Worldcon 2022

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I am back home following Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon. This was my first ever Worldcon; I’ve been wanting to attend one since I was a teenager, so fifty years, maybe?

I had a blast. The con was great. The hotel, the Hyatt Regency Chicago is mammoth, but appealing. I volunteered to sit on panels, thinking that since this was a Worldcon, I should consider myself lucky to get on one. They assigned me to four! I’m going to guess that someone on the Program Committee listens to The History of the Twentieth Century.

Not only did I get four panels, but I was assigned to moderate two of them. I quickly learned this is because it is a job no one else wants. I even moderated my very first panel, so no pressure! I’ve been on many panels and moderated many times at other cons, but this felt as if I went from performing in a touring company to opening on Broadway. Everything went well, though. My co-panelists were without exception polite and kind and had interesting things to say.

I was especially excited to share a panel with Victor Manibo, whose first novel, Sleepless, has just come out. I had already heard good things about the book and its author; I’d bought it, but haven’t had a chance to finish it yet. Imagine my surprise when he turned up at my left elbow at my first panel!

SFWA did not have a suite at this con, but did have a get-together for drinks at the hotel bar (which claims to be the longest bar in North America). I got to spend time with a bunch of cool writers, including John Stith and Joe and Gay Haldeman.

So a good experience all around. The best part: I remain Covid-free. The con reports 60 known cases out of about 3,500 attending, so that’s not too bad. Everyone was good about masking and distancing.

You know, I think I’m going to do this again.

On Mercedes Lackey and the 2022 Nebula Conference

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I was attending the SFWA virtual Nebula Conference this past weekend, and like many atendees was startled by Sunday afternoon’s announcement that Mercedes Lackey, the writer who had been named a Damon Knight Grand Master just the previous evening, had been removed from the Conference for using a racial slur while participating in a panel discussion on Saturday.

This got me thinking.

To begin with, I should note that Mercedes Lackey is 71 years old. I’m 64, just seven years younger than she. My initial “gut” reaction was that this was harsh. I can remember a day when the word she used was commonly heard, especially from the lips of older people, and am inclined to judge older people more generously. It really is hard to change when you get older!

But on further reflection, I realized that it’s been half a century since this term was common. Fifty years ago, I was a teenager and the people using it were in their sixties. Now I am in my sixties, but still unconsciously conflating people older than me, like Mercedes—who, I reiterate, is only seven years older than I am—with people who were in their sixties fifty years ago, that is to say, people who were born around 1910 and would be more than 110 years old if they were alive today, which they are not.

The television show All in the Family premiered in 1971, and on that show, Archie Bunker regularly used the same term Mercedes Lackey used. But even in 1971, his use of that term was intended to convey his insensitivity, and even within the confines of the show, African-American characters complained about it. Please note that when All in the Family premiered, Mercedes Lackey was 21 years old. I was 14.

So there really is no excuse for using in 2022 a word that was considered insensitive even in 1971. Moreover, the fact that one would blurt out such a word in a public forum is strongly suggestive that one uses the word privately with some frequency. I have never in my life used that word in that way, not even among my closest friends and family, and thus have never had the slightest difficulty avoiding it in more public venues.

Okay, but isn’t SFWA spoiling the occasion for Mercedes Lackey during what is supposed to be one of the high points of her career? Maybe, but then Mercedes Lackey spoiled the occasion for a number of Nebula Conference attendees, notably the African-American writer who shared the panel with her.

I have a confession to make: I watched that panel and the epithet in question went right by me. I didn’t even notice it. Of course, that’s because I am not one of the people who is hurt by that particular word. It’s much easier to be generous about this kind of thing when you aren’t personally affected by it.

Also, the very same circumstances that might make you inclined to give Mercedes Lackey a pass—that she’s an older writer with a distinguished career, that this was, in some sense, “her” special event and the rest of us are celebrating her—these are always the reasons given to let a slight go unaddressed.

