review of Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 24, 2014 Time to read yet-another SF author whose work I haven't previously read. This one was the winner of a Nebula Award, an award I respect since I usually agree about the merit of the work so honored. In this case, I, perhaps, agree a little less - there are some aspects of the work that are remarkable but it mostly strikes me as a novel-w/-SF-trappings. It seems that I've been reading a fair amt of dire-predictions-of-population-explosion SF bks lately, the most recently reviewed of wch is John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (see my review here: full version: "Being Eaten By Sharks Off The Coast Of Zanzibar": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ). Stand on Zanzibar's set in 2010 & its population predictions (made 42 yrs in advance of the novel's time setting) is close. As I write in my review: "according to Geohive, 2009's world population was "6,834,721,933". / "["]What we can't cope with is seven billion competing members of our own species.["]" (p 424) Hence, Stand on Zanzibar's prediction for 2009 population is only 165,000,000 shy. Not bad." Rite of Passage is set in a further future where humanity's migrated off-planet. Earth was destroyed on March 9th (yr unstated). "From what I learned in school population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war. In 2041, there were eight billion people on Earth alone, and nobody even had free room to sneeze. There were not enuf houses, not enuf schools or teachers, inadequate roads and impossible traffic, natural resources were going or gone, and everybody was a little bit hungry all the time, although nobody was actually starving. Nobody dared to raise his voice because if he did he might disturb a hundred other people, and they had laws and ordinances to bring the point home" - p 9 Now, granted that this is told in the voice of a 12 yr old living in a hollowed-out asteroid spaceship who's just recounting what she remembers from her schooling the author is, therefore, not presenting this as (fictionalized) 'facts of the future'. I'm writing this review at the end of 2014, a population of 8 billion by 27 yrs from now isn't improbable. At this rate of human growth conditions such as those described above might also be probable but I don't think that even 8 billion will get us there. As it is now I live in an uncrowded area w/ enuf to go around & plenty of 'untapped' nature. Then again, I'm considerably more fortunate than other people in the world & my 'good fortune' can at least partially be ascribed to the warlike nature of this country's politicians & other ruling elites. Maybe 200 yrs ago when people had many children it was w/ the likelihood that a high percentage wd die young. Not so these days. In the case of this story, the "rite of passage" of the title is a part of the 'weeding out' process: "We won't become overpopulated, either. We have a safety valve. Within three months of the day you turn fourteen, they take you from the ship and drop you on one of the colony planets to survive as best you can for thirty days. There are no exceptions and a reasonably high percentage of deaths. if you are stupid, foolish, immature, or simply unlucky, you won't live through the month. If you do come home, you are an adult. My problem was that at twelve I wasn't afraid to die, but I was afraid to leave the Ship. I couldn't even face leaving the quad we lived in." - p 10 That's an interesting enuf premise & Panshin fulfills it believably (at least to this reader). He also writes from the 1st person perspective of a young girl believably (again, to this reader) - although it probably helps that she's a bit 'tom-boyish'. Whether there's a girl in the world who wd agree w/ me on that latter I don't know. The girl describes her spaceship environmentthusly: "The quad itself, and they're all this way, was a maze of blank walls, blind alleys, endless corridors, and staircases leading in odd directions. This was done on purpose—it keeps people from getting either bored or lazy, and that's important on a Ship like ours." - p 14 I'm reminded of the "Winchester House": "There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities. Even all of the stair posts were installed upside-down and many of the bathrooms had glass doors on them." [..] "While all of this seems like madness to us, it all made sense to Sarah. In this way, she could control the spirits who came to the house for evil purposes, or who were outlaws or vengeful people in their past life. These bad men, killed by Winchester rifles, could wreak havoc on Sarah’s life. The house had been designed into a maze to confuse and discourage the bad spirits." - http://www.prairieghosts.com/winchest... Architecturally, this seems like my kind of place! That tangent aside, tho, the most important relevant reference in connection w/ Panshin's spaceship design wd be the NASA research that I was fortunate enuf to participate in around 1973 (5 yrs after this novel came out). I was a research volunteer for simulated space-station living at the Phipps Clinic, wch was part of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, us@. For 15 days I lived in confined circumstances following procedures that were clearly designed to be Behavioral Modification tests meant to keep the mind & body in good health. While the space was too small for labyrinths the general guiding principle in Panshin's novel is still sound. "There is a constant problem of stimulation in living in the Ship—if life were too easy, we would all become vegetables. The response has been to make some things more difficult than they might be. This means that shopping is something you do in person and not by vid." - p 168 Panshin has the main character wanting to be a "synthesist". I've been saturated w/ reading bks by John Brunner for the last 2 yrs so it's possible that I'm overemphasizing Brunner here but, nonetheless, it's probably worth mentioning that I'd already encountered the notion of "synthesist" in Brunner's "The Fourth Power" story (1960) in Out of my Mind - from the Past, Present and Future & in the afore-mentioned Stand on Zanzibar (1968). I'm not saying that Panshin took the idea from Brunner (& if he did it's ok w/ me), & I imagine that the idea predated both of their uses of it, I'm saying that there's some zeitgeist at work here: the idea of a "synthesist" was probably budding in importance in the mid-20th century (in fact, it still seems important to me NOW in the early 21st c). Panshin does go off on a development that I don't remember in Brunner: "A synthesist, which is what I wanted to be, is a person who comes in and admires the neatened room, and recognizes how nice