Downbelow station Book

[9/10]

As a part of my "Summer of Women 2015" reading challenge, I feel I should say a few words about the importance of C J Cherryh in the storming of the gates of the 'boy's club' that was Science-Fiction in its early days. When she first started publishing her stories, she hid her gender behind those two innocuous initials. She then reached such heights of recognition and praise that she now has an asteroid named after her, deservedly acknowledging her stature and her influence in the field:

Referring to this honor, the asteroid's discoverers wrote of Cherryh: "She has challenged us to be worthy of the stars by imagining how mankind might grow to live among them."

Downbelow Station is a fine example of why she belongs in the SF Hall of Fame (the novel was voted among the best 50 SF novels of all time). It is a good starting point for readers yet unfamiliar with her work, as it has been written as a stand-alone and is the first to set up her Alliance-Union universe: the history of mankind escaping the bounds of its home planet, colonizing the galaxy, coming into contact with alien civilizations and overcoming its self-destructing, predatory, warmongering instincts.

The opening chapter is a necessary setting up of the scene, an infodump of the future history of our civilization, first with Newtonian spaceships and small steps, jumping from one planetary station to the next, and later with faster-than-light travel and a greater liberty of movement. The presentation is a little too dry and factual, but it is saved by the clarity of the presentation and the elegance of the social and economical arguments, leading the reader to the current (24th century) state of war between the Earth based Company that first established the space stations and the Union of rebel colonists who no longer acknowledge the right of the old world to decide their lives and to tax their earnings. The starting point and inspiration might come from the Secession War of the American Colonies from Imperial England, with a strong flavour of the Cold War conflict between free enterprise and absolute state control of all aspects of society, but the details are fully original and constructed around the new technologies and the new social institutions born of space travel. Speaking for myself, I felt like reading here an academic paper, the result of years of research, translated into an accessible language for everyday use, instead of a fanciful speculation about some hypothetical future.

Newly industrialized populations and the discontents of every nation set out on that long, long track in search of jobs, wealth, private dreams of freedom, the old lure of New World, human patterns recapitulated across a new and wider ocean, to stranger lands.

Stranger lands and exotic alien creatures are the strongest selling point of the author. Cherryh excels at world-building and at developing truly alien societies that are not simply clones of Earth based nations, but are determined by the particular environment and the particular economical factors of their home systems. The first such aliens that humanity make contact with are the Hisa of Pell's Planet. They are a peaceful, fun loving, tribally organizaed and technologically backward population, fur covered bipeds, huge eyed and shy of strangers, well adapted to the humid, oxygen rich atmosphere of their home planet. The Hisa are relevant to the present novel because most of the action happens in and around the orbital station that human explorers built near the Hisa homeworld. In colloquial terms, the human colonists refer to the Pell planet as Downbelow, to the Hisa as Downers and to their home away from home as 'Downbelow Station'.

The Hisa though are only one factor in the conflict that is about to erupt in this corner of the Galaxy. My best analogy for the plot developments is a game of chess played by a grandmaster of the art. The Hisa are rooks, moving mostly in the shadows of their huge forests or in the back corridors of the station. Rooks are also the local colonists on the station, trying to maintain their neutrality in the open war between the war fleet of the Company and the newly built spaceships of the Union rebels. One side-effect of the war is the flood of refugees coming to Downbelow Station from other colonies destroyed in the war. The refugees are a wildcard, a knight capable of surprising moves with devastating results. The king is the Downbelow Station itself. Whoever gains control of it, will get the upper hand in the war both in valuable raw materials and in the most important hub for FTL jumps. The queen for me is Signy Mallory, one of the captains of Mazian's Fleet, a derelict rogue squadron that was initially the military arm of the Company, now following only the whims of its charismatic Admiral. Other pieces / factions include the ruling family/corporation on the Station (The Konstantins) and their main rival Jon Lukas; the delegation from the United Nations of Earth who has a plan to end the Company's hegemony on space travel; the independent merchants that are neutral in the conflict and provide the flow of goods and services between colonies; Union saboteurs; victims of torture and brainwashing, cloned soldiers for the Union, and so on.

To continue with my chess analogy, the beginning of the novel can be overwhelming, with all this information about the different parties and their motives to absorb, and with all the positioning of the pieces on the board that may seem random and slow in the opening moves. The patient reader will be rewarded later in the novel, when all these plays become explicit and the hidden identities, the hidden agendas are brought out in the open. Cherryh is also showing the same merciless pragmatism of the chess master about sacrificing her pieces and leaving sentimentality behind with an eye to the end game.

The end game, when it eventually comes, is spectacular. Space battles between ships of the line, assassinations in cramped corridors, friends' betrayals and help from unsuspected allies clash over the Station with the stakes raised until the fate of the whole galaxy hangs in balance. And the rooks become the most important pieces on the depleted board. Magnificent!

The prose of Cherryh takes some getting used to, though. Her academic credentials are undeniable, but, especially in the beginning, until the characters and the setting are established, reading her books feels like work. Her style is dense, informative, uncompromising and sometimes cold / detached. Which makes the human interest passages even more precious, like gems hidden in an ordinary fabric. Downbelow Station is overall a grim story, full of drama and loss, so humour doesn't play a great part of the presentation, but love, tenderness, kindness shine more brightly against the dark background.

The feminism credentials of Cheryh are all the more convincing by being unobtrusive. Equality of opportunity and of aptitudes is taken for granted, nothing to marvel at or to comment upon: her heroines are space ship captains, rebellion leaders, political mavericks, science prodigies as a matter of course, based on personal merits and charisma and not as a result of bedroom games of secret, behind the screens machinations.

My favorite quote comes from a merchanter lady, one of the collateral victims of the Company-Union conflict. She explains why going out into the void changes the whole perspective on life in a person.

You don't get much view on a ship. Not what you'd think. It's the being there; the working of it; the feel of moving through what could surprise you at any moment. It's being a dust speck in that scale and pushing your way through all that empty on your own terms, that no world can do and nothing spinning around one. It's doing that and knowing all the time old goblin Deep is just the other side of the metal you're leaning on. You stationers like your illusions. And world folk, blue-skyers, don't even know what real is.

Highly recommended!