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language: English
country: USA
year: 2026
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
dates read: 4.6.26-6.6.26
Cameron Reed’s What We Are Seeking is a rare book where I think comparisons to both Delany and Le Guin are both justified and well-deserved. I describe Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand as both the greatest and the most science fiction novel of all time, by which I mean that I have never encountered another novel that is doing as much, pushing as far with all of the things that science fiction can be and do; if Stars is the most, then I would put What We Are Seeking comfortably in the running for the second-most.
I bring up Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand not only as a measure of quality but also because if I were to describe the book I would characterize it as a cross between Stars and Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. What We Are Seeking is a novel that is deeply concerned with people and the relationships between them, with alternate — and at times conflicting — configurations of gender and sexuality (and unlike either book it has meaningfully trans characters), and with the possibility of encountering and understanding the Other, whether that Other be a human from a different culture, a human-technology hybrid, or an alien life-form whose mode of communication must be discerned from first principles.
What We Are Seeking follows John Maraintha, a doctor from the world of Essius — stigmatized for its abandonment of the institution of marriage and regarded as a cultural backwater for the lateness of its reconnection with the rest of human space — who is unwillingly deposited on a new colony world known as Scythia alongside one of the famed Dharanendran translators, a man named Sudharma Jain, a kind of aroace Marq Dyeth to whom John is instantly if frustratedly attracted. unfortunately for John, not only are the two groups of colonists on Scythia both “marrying people” but also one of the groups, the Zandaheans, are from a particularly conservative world whose early settlers were diehard Christians and who remain — in spite of some uncertainty provoked by what I take to be the death of their pope, disrupting the chain of “apostolic succession”, in the early days of the colony — largely devout and bound by the strictures of Christian, patriarchal morality. John, meanwhile, regards marriage as a form of slavery and finds the idea of attempting to legally bind a lover for all time abhorrent.
but he isn’t quite alone. there are two strands to the novel’s plot. on the one hand, there is Sudharma’s objective — either to learn the language of the native inhabitants of Scythia, strange, plant-like beings known to the colonists as “basket-men”, or, if he is not currently able to do so, to change himself, with the assistance of John and of some Dharanendran technology, until he is capable of learning, of perceiving the world more like the basket-men. meanwhile, as he works with Sudharma, John also comes to know the community in the colony, slowly meeting a group of people who, like John, find themselves on the edges of Scythian gender and sexual mores. most important among these is Iren, a “jess” — a culturally specific, ritualized third gender among the Ischnurans, the second group of colonists, encompassing, it seems, basically all trans people. Iren is, in fact, the only jess, and their position within the colony, as both insider (unlike John) and stigmatized outsider (Zandahean morality regards them as a sinful perversion and at least some Ischnurans regard them as the product of a genetic aberration that should be eradicated), allows them to guide John — and the reader — even as their encounter with John also begins to change them and the colony as a whole. and, of course, there is Vo, the Earth-born human(?) who has been integrated with a network of “aiyi” (i.e., AI) for more than a century and in whom John finds both solace — as the only person who understands and accepts what it means for him to “visit”, i.e., to hook up — and unanswerable questions.
these two strands intertwine throughout the novel, though often one or the other will take precedence: Sudharma’s efforts are the focus of roughly the first half, culminating in a The Left Hand of Darkness-esque journey across the Scythian desert following a basket-man they have named Blue; when they return, while Sudharma’s efforts continue and shape political and social developments in the colony as he starts to grasp the language of the énqissatêk, John’s relationships with Iren and other members of the community take precedence, as they start to fully grasp the precarious situation they are in, caught between both literal and figurative stories about the future.
the greatest strength of the novel is its characters. much of its plot — such as it is — is composed of scenes of characters sitting and talking together: in a van driving cross-country, in the kitchen making dinner, while working on a farm, after a visit. its characters are vividly drawn and individual, a wide-ranging array of people who, in different ways, are caught in social systems to which they cannot fully conform — John included, and not just on Scythia. how, the novel asks, do we build relationships — sexual, romantic, and otherwise — when we are surrounded by social structures that oppress us? how do we negotiate between our desires and the systems of oppression that have shaped them? what claims does love make on others, and how can we love without attempting to possess? how do we relate across difference, and especially how do we move beyond our impulses to organize others according to our own terms of reference?
this interpersonal focus complements the novel’s interest in language and communication, central to the Sudharma plot. the way Reed handles language is extremely good. first, there are current English words that are clearly being used in an unusual, technical sense — “visit” (a formalized Essian hookup), “memory” (the experience of gendered incongruity that (may) lead an Ischnuran to braid their hair and become a jess). second, there are English words whose meaning has shifted or whose literal referent is unavailable: John is unfamiliar with the word “lion”, for example, knowing it only from the fixed expression “lion’s share”. third, there are regular reminders of dialectal (and cultural) variation within human languages — that Sudharma speaks John’s language, for example, with the accent of actors pretending to be from a particular region, having learned it from old entertainment broadcasts — fourth, there are representations of both human and alien languages other than “ships’ English” (the standardized variety of English used on the interstellar generation ships known as the “Free Ships”). finally, there are discussions of shifts in pronunciation that reveal changes even in “ships’ English” — a reference to the “silent n” in words like “dance” or “sense”, for example. this book is a master class in how to handle language diversity in speculative fiction.
for all that the novel is character-driven rather than plot-driven, its title, which suggests a quest, is apt: this is a book about characters who are looking for things, though they don’t always know what they’re looking for. how, the novel asks, do we determine what it is we actually want, and how do we make it possible to get there? how do we navigate the tensions between what we want and what others want — or need?
crucially, it does not attempt to offer definitive answers; instead, it leaves its characters with a sense of possibilities opening up, of choices arrayed before them — and so before the reader — even when they have taken first steps towards a future they cannot fully perceive.
what are we seeking? how do we get there?
moods: emotional, hopeful, inspiring, reflective