It is the most powerful people, the most respected people, the elders among us, who are the most likely to get a free pass. But is that really fair? Surely the most powerful, the most respected, the elder leaders, also bear greater responsibility to lead us all in a better direction. To whom much is given, much is required, to coin a phrase.

We’ve tried for fifty years to rely on gentle persuasion to get people to become more sensitive, and you see how far that’s gotten us. Maybe The Mallet of Loving Correction (to coin another phrase) is more effective. And maybe demonstrating that even those who are bigger than we are have to answer for their use of language helps drive the point home.

That’s why I support the decision of the SWFA Board of Directors.

Thoughts on the Ukraine War

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I am not Ukranian. I am Pennsylvania Dutch on my father’s side; in other words, my father was descended from immigrants who came from the Rhine region of western Germany and settled in Pennsylvania in colonial times. My mother’s parents were Polish immigrants, but for a variety of reasons, I don’t normally think of myself as Polish-American, but lean into the Pennsylvania Dutch part of my heritage.

So no one is more surprised than I am that the unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine a month ago is stirring up in me Polish passions I didn’t even realize I had. The Polish people have a long and unhappy history of getting pushed around by Russians, and the resentments run deep among those of us with Polish heritage—even if we don’t normally think of ourselves as Polish. Watching fellow Slavs get steamrollered by the Russians is all that it takes to reawaken those resentments. Folks in Poland are freaking out right about now, and I have no difficulty understanding why.

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, made a catastrophically bad decision in attacking Ukraine. Until now, he’s seemed pretty clever. Russia has been punching above its weight for the past decade in international affairs, because Putin has shrewdly played to Russian strengths. Russian intelligence officials have traditionally been masters of propaganda and disinformation, going back to Imperial times. (The anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an Imperial Russian disinformation operation that is still taken seriously, at least by the profoundly ignorant, more than a century after it was created.)

Putin’s government expertly melded traditional Russian disinformation operations with modern internet communication to create huge disruptions among Russia’s competitors. Brexit was almost certainly a Russian disinformation campaign that thoroughly kneecapped the United Kingdom. The UK is no longer even a second-tier power, and it will take it decades to claw its way back into international relevance, if indeed that is even possible anymore. That it was done in the name of making Britain stronger is just the cherry on top of Vladimir Putin’s sundae.

Similarly, Russian disinformation put a Russian intelligence asset into the Oval Office, with disastrous consequences for the United States, and the Russians have a better than 50/50 shot of doing it again.

A couple of years ago, Vladimir Putin must have been laughing at the leadership of the old Soviet Union. They believed that in order to keep the US at bay, they had to spend enormous sums on missiles, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and large armored formations stationed in East Germany, when he proved that for a fraction of the cost, you can set the Americans against each other so completely that they have no resources left over to oppose foreign threats.

But something happened last year. We can only guess what it was. I’ve heard that Putin’s health is deteriorating, and maybe crushing Ukraine was something on his bucket list that he felt he needed to check off before he departs for that Kremlin in the sky.

Whatever changed his thinking, it tempted him into making an egregious error. He shifted the field of battle from disinformation, where he held a huge advantage, to military confrontation, where he did not. Maybe he thought he did, but history also teaches us that the Russian military has frequently looked more fearsome on paper than it proved to be in actual conflict. Putin ignored that history, and now he (and his country) are paying the price.

You’d think a master of disinformation would understand that revealing too quickly what it is you really want will weaken your position. Yet here we are.

Putin’s public position seems to be that Ukrainians are not in fact a distinct ethnic group, but are in reality just Russians, and that the creation of a Ukrainian national identity is merely a Western plot to weaken Russia. That works great as a piece of disinformation, but what we’re seeing now is an object lesson in the dangers of falling for your own propaganda.

The reality is that there are some fifty million people worldwide who identify as Ukrainian, and they’re the only ones who get to have a vote on the matter. While it might be possible to gently persuade Ukrainians that their culture, their values, and their national interests are closely aligned with those of Russians, productive techniques for gentle persuasion do not include shelling residential neighborhoods in Ukrainian cities, or turning tens of millions of Ukrainians into refugees.

