Environments like those rarely produce "good" people who are able to see the world and respond in ways most of us would view more positively. Winston Smith in 1984 is a character designed with similar aims. He's not "likeable" and is generally a small, petty, and awful person.

In Tesh's book, she emphasizes with the way it starts that for all practical purposes, Kyr is still a child. As the adult reader, we should see and be horrified by her environment, by Jole, and by everything surrounding her and shaping her. Even the adults who knew better, like Lin, Harry, and Sif let it continue and participated in maintaining it. Kyr is both a perpetrator and a victim. And she has to face it and basically reconstruct how she understands and interacts with the world around her.

It's a fascinating journey when executed well. And I think Tesh did a pretty amazing job. It certainly pulled me along Kyr's journey. Kyr never became a heroic "good" savior. Even in the final conflict, she was reflecting on how she would have just saved the people who mattered to her. Nobody in the story was really a "hero". They all started flawed and though some like Kyr experienced significant growth and change, they all ended still very flawed.

But witnessing the growth and change as Kyr fought her way through it, and often against it, at every step was what made the book so captivating for me. I loved being inside her head for that journey.

2. Kyr's understanding of Gaea's history and society is based on lies, making her an unreliable narrator. At what point did you realize that her understanding of the world was flawed? Did this make her character more or less sympathetic?

This ties into the first question. I think the sense that things were off was woven in pretty early. I would say that certainly by Chapter Four, the reader should understand there's something deeply wrong.

I don't know that Kyr as a character is ever exactly "sympathetic" but the reader should gain a sense of what has been done to her over the course of her entire life and just how toxic and abusive her circumstances are -- even as she acts in toxic and abusive ways towards others.

I certainly felt a complex set of emotions in response to things Kyr experienced and towards Kyr as a character. Some of them brought back situations from my childhood that were experientially similar even if factually dissimilar. So in that sense, I would say there were plenty of places I empathized with Kyr. But that's different from finding her a sympathetic character.

4. How do you think Kyr's life will go after the end of the book? Do you think she can move past her history as a violent extremist? How might her relationships with those she's hurt in the past -- the Sparrows, Yiso, Lisabel -- develop after the end of the book?

Nobody "moves past" trauma, extreme experiences, or their childhood formation, even if it didn't qualify as "extreme" in the way most people use the word. The experiences always remain. It's always a part of who you are.

We can change who we are in the present. And we can develop a sense of goals for a sort of person we might imagine we want to become. And we can process and place in context past trauma. Kyr has plenty of that she'll need to do.

I'm most interested in how the story left her relationship with Yiso. It had elements that felt romantic to me. Or maybe queerplatonic would be a better descriptor. Yiso's physiology is different and they are described as lacking anything we would call gender, so not any sort of sexual relationship, but definitely an intimate one that has a different feel than "friendship" to me.

Next, I'm very curious how she moves forward with Ursa. Avi is an amoral hot mess, but despite it all he is Kyr's friend and she doesn't have many of those.

None of that is necessary to the story being told in the novel and I don't expect Tesh will write more. But I am curious and it's fun to speculate and imagine.

10. The question of Earth's destruction haunts the whole book. Do you think the Wisdom made a justifiable choice? Who can make those kinds of choices, and why?

The particular framework was designed to establish the questions and choices Kyr had to face and explore how she stepped through. And it seems outrageous and monstrous in proportion, but it's really just scaled differently. One planet vs. at least hundreds of others. But it's the same question when dealing with individual lives.

Who counts? Whose life matters?

Whose life is disposable or less important?

Or if everyone's life is somehow equal in value, is it just a math problem? Really?

There's a pretty famous Jewish teaching from the Talmud. It's translated into English in a variety of ways, but I think I most like the way Gideon Frieder paraphrased it in an essay.

"Why was man created alone? Is it not true that the creator could have created the whole of humanity? But man was created alone to teach you that whoever kills one life kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

I don't think it's ever truly "just" a trolley problem and each life is infinitely valuable.

I like that the Wisdom ultimately decided to stop playing the game it had been created to play. It never found an answer that satisfied either.