Zhen-Galac (23 teselas cuadradas), Yoss
[bala · home]
[okadenamatī · reviews]
[mesaramatiziye · other writings]
[tedbezī · languages]
language: Spanish
country: Cuba
year: 2018
form: novel/short fiction
genre(s): science fiction
dates read: 28.6.23-10.7.23
the Cuban sci-fi writer Yoss’s novel(?) Zhen-Galac (23 teselas cuadradas) is, in actuality, a series of 23 “teselas cuadradas” — “square” because they have four components:
- a text somewhere between a long prose poem and an in-universe encyclopedia entry, describing the inhabitants, history, and ecology of Zhen-Galac, a mysterious artificial planetoid at the center of the galaxy that intelligent life appears to gravitate towards, documenting its several major resident species in the century or so after the arrival of humans;/li>
- two encyclopedia entries on people, objects, or concepts that inspired the first text (ranging from social insects to dreadlocks to Kaspar Hauser); and
- a reflection on the connection between the two encyclopedia entries and the story/prose poem/in-universe encyclopedia entry, explicitly highlighting his influences (especially from biology and anthropology) and his creative writing.
some of the pieces were conceptually interesting, and the atmosphere of the collection overall was delightfully enigmatic, and his background in biology contributed to some compellingly inhuman sentient species.
it suffers from two big problems:
- as early as like…the fourth entry Yoss’s authorial reflections already indicated that he was getting bored with the conceit, although he was committed to carrying through. unfortunately, I could tell! I do not, at the best of times, especially enjoy having authors’ commentary on their own writing in immediate proximity to the writing, but the commentary in this case felt more and more forced and less and less like it actually added anything to the reading experience as it went on. Cómo se hace una novela de ciencia ficción this was not. I wish it had been.
-
- Anthropology and its concommittant racism. the entry on dreadlocks, which mainly discusses their significance for Rastafari, is linked to an entry on a species of inhuman and violent aliens. there’s an entry on “amok” (i.e., Malay amuk), which describes Malay people as “uno de los pueblos más corteses y amables de Asia durante la mayor parte del tiempo, pese a la pobreza, insalubridad, hacinamiento y las en general durísimas condiciones en que vive la mayoría de ellos”. among others. it’s really a mess.
there are some additional, smaller problems, most notably the very weird treatment of Andrea La Fére’s gender-ambiguity. some of the non-biological science is messy; there’s a part where he suggests that rivers can’t change their course without human intervention (???), for example.
overall the book was…fine. but I’m disappointed both by the form of the book and simply because I expected more from an author who’s cultivated a rock star persona. I’ll likely read another of his books at some point, because I think this isn’t representative of his work, but this one was kind of mediocre.
moods: lighthearted, mysterious, reflective
webring >:-]
[previous · next]