Month 25: You are someone else

Month 25 of 260 (9.62 percent)

Size of list: 85,470 pages (dropped 8 pages from Cyteen based on actual page count)

Pages read: 12,559 (14.69 percent)

H-list: 3,729/23,114 (16.13 percent)

N-list: 4,797/36,694 (13.07 percent)

O-list: 4,033/25,662 (15.72 percent)

Finished: Cyteen

Reading: The Shadow Rising, The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft 

My working definition of good science fiction is a story that changes something about the world and then explores the consequences. Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination are my Platonic ideal of this idea, but Cyteen also matches it.

What if you were someone else, a duplicate, a clone? C.J. Cherryh's answer is that you'd be someone cloned on purpose because the original was someone extraordinary, and we wanted another. But nature and nurture, so you'd be raised in a way that matches the original's childhood, even if that means your mother disappears when you're eight. And you would have the pressures of being a replica of the original, inheriting allies and enemies. And the society that created you would be able to create other people, as well, and to shape their personalities, creating not just more extraordinary people — "Specials," in this world — but people designed to be servants. They're called azi in Cyteen, and they're basically slaves. Cherryh doesn't fully deal with the issue of azi slavery as we would expect in today's political climate, but there are abolitionists in the story. 

Cyteen took forever because it's huge — 680 pages, but large format, so it'd be something like 1,200 pages if it were mass-market paperback dimensions. So even bigger than The Shadow Rising, which is pretty much tied as the largest Wheel of Time book, which I'm also reading.

Also, I've started the second volume of the Complete Lovecraft, and while I've been aware of people talking about his racism, "The Street" is a filthy piece of racism-dressed-as-patriotism, the kind of bilge I'd expect from today's white supremacist websites. Blech. I proceed onward, noting that it's listed as one of his early stories, and hope he at least hides it better as we go on.