a copy of a certain piece of furniture would loon in the next room over and how useful it would be there, and points the fact out. Without the ordinologists, a synthesist wouldn't be able to begin work. Of course, without the synthesists, there wouldn't be much reason for the ordinologists to set to work in the first place, because nobody would have any use for what they do." - p 29 The synthesist, in the above description, seems precariously close to an aesthetician, a highly suspect pseudo-profession in my opinion. That said, the symbiosis of the ordinologist & the synthesist is interesting. [reviewer's note: every time I turn a page & flatten it for easier reading in this bk it comes unglued & I have to tape it together - that's getting very distracting - shame on whoever Ace used for this printing] In Science Fiction there mightbe a higher percentage of collective creation than in other fictional genres. EG: Heinlein's "waldo": "This story has been largely forgotten (even though it still makes great reading). The notion of a waldo, however, has not. The word itself has come into common usage; the American Heritage Dictionary describes it as follows: "A mechanical agent, such as a gripper arm, controlled by a human limb." Real-life waldoes were developed for the nuclear industry during WWII; they were named after the invention described by Heinlein."This technology is known today by the more generic term "telefactoring"; it is used in a variety of industries." - http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content... Another less direct instance occurs in Rite of Passage: ""I've got one," Riggy said, after some moments of concentration during which he wouldn't show anybody what he was doing. Triumphantly he held up a sheet with a drawing of locks on it. " 'More-lock,' " he said. "Get it?" "We got it but we didn't like it. He had covered the whole sheet with his drawings, which is hardly what you'd call concise. "I'd been working on the same name myself. I came up with a fair-to-middling troglodyte. ""What's that?" Atilla asked. ""It's Morlock again." "Venie didn't look pleased, and Riggy immediately challenged, "How do you get Morlock out of that thing>" ""It's from an old novel called The Time Machine. There's a group of underground monsters in it called Morlocks."" - p 122 One of the nicer touches in Rite of Passage is the taking of horses to the colonized planets: "When the colonies were settled, they took horses to work and ride, because tractors and heli-pacs have such a low reproductive rate." [They'd reproduce better if reproduction were as pleasurable for them as it is for humans.] "There weren't any opportunities to set up industries on the colonies, simply time enough to drop people and enough supplies to give them a fair chance to survive. Then the ships would head back to Earth for another load and another destination. Those supplies included very little in the way of machines because machines wear out in a few years. They did include horses." - p 60 Panshin's protagonist is female. He has her give this herstory: "Like the girl who first found out how to make fire, like the girl who invented the principle of the lever, like the girl who first had the courage to eat moldy goat cheese and found Roquefort, I had discovered something absolutely new in the world. Self-confidence, perhaps." - p 93 I reckon we have no way of knowing who figured out "how to make fire" so it might've been a girl. Wikipedia tells this story "Legend has it that the cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes' milk cheese, saw a beautiful girl in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold (Penicillium roqueforti) had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort ) - but that's only a legend. Finally, there's no conclusive evidence regarding the origin of levers either: "Levers have been used since prehistoric times for cultivation, excavation, and moving large objects. Such implements as hoes, slings, and oars were conceived and constructed to enhance human effort."As early as 5000 B.C.E., a simple balance scale employing a lever was used to weigh gold and other items. A Greek device called a steelyard improved on these simple scales by adding a sliding weight to enhance precision. Around 1500 B.C.E., the shaduf, a forerunner of the crane, made its appearance in Egypt and India as a device for lifting containers of water.[1]"The earliest extant writings regarding levers date from the third century B.C.E. and were provided by Archimedes—behind his famous remark Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth stands a correct mathematical principle of levers (quoted by Pappus of Alexandria) and of the various methods possibly used by builders." - http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/e...Ergo, the protagonist might be correct. Personally, I prefer sentences such as 'Like the person who first found out how to make fire' but I think Panshin's way of putting thoughts in his protagonist's head is an effective challenge to POVs such as the legend recounted above. Panshin also manages to squeeze in Ethics: "Ethics is the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with conduct, questions of good and evil, right and wrong." [..] "Skipping the history and development of utilitarianism, the most popular expression of the doctrine is "the greatest good for the greatest number," which makes it sound like its relative, the economic philosophy communism which, in a sense, is what we live with in the Ship. The common expression of utilitarian good is "the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain." "Speaking descriptively, utilitarianism doesn't hold true, though the utilitarian claims that it does. People do act self-destructively at times—they know the pleasureful and choose the painful instead." - p 148 "The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that that is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to the king than the slave." - p 152 I find these 'youthful' philosophical musings interesting. It seems to me that any system, philosophical or otherwise, isn't going to be apropos for ever situation it's applied to. As such, a flexible philosophy that helps a person decide what an appropriate response is in the time best-suited for the degree of urgency is desirable. & then there's the politics: "Mr. Persson said, "As you know, our past policy has been to hand only as little technical information out to the planets as possible, and then only in return for material considerations." - p 246 Ah, yes, well that particular philosophy turned out to be pretty Draconian.. but I won't spoil it. A good read, I enjoyed it, I don't much care, I'll forget it in a wk or 2.
