Paradises Lost

Paradises Lost

Poster depicting a human hand against a background of stars

A poster for the 2012 opera adaptation of Paradises Lost
Author Ursula K. Le Guin
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction
Publisher Harper Perennial
Publication date
2002
Media type Print, e-book

Paradises Lost is a science fiction novella by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. It was first published in 2002 as a part of the collection The Birthday of the World, and has since been anthologized as well as adapted into an opera of the same name. It is set during a multigenerational voyage from Earth to a potentially habitable planet. The story follows the protagonists Liu Hsing and Nova Luis, members of the fifth generation born on the ship, as they deal with a religious cult on board which does not believe in stopping at their intended destination, and with a crisis brought on by a drastic change in the ship's schedule. The novella explores the theme of the isolation brought on by space travel, as well as religious themes. It contains elements of ecocriticism, or a critique of the idea that human beings are altogether separate from their natural environment. The novella and the collections it was published in received high praise from commentators, who compared it to other Le Guin works such as "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow", "Newton's Sleep", and The Telling, as well as to the works of Gene Wolfe and Robert Heinlein. It was described as "a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness."[1]

Setting

The setting of the novella is that of a multigenerational voyage from Earth (referred to as "Ti Chiu", its Chinese name within the story, or as "Dichew", the children's version of the same term) to a planet potentially habitable by humans, known as "Hsin Ti Chiu" ("New Earth", "Shindychew").[2][3][4][5] The two protagonists of the story are 5-Liu Hsing and 5-Nova Luis, with the "5" denoting that they are members of the fifth generation to be born aboard the ship (which is named Discovery).[4]

The generation that boarded the ship intend their descendants to understand and feel value for a terrestrial existence, but over time the words and images associated with being on a planet begin to lose meaning to those on the ship, who become adapted to a shipboard existence, and struggle to understand the motivations of the zeroth generation.[4] A related feature of the Discovery, on board which the major religions of Earth are depicted as having gradually lost meaning, is the religious cult of "Bliss", of which members are known as "Angels".[6] The adherents of the cult believe that their purpose in life is to overcome their connections to a terrestrial existence.[6] They do not see their belief as a religion, and believe that the world outside the ship is an illusion. Only the voyage itself, and not the origin or destination, matters.[7][6]

The environment of the spacecraft is highly controlled. Until the age of 7 all children roam naked, which presents no difficulties in a ship where temperature is controlled,[8] and all disease-causing organisms have been eliminated.[9] The population of the ship is also tightly controlled, at a figure of approximately 4,000.[10] Individuals are required to get contraception injections every 25 days, unless they are willing to make a pledge of chastity or strict homosexuality, or intend to conceive a child.[11] All matter on the ship is carefully recycled, with no inessential items ever lasting more than a few years before being recycled.[12]

Plot summary

The novella begins with 5-Liu Hsing, as a child, being taught about Earth through the use of virtual reality tapes, an experience which the young Hsing takes exception to. She develops a close friendship with 5-Nova Luis. At the age of seven Hsing and the other children of similar age are allowed to put on clothes for the first time; Hsing greatly looks forward to this ceremony, a rite of passage aboard the "Discovery".[8] As the children grow older Luis begins to develop an interest in the virtual reality programs that allow people on the ship to explore the planet they have left behind.[13] Hsing gets into arguments with her friend Rosie, a member of a "Bliss". Although Hsing explores the philosophy of the angels, and questions in her own mind the purpose of the voyage, she disagrees with the angels' thinking, which eventually damages her friendship with Rosie.[14] Luis also investigates this group, by participating in some of their practices.

Entering college at the age of 18 Hsing discovers that 4-Hiroshi Canaval, the teacher of Navigation, has asked her to be placed directly into the second-year navigation course. Hsing shows an aptitude for the subject, and in her third year chooses to make it her profession.[15] Luis chooses to become a doctor, and their academic separation leads to Hsing and Luis slowly drawing apart from one another.[16] Hsing finds herself attracted to Hiroshi, and the two begin a romantic relationship. Three days after their wedding Hiroshi tells Hsing that the focus of his life's work is not simply navigation, as is generally believed, but in concealing a big secret from the rest of the ship. A few years earlier an unexpected gravitational effect led to the ship experiencing a vast acceleration, putting it 40 years ahead of schedule; it is expected to arrive at Hsin Ti Chiu in five years.[17]