Far from tightening the bonds between Ukrainians and Russians, this war has driven a wedge between these two peoples, dividing them more deeply than ever. Take the word of this not-very-Polish Pole: the young Ukrainian children of today, made refugees and orphans by Putin’s war, will be lecturing their grandchildren in 2092 about the terrible things Russians did to Ukrainians. The bitterness and resentment created by this Russian invasion will became a part of the Ukrainian identity. They will also insure that Ukrainians will see Russians not as useful and culturally similar allies, but as a ruthless and untrustworthy foe, requiring Ukraine to look to nations more distant—geographically and culturally—for its protection.

Russia will certainly lose this war. Alas, what remains unclear is how much more suffering the Ukrainian people must bear before this truth sinks in at the Kremlin.

Juneteenth

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Today, as I write this, is the first federally-recognized Juneteenth holiday in the United States.

True, I really don’t know very much about African-American culture generally or this holiday specifically, so this is all new to me. But that’s fine. I’m 63 years old, but I still love new things. May that never change.

My family and I are not Chinese, but we eat Chinese dumplings on Chinese New Year. We are not Jewish, but we make it a point to eat latkes on Rosh Hashanah. We are not Mexican, but we eat fajitas on Cinco de Mayo. We’ll figure out Juneteenth soon enough. I mean, it’s a new holiday. What’s not to like? Who could possibly object?

Oh, right. The usual gang of naysayers, nitpickers, wet blankets, and party poopers. The people who are only happy when everyone else is miserable, and vice versa.

I’m going to put on my Historian Hat and point out that if one of those holidays is “based on race,” it’s July Fourth, and the people responsible for making it a race holiday were the Founders. It’s called “Independence Day,” but a more honest name would be “Independence for White People Day,” thanks to those who fought for the proposition that “all men are created equal” with their fingers crossed behind their backs.

And so we had to have a whole Second Revolution to include everyone. And Juneteenth is the holiday for everyone.

Chadwick Boseman and Black Panther

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The loss of Chadwick Boseman shocks me, as I’m sure it does you. First of all, 43 is too young to die. I’m old enough to have been his father, and my heart goes out to his family and those who loved him, who now must cope with their loss.

Like many people, I first became aware of Chadwick Boseman upon the release of Captain America: Civil War in 2016 and his subsequent solo film Black Panther in 2018.

I grew up a stone science fiction fan. The SF and fantasy I consumed in my youth was overwhelmingly white. It was written by white (male) writers for white (male) audiences, and usually assumed a future controlled and directed by white men. I never even noticed. I accepted it, unthinkingly, as the way of the world.

I recall that time now, and I am saddened to think of my Black peers who may not have been able to get into SF the way I did and have their minds and perspectives stretched the way mine were, because they were ground down by the weariness of constantly having to pretend to be white as the price of admission into those imaginative realms.

This is not to say that a reader (or filmgoer or TV viewer) can’t identify with a character of a different race. Of course we can, and we all do. But being asked to set aside one’s own identity, over and over again, in order to adopt the same other identity, over and over again, must wear down even the most committed fan, after a while.

No one should be asked to do such a thing all the time. But everyone should do it some of the time. White audiences are not well served either, when they are constantly offered up only comforting reflections of themselves, even in their fantasies, and never challenged to imagine something (or someone) different. This is why we need diversity in our stories and entertainments.

And this is what made Black Panther so groundbreaking. For white people like me, it gave us Black role models to look up to, Black fantasy figures who were wiser, nobler, and more generous than we were. We were left with a powerful and unfamiliar mix of emotions. For many of us, it was a first-time experience and a breath of fresh air. And it wasn’t even our movie.

A whole other rush of emotions then came over us as we watched the reactions of our Black neighbors. I still remember all those smiling faces, Wakanda salutes, and people lining up to take selfies in front of cardboard cutouts of the film’s characters in the movie theater lobbies. You would have to have a heart of stone to see such overflowing joy and not feel moved.

