Rebecca Wilson

May 12, 2004 

Us and Them – Stories of First Contact  

“But who knows which is which or who is whom?”

Pink Floyd, Us and Them

When discussing the relationships between characters, my creative writing instructor once said that when two characters meet, a question always forms in the reader’s mind.  If the characters are of the same gender, the reader asks, “Will they be friends?”  If they’re of opposite genders, the reader asks, ‘Will they make love?”  The story’s plot and characterization must bring a believable resolution to the reader’s questions.  The literature of exploration gives rise to similar but larger questions “How do new worlds change explorers?” and “How do explorers change new worlds?”

 Though these questions apply to both fictional are non-fictional accounts of exploration, stories of first contact between humans and aliens offer a perfect opportunity to explore these issues.  As a part of the literature of discovery, first contact tales may emphasize different aspects of people and they societies they build, but they must all resolve these two questions.  As the personal and societal aspects of stories in this sub-genre differ, so do the resolutions to these two basic questions.

In terms of  “Us” and “Them,” some tales portray unity, some portray alliance, and some authors remake “Us” into “Them or “Them” into “Us.”

Turning Points – Shifting Allegiances in Children of God

 “First contact – by definition – takes place in a radical state of ignorance, where nothing is known about the ecology, biology, languages, culture, and economy of the Other.”  Vincenzo Giuliani, Father General of the Society of Jesuits  (Russell, 21)

The Sparrow offers a prelude to radically shifting allegiances, or side swapping, after the Jesuit party has marooned themselves on Rakhat by exhausting their lander’s fuel supply.  Though they begin their relationship with the Rakhati as disparate entities, the now-marooned explorers start to fit comfortably into the rhythm of Runa life, planting their own crops in an effort to refrain from overtaxing Runa resources.  In The Sparrow, Sofia Mendes switches sides as the result of a cataclysmic event when she witnesses the Jana’ata arrive to cull the Runa herd that the Jesuit party has been living with for many months.  When she leads the resistance to the Jana’ata patrol with cries of “We are many, they are few,” she spurs outright revolutionary thought in the minds of the local Runa.  With this single irrevocable act, Mendes has unquestionably accepted her role as a full-fledged member of Runa society, leaving her Earth-bound loyalties and identities behind; she serves the interests of the Runa community not as a bystander or observer, but as a fully-integrated revolutionary who seeks to end the use of Runa as a literal meal ticket for the Jana’ata.

            Until this point in the novel, the Jesuits have attempted to maintain their quickly diminishing community.  When the Jesuits take up the proverbial sword against the established social order of Rakhat, they cross over into identification with a new group, a new society formed of Runa and the apparent sole surviving member of the landing party, Sofia Mendes.  The Sparrow illustrates both the quick shift of allegiances and a gradual realignment of group identification, which sets the stage for the numerous side-switches found in Children of God.

            Supaari VaGayjur has prospered as a merchant with a monopoly on ET merchandise.  A Jana’ata third-born, he has achieved more than most of his third-born caste can hope for, a successful merchant career.  He may dream of more, but he does not question his station in life unduly, until the powerful eccentric Hlavin Kitheri offers him his heart’s desire – breeding rights and a marriage to the noble Kitheri lineage.  His refusal to accept the slated death of his infant daughter marks his first separation from Jana’ata society.  Blamed for Kitheri’s crimes, declared VaHaptaa by his own people, he flees Inbrokar as an outcast and a criminal.  Living in exile among the Runa at Trucha Sai, Supaari’s great revelation comes close on the heels of his discovery of the wreckage of the Magellan lander and the wholesale slaughter at Kashan.  When he is attacked by Kanchay, who asks, “What gives you the right?” Supaari is forced to take sides.

His turning point comes alone, in a night of self-imposed exile from his new community of Runa and human.  When he likens the Jana’ata to parasites, feeding off the Runa but never taking enough to kill their hosts, he abandons his Jana’ata identity forever.  When he returns to the settlement, Supaari and Djalao’s question-and-answer session begins the organized revolution of the Runa, and these two embark upon their new goal of genocide of the Jana’ata.  As Djalao answers, they will “kill them, one by one – until they trouble us no longer” (Russell 239).  Supaari’s search has ended; he has founded the social order of a new Rakhat, a world for Runa with no place for the Jana’ata.  Sofia Mendes affirms her alignment with this new community when she tells her daughter that “everything happens for a reason… The Runa are my people now, and your people as well” (Russell 252).

