[LINK] "Downbelow Station: Here's how you write a novel"

[rfmcdonald]

I've written a couple of times about C.J. Cherryh's brilliant novel Downbelow Station. Over at io9, Josh Wimmer backs me up.

This book doesn't have any flashy-cool technology, or superhumans, or phenomena beyond the ken of mortal understanding. It is set a few centuries in the future, but the characters are for the most part people like today's. And though it takes its title from a space station, you could argue that the novel could be recast in a non-science-fiction format — set on Earth in the present day or past — without altering the basic story too terribly much.

[. . .]

Humans, in the form of the privately held Earth Company, started colonizing the galaxy by building huge space stations in a chain of star systems extending away from ours, out toward the Beyond. Ships, moving at near-light-speed, ran a long trade loop: They carried essential organic materials to the stations, and brought mined minerals back to Earth. Because those organic materials couldn't be grown well in space, Earth remained the controlling power in the Great Circle.

And then Pell's World was discovered, the first inhabitable planet besides Earth — and one that already hosted intelligent life, the primitive, monkey-like hisa. (Later, the humans on Pell station started calling the world "Downbelow," from the hisa's pidgin English.) Now that there was another, closer planet that could supply the stations in the Beyond with biostuffs, Earth's grip on trade began to weaken. It tried to hold on, the stations resisted — and a quiet conflict began.

More life-supporting planets were discovered, and then on one, Cyteen, the faster-than-light jump drive was invented by the Beyonders. That enabled them to work together more easily, and eventually, they joined forces, calling themselves Union.

When Downbelow Station opens, full-on war between Earth and Union has been in swing for some time, and Union — with better technology, able to mass-produce cloned soldiers in vats — is winning. The Company fleet has been reduced to a ragtag guerrilla force, all but disowned by an out-of-touch Earth. Its ships survive only because they operate as near-independent units, striking at Union quickly and then retreating into hiding.

If there is a driving theme of this book, it is the clash between independent desires and the good of the group as a whole. The story begins with the Company's Captain Signy Mallory forcibly docking at Pell to drop off six thousand refugees from two other stations, recently all but destroyed. For years, Pell has served as a neutral zone on the border between Company and Union space; with the arrival of the refugees, that fragile neutrality starts to shatter.

[. . .]

Like an infection, the circumstances spread throughout the station and down to the planet below. War, and a population swollen by six thousand unexpected guests, means shortages of everything: resources, living space, mere time. Such acute scarcity turns people into rats, scrambling over each other heedlessly to bite at whatever's available.

And the inertia of it all imposes impossible decisions even on those who want to improve it: Stationmaster Angelo Konstantin can't afford to do much for the refugees — he has Pell's own population to take care of first — and so Q festers like a sore, one that will eventually erupt.

[. . .]

Cherryh tells the story in limited third-person, moving from character to character. (So we get inside Jon's head enough to know that he is intensely dislikable, but into Angelo's enough to guess that he has a gotten a little comfortable in the seat of power, and would rather have his brother-in-law accept his orders uncritically than try to communicate with him.) We spend a lot of time with Damon Konstantin, head of legal affairs on Pell, and I think it would be easy to assume that he is the protagonist (not least because he is a young man, and that demographic makes up the bulk of SF protagonists). Damon's story is more illustrative of the general point of the book — the moral, I guess — though:

He spends the whole book trying to maintain order on Pell (his job title is a symbol), and expends a lot of energy in the service of others. He's particularly committed to helping those who are weak: There's Josh Talley, a Union prisoner of war left on Pell by Captain Mallory, who has undergone Adjustment — mind-scrubbing to remove any dangerous information or violent tendencies. Damon and his new wife, Elene, befriend him and vouch for him again and again. And then there are the alien hisa, or Downers. Unlike most humans, all of the Konstantins treat them like sentient beings deserving of basic rights.

Damon's treatment of Josh and his relationship with the hisa eventually prove essential to his survival. As civilized society falls apart, his refusal to abandon the people and principles he cares about is what saves him. That is true of other characters, too — his brother, Emilio, who leads the workers and refugees on the planet below; his mother, Alicia, beloved of the hisa; Satin, a Downer who has come up to the station to honor a human who sacrificed himself saving hisa lives. And so is the converse: The characters like Jon Lukas, who think purely of themselves, ultimately find themselves needing help and with no one they can rely on.

Go, read.