Cecily's Reviews > The Book of Strange New Things

Alienation

“We’re the aliens here.”

This book can easily be (mis)taken as generic sci-fi, exploring the impact of colonialism on the existing inhabitants, as well as the newcomers: in the near future, a Christian minister leaves his beloved wife and travels through hyperspace to a human colony on another planet, where his role is to evangelise to alien beings.

That is the medium, but it’s not the message. The message isn’t even the Biblical one that saved Peter from drugs and homelessness, and led him to this mission. There is no message.

This is not a preachy book, even though it’s about a preacher. Rather than a message, it’s an open-minded, open-ended exploration of separation, dislocation, translation, miscommunication, God, faith, truth, addiction, madness, scars, healing (“the technique of Jesus”), loss, and what it means to be human. Alienation, in every sense, of every sense.

It is profound and disturbing without being horrific. It’s a slowly-told story that’s nevertheless a page-turner. Like physics, it focuses on the big (Bea’s situation on Earth) and the small (Peter’s on planet Oasis). Ultimately, there are few answers - is that like physics, too?!

“There was a red button on the wall labelled EMERGENCY, but no button labelled BEWILDERMENT.”

Alienation by Miscommunication

“He opened his mouth to reply, but found the part of his brain where he went to fetch the answers was filled with incomprehensible babble.”

Most of us take language for granted, except when we’re abroad, or if we have an impairment. But there are many ways to be misunderstood. Problems with language of all kinds are at the heart of the alienation pumped through the veins of this book. Although some of the examples seem extreme, they all have implications for ordinary lives on Earth.

Oasans have no identifiable eyes, no readable facial expressions, and no discernible variations of intonation to indicate their mood. Peter can’t tell what gender they are - or even how many genders they have. They look so similar, the only way he can distinguish them is by the unique colour of each one’s garments (hooded robe, soft boots, and gloves) - although eventually, he can recognise some by their voices. Of course, he finds this bewildering, with very little idea of how he’s being received and understood. But on the phone, online, or if talking to a woman in a burqa, we cope without facial expressions and body language.

The Oasans' language “sounded like a field of brittle reeds and rain-sodden lettuces being cleared by a machete”. Some can speak reasonable English, though they all struggle to pronounce ‘T’ and ‘S’ sounds. They are reluctant for Peter to learn their language, let alone translate the Bible into it: “In foreign phrases, exotic power lurked”.

Thus Peter embarks on a Bible paraphrase in English that omits ‘T’ and ‘S’ sounds as much as possible, as well as eliminating things they have no experience of, such as fish, sheep, and money!

But can truth survive through multiple translations and paraphrases, conducted over millennia, through the lenses of different cultures? Peter notes that the Old Testament phrase for “of old” or “long ago” is closer to “from afar”, which is apt for an intergalactic missionary.

Distance, reliance on technology, and consequent time delays, are a huge source of alienation and misunderstanding. Much of the story is epistolary - messages between Peter and Bea - and the gradual, but seemingly inevitable increase in misunderstanding foreshadows their deepening alienation from each other.

Alienation from Others

“He was not ready to face her, not even through the veil of the written word… He needed to adjust to the complicated trivia of human intercourse.”

When communication is impaired, relationships change, invariably for the worse. If you’re alienated from one group, perhaps the only way is to integrate with others. What then is “otherness”? Who is the alien?

USIC, the corporation that created and runs the colony, is suitably mysterious, as is the base on planet Oasis, and its bland, unemotional staff. There is rudimentary email, but no internet or phones (not even phones within the base), photography is “not practicable”, and there are no locks on personal quarters.

The planet itself has a strange climate and beauty that only Peter appreciates, and the native inhabitants are welcoming, but mysterious, strange and new.

The result is a benign but sinister setting, veiled in secrecy and evasion, that numbs the mind.

Some aspects are gradually revealed, but much of importance is never explained. If this is sci-fi, it’s very light on the “sci”, and even on the socio-political angle. It’s the medium, not the message.

One striking feature is that Peter comments on the (presumed) race of everyone - literally everyone - he encounters. And yet he’s by far the most accepting of the Oasans. Maybe he’s excessively difference-aware, rather than anything worse, though “variations in pigment aside, humans were all part of the same species” and some dubious observations about gender and sexuality don’t really clarify matters. Maybe it’s just another aspect of his own otherness.

Alienation from Self

“The pain of useless empathy.”

When you’ve lost your partner, home, culture, language, food, and climate, and you’re even doubting your faith, what’s left but your sanity? And how can you keep that in the absence of the others?

