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language: Spanish (English tr. Yolanda Molina-Gavilán and Andrea Bell)
country: Spain
year: 1994
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
dates read: 20.5.20-22.5.20, 10.1.25-11.1.25
I first read Elia Barceló’s classic science fiction novel Consecuencias naturales in Spanish in 2020; it is an unsettling book, and I left off a bit unsure how I felt about it, but over the last few years I have continued to think about it regularly, both because it sounds funny if you describe it as “Elia Barceló’s mpreg novel from 1994” but also on its merits. it is not a perfect book — more on this below — but it has stayed with me in a way that many books I gave higher ratings to on my first encounter have not (looking at you, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet). I recently discovered that it’s now — as of 2021 — available in an English translation by Yolanda Molina-Gavilán and Andrea Bell, and I decided to get myself a copy of Natural Consequences and reread it that way.
I want to say, first, that the fact that they were able to produce a translation at all is an impressive feat, because one of the novel’s major concerns is gendered language. on the human side, the space future is one where egalitarian language use is legally mandated in official contexts and culturally encouraged in others. in the Spanish, for example:
El Gobierno Central nos cede el privilegio de hacer la primera sugerencia considerando que somos nosotras y nosotros las y los que más elementos del problema tenemos a nuestro alcance.
[The Central Government has ceded to us the privilege of making the first suggestion considering that we [nosotras feminine form] and we [nosotros, masculine form] are the ones [las, feminine] and ones [los, masculine] who are the closest to the problem.]
this feature runs throughout most human speech during the novel, and even the human characters — both men and women — find it artificial and awkward: as I read it (contra Molina-Gavilán and Bell in their preface), the novel is in part a sharp critique of “feminist” policies that focus exclusively on language without addressing the material conditions and power dynamics that produce, for example, rape. (again, more on this below.) from the first page, Natural Consequences is clear that future humans talk an okay game, sometimes, about gender equality but are very far from actually having it.
at the same time, the novel is a novel of alien encounter: a ship of the first alien space humans have encountered, the Xhroll, arrives for some emergency repairs on a human station, where a deeply unpleasant and deeply sexist womanizer, Nico Andrade, has sex with an alien whom he perceives as a woman and, as a result, unexpectedly finds himself pregnant. the Xhroll have three genders: the fertile ari-arkhj (who implants life), the fertile abba (who is implanted), and the infertile xhrea (the vast majority of Xhroll society). the principle human characters, Nico and Charlie (the female intelligence officer assigned to accompany Nico to the Xhroll homeworld for the term of his pregnancy), spend much of the novel attempting (and failing, in Nico’s case) to grasp the gender dynamics of Xhroll society: while the main Xhroll character, Ankkhaia, is gendered as male during his own internal monologue (since from his perspective his ability to implant life in an abba marks him as male in human terms), it is only in the final pages that Charlie, who has come to consider Ankkhaia a friend, finally also genders Ankkhaia as male, rather than defaulting to female pronouns based on Ankkhaia’s appearance.
the novel is, of course, deeply concerned with sex, sexuality, and reproduction: Xhroll society is on the verge of collapse because the vast majority of the population is incapable of reproducing. when the Xhroll discover that it is possible for ari-arkhj to “implant” life in humans (specifically in humans with penises — more on this below; I know I keep saying this, but it really is a complex book!), they initially plan to coerce these “human abbas” into sex en masse: among other things during his time among the Xhroll, Nico has taught them about the possibility of rape (and note that this is graphically portrayed on the page), and only a series of fortunate coincidences and some quick thinking from Charlie averts a Xhroll invasion and deployment of mass rape in order to replenish their population. this produces, unfortunately, the one big thing that mars the book for me: when Charlie is informed of the Xhroll’s plan, her response is to laugh uncontrollably at the possibility of men suffering the kind of sexual violence they have inflicted on women for centuries. her perspective acknowledges this is wrong, but her vision of the station commander running through the halls sobbing is still, I would say, played for comedy by the narration in a way that’s really quite gross. this is a big flaw, and I don’t want to downplay it; I will simply say that even with this scene I still think the novel is excellent.
the novel’s conception of human gender is also resolutely binary. however, the novel explicitly presents future human society as trans-inclusive: we’re told that reproductive options (e.g., the use of an artificial placenta to allow an embryo to be carried to term) are available to anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of whether she currently has a uterus. the narration doesn’t belabor the point, but the implication seems to be that as far as future human society is concerned there is minimal difference between cis and trans women. there’s a similar passing comment about trans men, though it’s coupled with an explicit affirmation that “males could not accidentally conceive”. I wouldn’t say it’s, like, stellar on this front: there are no explicit trans characters, and there’s also a transmisogynistic joke about Nico’s mother. but I would also say that in some respects, because of the novel’s thematization of the failures of liberal feminism, its own failures to escape patriarchy, cisnormativity, and the gender binary only emphasize the point it’s making: it is a timely reminder that feminism requires material change, and that we still have a long way to go.
something that didn’t strike me as dramtically the first time I read it but which I was fascinated by this time is the novel’s presentation of first contact and of Xhroll society. aspects of the book remind me of other novels of this kind — early Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness, obviously, but also Rocannon’s World), Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords, parts of of Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy — but it has a crucial difference. while Charlie and Ankkhaia come to respect and value each other, and while the end of the book leaves open the possibility of continued human-Xhroll interaction (but without the sex this time), it also comes repeatedly back to the question: what kind of relationship can exist between humans and Xhroll? both sides consider the question, and both come to the unsettling conclusion that the answer may be none. humans have nothing the Xhroll need or want, and the Xhroll have nothing that humans need or want:
Xhroll doesn’t need us for anything; we don’t need Xhroll for anything. There are no possibilities for commerce or any other type of exchange. We have found another intelligent species in the universe, but we have nothing to say to each other. Period.
this is fascinating!!!!!! in the background of all of the novel’s interest in language, in gender, in sex and sexual politics, is this looming realization, which in the context of science fiction functions almost as a kind of horror: we have found another intelligent species in the universe, but we have nothing to say to each other.
if any of this sounds interesting to you, with the caveats I noted above re sexual violence, I highly recommend the book — I’m really glad it’s available in English because it means I can actually tell people to read it. I’ve been thinking about it for almost five years and I expect I will continue to do so.
edit: I also should add — this book is committed to pregnancy as horror. Nico’s body is changing in ways he doesn’t like and has no control over; his bodily autonomy is denied to him by both Xhroll and the human Central Government, which cedes him to the Xhroll rather than risk a war; his personal autonomy is denied by the Xhroll who believe abbas should, for example, never speak in front of people other than their ari-arkhj. there’s a monster growing inside him and he has no way to get it out.
moods: challenging, dark, reflective, tense