All of these changes grew from the seed of the Jesuit’s presence of Rakhat.  The Rakhati had lived for generation after generation, never questioning their traditions and the structure of their society.  Contaminated by the gardens of the Jesuits, which enabled them to reproduce at an unacceptable rate, Sofia Mendes sows the seed of revolution in the mind of the Runa.  Word spreads, resistance increases, and war ensues, with genocide as its stated intent.  With the aid of Stella Maris’s communications technology, and vastly superior numbers, the Runa seem destined to achieve Djalao and Supaari’s goal.  In the end, Russell sends a second Jesuit mission which prevents the slaughter of the Jana’ata, with the aid of the Lady Suukmel’s pragmatism and political savvy.  Genocide is narrowly averted, as is sometimes the case in first contact stories.  The contamination of an idea spreads quickly in the literature of ideas, and cultures almost inevitably clash in first contact stories.  Most of Russell’s characters realign their allegiance in a single moment, though they sometimes seem to have little choice in the matter.

Emilio Sandoz also switches sides after losing everything, leaving his Jesuit life behind when he has been raped by God, in the person of Hlaven Kitheri.  He recounts his turning point in the synopsis presented at the start of Children of God.  “I loved God and trusted in His love. … I was naked before God and I was raped. … If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God” (Russell 5).  It is Vincenzo Guiliani’s report that pinpoints the crucial moment for Sandoz, the death of Askama.

By his own admission, Sandoz had by that time reached a state of murderous desperation. …he had that day made Jephthah’s vow: that he would kill the next person he saw.  He could not have anticipated that it would be Askama, a Runa child whom he had all but raised, and whom he loved deeply.  (Russell 20)

Viewing him as a depraved prostitute and child murderer, the Magellan crew offers no solace; Sandoz returns to Earth alone with his madness, his entire world shattered by the unfortunate sequence of events on Rakhat.  Believing himself to be chosen by God to lead the Rakhati mission, the responsibility for the deaths of the Runa fall on his conscience.  He formalizes this decision by attempting to leave the Society of Jesuits upon his return to Earth, and is eventually granted a partially detached status by the SJ.  Sandoz is kidnapped by Carlo Giuliani, with the blessing of the SJ Father General and the Pope himself, a tool of ecumenical politics; Sandoz’ return to Rakhat is the price to end the separation of the Catholic Church and the SJ.  On Rakhat, Sandoz plays his part to help broker the deal to save the last remaining Jana’ata and send them to the reservations; in the end, Sandoz reunites with his God.

All three characters examined here, Sofia Mendes, Emilio Sandoz, and Supaari VaGaygur change their allegiances in a moment, as the result of a cataclysmic event.  Sofia witnesses the slaughter of the Runa infants, Supaari discovers his daughter had been wrongfully condemned to death, and Sandoz murders the Runa girl he loved the most.  With nothing left to lose, they leave behind the company they started with, and Sofia and Supaari ally as Sandoz forms a community of one.  On Rakhat, the explorers are profoundly changed by their adventures, as are the explored.

In The Sparrow and Children of God, the explorers and the explored change one another, bringing them to the brink of destruction, both individually and collectively.  For each planet, it is the initial attempt at first contact with an alien race.  How could they possibly have foreseen the inherent danger of cultural contamination and misunderstanding?  How would the story change if they had?  Orson Scott Card provides that answer in Speaker for the Dead, his sequel to Ender’s Game.

Us and Them – Changing Communities in Speaker for the Dead

“What I wanted to hear was the name of what you are instead of all the things that you are not.”  Pipo, to Novinha (Card 19)

Andrew Wiggin, whose nickname Ender is an epithet for third-born, understands the dangers inherent to both sides in situations of first contact.  In Enders Game, the child Andrew Wiggin is tricked by the military into the genocide of the buggers, thinking that he is participating in training exercises.  Through telepathy, he discovers the last surviving bugger, the Hive Queen.  Through understanding and empathy, he writes her story, becoming the first Speaker for the Dead.  This volume transforms him from Ender Wiggin, savior of the human race, into Ender the Xenocide.  Ender Wiggin’s perfect understanding of the buggers redefine them in the eyes of his readers; he realigns the bugger identity from “Us” to “Them”, sacrificing his own reputation in the process.  As the book concludes, he packs the Hive Queen’s cocoon into his knapsack and embarks on a search for a new home a new race of buggers.