Black Panther was embraced by African Americans, and while they surely played a large role in its success, I am certain it was not Black audiences and Black ticket sales alone that made it the highest-grossing solo superhero film of all time.

It was Ryan Coogler’s vision and a spectacular cast that made Black Panther work so well, but at the center of it all stands the performance of Chadwick Boseman. The dignity and gravity of his performance as T’Challa (along with Michael B. Jordan’s as Killmonger) is the foundation that supports the film and turns a fantasy into a statement.

And now we all feel a whole new rush of emotion upon learning that Chadwick Boseman did all this while privately, secretly, battling stage IV colon cancer. What a generous gift he gave us all, at a time when anyone would have forgiven him for focusing on his own well being.

Rest in power, Chadwick Boseman. We will not forget.

You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

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How to Be Remy Cameron
by Julian Winters,
2019.

I have a confession to make: I totally bought this book because of its cover.

Everyone says not to do that. But folk wisdom isn’t always right. The truth is, a smart publishing house understands that people do buy books by their covers, and that the book better deliver what the cover promises, or else they’re going to have unhappy customers. So a smart publishing house hires talented artists and designers to create a cover that captures the themes and the mood of the book inside.

How can your heart not go out to the kid on the cover of this book, plastered as he is with sticky notes that read ADOPTED, BLACK, and GAY? The whole thing has him knocked sideways, like a bottle of wine. He stares at the reader in bewilderment.

The note BEAGLE on his dog is the crowning touch.

So I bought the book. And now I am here to recommend Remy Cameron to you all. And to affirm that the cover really nails it.

Rembrandt “Remy” Cameron is a clever, handsome, and popular high school student, though he is only dimly aware that he is any of those things. He is also Black, adopted by a white suburban family whom he loves deeply, attending an overwhelmingly white school. He is also gay, and more than that, the first student of his school ever to come out publicly. Others followed, and now he is president of the school Gay-Straight Alliance. As the novel opens, Remy is just coming off a painful breakup with his first boyfriend, a soccer player named Dimi. Now the rest of the soccer team refers to him as “Dimi’s ex-girlfriend.” Ouch.

The folk wisdom that “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is not just shopping advice for book readers. It’s also a metaphor, warning us not to judge our fellow human beings by their superficial traits. Remy Cameron confronts this metaphor head on when his English teacher assigns him a self-description essay and his seemingly comfortable life (the breakup with Dimi notwithstanding) goes right off the rails as Remy experiences the mother of all identity crises.

“Who am I?” is the most important question in an adolescent’s life, but because Remy is so distinctive in so many ways, he feels lost in the very traits that make him stand out. He’s famous at school for being out and proud, but surely there’s more to him than being gay. He’s one of a handful of students of color, but surely there’s more to him than his race. Only, what?

Remy goes out with his seven-year-old sister and gets mistaken for her babysitter because they’re different races, triggering all his adoptive child insecurities that he’ll never really be a Cameron. He studies the arsenal of pastels and neons in his closet and wonders if it’s possible to be too gay. He ponders his taste in indie rock and thinks maybe he’s not Black enough. The less said about Dimi the better, but at least Remy knows one thing: amid all this turmoil in his life, he has no emotional room for another relationship. Then he meets Ian.

A character study like this rises or falls on the strength of the character, so I’m pleased to report that Julian Winters has drawn a powerful character beset by powerful doubts—daunting, yet familiar to us all. The challenge is great, but Remy Cameron rises to it. So does Julian Winters. Pick up this book and, like Remy Cameron, prepare to fall in love, whether you think you’re ready for it or not.

 

Remembering Anderson & Co.

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I wonder how many people can remember what they were doing on May 12, 1969, nearly 51 years ago now. It was a Monday, and the big news story that day was that our new President, Richard Nixon, was pressing Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to resign from the court. (Fortas did, which gave Nixon the opportunity to appoint his successor.)

