English language
Published 2024 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.
The story of carceral and academic institutionalized power set on a generation starship with a centuries-old caste system, written in the vein of Rivers Solomon and Ursula K. Le Guin.
One is a River
Everyone is a Sea
The boy was raised among the Chained, shackled to an ever-rotating stream of work gangs, and condemned to toil in the Hold of a ship out amongst the stars for eternity.
His whole world changes—literally—when he is taken out of the Hold and brought upstairs to one of the ship’s professors. The boy has been granted a scholarship, she says. He is no longer one of the Chained, and he is to receive an education. The woman—herself one generation removed from those imprisoned in the Hold—is dedicated to ensuring he succeeds, all while fighting for her own advancement.
But as the boy and the woman grow closer and learn from each other …
The story of carceral and academic institutionalized power set on a generation starship with a centuries-old caste system, written in the vein of Rivers Solomon and Ursula K. Le Guin.
One is a River
Everyone is a Sea
The boy was raised among the Chained, shackled to an ever-rotating stream of work gangs, and condemned to toil in the Hold of a ship out amongst the stars for eternity.
His whole world changes—literally—when he is taken out of the Hold and brought upstairs to one of the ship’s professors. The boy has been granted a scholarship, she says. He is no longer one of the Chained, and he is to receive an education. The woman—herself one generation removed from those imprisoned in the Hold—is dedicated to ensuring he succeeds, all while fighting for her own advancement.
But as the boy and the woman grow closer and learn from each other the physical and mental reality the other inhabits, together they embark on a journey to grasp the shape of the many chains that are both the tools of subjugation and the key to breaking free.
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain is a deeply dark yet eventually hopeful look at the continuation of current societal structures into space.
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain is a lyrical science fiction parable whose strength is in the development of its titular metaphors through its characters and worldbuilding.
The book follows an unnamed boy released from physical labor in the hold of a starship into the care of a woman professor, as part of an uplift university program. We get to see her world through his eyes, as he copes with unwanted changes to his life and as she learns to trust him. It turns out that she too her own set of different chains.
There's a lot of details I really enjoyed: names as a class distinguisher, interrogation of university politics, some horrifying about-face character and worldbuilding reveals, and also just the strength of the chain metaphor to show that what binds us also connects us.
