A Half-Built Garden
Ruthanna Emrys
July 26, 2022 Tor Books
352 pages
One of the reasons I became a science fiction writer was that I would dearly love to live on a planet other than Earth. I realize this is not a popular opinion, but as a Jew, I cannot help but look at centuries upon centuries of baseless persecution and hate and think I might be better off elsewhere. So I invent my own universes to inhabit (off world SFF or secondary fantasy are my faves). Which puts me in stark contrast to Judy Wallach-Stevens, heroine of Ruthanna Emrys’s queer norm, and deeply thoughtful, first contact novel, A Half-Built Garden. Judy’s roots grow deep into the Earth that she is trying to save and, unlike me, she has no interest in leaving despite offers of rescue from the aliens she inadvertently greets. Yet in our hearts, Judy and I share one crucial thing – we are both searching for ways to improve the future for humanity.
In Judy’s future, large corporations and governments have all been largely reduced to irrelevance by strong watershed networks of people who use mediation and collective decision making to steward the Earth and reverse climate change. It sounded idyllic until I found out these group decisions, which typically are subject to millions of confounding factors and are almost impossible to reach even on a much smaller scale, are made possible by use of dandelion networks. Each watershed has their own network on which members converse and share decision making by voting on various threads and questions. Their votes are given weight by an algorithm supposedly checking for their expertise and relevance on the topic as well as providing votes for what a tree, or river might want and need.
At this point, I remind readers the book was published in 2022 and written before some of our current AI and social media algorithm controversies reared their ugly heads. Right now, many of you might balk, as I do, at the idea that a computer algorithm should decide my future and how much worth my vote has compared to someone else’s – or compared to what its best guess for an inanimate object or force of nature’s vote might be. That’s a hard no from me, due to a significant amount of paranoia that has unfortunately proved to be founded in reality – which is why one of the novels biggest surprises came as no surprise at all to me. In fact I wondered for many chapters why nobody had figured it out yet. Because alas, humanity has proven itself just as devious as Emrys’s imagination suggested we could be, and AI and other advanced computer tools just as dangerous.
The story was still compelling, even if I don’t think such a universe would be a utopia. Our alien “saviors” have some interesting ideas about government and social hierarchies- namely that women (they define this strictly as those that actually bear children or lay eggs or whatever species equivalent there is) are actually the dominant member of the species and take all leadership roles. Which is why Judy, and my closest counterpart in the book – Viola St. Julien, employee of a long defunct NASA now thrust into the limelight – find themselves drafted as alien emissaries despite their complete and utter lack of training. They bore kids, which means the alien leaders are willing to talk with them. In addition, the aliens wonder why there are so few children in our media. Indeed aliens – this is a great question! A Half-Built Garden by necessity breaks that mold. When children are diplomatic props there ensues a large focus on child rearing, breast feeding, and even alternative parenting arrangements in a queer norm future. I was here for this!
Other things I was here for were the alternative gender presentations. The queer norm future of the watersheds allows for trans people to exist in much safer ways than they currently do, and pronoun badges are laid out at the front door like wine glass holders. Normal, expected, nothing of note. While this causes some very deep discussion between Judy’s household members on what to do with the aliens who have a stricter sense of gender roles, it was actually not my favorite form of gender displayed in the book. It is not a spoiler to say that corporations are the big bad in this future, and yet I found their variety of gender choices to be completely and utterly liberating. In the corporate world, members choose from a variety of gender presentations, can swap them out as easily as they can the clothes that signal to others what one is playing at any given moment, and they leave all of that at the office when they go home. When one intern attempts to explain it all to the confused watershed visitors, they say “I wouldn’t want to walk around with my soul on my collar, either. Here, my hormones are my doctor’s business. The shape of my body under my clothes is my lovers.’ … My true self, assuming I admit to having one, is for me alone.” I understand that for some people this would be a regression in rights they have fought for, for others a selfish or scared way to live, but for me it was like finally breathing again after being held underwater for ages. Why is it anyone elses’ business? Why can’t I be all and none if that is my desire? And shouldn’t we all get to chose which world we’d rather inhabit and who we’d prefer to share with? Which is another basic question lying at the heart of the book – why is it always one or the other, yes or no, with no room for “both.”
Yes, I know that was a deeply bisexual thing to say. I am a meme. I take no shame in it. “Both” will always be my answer.
Mediation between opposing factions is shown in fine form here, and it was best when the computer systems were entirely unavailable and a human had to step in and work through the process with both human and alien manually. It was brutal in the honesty it demanded, the forbearance in the face of insults and harm was monumental, and yet it was a thing of beauty to watch. The result – a shared decision based on values – was a testament to owning what we all truly want and need from a situation.
In that way, A Half-Built Garden is a deeply Jewish book. There are some Jewish holidays and traditions featured (Shabbat, kosher, and Passover to name a few) but also a very Jewish value system for Judy, and a fun set of offhand comments that set her well within her cultural inheritance. To opt out of an alien ceremony because she would like to consult a Rabbi first to ensure she is not the laughingstock of future iterations of Talmud scholars was a very, very Jewish neuroses to bring into the moment. I feel you Judy.
In keeping with some of my other reviews that include heat levels, I feel I should mention there is some alien sex in here. It’s mostly closed door, and honestly kind of hilarious, but if that’s not your thing just skip those couple of pages. This isn’t a romance novel. You’ll survive even if you hate romance novels. I promise.
I’m still not ready to let a computer have that much power over my life or my election options, I am more likely to find myself akin to where Viola St. Julien and NASA wound up at the end of the book than where Judy did, but I can see how this future might inspire admiration. Might make someone else want to stick to the Earth that has drank so much of my ancestors blood as humanity committed unspeakable violence upon each other and the soil we live on. A Half-Built Garden is a story of differing perspectives, and of hope, which I think is universal to us all. No matter what planet we wind up on.