[7/10]Somebody quiped this is the best juvenile that Heinlein never wrote. In her excellent review of the Panshin novel [jo Walton], Jo Walton argues that the author's goal was more subversive than paying homage to the grandmaster of science-fiction, a point sustained by the known critical disagreement between the two. I have read literally hundreds of coming of age stories, most of them fantasy or SF, which might explain my lower rating for what is arguably one of the least conventional and better written of the lot. The setting: Earth has been completely destroyed in a global conflagration in the 21st century. The survivors scattered through the galaxy in hastily built multigenerational spaceships. Some of them settled on planets, where they struggled hard to make them habitable and to produce enough food to survive, leaving too little time for education and leisure. A minority remained in the spaceships, avoiding overpopulation through strict birth control, preserving the advanced technology of Earth and trading this knowledge with the colonists in exchange for essential raw materials. In the absence of real life challenges inside the carefully controled and regulated environment of the Ships, all young people reaching the age of 14 are sent on a 30 day Trial down to one of the planets, there to survive only by their wits and skills. Not everybody survives the initiation ritual, but the ones who return safely are considered adults with full rights in the society.The hero(ine): Mia Havero is the narrator of the novel, in an extended flashback, starting with her tomboy phase at age 12, following through her two years advanced education and survival training, her Trial and its aftermath. She is a wonderful guide through the Ship's world, spunky and witty, "a reluctant daredevil" with a passion for old-fashioned sF stories and a carefully masked streak of loneliness and insecurity. In her own words she is "a little black-haired, black-eyed girl, short, small, and without even the promise of a figure". Much as I liked Mia and her tribulations adapting to a new school, new friends, new ideas and new responsibilities, I sometimes felt her character is a bit too good to be true. Like the kids from a TV series I used to watch (Dawson Creek) she seems written by a parent who puts down how he would like his offspring to talk and to learn from mistakes. Real teenagers, from my experience, are a lot more anarchic and authority flouting, less focused on growing up and more self-centered than Mia. This is not to say she is tame, or well mannered, just a tad too didactic and well organized for a 12-14 y.o.Things I liked best about the story:* fables and parables used in the text as a learning tool, storytelling in its more pure and effective guise, including the riddle games so beloved by Tolkien and a tongue-in-cheek approach to classic quests to slay the ogre and win the hand of the princess in marriage.* a project Mia has to write about ethics, where she studies "Epicureans and Utilitarians; Stoics; Power Philosophers, both sophisticated and unsophisticated; and humanists of several stripes. All these not to mention various religious ethical systems." She balances the strengths and shortcomings of each system, and later sees how they apply to real life conflicts during her Trial. Again, it is done by Panshin in an over-simplified and didactic manner, but it is still very effective. Example: The trouble with stoicism, it seems to me, is that it is a soporific. It affirms the status quo and thereby puts an end to all ambition, all change. It says, as Christianity did a thousand years ago, that kings should be kings and slaves should be slaves, and it seems to me that it is a philosophy infinitely more attractive to he king than to the slave. * Mia's "reluctant daredevil" atitude, her "Hell on Wheels", "The Compleat Young Girl" sarcastic persona, always ready to mock her own fears and honestly admit her faux pas. Favorite episode is her participation in an illegal sortie outside the Ship, in the company of her friends from the Survival Class. I had never realized before that adventures took so much 'doing', so much preparation and so much cleaning up afterward. That's something you don't see in stories. Who buys the food and cooks it, washes the dishes, minds the baby, rubs down the horses, swabs out the guns, buries the bodies, mends the clothes, ties the rope in place so the hero can conveniently find it there to swing from, blows fanfares, polishes medals, and dies beautifully, all so that the hero can 'be' a hero? Who finances him? I'm not saying I don't believe in heroes - I'm just saying that they are either parasites or they spend the bulk of their time in making their little adventures possible, not in enjoying them. Other pearls of wisdom from Miss Havero: There is nothing like hunting a tiger almost barehanded to give you a feeling of real confidence in yourself. If you manage to survive the experience. * the general pacing and the length of the novel : a fast and entertaining read that kept me glued to the pages from start to finish.