As Speaker  for the Dead opens, Ender Wiggin has practiced his profession of Speaker for the Dead for 3,000 years of human history.  His identity as Ender Wiggin is scrcret; he is simply addressed as Speaker.  All Speakers for the Dead are allowed special access to information because of their mission to speak the truth of the recently deceased.  And, Ender has a very special research assistant in her ear – an electronic sentient being named Jane, the proverbial Ghost in the Machine, a machine intelligence that has revealed herself to nobody else.  Ender, Jane, Valentine, and the Hive Queen make up a very small, very exclusive community, set apart from the rest of humanity by their secret identities and dislocation in time.

The story follows the family of Novinha, a xenobiologist on Lusitania.  Xenology, the study of piggy behavior, and xenobiology, the study and manipulation of alien plant and animal life, are difficult endeavors on Lusitania.  Starways Congress has tied the scientists’ hands by decree: the colonists may not venture outside the protective fence around their compound and “the piggies are not to be disturbed.”  (Card xiv)  The fence was erected to keep the colonists in, in addition to keeping the piggies out.  The xenobiologist must not only attend to traditional duties, but must also monitor the descolada, a mutating virus that killed a significant number of colonists, Novinha’s parents among them.  Because of the congressional restrictions, the xenologers may not reveal any aspect of human culture to the piggies, for fear of cultural contamination.

When Novinha’s mentor, the xenologer Pipo, is killed in a piggy ritual of vivisection, she calls for a Speaker for the Dead to speak the truth of Pipo’s life and death.  Pipo has discovered why the piggies name the trees, and why they talk to the trees as if they were revered ancestors.  The truth is quite simple – they are in fact dead ancestors, and the piggy ritual is required to send them into the next phase of their life as trees. Pipo realizes that their transition from animal to plant is a result of the piggies’ adaptation to the descolada virus.

Ender Wiggin answers Novinha’s call, arriving almost thirty years after the call is placed. In the intervening years, Novinha has completely unraveled the secret of the descolada and locked it away in her files.  To know this secret is to suffer death by piggy ritual and she will simply not allow that to happen again.  A bitter, abused woman, married to a violent alcoholic to protect the man she really loves, her family has grown up as a collection of individuals who happen to live in the same house.

Ender’s understanding and empathy have a profound effect on Novinha’s family, and he joins their community immediately.  On his first night he thinks, “Didn’t you notice?  I’m in the family now, whether you like it or not.  Whether I like it or not”  (Card 131).  With Jane’s help, Ender uncovers all of Novinha’s secrets and speaks Pipo’s death, telling the truth about Novinha and the descolada.  Now the colonists all know that no one can ever leave Lusitania again because of the danger their infection presents to the Hundred Worlds.  It matters little, since Starways Congress launched an evacuation fleet the moment they noticed Lusitanian xenologers were sending falsified reports; the local scientists had in fact been unable to bear the denial of information to the piggies.  The xenobiologists have provided the piggies with genetically altered grain to supplement the piggy diet in an attempt to end the piggies’ inter-tribal wars over food.

Once the truth is Spoken, the fence must come down.  Ender discovers the secrets of the piggy life cycle and hammers out a treaty with their new community members, the piggies.  To formalize this treaty, Ender must do what Libo could not.  He must perform the piggy ritual of vivisection upon a piggy named Human, to honor Human’s part in forging the treaty.  Libo sacrificed his own life rather than commit what he believed to be ritual murder, but was in actuality bringing a piggy into his next life as a fathertree.

The Lusitanians discover that the Speaker for the Dead is The Speaker for the Dead, Ender Wiggin.  Starways Congress has seized all of the Lusitanian records, including the locked files of Novinha.  Having learned the truth about the descolada, they launch a fleet of planet-destroying ships toward Lusitania.  Ender Wiggin writes The Life of Human, the story of the piggies.  Jane transmits it to the Hundred Worlds by ansible, and mankind starts to understand the piggies, as they understood the buggers after the first xenocide.  Resistance to the congressional plan to destroy Lusitania is growing because of the Speaker’s latest literary work.  As the novel ends, Ender Wiggin unpacks the Hive Queen’s cocoon from his knapsack and the new community of Lusitania is born, comprised of Jane, humans, piggies, and buggers awaiting the arrival of the potentially lethal ships of Starways Congress.

