"The Many-Colored Land" - Discuss Everything * Spoilers*

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Here we go! Talk about all of it! I've split the difference on cover ;-)

Some questions to get us started:

1. What did you think of the way characters were introduced?
2. What do you think about "Exile?"
3. Would you have gone to Exile?
4.Overall thoughts?

[Oleksandr]

Will wrote: "-Felice’s queer masculinity is seen as monstrous
."

I'd say she is shown as a bit unhinged person (breaking bones during an interview), so her 'monstrosity' is more personal and not a group representative I think.

Also I guess that Richard as a character intentionally shown as homophobic and racist in order to show his character's growth

[Anna]

Will wrote: "My first book for SFFBC, and, um...that was certainly something"

It certainly was. I hope you stick around for another month!

[Anna]

Will, would you please hide the Star Wars spoiler in spoiler tags, thanks!

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[Gabi]

Good to see your rating here, Anna. ;D This was the one I was waiting for to decide if I should buy the book or not. <3

[Anna]

Gabi wrote: "Good to see your rating here, Anna. ;D This was the one I was waiting for to decide if I should buy the book or not. <3"

Many seemed to like it based on the non-spoiler thread, which is why I waited to rate until spoiler threads were up. It's one of those cases where I'm kicking myself for picking this book for the poll at the very last minute. I bet the book I left out would've been much better.

But since we also have people who did enjoy this, I'm hoping they'll explain why!

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I loved the novel! Why? The writing. The world-building. The characters.

I did not see hidden misogyny, I saw admitted misfits conforming to the psychological forms that made them unacceptable to modern earth society. They were able to change once their misfit ideas were challenged in life and death heroism. Maybe misfits are misfits because of stubbornness (and conservative instincts) held onto despite facts and experiences. I saw Felice as very scary. Men and women with normal sexual appetites maneuvered around in trying to determine what sexual appetites others had. Ok, the healer thing would have more balanced if a man with such talents had stepped into the time machine. Maybe men healers feel they fit into the modern world very well with no need to leave?

: p

I would NOT go to Exile! I have never done well in the wilds. Besides, the view of the modern universe the author showed us suited me. I leave the pitting of oneself against the elements of Nature to those who enjoy such contests. I much prefer a vicarious experience through reading about others, fictional or real, who enjoy hiking/hunting/combat.

[Oleksandr]

Will wrote: "This is my first time discoursing in a group like this so I’m open to feedback and suggestions on how best to present my arguments and my ideas that can be a..."

First of all, welcome to the group! Your comment was much appreciated.

I agree that in general this book is more queerphobic and sexist than many more modern novels. Despite there are contemporaneous examples of more 'woke' SFF, I nevertheless think that "product of its times" defense applies, the same as to homophobic views in such earlier classic as Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land - at the time of their writing it was a mainstream psychological theory that 'abnormalities' (note quotes) are just a result of a trauma.

As for the 'monster theory', I've read Felice more like an experiment "Let's make a petite girl the mightiest of fighters" than as a comment on her otherness. Moreover, her queer status for me is the result of copying tropes of masculine heroes, who are sexually not only active but aggressive.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Great thoughts, both of you!

I think you've both really honed in on the tipping point for whether or not this book works.

It's true that this book was written in the context of its time, and that likely for its time it was considered fairly forward thinking (literally telling people who define women as uteruses with maternal instincts to fuck off) but that within the context we have now, it's rife with things that we know to show a systemic misunderstanding that leads to violence.

I personally fell on the side of "very tired with these tropes, can we leave procreation by whatever means necessary out of a story for one blessed month" but I think that's also because I found it really jarring to get into the story with people I disliked SO MUCH for different reasons, many of which were around the issue of how they perceived their gender and its relationship with the opposite gender.

But April makes a lot of great points, too, and a much more charitable reading that I can totally understand, even if I did not get that interpretation, personally.

[Jennifer]

I enjoyed the series when I read it back int the late 80's early 90's. But when your 20 you see things differently than when you are pushing 50. I have actually re-read the first 2 novels and will read the 3rd just to complete my re-read perspective.

I do feel it was a product of its time. But the wold building was amazing and even though the characters are not likeable, I like how they all grow. I always felt Felice was a monster, because, well she was. She was kinda a terrible human. and not because she was gay. I feel her sexuality had very little to do with the bigger story.

I loved the descriptions of the land and liked the twist (view spoiler)[ that the Tanu and Firvulag are the bases for our tales of faries,elves and so on (hide spoiler)] That maybe more in the second book....

