Archive for the ‘Joanna Russ’ Category
We Who Are About To . . . by Joanna Russ
published 1975
where I got it: purchased used
..
.
.
.
You read the book, or saw the movie of Andy Weir’s The Martian, right? It’s a story about hope, about survival, about sciencing the shit out of every resource at your disposal. Because when it comes down to it, Mark Watney really doesn’t want to die.
And a lot of “stranded on a deserted island” (ok, deserted planet) stories are like that. Our instinct is to survive. To make shelter, to find water, to figure out what to eat, to try to get rescued.
But what if you were stranded somewhere, and you were pretty sure you weren’t going to get rescued? What if you had no resources? What if there weren’t any experts among the survivors? What if surviving was a pipe dream?
In Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To, an escape pod full of survivors lands on an uncolonized planet. Off the beaten path, nowhere near a beacon, and with little to no resources, can they survive? None amongst them is a scientist, biologist, doctor, or specialist in anything, really. They’ve got a few weeks of food and a water recycler. They don’t even know where they are.
Some of the more ambitious in the group decide their small group might as well start colonizing the planet. After all, this place is going to be mapped anyways, eventually, right? And to start a colony, they need more people. Which means they need to start having babies, and all the adult women in the group should be willing to be impregnated by the men. This particular scene was so blunt that I laughed out loud. Most of the novel is this blunt.
(warning: SPOILERS ahead)
the Little Red Reviewer 
Recent Comments