Card’s theme of community permeates Speaker for the Dead like the descolada virus.  Novinha, Jane, Ender, Human, and the Hive Queen join the new community on Lusitania through a combination of cataclysmic events and gradual immersion to avert a second accidental xenocide.  Card illustrates the principle that communication leads to understanding, which leads to a sense of community, turning “Them” into “Us.”  Unity arises from the combination of empathy and respect embodied in the character of Ender Wiggin, the most loved and hated man in the Hundred Worlds.              Ender Wiggin did not intend to change the fate of the Lusitanians when he arrived, at least not in any fundamental manner.  In this, his mission differs somewhat from Estraven and Genly Ai, the protagonists of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Loyalty and Duality in The Left Hand of Darkness

“Who do you serve and who do you trust?”

Opening credits to J. Michael Straczynski’s Crusade

            Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is set on the planet Gethen, a world so cold that we call it Winter.  Life on Gethen is difficult, with weather much like the coldest climates of Earth.  The Gethenians are very unlike the humans of the Ekuman of the Known Worlds, who are mostly humans as we know them.  The Gethenians have no permanent sex or gender; rather, their sexuality is latent for most of the time.  Sexual ability emerges on a regular cycle known as kemmer.  When a Gethenian enters the kemmer phase, they could become man or woman, depending on the current gender of the available partner they choose.  A Gethenian may be the birth-parent, or mother, of one child and the parent, or father, of another. Monogamous marriage, or a vow of kemmer, is not particularly common, though it is possible.

The most horrible crime that one can commit on Gethen is suicide.  Murder is a personal or political act on Gethen, and war has never occurred.  The political climate has begun to change, and it is possible that war may be in Gethen’s future as the novel begins -- a border skirmish between the two largest countries has continued to escalate. 

Genly Ai has volunteered as First Mobile, traveling to Gethen to deliver an invitation to join the Ekumen of Known Worlds.  When he arrives, he begins his mission in feudal Karhide, aided in his quest by the Prime Minister Estraven, the “King’s Ear.”  On the eve of Genly Ai’s long-awaited audience with King Argaven, Estraven is declared guilty of treason and banished from Karhide, sentenced to death if he ever returns.  Ai journeys to neighboring bureaucratic Orgoreyn, where he becomes the unwitting tool of one of the thirty-three political factions.  The faction supporting him loses their bid for power, and Ai is imprisoned; false reports of his death by disease are circulated by the Orgoreyn government.

Estraven rescues Ai from prison, and they sledge across the Gobrin Ice, a glacier that separates the two countries.  Estraven returns Ai to Karhide, knowing that Ai will be welcomed by the King, as an embarrassment to Orgoreyn.  Estraven is betrayed and killed by agents of Tibe, his replacement as King’s Ear.  Ai brings down his starship and Karhide joins the Ekumen, with Orgoreyn soon to follow.  The novel concludes as Ai travels to Estraven’s domain to meet Estraven’s parent and child.  Genly Ai has spent three years in his mission to Gethen at the close of the novel.

LeGuin’s novel is structured as a series of reports from Genly Ai to the Ekumen.  Ai includes his own reports, reports from later observers, myths of Gethen, and journal entries.  After the trek across the Gobrin Ice begins, the journal entries typically alternate between Ai and Estraven.

The first chapter contains a conversation between Prime Minister Estraven and First Mobile Genly Ai.  Estraven knows that his exile as a traitor is imminent.  He speaks of patriotism as fear of the other, instead of love of the homeland.  “It’s because of fear that I refuse to urge your cause with the king, now.  But not fear for myself, Mr. Ai.  There are other nations on Gethen”  (LeGuin 14).  Estraven observes that he has never served the king, nor has he ever intended to.  “A man must cast his own shadow…” (LeGuin 14).

The significance of these remarks is entirely lost on our current narrator Genly Ai and therefore on the reader as well.  It is only much later, on the Gobrin Ice trek, that they are understood as simple truth.  Genly Ai does not trust Estraven and neither does the reader.  LeGuin aids our misunderstanding by describing Ai’s frustration with the elaborate Karhidish custom of shifgrethor, which abhors plain speech in favor of a communication game where information is inferred and the rules of politeness have devolved into a Byzantine labyrinth of manners.