Hiroshi tells Hsing that he and a handful of allies, who believe that the people on the ship should stop at Hsin Ti Chiu, have been keeping news of the acceleration secret. They believe that hiding the knowledge of the schedule provides them a weapon against the Angels, who do not wish the ship to stop at all.[18] Hsing becomes a reluctant party to the conspiracy, but is distressed by its secrecy and what she considers to be dishonesty, and persuades Hiroshi and his allies to go public with the information. Meanwhile, Luis thoroughly investigates the education program for the sixth generation aboard the ship (the generation supposed to land on Hsin Ti Chiu) and finds that large parts of it have been erased or replaced with propaganda by the Angels.[19] Luis succeeds in making the ruling council of the ship launch an investigation into religious manipulation of the education program. Persuaded by Hsing, Hiroshi makes a public statement about the ship's new schedule, while concealing the fact that he had known about it for a while.[20]

A few months later Luis is elected Chair of the ship's ruling council, and helps bring about a settlement wherein the people on board can choose whether or not to stay on the ship, and also choose whether the ship stays in orbit around Hsin Ti Chiu.[21] Hsing has a child by Hiroshi,[22] but Hiroshi dies soon afterward, of heart failure. The ship's educational curriculum is revised, and all schools are required to allow teachers who are not Angels to teach material relevant to living on the new planet.[22] The new planet proves to be habitable by humans, and around a quarter of the ship's population moves to it, settling down despite the difficulty of learning to live on a planet again. The ship leaves, not intending to return.[23]

Main characters

The two "co-protagonists" of the book are 5-Liu Hsing and 5-Nova Luis.[6] Both Hsing and Luis have been described as protagonists typical of Le Guin's works, being somewhat isolated from the society they live in, due to their strong individuality and the fact that they do not entirely conform to societal expectations.[6] As with other members of their generation, Hsing and Luis grow up in an environment devoid of terrestrial ties, as a result of which they are, as children, unfamiliar with the terms "hill", "sky" and "wind".[24] Despite not having an understanding of a planetary existence, Hsing and Luis are among the people who are not convinced by the beliefs of the Angels. Instead they question those beliefs, and hold that a reality exists outside of their own human-created bubble, and are drawn to the idea of stimuli other than those created by humans.[6]

Hsing

Hsing is of Chinese and European descent,[25] and is brought up by her father 4-Liu Yao, who works with the ship's colony of plants. While a child Hsing has a strongly negative reaction to a virtual reality recording of a tiger in a zoo, demonstrating her complete separation from the "wild" aspect of the earth.[24] Hsing chooses to live with Yao until midway through her college career,[26] when she moves in with 4-Hiroshi Canaval, whom she marries and by whom she has a child.[22] While still a child Hsing develops an interest in writing poetry, and in high school shows an aptitude for physics and mathematics, which gets Hiroshi's attention.[15] On entering college she chooses to pledge chastity rather than let her body's rhythms be controlled by the contraceptive injection.[27] She is among those who choose to live on Hsin Ti Chiu, along with her son, whom Hiroshi names 6-Canaval Alejo.[22]

Luis

Luis has a highly mixed racial background, including South American, Japanese and European.[25] He is also brought up by his father, 4-Nova Ed, a man whose life is described as being centered on his sexual activity, and who is very different from the thoughtful and introverted Luis.[28] Luis also has a memorable experience with the virtual reality tapes, although his occurs in adolescence. Luis subverts a program by remaining in a jungle he is supposed to walk through, and just watching the animal life around him. He sees a large spotted cat, and is "transfixed" by its elegance and the fact that it simply ignores him.[6] The brief experience with "wildness", even though it is part of a human-made program, has enriched his thinking.[6] In college Luis studies to become a doctor,[16] and also becomes interested in exploring the educational program for future generations. This leads him to uncover the Angels' attempts at erasure and propaganda, and to demanding the creation of a committee on religious manipulation.[19] His role as a conciliator following Hiroshi's announcement leads to his election as Chair of the ship's council.[21] Eventually he also chooses to live on Hsin Ti Chiu.

