Books
Xenocide: A Severely Underrated Sequel
It’s hard to believe OSC was even able to write this book from its sheer enormity
Xenocide, in its complete form, is about 600 pages long — including Children Of The Mind, originally its second half, it breaks the 900-page mark. With such a hefty page count, a self-admission from the author that this is an extremely talkative and philosophical novel and, at least, a dozen featured characters with relations to each other. It would be fair to assume that Xenocide is crushed under the weight of itself, and that I wouldn’t have anything positive to say about the book.
Not so!
Xenocide is one of my favorite books ever, far surpassing the quality of its predecessors Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. I personally also think that this book is one of the few books which genuinely deserve to be recommended for reading in schools everywhere — high regard from me, considering that I have a hatred for anything that’s required reading in the American English curriculum. I’ve almost always thought the books that I was forced to read were boring, devoid of any actual message and, overall, not fit to be forced upon millions of kids; only a few rare exceptions were worthwhile, in my opinion.
I think Xenocide is one of these books, and I hope that by the end of this, you’ll be convinced too. Keep in mind that I will go into plot details of Xenocide, so look out for that.
Moral War
The buggers, pequeninos, and Jane all pose their own version of the centuries-old debate regarding what should be done by humanity against any extraterrestrial sapients they may meet.
The buggers pose the most obvious version of this question and, by far, the most controversial: should humanity kill aliens in a war?
The pequeninos pose the equally important but less discussed: should humanity imprison a species that is as intelligent but less advanced than them?
And, finally, Jane poses a question that seems at first to be almost entirely unrelated: what is life?
While this may seem an unimportant question at first glance, this question is by far the most important one in the moral wars of extraterrestrial encounters; since defining Life defines what humans would even be threatened by — and thus, what they would kill versus what they would not.
All of these questions are resolved in Xenocide and its sister novel Children Of The Mind, in their own unique and genuinely real way: Buggers are exterminated (and then later revived). The pequeninos are destroyed as they are believed to be a threat because of the quirks of their own species, and Jane is destroyed because they believe her to be an ultimately evil AI.
Now, while this may sound misanthropic when written, in the book, these decisions have genuine soul behind them. People dedicate their lives and effort towards trying to answer this and then enact their answer, such as Han Qing-jao's story — one that ends in the most bittersweet resolution that I have ever read within a fiction novel: her giving up her family, friends, and ultimately life for the sake of her mental-illness-induced beliefs, ending it with hundreds of thousands of followers and dozens of disciples.
The way that people so fervently believe in their version of the many answers to the question makes the books feel as though they were written with an insight into the modern age, where radicalization of almost every thinking person is a big part of dystopian fiction; however, the fact of this books being closer to the terrorist panic and the literature of it makes me feel like this book could have only been written with some sort of divine knowledge. In fact, the book’s genius only begins at this, and the book’s actual plot has some of the most uncomfortable yet insightful sci-fi I’ve ever read
Disturbingly Bright
The book continues the plot threads from Speaker for the Dead with the grown-up children of Novinha, but it also introduces a new plot thread from one of Orson Scott Card’s books: The Divine World of Path. This world is… disturbing in a way that only a brilliant dystopia could be, and anyone who’s read Xenocide will almost certainly, wholeheartedly agree with me.
In the book, The Divine World of Path is an experiment authorized by Starways Congress to test a certain strand of modified Obsessive Compulsive Disorder DNA, which gives OCD to the bearer, with the consolation being that people with this DNA strand are much more intelligent and creative than the average person.
The Divine World of Path, over time, develops its own sort of branch of ancient Chinese religion — they believe that the gods speak to a certain few of their population (the God-Spoken are the people with the OCD trait), and they worship these people, who are the highest echelon of their society. The stories of Si Wang-mu and Han-Qing jao interlock to show the overall damage the societal structure does to all of its members.
I want to highlight a particular part of Xenocide — the condemnation of Jane by Han-Qing jao. The… horror of Path is shown off by the way that Han-Qing jao becomes entirely consumed by the OCD traits in her to the point that all her life is dedicated to her release of these traits, always under the belief that it is the gods at the end of the day. She believes that the OCD trait was brought by the gods and that every single event which contrasts this belief — like the private exposal of Starways Congress to her by Jane, the OCD gene’s genetic data being shown to her, and even the change of heart of her much holier father.
Throughout all this, Han-Qing jao doesn’t once falter in her beliefs and, in the end, of Xenocide, the permanent bend in her body after constantly tracing the patterns in the wood floor and the idolization of her suffering from the hands — not even solely from the OCD — but also from her own will towards it: it’s simply incredibly well executed. At the very end, her seemingly ascending to the mental levels of the gods is simultaneously cynical and a joyous completion of a well-lived life — both tones are easily applied. It’s also equally easy to say both are valid.
It feels exactly like someone’s real life played across the pages, even if the synopsis feels as though it would feel artificial. Her upbringing into the world being entirely focused on the “gods” and everything being merely a connection to the gods and their faith simply… feels real.
Ultimately, Xenocide can work as a commentary on propaganda, on the benefits of perseverance, on the nature of human will, and a simple, profound, moral, and philosophical quandary that has no right to be so unnoticed compared to Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead’s much more recognized status — and it is no exaggeration to me to say that Xenocide is easily the best novel I’ve ever read, and it borders on being an experience in its extremely well-acted and recorded audio form.