* finally, I really appreciated how the comic elements and the light headed spirit of a fun adventure a replaced later in the novel by the real issues Mia will have to deal with as an adult: intolerance, xenophobia, death, free will versus predetermination, the individuall versus the political, and more. This is where Jo Walton draws our attention that becoming an adult is not equal to saving the planet from an alien invasion in a blaze of spectacular explosions and other special effects, but looking inside yourself and finding the strength to change what is wrong with your society instead of accepting the status quo. Here are my favorite quotes from this later phase in the novel: I've always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else's story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention, and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, "I resign. I don't want to be used." They are here to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded. --- If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it. --- I can think of nothing sadder than to know that you might be more than you are, but be unwilling to make the effort. --- Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with. Recommended for readers who are not yet fed up with coming of age stories and who appreciate classic SF.
What do You think about Rite Of Passage (2007)?
The first half of this novel is almost unreadable, the narrator a stultifying caricature barely recognizable as a young human, let alone a young human woman. Panshin flinches from even the mildest boundaries in imagining the life of a girl at puberty; his one-sentence glossing over the subject of menstruation brought eye-rolling and disappointed laughs from all the real live women I asked for an opinion. The second half of the novel is far more interesting and sensitively wrought, a tale of first love and hard adventure that leads into profound moral discussion and a staggering injustice. I found the ending unforgettable, and am damned glad I didn't give in to the impulse to throw the book across the room while still mired in its early chapters.
—Scott
A science fiction novel about deontological ethics--imagine that! How could I not love it?Science fiction is justified as something more than mere escapist entertainment by its inherent capacity to radically challenge its readers' presuppositions and worldviews. In this the genre serves the same salutory function available to the disciplines of cultural anthropology, abnormal psychology and comparative sociology. Unfortunately, most SF literature does no such thing. Indeed, Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a space opera composed in an alternative past by a mediocre SF writer, Adolf Hitler, represents how bad novels in the field can even reinforce the prejudices of their readers. Opposed to that exaggerated example, however, are such books as Panshin's Rite of Passage and many of the novels of Theodore Sturgeon and Ursula K. LeGuin.
—Erik Graff
'Rite of Passage' is one of science fiction's more overlooked and lesser known masterpeices. Really, they did know what they were doing when they gave this book a Nebula award. I think one of the reasons it hasn't maintained the enduring audience of some of other classics from the golden era is that it is a book that suffers from having an uncomfortable relationship with any of its potential readers. On the one hand, adult readers may be put off by a book which appears at first in both its language and ambitions to be little more than reutine young adult fiction in an exotic setting. On the other hand, younger readers may find the book ultimately dark, disturbing, unsettling, and at times too graphic. (Adult readers who have finished the book are probably similarly unwilling to put the book in the hands of their children.)For my part, I think pretty much everyone is rewarded for pushing through the difficulties. This is a great book that I find myself chewing over in my head time and time again, and repeatedly drawing on for insight. Having become a parent has only deepened my appreciation for the subtleties of the book.To begin with, it is a great coming of age story. Refreshingly it has a young complex female protagonist - far different from the sort of simple boy-men that typically populate SF coming of age stories. Likewise, this a character that truly comes of age in every way that it is possible to come of age, which I find incredibly appealing compared to the typical 'how I learned calculus and 20 other ways to kill' of more boyish SF. Not that our heroine doesn't learn calculus or... but that might be giving too much away. On that level alone, 'Rite of Passage' has much to recommend itself. But I'm also repeatedly struck by the insight Panshin shows into humanity and human social structure. Ultimately, this is book about the value of life, about the value of living well, and about what really makes an adult.I highly recommend this novel. Especially in a time when adults are embrassing young adult fiction, its time to reexamine this little gem.
—Matt