That night, at 8:00 PM on NBC-TV there aired a half-hour program called Anderson & Co. This was the season when summer replacement shows began (that was a thing back then), and young me assumed I was watching the first of a summer series, possibly something that would continue if it were popular enough. Alas, though I quite liked the show, this was the one and only airing of a failed TV pilot, and I would never get another chance to watch even this one episode, let alone more. But the fact that I still have fond memories of it fifty years later speaks well of the show, and I’m sorry it never got any farther along into production.

The show was set in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, and when it began I thought at first I was watching a TV adaptation of Life With Father. Even at the age of 11, I was already familiar with Clarence Day, though not familiar enough to know that Life With Father had already been adapted into a TV series before I was born (in 1953.)

Still, the creators of the show obviously were also familiar with Clarence Day and were cribbing from him. Anderson and Co. was about the owner of a fictional New York department store of the same name, Marshall Anderson, played by Fred Gwynne, previously the star of The Munsters, and before that, Car 54, Where Are You? Marshall Anderson had a wife, Augusta, and eight children, each of which had a name beginning with the letter A. And the joke here is that the large and boisterous Anderson family is a whole other Anderson & Co. It was meant to be a situation comedy, but if the tone of the pilot was any indication, it was going for quiet character humor, not slapstick and hijinks.

As far as I can remember, the plot of the pilot episode went like this: Augusta is out with her brood of children one day and finds she’s missing some trifle, so she makes an unplanned visit to her husband’s store, children in tow, but one of the children knocks something over, causing a commotion and drawing Mr. Anderson out of his office. He chews Augusta out publicly for not managing the children properly, and she leaves in a huff. Still lacking her trifle, she decides to take the children to the store of her husband’s arch-rival. It’s a Macy’s and Gimbel’s thing. I don’t remember the name of the competing store, so I’ll just call it “Smith’s.”

Anyway, she and the children are shopping in Smith’s, when this catches the eye of a newspaper photographer, who snaps a picture, which appears on the front page the following morning. “Hey, look! Mrs. Gimbel shops at Macy’s.” That kind of thing. Mr. Anderson has to pretend publicly not to mind, though privately he is furious with his wife. The story resolves very neatly when a few days later, a similar photo appears in the same paper, headlined “Mrs. Smith Returns the Favor.” It seems the Smiths were good sports, or else decided this was a great publicity gimmick, and sent Mrs. Smith and a photographer to recreate the earlier picture in reverse at Anderson & Co. Problem solved.

Anderson & Co. was created by Jean Holloway, a TV writer with a long career, most recently as a staff writer for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Gene Reynolds produced the show and directed the pilot. He would go on to great success as a producer for M*A*S*H. Child actor Teddy Eccles played one of the Anderson children, and would play the lead in the feature film adaptation of My Side of the Mountain, which was released just six weeks later. Eleven-year-old me was very jealous of Teddy Eccles, I can tell you that.

I regret that Anderson & Co. never got any farther. It might have turned out to be very successful. It had the right ingredients, and with Gene Reynolds at the helm with his trademark sly and bittersweet humor, who knows where it might have led? It seems strange to lament the failure of a half-hour sitcom pilot fifty years later. But this is what it’s like when you get old. You collect memories, like kids collect bugs or bottlecaps. Here’s an item from my collection I’m particularly fond of.

What’s Up, Danger?

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Why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Is the Most Important Superhero Movie Ever.

Superhero stories are important as a metaphor. To discover what our strengths and gifts are, to learn how to use them, and then to apply these skills to make the world a better place—this is the life’s work of every one of us.

This is also the reason why, for me, the most memorable moments in superhero films are the moments when the superhero inspires ordinary people to heroism. Think Superman II, when the people of Metropolis believe General Zod has killed Superman and they pick up pieces of debris and attack him themselves. Think Spider-Man (2002), when pedestrians start throwing things at the Green Goblin and one of them calls out, “You mess with Spider-Man, you mess with New York!” Think Wonder Woman, when she’s in the trenches and demanding that they do something to save a village. Everyone else tells her not to go over the top, that it’s too dangerous, that she’ll be killed. But she does it anyway. And they follow her!