Themes

Ecocriticism and utopia

Tonia Payne has written that Paradises Lost is an example of ecocriticism, wherein Le Guin critiques the idea that human beings are separate from their natural environment.[29] The premise of the novella involves human beings who are living entirely in interstellar space, and who therefore have to create a new reality for themselves, a notion also explored in Le Guin's short story "Newton's Sleep".[29] The inhabitants of "Discovery" become unable to relate to representations of Earth. Some of them, like Hsing and Luis, still struggle to understand Ti Chiu, keeping in mind their position as a part of a continuum of people which is supposed to lead to colonization.[24] For others this new reality takes the form of the religious beliefs of the cult of "bliss". These beliefs are portrayed as an understandable attempt to adjust to the reality of spaceflight.[29][30] A review by Publishers Weekly also said that a major theme of the story, which it had in common with other stories in the "Birthday of the World" collection, was that of characters coming to terms with the world they live in.[1]

The portion of the story set on New Earth also challenges the reader to question their own relationship to Earth. Le Guin uses the colonists' ignorance of common words to demonstrate common assumptions that we make.[31] Additionally the humans are shown as having gone from an environment in which their own continued existence was entirely in their control, to one where it depended on the wind, the rain and the sun.[31] Many of the colonists suffer from headaches and other ailments thanks to pollen and other substances in the air, making Luis realize their total dependence on the planet, and which also points out actual human beings' dependence on the planet Earth.[31] Payne writes that the fact that the story remains with Hsing and Luis on Hsin Ti Chiu indicates that Le Guin sees their choice, rather than that of the Angels, as the correct – albeit more difficult – path to take.[31] In the belief system of "Bliss," the space outside the ship is equated with spiritual and physical danger, evil, and death.[5] The separation the Angels create between themselves and the outside of the ship also becomes a separation from history and the future, and from their own mortality.[5] The story briefly quotes Lao Tzu (referring to him as "Old Long Ears"[5]) and suggests that the Angels' pursuit of bliss and total control over their environment are dangerous: it is the "dangerous" planet of New Earth which offers the possibility of a utopia.[5]

According to Everett Hammer, writing in an anthology examining Le Guin's work, "Paradises Lost" suggests that any attempt to create a utopia while ignoring the history of the people within it is bound to degenerate into a dystopia.[32] Several other works of hers, including "A Wizard of Earthsea", "The Telling" and "Always Coming Home", also suggest that "a healthy future is not possible without an accurately understood past."[32]

Religion

Le Guin does not explicitly criticize the concept of religion in general, but only the tendency within religions, and within contemporary Western society, that human beings can entirely control the environment around them.[29] This "control" is only possible within the entirely human-made environment aboard the spacecraft, which Le Guin depicts as lacking elements of the "richly textured" real world, and which denies human beings the experiences of "wildness" which make life interesting.[33] A review in "Salon" magazine said that the story allowed the reader to imagine what it would be like to create part of their world, and what environmental constraints shaped human beings.[30] The review also stated that Le Guin offered an unusual take on the theme of religion by depicting a "cult of atheists" fed by the tendency to religious conformity among human beings.[30]

Literary critic Richard Erlich wrote in 2006 that the depiction of the religious cult of "Bliss" demonstrated the disagreements Le Guin had with Christianity.[5] The Angels use of the phrase "the planetary hypothesis" to refer to their terrestrial origin was a gentle dig at Christian fundamentalism in the United States, with its insistence that evolution is "merely a theory."[5] The story also refers to the success of Christian fundamentalists in taking over school boards in the US.[5] A more direct criticism of Christianity comes in Le Guin's depiction of the cult of Bliss being disrespectful of women, as well as of believing in a nuclear, patriarchal family.[5] A reference to Christianity is also present in Le Guin's word to describe activity outside the ship: the real-world term "extravehicular activity" or EVA is used as a single word "Eva," in reference to the biblical "Eve": Angels in the story see going outside the ship as an act of transgression associated with death.[5]

Publication and adaptations

Collections

"Paradises Lost" was first published as a part of the collection "The Birthday of the World and Other Stories" in 2002, along with seven other stories from the period 1994–2002.[34] With one exception, all of the works in the collection examine unorthodox sexual relationships and marriage; in the case of "Paradises Lost" the tightly controlled reproduction of people aboard the ship.[35] "Paradises Lost" was the only original story in the book: all the others had been previously published elsewhere.[1] In 2016 "Paradises Lost" was anthologized along with all 12 of Le Guin's other novellas in the volume "The Found and the Lost".[36]

Opera

In 2012 "Paradises Lost" was adapted into an opera by the opera program of the University of Illinois.[37][38] The opera was composed by Stephen Taylor.[37] Le Guin described the effort as a "beautiful opera" in an interview, and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers.[38] An essay written for the Poetry Foundation stated that the opera was "so free from historyβ€”and even from Earthβ€”as to have its own constraints".[39] The review described the opera as taking place in a quiet setting, unlike the "swashbuckling atmosphere" of most operas, and that as a result it depended more on atmosphere and language to maintain tension.[39]

