The Affinities

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Years ago in this country there was something known as a Eugenics movement, which, in essence, was all about breeding deformities out of the gene pool, about letting the weak and the mentally feeble be sterilized, so that they would die out and not continue to drag down the human race with their weakness. As horrible as it sounds, it actually gained much popularity in this country, with its own culture and festivals celebrating purity and clean and unpolluted bloodlines. And it all pretty much went by the wayside when a little man in a crazy mustache took something very similar and took it to its perversely horrific logical extreme.

I thought of this when I read The Affinities. The idea in the book as that personality types could be categorized and allow people to be separated into groups where the spirit of cooperation would prevail. The theory was that like-minded people would make a more just and equitable world, since the many conflicts that humanity has is surely the result of people not understanding one another. It is an idea that seems, in theory to be useful and valid, but what happens in the book is that the idea becomes skewed, and taken to a logical extreme where the idea becomes more perverse and unworkable than anyone would have ever realized. While it may have had some short term benefit to humanity, in reality the separation of people’s only serves to isolate those who don’t belong in any of the groups. And the problems of the world, as intractable as they are, don’t go anywhere.

At the heart of this story is Adam Fisk, who fits into the Tau group, one of the larger groups of the 22 “Affinities” that exist. What Adam finds is that relationships that exist outside the affinity are frowned upon, including those with your biological family. And the derogatory term “tether” is given to a person who intrudes into an affinity. It is a cold blooded way of isolating oneself from the flawed wonderfulness of humanity.

I read Wilson’s The Harvest many years ago and I remember really liking it, which is why I picked this new one up. By comparison, this book is much less wide in scope (ok, fancy way of saying it’s a lot shorter), but it is still pretty tight sci-fi. I think it invites the unfortunate comparison to the Divergent series (which I haven’t read) but I wouldn’t let that stop you from reading this.




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