Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the novelette:


"The Peak of Eternal Light" by Bruce Sterling

This story is part of the Edge of Infinity group anthology discussion.

★★★★1/2

Synopsis:  Colonists on Mercury live in a strict matriarchal society, a mixture of 19th century conservativsm and strict Purdah marital tradition with gender segregation and body concealment. Pitar meets his wife Lucy on their tenth wedding anniversy to perform their ceremonial and conjugal duties. Lucy expresses her wish to meet with Pitar more often in a safe environment, perhaps with one of those modern "bicycles". As a second occasion we witness a subsequent death and funeral of one of the planet's rulers.

Review:  Sterling is one of my favourite authors since the start of Cyberpunk back in the 80s.

This outstanding social satire concentrates on the protagonists' relationship dictated by their cultural background which feels a bit like "Steampunk in Space". He mixes in grand ideas of colonization which don't end in Mercury settlements like in Robinson's 2312 but in plans for settlements within the Sun and spreading out to the stars.

I don't like the Purdah culture at all and I assume that Sterling doesn't either, but like in a dystopian fiction it gives reason to think about how our cultures would evolve. It is an enjoyable narration with a humorous and tongue-in-the-cheek tone, especially when he hints at different cultures on Earth, Mars, the Asteroids, etc. and reflects on their traditions from the viewpoint of Mercurian inhabitants.

Well, Andreas found a good deal more to like about this story than I did.

Some guy named DeBlakey apparently had a dream to colonize first Mercury and then the Sun! He led a cult-like following of believers to colonize Mercury, using artificially built underground tunnels, because the surface is clearly too hot for anything but robots, and even they only in the terminator zone. Apparently DeBlakey also left them with a strange societal morality involving strict segregation of the genders, both in living and work.

There are the number of oddities in the society. Apparently there are ice deposits when Mercury, and initially those glaciers seemed large enough to quench the thirst of millions. But now that there are millions living in the warrens beneath Mercury, the water supply isn't looking so secure. Not that anyone seems to seriously worry about that. DeBlakey blithely sent out a giant manned spaceship to go out to the Ort belt and bring back some comets.

Our PoV character, an engineer name Pitar, as reasoned out for himself that a smaller fleet of unmanned robotic crafts could have collected ice far more reliably, but using robots would denigrate Man's proper place in the Universe with. Pitar senses the growing crisis over lack of water, but seems very content to simply accept the wisdom of the heroic ice hunt. When confronted with alternate social arrangements for genders living together practiced on other planets, he dismisses them all has sluts and without honor.

I'd expect this sort of passive acceptance of the status quo, sometimes even in the face of evidence that it's not sustainable, to be part of some cultish religious fanaticism, but Sterling doesn't suggest any religious basis for these beliefs, just DeBlakey in some vague concept of honor.

In the end, I just didn't understand what Sterling was getting at. There are some obvious satire, some ecological and some social, but if the story had a point, I missed it.

BTW, Andreas calls this a matriarchy, I thought it was a patriarchy; obviously I can never figure out who's really running the world.

2.5 Stars **1/2*

G33z3r wrote: "Apparently DeBlakey also left them with a strange societal morality involving strict segregation of the genders, both in living and work."

That social model is strange, but doesn't stem from DeBlakey. It is a contemporary social/religious practice called Purdah (just search Wikipedia for an explanation) and I think that the story even refers to it.

Andreas wrote: "That social model is strange, but doesn't stem from DeBlakey. It is a contemporary social/religious practice called Purdah (just search Wikipedia for an explanation) and I think that the story even refers to it. ..."

You're right - Sterling attributes Mercury's Purdah to Captain de Gupta. Not clear to me if it was brought with them from Earth or imposed on the colonists when they arrived.

DeBlakey seems associated with a number of quixotic (and absurd) notions, such as calendar reform, spelling reform & trinary computation.

Recently I read an old Ray Cummings story called ‘The Fire People’ in which we find that the women of Mercury fly, but their wings must be clipped when they marry. For some reason I kept thinking about that while reading ‘The Peak of Eternal Light’ In the story from an earlier generation (1930s?) it is human intervention from Earth that helps to turn around the gender inequalities of Mercury. Maybe it is progress that nearly a century later our Mercurians no longer look to Earth for guidance.