The relationship between Genly Ai and Estraven illustrates one of LeGuin’s major themes, the nature of duality.  Their experience of their relationship is completely divergent as the novel begins.  Ai mistrusts Estraven, believing that Estraven is delaying his much-sought audience with King Argaven.  When Ai arrives in Orgoreyn, he continues to view Estraven with alarm and suspicion, and fails to heed Estraven’s urgent warnings of danger.  It is only after Estraven saves his life by rescuing him from Pulefen Farm that Ai realizes that Estraven has been working to further Ai’s mission all along.

At the brink of the Gobrin Glacier, Ai begins to find personal common ground with Estraven.  As they rest at the edge of the Ice, Estraven reflects upon Genly Ai’s dislocation in time, brought about by his timejumps from Earth to Gethen.  Estraven says, “I thought myself an exile.”  Ai replies, “You for my sake—I for yours” (LeGuin 159). With this exchange, they both begin to realize what they have in common, instead of focusing on how they differ.

The theme of duality runs rampant in this chapter, which also features an exchange on the nature of women.  Estraven asks, “How does the other sex of your race differ from yours?”  Ai realizes that Estraven has never seen a woman, so he attempts to describe them.  In the end, Ai concludes that he really doesn’t understand women all that well.  Ai says, “In a sense, woman are more alien to me than you are.  With you I share one sex, anyhow…” (LeGuin 169).  Themes of gender issues aside, this chapter concerns duality but curiously, through a consideration of duality, Genly Ai comes one step closer to understanding of, and identification with, Estraven.

Estraven escorts Ai into Karhide where he is eventually discovered by Tibe’s agents, who promptly betray the former Prime Minister.  Attempting to cross back into Orgoreyn, Estraven the Traitor skis straight into the guns of the Tibe’s border guards, committing the heinous crime of suicide to ensure the safety of Genly Ai and the success of Ai’s mission.  Estraven sacrifices everything for Genly Ai, and for his loyalty to Gethen.  By joining the Ekuman, war will be averted and the people of Gethen will escape the specter of war that has haunted them since the rise of Tibe and the organization of Orgoreyn.

At the conclusion of the novel, Genly Ai finally realizes that Estraven is the only person he mistrusted from the start, and also the only person who did not betray him.  In return, Ai reneges on the only promise he has ever made to Estraven, that King Argaven must agree to clear Estraven’s name before Gethen may join the Ekumen.

As Ai’s party steps off the ship, he discovers just how much he has been changed by his three years on Gethen.  At the start of his mission, the Getheniens were completely “Them” to Genly Ai.  As he views his own colleagues from Earth, he is appalled by their strangeness: “Their voices sounded strange: too deep, too shrill.  They were like a troupe of great, strange animals, of two different species: great apes with intelligent eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer…” (LeGuin 212).  In this moment, Ai’s Us has become the Gethenians and his Them has become the Earthers.  He has completely swapped sides, a change brought about through immersion in Gethenian culture and his love for Therem Harth rem ir Estraven.

The Practice Effect

In a 1998 interview for the National Jesuit News, after the publication of Children of God, Mary Doria Russell talks about why it was so important that Emilio Sandoz was a Jesuit. She says:

I also think the opportunity to do first contact right would be interesting, and it would be something that would motivate Jesuits.  The notion that you have seen how things can be damaged and how dangerous it can be would lead Jesuits to want to analyze that and then try to do it right the second time. (Russell interview)

The first Jesuit mission split the world of Rakhat in two, setting the Runa on the path to revolution.  Sofia Mendes incites revolution with her cry of “We are many, they are few.”  The mission is an unmitigated disaster for both sides, resulting in Sandoz’ months of gang-rape and imprisonment  by Hlaven Kitheri as a result of Supaari VaGayjur’s misunderstanding of the English word “service.”  The reports of the murderous prostitute Sandoz cause almost irreparable harm to the reputation of the Society of Jesuits and the Catholic Church.

In Children of God, Russell grants Sandoz, and the SJ, an opportunity to redeem themselves.  Though the methods of the Church and the SJ are undeniably brutal, they do achieve the desired personal and social results.  In the end, Sandoz has achieved some kind of truce with God, the SJ is welcomed back into the Catholic Church, and the apparently inevitable genocide of the Jana’ata is averted by Danny Iron Horse’s administration of the reservation system for the Jana’ata.

