“Outlaw Planet” Full Discussion “Spoilers Allowed”

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

A few questions to get us started:


1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

[CBRetriever]

1. world gradually made sense
2 characters made sense from the beginning
3. the first time I ran across the second story line, I thought the publishers had made a mistake, but it gradually made sense
4. I liked it and like many Andre Norton books, the somewhat open ending made sense as you could imagine the future.

[Nicol]

I also found the first unit report jarring but then looked forward to it at the end of each part. I thought it was really well done. I went back and forth about perhaps waiting and reading the Pandominion duology first since it takes place in that world. Ultimately, I didn’t because the wait at the library was too long. Once those books come in, I plan on rereading this one. I enjoyed it that much.
I will say it took a minute for me to get into the story at the beginning but once I was in, I couldn’t put it down.

I have not read much sci-fi western, but this is definitely the favorite of what I have read. I think I’ve only ever read Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country and The Blade Itself but couldn’t get into it. Not sure if its Abercrombie or westerns, but now I am thinking its Abercrombie, sorry. I read them both for RATB challenge. Not sure if the bookshelf has any other sci-fi-westerns.

I felt Carey did an excellent job of showing how violence destroys and the cyclical nature of wars (even if mind control was involved lol) without it being trauma porn. Also, when I think how much I disliked last month’s BOTM The Shadow of the Wind for being trauma/misogyny porn; here Carey definitely paints a world steeped in misogyny and racial hierarchies without ever making me think the authors holds those beliefs or that those beliefs are inevitable. It did not interrupt the narrative for me, and it showcased resistance to that world’s belief system. I also didn’t feel like the violent scenes were gratuitous.

I loved Slim, and enjoyed a story where AI isn’t evil. Also liked how all recognized Slim’s autonomy; and Slim kept the shell Bess had inscribed. I also seem to enjoy those stories where technology is magic like Carey’s other series (view spoiler)[ that starts with The Book of Koli (hide spoiler)] and Rosemary Kirstein’s (view spoiler)[ The Steerswoman (hide spoiler)]

I also liked how Bess was a complicated MC, while I understood her thirst for vengeance, I guess I am more of a Martha in real life lol. Even though I disliked her inherent (mind control perhaps?) beliefs about Pugs and her times where she seemed careless, she would always ultimately do the “just” thing. I guess just in my terms of thinking, helping to save Dima and demanding to rescue Ksaia and Jemet.

And finally the big reveal of Esten’s choice. At first, with the tribal names, I wondered if some were the descendants of the original 23 and wasn’t sure how that would work cross species and all. I thought it was heartbreaking. To create a group of people that would live but also for sure suffer for 1100 years to right the original wrong. Luckily I won’t ever be in the position but I wonder if the ends justify the means. I also wonder if there was not another choice? I mean I don’t have one, just wondering if anyone else thought of one.

Wow, that is a lot, sorry for the long post.

[Peter]

The professional review to read is by the reliable Paul Di Filippo:
https://locusmag.com/review/outlaw-pl...
Do note that his review is thorough, but somewhat spoilery. You may want to wait to read it after you’ve read the book.

OK, this is a spoilers-allowed area. But still....

[Nastia]

I finished Outlaw Planet and then couldn't pick up another book for a week. Not because it was so good I needed time to recover, more because it left me unsettled in ways I'm still trying to process.

That's something, I suppose, even if it's not the something I was hoping for.

The most telling sign of the book's problems, for me, was realizing I had far more sympathy for Wakeful Slim, a killing machine, an AI weapon, than for Bess herself. Slim felt more alive, more emotionally present, more humane than the protagonist. Bess (or Dog-Bitch Bess, as she becomes known) struck me as cold and oddly detached, with less empathy toward her own people than the sentient gun she carries. The Pugface girl, too, grated on me throughout, I found her frustrating rather than compelling. When an AI outshines the human characters in warmth and depth, something has gone sideways with the emotional core of the story.

Then there's the world itself. The animal-humanoid setup, sentient, bipedal creatures descended from various Earth mammals was the biggest stumbling block for me, and honestly the main reason I nearly put the book down. I kept getting pulled out of the story, unable to take the world seriously on its own terms. Combined with the Western frontier setting, which I also never warmed to, I spent a lot of the novel fighting the book rather than being carried by it. I pushed through to the end, and I can't say I'm glad I did.

[Becky]

I fall more on Nicol's side of the fence on this one. I really enjoyed the story so much. I didn't know that it was part of a larger set of books, and I might be inclined to read more in this world/multiverse.

The main thing that I feel like I'm left with after finishing this is that people are easily manipulated. In this book, it was the Dream Towers, but it could as easily have been newspapers, or social media, or podcasts, like it is in our world. It really makes me think about the nature of choice. It also makes me think about the nature of power and control, and who has it, and what they do with it. There were multiple layers here - The Pando vs True Imps over and above it all, basically as gods, then the sentient Selves and their power and control over the understock (a parallel to free white people holding power over enslaved and/exploited Black people), and then down to the beasts of burden - in this case katys and chafers, etc.

I do wonder at the level of control that the Towers exerted as well. Was it just a director, handing out roles, positions, calling action, and then the course of the play was improvisational based on the setup, or did it really CONTROL them throughout? It seems like the former to me, and that free will was still retained to some degree - otherwise Bess likely wouldn't have made a lot of the choices she did.