Yes, Diana is a virtually indestructible demigod. But the soldiers behind her aren’t. They follow her anyway.

I could write multiple blog posts about all the things Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does well, but what really makes it stand out is that it is the first superhero movie to center this idea of the superhero as an inspirational figure. Miles Morales is a 13-year old African-American Puerto Rican in Brooklyn. He is a bright and likeable kid, saddled with typical 13-year old problems: stress at school, a difficult relationship with his father, awkwardness around girls. He also has a Superman poster in his bedroom.

We learn exactly how Miles sees himself early in the film, when he paints a graffiti mural: a colorful rendition of the word “expectations” with a silhouette of himself in the middle. “I get exactly what you’re doing,” his uncle says. Outside, Miles is surrounded by expectations. Inside is shadow. A black box. Not even Miles knows what’s there.

A moment later, Miles is bitten by a radioactive spider. You know the drill. He develops superhuman abilities, but must learn to master them, a great metaphor for puberty, which the film makes explicit. And he makes a fateful promise. For Miles, a promise is a sacred duty. But he doesn’t know how to fulfill it. He studies Spider-Man comic books for tips, then meets other spider-heroes, learns from them, masters his powers, and earns the title “Spider-Man.” Delightfully, the film announces this by putting a Miles Morales Spider-Man comic book on screen.

Miles does not blindly imitate the ways of the other spider-heroes. When he comes into his own, we see the influences of the others, but his moves are his own, just as his Spider-Man outfit is his own. “Don’t do it like me; do it like you,” Peter Parker advises him. (The line was in the trailer, but was cut from the film. No matter. The point is clear.)

By the end of the film, we have come full circle, as Miles demonstrates his newfound mastery of his spider-skills to a street full of grateful New Yorkers. The boy who once looked up to superheroes is now himself an inspiration. Perhaps the message is that becoming the best you can be is important not only for your personal fulfillment, but as an encouragement to those around you. Or, as Miles puts it at the end of his story, “I never thought I’d be able to do any of this stuff. But I can. Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before, I hope you do now.”

That is the very best reason to make a superhero film. And the very best reason to go see one.

Cathedrals and Democracies

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So this happened.

The fire at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris is a shocking moment. For those of us who love history, it is a disaster. As I write this, the fire is believed to be a tragic accident related to restoration work being done on the building. (Note the scaffolding in the photograph.)

The fact that an 800-year old building, so important to so many people, can be accidentally gutted in a heartbeat is horrifying to contemplate. Notre-Dame is so old, our lives are as flashes of lightning in a storm by comparison. We naturally assume the cathedral will endure long after we are dust. It seems so solid and mighty, a tangible symbol of French religious devotion. Some might have claimed it was protected by God.

But the reason Notre-Dame endured for eight centuries has less to do with the workmanship of the stonecutters or the faith of the French people than most imagine. Notre-Dame endured for the simple reason that forty generations of French believed it to be important. Whatever else was going on in the life of the nation, enough French people cared to ensure Notre-Dame was preserved. It took forty generations of care to preserve the cathedral; it only took a momentary lapse to lose it.

Americans take pride in their democracy and in their Constitution. We like to believe our Constitution endures because of the genius of our Founders, and that democracy, freedom, and equality are rooted so deeply in American culture that an America without them is unthinkable. Some might claim it is protected by God.

We are wrong. As with Notre-Dame, our democratic institutions endured not because of the workmanship of the Founders or the values of the American people. They endured for the simple reason that eleven generations of Americans believed them to be important. Whatever else was going on in the life of the nation, enough Americans cared about our democracy to preserve it.

But don’t be fooled by the seeming strength of the edifice. Eleven generations of preservation can be undone in a momentary lapse. If you seek proof, you need look no farther than Notre-Dame.

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

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Powers
by Ursula K. Le Guin,
2007.

Powers was awarded the 2008 Nebula for Best Novel by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, so once again, I am late to the party. Sadly, the author passed away in January of this year. But if you’ve ever wondered if she deserves her reputation, just read Powers and that should settle the matter once and for all.