The second SJ mission does learn from the mistakes of the previous mission, which is one reason Giuliani insists that Sandoz’ kidnapping is worth the price.  Giuliani’s prediction that Sandoz will return to God is also proven to be correct.

This parallels Ender Wiggin’s redemption on Lusitania.  As the unwitting tool of the military, Ender has apparently been the instrument of destruction of the entire bugger race.  On Lusitania, it is Ender Wiggin who forges the treaty between human and piggy, and the reestablishment of the race of buggers when he finally finds a resting place for the Hive Queen’s 3000-year-old cocoon.

The Ekumen already has vast patience and much experience with first contact in The Left Hand of Darkness.  Genly Ai has the experience of what may be hundreds of years worth of reports from more than eighty member worlds.  When he remarks that “One alien is a curiousity, two are an invasion,” it has the tone and feel of an Ekumenical aphorism (Leguin 22).  Clearly, Gethen is not the first world that the Ekumen has contacted and Ai has the reports of a previous observation party to aid him in his understanding of Gethenian customs, attitudes and culture.

All three of these tales suggest that the risky business of first contact improves as explorers gain experience.  Like the experience of our Polar explorer Roald Amundsen, practice and preparation are portrayed as potential keys to success in the first contact experience.

Catalysts for Swapping Sides

These three tales all portray examples of exchanging Us and Them, shifting community and group identifications for the explorers and for the explored.  The three authors use explosive events, gradual immersion, or a combination of the two to set up the change of identification for the characters.

In Children of God, the outright side swapping is generally the result of a single event.  Sandoz divorces himself from God when he has the misfortune to murder his beloved Askama.  Sofia Mendes sows the seeds of revolution when she witnesses the wholesale slaughter of Runa infants as punishment  for unsanctioned breeding by the Runa.  Supaari VaGayjur turns his tail on the Jana’ata version of success when he sees his doomed perfect daughter, and joins the Runa revolution when he realizes that the Jana’ata have lived as parasites on the bodies of the Runa.  

In The Left Hand of Darkness, Ai’s identification of Gethen as his community is a more gradual process that evolves over his trek across the Gobrin Ice.  When Estraven rescues him, Ai begins to understand that he has, in fact, understood little from his two years in Karhide and Orgoreyn.  When Estraven abandons shifgrethor in favor of plain speaking, Ai begins to understand Estraven’s motives.  After more then three months in the constant company of Estraven, and the experience of watching Estraven commit the worst crime on Gethen to save Ai and ensure his mission’s success, Ai realizes the depth of Estraven’s love for him and for Gethen.  LeGuin combines the two methods to lead up to the moment of the embarkation of the landing party, when Ai fully realizes that he has become more Gethenian than he would have ever thought possible.

Like LeGuin, Card combines the two methods to spur Ender Wiggin’s forging of the new community of Lusitania.  Ender has spent a lifetime as Speaker, utilizing empathy, understanding and respect for the ways of the Other to speak the truth of their lives and deaths.  The piggy and human cultures merge as the result of a series of epiphanies and both races’ reaction to them.  Novinha withdraws from her community of Pipo, Libo and herself as a result of Pipo’s ritual murder and her knowledge of the necessity of the descolada to the piggy development cycle.  She rejoins the larger community of Lusitania when Ender Wiggin speaks the truth and all of her secrets are  revealed by the Speaker for the Dead.  Ender Wiggin forges the new community of humans, piggies, Jane, and the Hive Queen out of the necessity of Starways Congress’ reaction to the transgression of their directives against cultural contamination and the potential consequences of the descolada virus.

The Conflict between Love and Duty

All three works demand that explorers examine the conflict between their public roles and their private lives in order to achieve their goals.  From an article about typical LeGuin heroes:

In his role of scientist, the anthropologist expects cultural division and has been trained to explore it; but as an individual, he fins that his personal attachments exist to an important degree independent of and at times in conflict with his social duty. (Huntington)

Examining Genly Ai, Huntington asserts that his love for Estraven is in conflict with his role as First Mobile.  He later states that it is significant that the love between Estraven and Ai develops in solitude on the Gobrin Ice.  Though I was at first inclined to disagree, perhaps Huntington is right.  If Estraven’s motive in Ai’s rescue is attributed entirely to his desire to use Ai’s invitation to avert war on Gethen, then Huntington may be correct.  Until the two are stripped of their duty to their respective worlds, they cannot see each other as individuals.  Once they are alone on the Gobrin Ice, with nothing more pressing then their mutual survival, they can explore one another as people, resulting in love and understanding.