Watching a disintegrating mind is probably the most painful vicarious experience, as anyone who’s had a loved one with Alzheimer’s or mental illness knows. The helplessness of the observer, and the seeming inevitability of the decline is agony. (I’m not suggesting that applies in all cases, with all conditions.)

For me, that was the most powerful aspect of the book. It is gradual, unsentimental, sympathetic, powerful. Faber wrote it while his wife was dying, but he’s not, and never has been, religious. He asks where God is when tragedy strikes, but suggests no answer.

Quotes
Long-Distance Relationship via Email
• “I miss living through the visible moments of life with you.”
• “To his wife, these messages were already history. To him, they were a frozen present.”
• “His heart and mind were trapped in his body, and his body was here.”
• The rains “were indescribable… but seeing them would leave a mark on him that would not be left on her.”
Humid Climate
• “The rain wasn’t falling in straight lines, it was… dancing!... elegant arcs… a leisurely sweeping from one side of the sky to the other.”
• “He was enveloped in a moist warm breeze, a swirling balm… The air lapped against his cheeks, tickled his ears, flowed over his lips and hands.”
• “The air here was a presence, a presence so palpable that he was tempted to believe he could let himself fall and the air would simply catch him like a pillow… As it nuzzled his skin it almost promised that it would.”
• “The air currents, so similar to water currents, could not move silently, but must churn and hiss like ocean waves.”
• “The warm air embraced them with balmy enthusiasm.”
• The moist atmosphere “was enjoyable… but also an assault: the way the air immediately ran up the sleeves of his shirt, licked his eyelids and ears, dampened his chest.”
• “They truly were rains, plural… The air all around him was ecstatic with water, bursting with it. Silvery lariats of droplets lashed against the ground, lashed against him.”
Oasans
• “The Oasan settlement wasn’t what you’d call a city. More like a suburb, erected in the middle of a wasteland.”
• “Where the ‘S’ should have been, there was a noise like a ripe fruit being thumbed into two halves.”
• King James “Bible verses were like a particularly mellow alcoholic drink”, whereas Peter’s paraphrases were like “local home-brew, a moonshine compromise”. So “maybe he shouldn't dilute its strangeness”.
• Trying to explain the Oasans is “like trying to explain what a smell looks like or what a sound tastes like”.
Corporate Outpost and its Personnel
• “The bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does.”
• “A curious absence of any image that evoked a specific, currently existing spot on Earth, or a passionate emotion.” That, of a corridor plastered in a wide variety of posters.
• "You cannot create a thriving community, let alone a new civilisation, by putting together a bunch of people who are no fucking trouble . . . You want to build Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy, on naked greed."
• “Her boringness was so perfect that it had transcended itself to become a kind of eccentricity.”
• “He did not lose his temper. He had no temper to lose. That was his tragedy, and his mark of dignity too.”
• “His calmness had impressed them… Without knowing it, he’d always been an honorary alien.”
Other
• “The pungent odour of Tartaglione’s loneliness dispelled some of the fog in Peter’s brain.”
• Scars “were not suffering but triumph: triumph against decay, triumph against death… not a disfigurement, a miracle”.
• “Belief was a place that people didn’t leave until they absolutely must. The Oasans had been keen to follow him to the Kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t keen to follow him into the valley of doubt.”

Easter Eggs?

The Book of Strange New Things is what the Oasans call the Bible. However, in Faber’s short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall (published in 1998 and reviewed HERE), there’s a piece called Toy Story, about God’s childhood. It includes the line "His eyes would goggle at the strange new things he found there [in the abandoned universe]... bottled gases which plumed out in the shape of a star when smashed free, huge fluffs of sliver fibre spilling out of the bins like foam... enigmatically specific crystal implements... and... broken engines of paradox."

Perhaps in a nod to Under The Skin, reviewed HERE, on the second page, Peter and Bea discuss whether to pick up a hitchhiker.

One of the characters is called Billy Graham - but not the minister. In the Acknowledgements, Faber says many of the names are from, or loosely based on, Marvel Comics, but surely Billy Graham conjures an early televangelist in most people’s minds.

I wonder if the ubiquitous and multi-purpose whiteflower is a nod to the Wompom of Flanders and Swann. Lyrics HERE and F&S singing it HERE.


For a very different take on the missionary experience, as suggested by Caroline in the comments, see Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, reviewed HERE.


Picture source for man in space suit in ruined church:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static...