That we never really see the True Imps in this book feels apt - they hold the power to shape worlds, and yet we don't know who they are or what they want (aside from power), and the extremes that they will go to in order to exert it. This aspect reminded me strongly of Stephen King's Under The Dome. In a closed environment, things get dicey, but... who set the dome down? And why? What is their purpose or intent? Is it just entertainment to them? A distraction? Something to keep the masses busy and not questioning anything bigger? All of the above?

At first, I didn't really understand Bess. It was interesting and kind of baffling to me that she could fall in love with a person who so strongly holds the kinds of beliefs that Martha held, and not be swayed by them. But I did understand her pragmatism and desire to just not rock the boat. Then when she sets out on her course of revenge, I could understand that too... Thought not to the extent she went to. If she had just gone after Rondeau, I could understand that, but hurting innocents the same way she was hurt didn't really sit right with me. To that end, I really loved the growth she had, and that by the end, she went out of her way to help others who were subjugated.

I really love Slim's character. My heart broke for him at the end when he simply needed Bess to be with him but she was willing to sacrifice herself for him. It really showed the depth of their relationship that they were willing to each give up everything for the other, but simply wanted the other's companionship in the moment. And I know that it seems silly to say it, but I really do love that it was a platonic relationship that wasn't shoehorned into something more. Just two entities who need each other for their purposes - her a weapon, him a wielder - and the friendship that grew out of that.

I also found Dima to be frustrating at times, but I suppose I kind of understand where she was coming from. She had all of this secret knowledge. It would be like trying to explain to a toddler the theory of relativity, without mentioning physics... or science.

I agree with the jarring aspect of the unit report log. I do wish that had been separated more somehow, but I too really started looking forward to them, and feeling like they were the key to everything. I really liked how the story revealed itself so slowly and indirectly, letting the reader piece it together. Especially compared to the other BOTM, which I felt was so direct and explicit it felt somewhat juvenile to me.

I think this is the 4th Carey book I've read (if you include his books under Mike Carey), and I really have enjoyed most of them. I think I should read more of his books.

[Kaia]

This was a perfect BOTM for me - I never would have picked it up on my own, it was really different, and I enjoyed how everything gradually came together. I actually found the first unit report to be exciting rather than jarring - something new to explain what was going on, different from the a bit overdone (for me) western folksiness, and to take the story in a deeper direction.

@Peter - thanks for sharing that review from Locus Magazine! I didn't realize that this story was based in a universe that Carey had previously written in (this is my first book by him), so I'm extra curious now to read Infinity Gate, which was already on my TBR list.

Like others in this discussion, I also loved the character of Slim. As for Bess, I was interested in her story, but I found her hard to connect with and exasperating at times, especially in the last part when she encounters Dima and the old man. I actually liked Dima, and I could sympathize with her frustration trying to explain things to Bess.

@Becky, I agree with you about Bess's choice to behave like Rondeau's men, except to the other side. I can understand her wanting to get vengeance against Rondeau and his men, but I really did not like her choice to take out that vengeance against innocent people living in villages near the border. Which brings up your question about the level of control the towers had. Maybe that destructive and violent impulse, beyond vengeance against Rondeau, was directed by the towers? I guess I imagined that the towers were doing more nudging and less specific directing, but then again, the fact that the people kept repeating the same war over and over and not having much of any technological growth, suggests that maybe the towers were interfering more directly.

One thing that didn't sit well with me was how closely the repeated conflict mirrored the Civil War era of the United States. To me, this didn't make sense in a society that seems to be so far removed from that time in history on our Earth, with characters who aren't even humans. I wish that the author had created a situation that was new (but still creating a conflict between sides), especially since we spend so much time with Bess and characters who are essentially fighting to keep slavery going. Bess does at one point reflect on her fighting for the side in the war that was fighting to keep slavery, but not for very long. (I also feel like for her, it was mostly about vengeance and not about political sides, but it still felt icky to me.)

I also never really understood the animal-self characters, but maybe they are carried over from the other books set in the Pandominion? I didn't mind them as much as some readers in the no-spoilers thread. I found that I mostly just pictured the characters as humans as I was reading and just disregarded the descriptions of their animal-ness (which was fairly easy, as I don't usually picture characters in my head with any real detail as it is). It was easier for me to picture the insect-like animals they used as horses and draft animals.

On the whole, though, I liked how the author told the story so that you piece it together as you go (and can find clues, like in the names of the crew that was stranded there being the same as the names of the Pugface clans). There was a lot to think about, but it wasn't so complicated as to be hard to understand. I thought the ending was effective, too, giving you enough to see what happened after the towers were turned off, while still leaving some room for questions and the reader's imagination.

[CJ]

There was a lot of promise in this story, but I couldn't shake the feeling that much of it was stuff I'd read/seen before. That it became clearer and clearer as the story went on that it was undergirded by vague Lost Cause romanticism a la Firefly which really left a bad taste in my mouth. I give it 2 1/2 stars, overly generously rounded up.

[Becky]

Oh, I got the exact opposite vibe, CJ. I saw the endless/cyclic civil war as a commentary on society’s tendency to hang on to and repeat historical mistakes. I also saw it as showing how the unseen powerful are actually the ones pulling the strings and setting the masses against each other so that they are too busy fighting amongst themselves to look at them.