Reading Wednesday

[redbird]

Hwarhath Stories, by Eleanor Arnason. This is subtitled "Transgressive stories by aliens." The stories are all narrated by hwarhath (the aliens I first read about in her novel A Woman of the Iron People; the frame is that these are translations by humans, with the goal of helping the human reader understand the hwarhath, with some translators' notes on things that will be unclear or counter-intuitive for the human reader. Some of what would be "transgressive" for a hwarhath reader is ordinary for the human reader, and vice vers ( and presented as written by, the hwarhath. These are good stories, and give a broad idea of these aliens and their society (or societies, over centuries of change).

Some of what's "transgressive" for a hwarhath reader, or writer, would be unremarkable if not actively expected for humans (including heterosexuality for pleasure rather than as a necessity of reproduction), and some things that we'd find shocking or unethical are normal to them. (Some hwarhath would agree with some humans that actors are disreputable or immoral, but not for our reasons.)

This collection is related to A Woman of the Iron People, but neither depends on or is significantly a spoiler for the other. I recommend both, if you like worldbuilding and sf that is mostly about aliens not interacting with humans.

Comments

[stardreamer]

I love that book! It's one of the most ALIEN alien stories I've ever read; Arnason does a fabulous job of getting inside the heads of alien characters. My favorite is the one about the artist who reasons out the fact of evolution from the fossil evidence, even though she has no idea of what the mechanism might be.

[thnidu]

Noted for bucket-of-books list.

[umadoshi]

the frame is that these are translations by humans, with the goal of helping the human reader understand the hwarhath

What a neat concept!