While my re-read had a few cringe worthy moments , I feel its an overall good story and can give it a pass for all the faults everyone else see's.

[Jennifer]

Aiken Drum is still one of my fewkin favorite characters despite the flaws and tropes.

[Rosina]

Jennifer wrote: "I enjoyed the series when I read it back int the late 80's early 90's. But when your 20 you see things differently than when you are pushing 50. I have actually re-read the first 2 novels and will ..."

It's not just age, it's that all of us have changed our world view and awareness of issues over the last 40 years. Books which I thought were enlightened - which were enlightened for their time - now show their age by being hesitant and ambivalent.

I haven't read them for some years, but I think part of the story arc was that these people were not shining examples of their own time, but misfits, with problems of behaviour and attitude. I'm not sure, on the other hand, if the second series, set in 'the present day' are going to turn out to be any more enlightened.

[Desmond]

I enjoyed the book. Started out rough but after adapting to the way the story was told I had fun bouncing through the Pliocene era.

I did feel the ending was anti-climatic. I mean, it builds up to this moment and in only a few pages they easily win the day. I thought there would be a little more to the conflict with the Tanu than utter and complete dominance and destruction.

But oh well. I'll probably read the second book at some point.

By the way, can anyone tell me if it explains how they knew the portal went back to the Pliocene era? I was trying to figure out how anyone could know that if it was a one way trip.

[AndrewP]

Desmond wrote: "By the way, can anyone tell me if it explains how they knew the portal went back to the Pliocene era? I was trying to figure out how anyone could know that if it was a one way trip."

Right at the beginning it's described how they lured an animal onto the transport and filmed it before it disintegrated. I assume from that they could identify the animal and the rough time period in which it existed.

[J.W.]

I thought this book felt especially dated compared even to its contemporaries. Not impressed. Also didn’t like the sexism etc., even if it was an attempt at subversion.

[Melani]

I'm not very far in, but I feel like the 'this person is too wild/free/doesn't fit in the modern world' thing is kind of annoying. But also, I don't think it's unique to this book. Like, I'm fairly sure I've seen this type of character and attitude in other books before. What's funny is I think I remember thinking it made sense then, but now I'm just lamenting the loss of plumbing and wondering how these characters, who grew up with modern conveniences, are really going to deal with the reality of the loss of those conveniences. Somehow, I don't think May is really going to deal with that, because there seems to be this layer of romanticism about the wild, untamed, uncivilized land about the book.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Well said, Melani,

I, too, was confused. And extra confused when it seemed everyone was planning to roleplay their survival?

If I was going back in time today, my pretty gowns would be chucked immediately for bandages, water purifiers, and antiseptic lol.

[Melani]

Allison wrote: "I, too, was confused. And extra confused when it seemed everyone was planning to roleplay their survival?

If I was going back in time today, my pretty gowns would be chucked i..."

Hard same. I'm also wondering how they're planning to clothe themselves. Leather, obviously, is one option, but things like silk, cotton, wool, or linen are things humans developed through agriculture. Unless they're planning on bringing seeds, herds with them, which raises a whole host of issues with crops and diseases and cross pollination among other things which, again, I suspect are going to be ignored because it doesn't fit the story May is telling here.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

The impression I had was they planned on hunting - just hunting, and trapping, fishing, etc. Weren't the time travelers either vicious competitors or punters or suicidal, all in despair from living in a high-tech polite mannered world? Haters of air-conditioning and pillows and other people, so to speak?

In my family, I know folks who think we are all soft and disgusting. To them, Real men drive Ford pickups with guns hung on the rear cab window and they drive on mountain trails until the truck can't go anymore, then set up camp and shoot deer and rabbits for two weeks, skinning and eating the meat they killed, and the first guy to take a bath in the river or change their underwear is a 'f***ing girl'. They wear leather boots and jeans and huge belts. Hair can be long, but always unkempt and unstyled. When they sit, they purposely use up two spots, legs spread wide.

I can't believe I am the only one who knows men like this (it usually is men)? Who think everybody is a 'pussy' today?

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Btw, these men I know I have the GREATEST disdain for "book readers".

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Sure, I've known some. None that were planning to colonize a world though. And none that I particularly cared to spend time with as they tried to colonize somewhere, for that matter.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Well, there you go. The ones I know don't want to colonize the world, they want to be King of their own world - no rules but their own, no judgement but their own.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Is this in response to why May isn't considering what it would take to actually start a civilization, April?

