"No. I don't think they ate her."

December 13, 2016 12:44 PM

In N.K. Jemisin's "The Evaluators: To Trade With Aliens, You Must Adapt," an extrasolar investigative team has disappeared, but the United Communities of Earth wants to go forward with a trade agreement. This short story is a part of Wired's first ever issue dedicated to science fiction.
posted by mixedmetaphors (19 comments total)

So excited to read this. I agree entirely with what the Tor roundup stated about the Fifth Season:

I know, I know. This is one of those picks you see in everyone’s Best Of list and it just feels so expected that you develop a resistance to it. You don’t doubt that Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is great, but everyone is already singing its praises, and you want to find something different and wonderful and not as lauded. And that’s great! One should follow one’s instinct to seek The Great Things. But also, on the way to seeking the great things, read The Fifth Season. It’s a deeply emotional story in a rich fantasy world, containing deep veins of love, betrayal, and magic. And it moves. It is a rocket train barreling to the coast. It is a supernova devouring a planet. Almost every chapter ends with a cliffhanger and before you know it you’ve read the whole book and are downloading the next one and reviewing your notes on the lore of this fantasy world.

Also the audiobook is one of the best read I have heard. Totally worth checking out.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:13 PM on December 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

Seconding The Fifth Season as very, very good.
posted by Artw at 1:32 PM on December 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Seconding The Fifth Season as very, very good.

Good to know. I really enjoyed The Inheritance Trilogy, and haven't gotten around to that one.

The Evaluators was really good. Somwhere between The Story Of Your Life and To Serve Man. I'm looking forward to reading all the entries.

I'd like to make a point of recommending the Laundry series also mentioned in the Tor roundup, but every time I make a reference on the blue, most everyone gets it, so I'm assuming most mefites have read them.

Thanks for posting this!
posted by lumpenprole at 1:41 PM on December 13, 2016

The Fifth Season was great, but the next book really suffered from middle-book-trilogy syndrome -- I found it a big disappointment. Still optimistic about the forthcoming third book though.
posted by crazy with stars at 1:48 PM on December 13, 2016

Wow, that was really good.

(Among other things, it was an allegory about Capital, right?)
posted by PMdixon at 1:58 PM on December 13, 2016

I see why people like her so much:

Did some extra scans of the southeast main continent today. Those palladium deposits … Have you guys seen the stock prices since the CogNet-Pallenergy merger?

It gratifies me to know that in some universe Pons and Fleischman weren't as full of it, because when the news first broke I thought there might be something there myself -- but I haven't quite decided how I feel about Jemison. I saw where she was going pretty quick, but probably only because Wolbachia has been on my mind lately.
posted by jamjam at 2:30 PM on December 13, 2016

Adding to the chorus - that was really good.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:33 PM on December 13, 2016

Damn fine stuff. Also, must read The Fifth Season now.
posted by Ravneson at 2:38 PM on December 13, 2016

Well that was upsetting.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:09 PM on December 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ha ha - you want upsetting, read The Fifth Season. Now that was really fucking upsetting.

The Fifth Season is awfully good. It is a lot more complicated in what it's doing than the very transparent prose makes it appear. It reads a lot like very good YA in terms of pacing and transparency of prose and indeed there's a section which is a very clever...send up isn't the right word, critique maybe...of dystopian YA series. If you like SF that does a lot of clever fiddly stuff with prose at the sentence level (Delany, Russ, Samatar) you will not be immediately engaged by it (am I describing my own reaction? why yes) but carry on reading. Also that thing at the end? Where all the parts about why the landscape is so bizarre start to come together? That was so good from an SFnal standpoint. So very good indeed.
posted by Frowner at 5:41 PM on December 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

It reads a lot like very good YA in terms of pacing and transparency of prose and indeed there's a section which is a very clever...send up isn't the right word, critique maybe...of dystopian YA series.

I took it as more of a Wizarding School critique, but I can also see what you're going for with that one.

Also, yes, absolutely the best final sentence of any SFF I've ever read. The book even tells you (though not in so many words) exactly what reveal it's leading up to, but it's still a pretty shocking surprise when it lands.

And woven through all of that is a story about self-deception and abuse and empires and how all those things work together synergistically like a Voltron of despair.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:51 PM on December 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

A Voltron of despair! That's so apt. When my book group read it, we thought it through in terms of Afro-pessimism and Lose Your Mother in particular.

I think that what's interesting about some of the recent big SF (I guess you could call it - Fifth Season is literally a big book, but I'd also include Ancillary Justice and just a lot of the recent Hugo-y books by women) is how boldly experimental they are while still being recognizable as mainstream SF. You read something like Dhalgren or some book that's more obviously literarily ambitious/experimental/difficult and it's clear that even if those books have a big impact on SF they are something other than "that book literally everyone is reading". Whereas Fifth Season and others are not difficult per se - you can read them easily and fairly quickly, and what they're saying is mostly pretty clear - but they are so innovative and bold, it's really amazing. I can't think of another era other than the New Wave when so much of what was popular and accessible was also so good.
posted by Frowner at 6:00 PM on December 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

"you want upsetting, read The Fifth Season."

I know it; I read literally the first five pages and I was like NOPE THIS HAS TO WAIT UNTIL I'M NOT PREGNANT OR BREASTFEEDING.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:29 PM on December 13, 2016 [6 favorites]

But as a second in a trilogy, should the first be read first?
posted by sammyo at 3:59 AM on December 14, 2016

The Fifth Season is first in a trilogy.

I actually forgot that bit whilst reading it, or never took it in to begin with, so the ending, which is a bit "to be continued...", came as an abrupt surprise.
posted by Artw at 4:54 AM on December 14, 2016

Fanfare for The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate

I've slowed down on recommending The Fifth Season until the third book is out, just because it's so obviously an unfinished work, but it does still surprise me that I meet a number of ardent sci-fi fans who haven't heard of it yet. It makes explaining why I didn't like Seveneves so much harder.

Wired's web design makes the FPP difficult to read on my phone, but I'm excited to read it when I get home.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:41 AM on December 14, 2016

Great stuff. I'm excited to read the fifth season now.

It makes explaining why I didn't like Seveneves so much harder.

Some fun ideas in it, but I didn't really like it either.
posted by knapah at 3:58 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, this gave me actual nightmares...
posted by Cozybee at 9:02 PM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I too had a nightmare, combining this and the sentient ordinance robot, last night. Unfortunately I was in the car with the super predator and the ordinance robot failed to kill us. :( Ugggggggh it was really upsetting, I was trying to talk the super predator out of eating my children while introducing it to carnival rides.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:28 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]