A startling debut novel of linguistics, anthropology, geopolitics, and first contact.
In England, a team of scientists conduct unethical experiments on children secluded from the outside world. In Brazil, American engineers threatened by left-wing guerilla fighters attempt to complete a massive new dam. In the rainforest threatened by the dam, an enigmatic tribe awaits the birth of a new messiah. In deep space, an alien intelligence receives and analyses transmissions from Earth. The world stands on the brink of an incredible breakthrough, but will it be transformative - or destructive? As David Pringle wrote, “it seemed in the mid-1970s that the world was Ian Watson’s oyster”. He began his SF writing career with “Roof Garden Under Saturn”, a story published in New Worlds magazine in 1969. Published by Gollancz in 1973, The Embedding is Watson’s striking and sometimes shocking debut novel. As the SFE put it, the book “very early confirmed his stature as an SF writer of powerful intellect”. Very much a novel of the “soft” sciences, The Embedding has a complex plot which braids together narratives dealing with linguistics, anthropology, colonialism and resistance, as well as first contact with alien life. Watson explores language, perception and the pursuit of meaning on various scales - from a closed-off lab, to an Amazon village, to an alien civilisation which journeys the cosmos on the shifting tides of space itself.
Nested destinies
The Embedding has a complex story which is primarily organised into three plot threads, which are initially only slightly connected, but which become braided together.
While each of the characters grapple with their own crises, an external element intrudes: Sole is alerted by an NSA agent that contact has been made with an alien intelligence. The linguist is essentially conscripted into an effort to make contact with the beings, who prove to be obsessed with language. They offer a grim bargain to humankind - formidable technology and the coordinates of habitable worlds, in exchange for six live, disembodied, human brains. Events in every plot thread rapidly escalate, in part due to their connections with this momentous exchange. What unites many of the deeply flawed characters - and the aliens - is their craving for meaning, for a grasp on language that will enable them to better understand the universe and their place within it. Watson’s novel raises the questions of whether humankind is worthy of this knowledge, what they would do to obtain it, and whether they would abandon it in order to preserve the status quo.
Finding the right words
The Embedding is arguably a far more effective and compelling use of linguistics in science fiction than other efforts like Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 (1966) and Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue (1984). Like other SF treatments of language, Watson’s novel deals partly with the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (or linguistic relativity), which suggests that a person’s notion of reality is structured by the language they speak. The novel’s human and alien characters each, in their own way, seek a language that will unveil some truer knowledge of the universe. The aliens in particular are pathologically driven by this quest, which has taken them to numerous inhabited star systems. The pursuit of knowledge comes with a large cost. The alien culture has been warped by it, and Chris Sole is driven to highly unethical experimentation. Pierre Darriand, though an anthropologist, is obsessed partly by Xemahoa B and crosses his own ethical lines. While the novel’s opening can seem overly dry or academic in tone, no prior knowledge of linguistics or other disciplines is necessary to enjoy The Embedding once it gathers pace. Watson’s chosen title comes from the term centre embedding, and has several resonances in the story.
The stars reach back
The Embedding is as much about people as it is about language. It is suffused with political and personal conflicts, as well as questions about the future of the human species. The novel’s anthropological element examines multiple different kinds of societies and groups, from the supposedly primitive Amazonian tribe to the apparatus of the US security state. The novel has a strong geopolitical element, in which the powerful manipulate the affairs of “lesser” societies in order to secure their own interests. After contact with the aliens begins, The Embedding widens its scope. It raises questions about humanity’s worthiness for venturing beyond the Earth, and how trustworthy it will be in its interactions with other intelligences. At no point does Watson’s novel indulge in the wish fulfilment typical of much SF. It is clear that human greed and lust for power poses a deep threat to the lofty goals of exploration and understanding.
A unique first novel
The Embedding is a truly striking first novel. Rooted in Watson’s encounters with linguists, anthropologists, and even his experiences with LSD, it is tremendously ambitious in its scope. This is a difficult novel to summarise or even to parse; in its 250 pages it covers enormous intellectual ground, while telling a story that is compelling and - especially in its endgame - genuinely shocking.
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Exploring classic science fiction, with a focus on the 1950s to the 1990s. Also contributing to Entertainium, where I regularly review new games. Categories
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