WHAT WE ARE SEEKING

A queer doctor finds community when his ship captain maroons him on a desert planet.

John Maraintha grew up on Essius, the only human-colonized planet that doesn’t observe the rites of marriage or monogamy. When his ship captain abruptly sends him and a linguist, Sudharma, to the desert planet Scythia, John is not sure he will ever fit in. Both human cultures present on Scythia, the Ischnurans and the Zandaheans, practice marriage, and the Zandaheans—who are by and large conservative Christians—consider John’s bisexuality sinful. They also find themselves at odds with the Ischnurans, who recognize three sexes: male, female, and jess. The sole jess on Scythia, Iren, quickly becomes John’s confidante, as do Piro and Laura, a Zandahean married couple harboring secrets of their own—including a child who wishes to “take the braid” and become a jess. John struggles to find his niche while Piro, Iren, and Sudharma work together to unravel the language of the Scythian natives, known as basket-men. But when Iren discovers a foul betrayal, John’s mission becomes clear. Reed spins a beautiful tapestry of a story here, holding deep conversations about gender, biology, and linguistics. Scythia, with its dryads—mammals, insects, and reptiles that spawn from plants—seems totally alien, and the human cultures that mix in its deserts seem diverse and believable. Most of the characters have brown skin. Iren is asexual, Sudharma is aromantic, and Laura is a lesbian. Additionally, Sudharma is a devout Jain, Piro and his child are devout Christians, and Laura is a “Denier”—a non-Christian Zandahean.

A smart, tender work of hard science fiction.