Reception

A review of "The Found and the Lost" in "Locus" magazine stated that the novella was a "deft" example of the "classic "power chord"" of stories set on generation ships.[36] The review compared the tone and premise of the story that that of science fiction authors Gene Wolfe and Robert Heinlein,[36] and said that, as with Le Guin's other works, it explored multiple forms of social stratification.[36] The collection as a whole received high praise, particularly for the "sheer level of talent and word-wizardry and world-building" in Le Guin's writing, and for taking a "non-dogmatic and fair-minded" approach to politically sensitive subjects.[36] Another review of "The Found and the Lost" in the online science-fiction magazine "Tor.com" drew a comparison between "Paradises Lost" and "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow", stating that while both stories examined the challenges of interstellar travel and the isolation it brought on, the differences between them were "as stark as they are fascinating".[40] It went on to say that "Paradises Lost" explored the issue of isolation in space travel with "compassion and patience", and called the story the "culmination of the collection, [which drew] together the community-building and existential malaise of all the previous stories into a captivating and ambivalent conclusion".[40] Speaking of the volume as a whole, "Tor" stated that it "[welcomed] readers home to places they've never visited, and making the familiar stranger and stranger still".[40]

A review of the "Birthday of the World" volume called "Paradises Lost" a "a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness",[1] while Booklist Review commented that it offered a "change of pace" from the rest of the collection, and that in contrast to many of the other stories, which are set in the Hainish Universe, "stood well on its own".[1] Author and literary critic Margaret Atwood, reviewing the volume for New York Books, wrote that "Paradises Lost" was a part of the "note of renewal" in "Birthday of the World".[41] Atwood stated that she found a "release from claustrophobia" in the fact that Le Guin offered a choice between a version of "heaven" on board the ship and life on a "dirtball", but took the side of the dirtball.[41] According to Atwood, in doing so, "Paradises Lost" "shows us our own natural world as a freshly discovered Paradise Regained, a realm of wonder".[41]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Summary/Reviews: The birthday of the world and other stories /". Buffalolib.org. December 22, 1953. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  2. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 256.
  3. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 267.
  4. 1 2 3 Payne 2006, pp. 239–240.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Erlich, Richard D. (2006). "Le Guin and God: Quarelling with the One, Critiquing Pure Reason". Extrapolation. 47 (3).
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Payne 2006, pp. 242–244.
  7. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 319.
  8. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, pp. 253–256.
  9. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 250.
  10. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 263.
  11. ↑ Le Guin 2002, pp. 305–306.
  12. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 288.
  13. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 281.
  14. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 270.
  15. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, p. 305.
  16. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, pp. 305–308.
  17. ↑ Le Guin 2002, pp. 312–315.
  18. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 313.
  19. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, pp. 323–324.
  20. ↑ Le Guin 2002, pp. 337–339.
  21. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, p. 343.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Le Guin 2002, p. 341.
  23. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 355.
  24. 1 2 3 Payne 2006, pp. 240–241.
  25. 1 2 Le Guin 2002, p. 272.
  26. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 308.
  27. ↑ Le Guin 2002, pp. 307.
  28. ↑ Le Guin 2002, p. 273.
  29. 1 2 3 4 Payne 2006, pp. 229–230.
  30. 1 2 3 Hansen, Suzy (April 26, 2002). ""The Birthday of the World" by Ursula K. Le Guin". Salon. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  31. 1 2 3 4 Payne 2006, pp. 245–247.
  32. 1 2 Hammer, Everett L. (2005). "The Gap in the Wall: Partnership, Physics, and Politics in The Dispossessed". In Davis, Laurence; Stillman, Peter. The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Lexington Books. pp. 219–232. ISBN 0-7391-1086-1.
  33. ↑ Payne 2006, pp. 231–232.
  34. ↑ "Review: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, reviewed by Colin Harvey". Strangehorizons.com. Archived from the original on August 8, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  35. ↑ Lindow 2012, p. 205.
  36. 1 2 3 4 5 di Filippo, Paul (October 7, 2016). "Paul Di Filippo Reviews Ursula K. Le Guin". Locus. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  37. 1 2 ""Paradises Lost" adapted from the novella by Ursula K Le Guin". playwrightsguild.ca. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  38. 1 2 "Interview: Ursula K. Le Guin". Lightspeed Magazine. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  39. 1 2 Axelrod, Jeremy. "Phantoms of the Opera". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  40. 1 2 3 "Farsickness, Homesickness in The Found and the Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin". Tor. October 28, 2016. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  41. 1 2 3 Atwood, Margaret (September 26, 2002). "The Queen of Quinkdom". nybooks.com. Retrieved January 2, 2017.

Sources

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