Powers is billed as the third book in the Annals of the Western Shore, but don’t let that put you off. Apart from being set in the same invented world and with a light crossover of characters, the books are independent stories and can be read in any order.

Gavir is an eleven-year old slave boy at the beginning of the story. He is one of the Marsh People, which means he is darker skinned than the other people in his life, apart from his older sister, Sallo. Sallo and Gavir were taken when they were small children, too small to have any memory of their former lives. Now they are slaves in the household of a wealthy family in the city-state of Etra. Gavir is content with his life. He is not a farm slave, laboring in the fields, but a house slave, living in comfort with an enlightened master and his family. In this house, slaves are not beaten or tortured. Slave children play with and are educated alongside the children of the Family. Gavir himself is a promising little scholar, who is being groomed to take over the job of teacher to the household once the slave who currently holds that post grows too old to carry on.

Gavir also has powers, hence the title, powers he barely understands himself. The first is that he has occasional visions, brief glimpses of the future. Gavir calls this “remembering,” in the sense of remembering things that have not yet taken place, though Gavir spends most of the story puzzling over what use this power might have, if any.

The invented world in which the story takes place and Gavir’s visions are the only real fantasy elements in this novel, which otherwise could be taken as an historical tale set in the ancient Mediterranean world. Oh, but wait! Gavir has one other power: a photographic memory, although the book never describes it in those words. It’s a phenomenon we are familiar with in our time, but surely would seem magical to those living in a less advanced culture, and indeed it does to Gavir and the people who know him.

The novel follows Gavir for the next six years of his life, until he’s seventeen. His world seems cozy and secure at first, with his future as a teacher in the household of a kindly master an inviting one. But, alas for Gavir, it is not to be. First, a terrible injustice turns Gavir’s world upside down and compels him to flee his master and Etra, and wander the Western Shore in constant danger. For the relationship between master and slave, as Gavir comes to understand, is based not only on power, but also on trust. A slave must be able to trust the master, and if the master betrays the slave, well, even a slave is capable of betrayal in return.

Gavir’s wanderings take him deep into a forest, where he discovers the legends he has heard are true: hidden deep in the wood is a community of escaped slaves, who live in freedom, as equals. Gavir is welcomed among them. He can recite from memory many of the long poems and tales of old for this band of largely illiterate and isolated ex-slaves, which soon makes him a valued and respected member of the community. But in time, there is another injustice, and Gavir must flee again. He makes his way to the marshes, where he reconnects with his clan and his family among the Marsh People. But the Marsh People are an isolated folk with a very different culture. Gavir finds they do not understand him and he cannot understand them. “The slave takers did not only take me from my people,” he muses. “They took my people from me.”

During his stay with the Marsh People, a vision tells him that his former owners do not believe he is dead, as he had hoped, but in fact a slave catcher is tracking him. Gavir now must leave his people, in the hope he can find a place for himself in this world, before the slave catcher has his vengeance. Perhaps Gavir might even at last find a use for his powers.

You expect elegantly crafted prose from Le Guin, and she does not disappoint here. Powers is largely a character study, as we watch Gavir grow from a naive, hopeful tween forced to become a man all too soon in reaction to the harsh world he lives in. And, led along by Le Guin’s sure hand, we grow right along with him. I had the misfortune of reading the climax of Gavir’s story late at night and found myself forced to keep reading into the small hours of the morning as my heart pounded in fear for Gavir as the slave catcher closes in, and ended the story the same way Gavir did—with tears in my eyes.

Powers is a young adult novel in every sense. It is literally the story of growing up. We can all, like Gavir, recall our sojourn from naive child to disillusioned young adult, wondering all the while what place, if any, this disappointing world holds for us, and so readers of any age can find in him some of our own formative experiences. Gavir’s world is a difficult world, but a textured one. There are no black knights, or white ones, just people making their way through tough circumstances, some more admirably than others. This is a long book, for Gavir has a long journey, but that merely means he has well earned his tears of joy on the final page. Journey by his side, and you will earn yours along with him.