I think Melani and I agree that this was meant to be the power fantasy of just living "true to our natures" or "being free" or whatever, so the "reality" of the situation is irrelevant, but I think some of us stumbled over the premise :)

[Alex]

I honestly did my best not to think too hard whilst I read this book.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I think if you know people like this the book's premise of characters, it is more plausible. I know people who would love to go back in time to a place with nothing but wildlife and animals and no people for miles. I know misfits and mountain men types and antisocial people. They want to fight people when they get drunk. They hate cell phones and office jobs and ties and speeches and conversation. They can't handle the 'horrors' of modesty, manners, and political correctness. They sort of want - prefer - the world of nature and tooth-and -nail of critters.

They seem to be born that way. When they go camping with the family as kids, they usually are the only one who really knows how to make a fire because they practiced on their own while everybody else was getting high at parties at the house of the kid whose parents were gone. They tromp without a thought through streams while the rest of us worry about wrecking our shoes. They dig into the guts of critters while the rest of us are losing our appetites.

I knew a rich kid who willingly signed up every summer to go crab fishing in Alaska. He came back scarred, sunburnt and frostbitten and scabbed and bruised all over - completely exhilarated. His parents had a three-story mansion that was basically 1970's 'smart'. He had been given a car and a European tour when he was sixteen. He thought Europe was effete.

I knew a guy at work who always looked like his shirt and tie were strangling him. He had a huge beard before they were acceptable in a skyscraper office job. He finally quit to go to Canada and live in a shack without electricity or running water. He dressed in expensive mountain man fashion - certainly a costume, like the bikers, like suited business men. That is all costumes and role play, you know. Like mom jeans or expensive name-brand yoga pants, like jeans hanging below one's crotch.

These people I knew and know would have gone back to the supposed wilderness time of the world without a thought of what might happen - breaking a leg? Starving in winter? Their mother getting sick? Running out of supplies? They couldn't stand being indoors. They couldn't stand elevators (claustrophobic) or not being able to punch out a guy who annoyed you. They hate talk radio. Etc.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I also knew cutthroat competitors. I worked as a secretary/office assistant to Presidents, vice-presidents, etc. who worked on the executive floors. The plush carpets, gold bathroom fixtures, etc. They were as competitively vicious as junkyard dogs, only perfumed and wearing $10,000 suits/shoes and $50,000 watches. I saw the nastiest fights over who at the conference table what pens, glasses, drinks were at where they were supposed to sit - was everything the same as everyone else of their rank?

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

These folks don't want to 'start' a civilization, in the book or in real life. They want to BE the civilization.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

The existence of people who would risk dying for the chance at Exile isn't the part that's unrealistic. But LARPing it without the supplies a pioneer would have is a bit unusual, even for the SCA types. I know someone whose profession is "armorer" who avoids people as much as possible and whose vacations include hiking through the bush in the summer with his infant strapped to him, but he doesn't go in his chain mail lol

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

And also, I'm not sure that's relevant to the part that was odd for me (one of many!)

But I don't think I'm the target for this sort of book in any way, so I doubt the author will miss my patronage :)

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I have nieces and nephews who are very sad ComicCon is not happening. They have all of the costumes and paraphernalia and go to home parties, restaurant/comic parties post on Instagram as Star Wars characters. I know a nephew who has huge in-home computer gear/monitors and every video game and frequently competes in killing people (in games). He has real guns, too. I also have a relative who participated in Civil War enactments. Before Facebook, I didn't know my family has religious Fundamentalists, survivalist preppers, racists, Sander and Trump supporters, ranchers and liberal University graduates and people who went only to the 10th grade.

I don't unfriend, so, I got to know people there too, like I did as a secretary of huge corporations. All types.

[Melani]

it's not that I don't find the character's motivations for leaving unbelievable, it's that I find the romanticism of the 'wild untamed land' distasteful. that kind of disconnect with reality leads to things like Into the Wild where a privileged kid, who was one of those people who have a strong distaste for modern life, went off into the wilderness and died because he was unprepared for the reality of nature untamed. And it's that reality of nature untamed that isn't explored here, because of course aliens. Nor do I think any of these people were adequately prepared for it, likely because it's not really the focus

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Right? The aliens means these misfits and dreamers and loners and emo-types only seeing their own drama have to change, pull together, lookout for each other.

[Melani]

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "Right? The aliens means these misfits and dreamers and loners and emo-types only seeing their own drama have to change, pull together, lookout for each other."

Cause that wouldn't' have happened when the realities of cruel nature were made clear? Man vs monster is as good a plot as any and that's obviously what May was going for.

