On "Light from Uncommon Stars" and just writing a good story
A review of Light from Uncommon Stars (2021) by Ryka Aoki
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Science Fiction: ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5)
Literary: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Vibe: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
As this is a very recent book, I’m not going to be giving any spoilers. Regardless, I don’t think I’d want to — although there is a very definite plot, it is a story that is so much more than plot.
Light From Uncommon Stars has three major1 point-of-view characters, each part of a different genre: realism, magical realism, and science fantasy. As the realism thread is about a transgender character written by a transgender author documenting the difficulties of being transgender in this world, your reaction will certainly be emotional; whether it is the catharsis of being seen, the anger at the way the world is, or the sadness of witnessing tragedy, Aoki’s writing elicits feeling.
The novel is a fairy tale with a reference to Undertale in more ways than one — a mishmash of new and retro elements, a combination of fantasy elements from different genres, and a literal reference to Undertale (“Nethertale”). And themes — so many themes. Music. Food. Artisanship. The validity of both connoisseurs and simple pleasures, of both high and low art. The entire story can be seen as metaphor for an author dealing with creating a character and putting them through hardships2. There are detailed descriptions of violins and donuts. Overall it is incredibly rich, making for an enjoyable reading experience — you never feel like you are reading too much into it.
Like I mentioned with Malka Older’s Infomocracy (2016), there’s an almost Miyazaki-like attention to detail with food. While I see and intellectually appreciate the connection between the non-utilitarian artisanal nature of music and food, along with the high and low art aspects of both (video game music vs classical; donuts vs mille-feuille) — in this story the later instances feels like filler. It doesn’t serve a good purpose other than to provide that analogy, so you don’t need ten different iterations of the same idea.
The details of food never slow down a Miyazaki film (or Fruits Basket or many other anime). In a visual medium, you can convey a large amount of detail very quickly. As we would say in signal processing, our visual bandwidth is much greater than is used by text. It takes a lot more bits to stream a film than to download a book to your e-reader.
That means when you start a detailed description of food in a novel, you need to convey something else with the text in order not to feel like everything suddenly stopped — and that something else can’t be the same thing each time. Aoki is conveying the artisanal metaphor with one instance, conveying the cultural diversity of Los Angeles with another instance (world-building3), and then … it’s more of the same. We’re still in LA. We’re still appreciating artisans of high and low art. Older’s uses are world-building and setting — the novel moves around the world, so we have food items establishing the location or describing characters4.
The science fiction thread is the weakest of the three major ones, and is mostly just built from Star Trek (complete with references) with a hint of Foundation (1951)5 and a sci-fi version of The NeverEnding Story (1984). This is why I give the novel two stars for my sci-fi rating. However, that doesn’t detract from the overall rating since I don’t think the book was trying to break new sci fi ground — at its heart, it’s about the characters and how they grow and change. The sci-fi and magical realism elements are there just to expand the space for creativity. I can see a version of this book as pure realism, but it would be much darker — not a story of liberation.
Regardless, I highly recommend this novel as a novel. If you’re looking for a sci fi novel, you’ll probably be disappointed unless you’re flexible on what you think of as sci fi. However, since it contains sci fi elements, it probably won’t receive much attention outside the genre fiction world (seen as derogatory still in the “literature” world which can be as fastidious and closed-minded as the “hard” sci fi6 world). It can be emotionally difficult to read and comes with trigger warnings (and I found a good site to reference linked here). Those elements in the book are from a person who would have experienced them — depictions of homophobia are definitely different coming from LGBTQ+ authors than cis white men, even if they aren’t given authorial endorsement.
There is a fourth, but they are not introduced until about halfway into the novel and are only periodically visited. This fourth point of view character could be considered a bridge between the realism and magical realism elements.
I can’t find the example, but there was a meme/tweet out there that the work of an author is to (paraphrasing) “invent a little guy and make them suffer”. This book has an author who recognizes that and tries to come to terms with it.
I’ve spent a good deal of time in LA and was aware of or personally experienced the kind of food moments in the novel. It’s possible my familiarity with it made the asides feel repetitive.
I have an antenna out for this kind of thing because I have added a few food scenes to Inner Horizon. However, each one is there to add to the story. One helps illustrate the cultural separation between the PlanComs and the wider Orion Union, one is world-building showing the future has a ubiquitous food source so hunger is no longer a problem, another shows the difference being on a space ship, and yet another helps depict being in detention on an alien world.
I also read this incredibly boring book for this review series and will link here when it becomes available.
For my feelings on “hard” sci fi, you can probably look at any other entry of this review series — but most of all my review of The Three Body Problem.
I realize this is the second time I forgot to complete the title before sending (as I've been basically free-forming the review and then seeing if a theme emerges and adding that to the title). Anyway fixed that. Another thing — for some reason I've been disabling comments. I am going to go back and enable them.