Subject: Review: Halfway Human, by Carolyn Ives Gilman (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Rich Horton)
Date: 15 Oct 1998 09:57:20 -0400

Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman
		Review Copyright 1998 by Rich Horton

_Halfway Human_ has already garnered some excited comment.  I've read
several previous Gilman shorts: I liked "The Honeycrafters" a few years
ago, and kind of liked "The Wild Ships of Fairny" and "Frost Paintings" --
the latter from the most recent Dozois _Best of the Year_.  _Halfway
Human_ is her first novel, and I approached it eagerly.

It's pretty darn good.  The "future history" is a rather well worked out
variation of a common idea: sometime long in the story past (our future)
Earth humans have colonized and terraformed many alien planets.  After a
period in which the planets fell out of contact, a subset of them have
rediscovered each other, and have apparently formed a very loose
confederation, including Capella Two, the moon on which the nominal
viewpoint character, Valeri Endrada, lives.  Travel is by matter
transmitters, and is light speed.  The fairly rigorous insistence on light
speed travel and the corresponding simultaneity problems is a good
decision, and is used well in the story.  The tech behind all this is very
much backgrounded.  At the time of the action, none of the unmanned probes
which are trying to rediscover the colony planets have reported back in
some time, except for the one at Gammadis (Gamma Disciplins), which is 51
light years away from Capella Two, and which harbors an odd variety of
humans.  The original mission to Gammadis ended 63 years previously in
disgrace, with the ambassadors thrown off the planet and arriving back on
Cappella 12 years prior to the main action.

All this is window dressing, and it's not bad.  I would quibble, as I
often do about other far future novels, that the inhabitants of Capella
Two, though they are thousands of years in our future, and have matter
transmission, and a goofy sort of information capitalism economy,
basically seem like very standard-issue 20th C. people.  To continue
quibbling, I think Gilman stumbles a bit occasionally with references that
come off a bit anachronistic to me. And she makes some questionable
decisions like calling the planet Gammadis by the Capellan name instead of
the local name.

The strange thing about Gammadis humans is that they are born neuter.  At
puberty, about 1/3 (very roughly, and the ambiguity about the actual
numbers is a point of the novel) stay neuter, and the others turn half
into males and half into females.  There is no way to tell whether a given
child will be male, female, or neuter.  The neuters, also called blands,
are condemned to life in "grayspace," literally underneath and "behind"
the "human" world.  They live lives of slavery, performing the menial
tasks of their society, leaving the "humans" free for the more
intellectual and artistic pursuits.  This is regarded on Gammadis as
natural: neuters are supposed to be stupider, less energetic, and
literally to have no souls.  The whole setup is monstrous, and at the same
time quite clearly analogous in many ways to slavery in the US, and in
many other cultures.  In fact, though the novel seems to be promoted as a
novel about gender roles, it really isn't.  Certainly Gilman makes some
such points, and it's not without value for its exploration of gender, but
the central issue is definitely slavery and not gender.  It seems to me
that many opportunities for a more probing (no pun intended, God help me)
exploration of gender issues are missed, but I should emphasize that
that's not a weakness, just a different focus than one might have
expected.

The action of the story proceeds on two tracks.  It turns out that a bland
escaped from Gammadis when the ambassadors from Capella were expelled.
This bland, Tedla, was to some extent adopted by one of the ambassadors,
and has spent the last 12 years at university.  As the novel opens, Tedla
attempts suicide, and the treating hospital is very puzzled when they see
a neuter human.  The viewpoint character, Val, a struggling "Magister"
(someone who sells knowledge, I think), is called in because she luckily
knows a little bit about Gammadis.  The present-day path follows Val,
Tedla, Val's husband and child, and her mysterious mentor Magister Gossup
as they decide what Tedla is to do with its life: return to Gammadis as
the Gammadians who have just shown up demand?  Be treated and debriefed by
one of the information companies?  Or make its own choices, which under
Gammadian law is literally inconceivable for a bland?  As Val dodges
various attempts to grab Tedla she hears, in very long chapters, Tedla's
story of its life on Gammadis, and we learn slowly the real nature of
Gammadian society.  The ending is a bit forced and hokey, with a rather
contrived "courtroom drama," but the meat of the novel is wonderfully
absorbing, and the central ideas are developed subtly and with the true
SFnal rigor.

The book works because of the believable but horrifying society revealed
on Gammadis, with its uncomfortable parallels with our history and even to
an extent our present.  In addition, the characters of Tedla -- of her
first mentor, the Gammadian Squire Tellegen -- and of her second mentor,
the Capellan Alair Galele, are very well realized.  AltHough, I think
Tedla's abilities sometimes seem to conveniently alter themselves as the
plot requires, though again to be fair much of this is Tedla's own
perception of its abilities, which perception is very much a result of
what others tell it.  To quibble further, the final revelation about Alair
drifts a bit into melodrama.  There are many disturbing scenes, and many
moving scenes.  The portrayal of the bland society, and the secret behind
the Gammadian characteristics, is very well done, and at times has a "Ones
who Walk Away From Omelas" sort of message to it: they have created a
near-Utopia, at one level, and they try so hard to ignore the "screaming
child in the back room," except it's not one child but 1/3 of their
population.  Many of the characteristics of the Gammadian society are very
nicely shown, instead of told, and some important details are very subtly
planted in the background.  Details which seem trivial take on powerful
new meaning later in the novel, after we understand the society better.

As I hinted, I had a few reservations with this book plotwise, but all in
all it's a first-rate read, and very provocative.  In many ways, this is a
pure SF novel, in that its value derives mostly from the ideas it
explores, rather than a particularly exciting plot though the story moves
nicely, or any outstanding "literary" values though it's certainly
well-written, and decently characterized.

%A Carolyn Ives Gilman
%T Halfway Human
%I Avon EOS
%C New York
%D February 1998
%P 472 pp
%G 0-380-79799-2
%O PB, US $5.99

Rich Horton | [email-masked]
"I am an excellent cook, and anyway when I am fifty I will probably
prefer the breakfast to the girl anyway." - W. M. Spackman