What I think you're missing is that my issue with the book is the romanticism towards untamed nature, the uncivilized land, the wild. It's aggravating to read about how 'going back to simpler time' will solve problems for these people when that patently isn't true.

The wild loving people that I know fall into two groups. People woefully unprepared for the reality of untamed wilderness (a la Into the Wild, and honestly most of these characters), and people who casually flit back and forth between wilderness and civilization. In one of the examples you mentioned you talked about people uncaringly getting their feet wet. The thing is, we take care not to get our feet wet not because we're worried about ruining the shoes but because wet feet are a death sentence without civilization. Dry, clean socks are a campers best friend.

The book misses the opportunity to explore what happens when people from a civilized nation go to the untamed wild because it doesn't want to. The book likes that romantic view of civilization being just too much for some people to bear. So the truth of that wild nature isn't explored and aliens are put on the other side so the wild isn't really wild.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

The Wild has always been too wild for me. The first time I encountered a trillion mosquitos in a North Dakota park, yeah, only a park, while visiting relatives during the Fourth of July just about destroyed me: 1. It turned out I am one of those people who get bit twenty times while other people get bit once - I was and am bug bait, and 2. any heat over 80F makes me throw up and generally sicken and definitely a party pooper.

It didn't help I saw a boy of about twelve blow two fingers off of his hand, either.

Later, when my family hiked up to lake for fishing when I was fourteen, I couldn't make it despite regular five-day-a-week-gym. I always hit a ceiling of ten-twenty reps of anything even in my thirties after years of gym. I run like a rubber band as well. It turns out I have a hyperflexibility condition restricting my strength building.

Of course, I grew up in an area - the Pacific Northwest - where EVERYONE loves trying to be someone who hikes and camps. Although people generally get sympathetic after seeing my limbs all swollen from bug bites if I even went to an outdoor concert. If they can get past my huge sunhats and wanting to leave after thirty minutes of hot weather.

I agree if some of these characters in the book had actually tried to deal with 'The Wild', it would have been a different book. For me, if I was a character in a book dealing with 'The Wild', it would be a short farcical novella, ending with me dying in some stupid way. Like being eaten by a giant squirrel.

[Trevor]

I read all this and related books of the series in the 80s thru to the 90s, then read them again years later ... love them, loved the characters, loved the fact they were flawed, the ego mania, the insecurities, the bigotry ... all of them deeply flawed in some way.

[Edwin]

Boy that was a disappointment. I have to join the 2 star reviewers here. It felt like some kind of entropic explosion of weird and disjointed concepts and ideas and characters. Kind of like my sock drawer at times.

[Desmond]

Edwin wrote: "Boy that was a disappointment. I have to join the 2 star reviewers here. It felt like some kind of entropic explosion of weird and disjointed concepts and ideas and characters. Kind of like my sock..."

Love the analogy!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

It's interesting to see such a split on this highly rated book that is so often credited as one of the first "science fantasy" novels.

[Leonie]

I've always enjoyed these books, but I read them when they first came out, and then, they were ground breaking. I can see some of the flaws that people point out, but I can still enjoy the characters and the created world/s.

Having said that, I prefer the prequels that were written after these books, giving the backstory.

[Jessica]

I just want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed everyone's comments on this book. honestly I hated it haha but reading everyone's comments have me a little more perspective. My main issue was it just wasn't believable to me. Seriously? You go back in time and find aliens? it wasn't the worst though and I was at least able to finish it. good characters and writing, I just couldn't get past the ridiculousness of combining time travel with aliens.

[DivaDiane]

Oh wow. My son is really into this show called Ancient Aliens that we’re watching on weekday evenings because it’s ostensibly a documentary. It’s kind of tedi Ilona but there are so many people out there grasping at straws and drawing all kinds of inferences and what not about aliens who came to earth even 10s of thousands of years ago and taught us all sorts of things. I kind of things May might have read a bit about that and then ran from there.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Diane wrote: "Oh wow. My son is really into this show called Ancient Aliens that we’re watching on weekday evenings because it’s ostensibly a documentary. It’s kind of tedi Ilona but there are so many people out..."

I'd haha except that people truly believe this which is horrifying.

[AndrewP]

I just finished re-reading the next book The Golden Torc and some of the things that don't make a lot of sense in the first book are really just foreshadowing of later events.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

"The fact that you, a human scientist, have been even partially successful where so many others have failed is surely one more confirmation of the unique abilities of the Children of Earth."

If this isn't a warning sign... Human exceptionalism is rarely enjoyable to read.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I eagerly await your later impressions, Ryan!