Certainly, a dichotomy exists between private desires and public imperative in Children of God.  It is clearly Supaari VaGayjur’s duty to allow his infant daughter to be killed by Hlaven Kitheri.  Yet, as he gazes upon her tiny perfection for the first time, his love for her drives him to leave Jana’ata society and join the Runa refugees at Trucha Sai.  Sofia Mendes has no first or second thoughts about cultural contamination when she incites the Runa revolution.  She and the entire remaining Jesuit party are motivated solely by her love for the Runa, abandoning their duties as missionaries and anthropologists in their drive to remake Rakhati society more Earthlike.

Ender Wiggin’s profound sense of empathy has spent a lifetime loving the dead whose lives he has been called upon to Speak.  Nonetheless, he has not spared the dead any potential embarrassment; he speaks the truth no matter how harsh it may be.  When he talks about the xenocide of the buggers he says, “If I had known the battle was real, I’d have done the same thing.  We thought they wanted to kill us.  We were wrong but we had no way to know that” (Card 403).  He loves Human even as he performs the piggy ritual murder to seal the pact between human and piggy.  And yet, it is love that motivates him to honor his promise to the Hive Queen, it is love that he exercises when he unpacks her cocoon on the surface of  Lusitania. 

Narrative Structure in First Contact Stories

These three tales also have at least one common structural device – the use of  non-narrative elements to impart background information and lend verisimilitude to the works.  “The ‘anthropological survey’ portion of The Left Hand of Darkness is necessitated by the alienness, the radical Otherness, of the Gethenians.”  (Erlich)

LeGuin provides the most extreme example of using non-narrative elements to impart information.  Her novel contains short chapters that consist of myths of Gethen or reports of Ekumen observers.  She also allows Estraven to narrate part of the journey across the Gobrin Ice.

Card and Russell favor excerpts as chapter epigraphs to impart information about the Other and their homeworlds to the reader.  Whether it comes in chapter form or as an epigraph, these digressions from the narrative not only provide expository material in an elegant, economical fashion, they also lend verisimilitude to the work.  It adds some of the tone and feel of real-life explorers’ journals to these fictional works.

Parallels and Divergences

These three tales are set in both near and far futures, with varying degress of technological advancement on the part of the explorers.  Because great distances must be covered to journey to their destinations, they all employ some sort of faster-than-light travel.  They all project instantaneous (or near-instantaneous) communication across vast distances.

All three works have differences in major themes.  Card emphasizes a sense of community, understanding, and communication as the road to a desirable goal of unity.  Russell also seeks unity, but her novel is the most overtly thematically religious, and could arguably be described as the story of Emilio Sandoz’ search for God set in a science fiction universe.  LeGuin emphasizes politics, gender, and duality with the common goal of unity.  But they all share the goal of unity across species, across planets.  All three authors offer tales which feature some peaceful blending of Us and Them as the most desirable, and difficult to achieve, outcome of first contact.

Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott.  Speaker for the Dead.  New York:Tor,1986.

Erlich, Richard D.  “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Survey of Science Fiction. Ed. Frank N. Magill (Englewood Cliffs:Salem, 1979), 1171-77.  09 May 2004. http://www.users.muohio.edu/erlichrd/courseinsf/Lhd.html

Huntington, John.  “Public and Private Imperatives in Le Guin’s Novels.” Science Fiction Studies.  2:7 (November 1975) 09 May 2004.  http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/7/huntington7art.htm

LeGuin, Ursula K.  The Left Hand of Darkness.  New York: Walker and Company, 1969.

Mailer, Norman.  Of a Fire on the Moon.  Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969,1970.

Russell, Mary Doria. Children of God.  New York:Villary,1998.

Russell, Mary Doria.  Interview.  “Insight from Afar An Interview with novelist Mary Doria Russell.”  The National Jesuit News.  09 May 2004.  http://users.adelphia.net/~druss44121/nationaljesuitnews.htm