Why I Am Glad A Memory Called Empire Won the Hugo Award for Best Novel

 The Middle Ages are rich source of material for writers of speculative fiction and fantasy. Some of the blockbusters series of the genre, such as Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or Dune, introduce readers to worlds which seem recognizably medieval--feudal or monarchical systems of governance, male-dominated social structures, militaries which rely on horses and swords, agrarian economies, technology that belies an industrial revolution or imagines it went off on a very different path, structures of communication which rely on humans to relay information, and so on. Then there are novels in which the futuristic present meets a medieval past (Doomsday Book, Lest Darkness Fall). Beyond that, there is the space opera with elements of medieval culture, and there we come to the utterly brilliant novel, A Memory Called Empire.

 

 

Before discussing why I love this book so much, I want to address two topics to help me get there: medievalists who write things that aren't medieval history, and the assumed whiteness of the Middle Ages. But before I do that, I want to emphasise that I am writing these from the perspective of a fan, and person interested in learning more. I am not an expert, and would encourage you to check out the work of people who are. For medieval and classical receptions in science fiction perhaps here and here would be good places to start, and on the study of the Middle Ages and race, perhaps here and here. Further recommendations most welcome.

Buckle in!

Medievalists as Writers

As the academic and science fiction author Joanna Russ observed, there might be something about similarities between science fiction and the study of the Middle Ages that particularly attracts medievalists to the genre:

Science fiction presents an eerie echo of the attitudes and interests of a pre-industrial, pre-Renaissance, pre-secular, pre-individualistic culture. It has been my experience that medievalists take easily and kindly to science fiction, that they are often attracted to it, that its didacticism presents them with no problems, and that they enjoy this literature much more than do students of later literary periods.  (Russ, 'Towards an aesthetic of science fiction', here)

By a medievalist, I mean someone who has received academic training centred on the broadly-defined Middle Ages AND produced academic publications on the broadly-defined Middle Ages. This a flawed definition of 'medievalist'; it excludes writers like Dr Nicola Griffith, who exhaustively researched her beautiful historical fantasy Hild (you can read about her research process on her blog about writing the novel, here, and I highly recommend that you do.) I am intentionally looking at the medievalist as a creature with some kind of advanced degree in the study of medieval literature, culture, or archaeology, who has produced at least some writing for an academic audience.

But how many of these 'medievalists' have written for non-academic audiences? There is a small but mighty number! I wrote about Tolkein in my last post, and for a lot of people who think of medievalists as writers, he just might be the first person who comes to mind. Certainly, for people who study medievalism in literature and film, his work has provided a wealth of research material. (Interestingly, the only section of Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones devoted to a single author deals with Tolkien). The next person who comes to mind, for me, is the early medieval historian Edward James, whose publications include both studies of the early Middle Ages and its receptions, and studies of science fiction and fantasy, although James as far as I know does not actually write speculative fiction himself.  In reading for this post, I learned about the works of Harry Turtledove, who did an PhD in Byzantine History after reading Lest Darkness Fall (see here). M.R. James studied medieval manuscripts and wrote ghost stories which often feature scholars and sometimes also old and dangerous books (for a good introduction see here)

Arkady Martine (Dr AnnaLinden Weller), whose first novel A Memory Called Empire, won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, has a PhD in Byzantine Studies and has published about the borders and frontiers of the Byzantine world in addition to her speculative fiction (she gave a delightful interview about producing both at once here). As part of her postdoctoral research, Weller brought together both interests in a conference on medieval empire, Byzantium, and speculative fiction (programme here), out of which the edited volume, Histories of the Future, about post-Roman Empires in science fiction, will hopefully come in due course (it's listed on her CV on academia.edu)

In sum, I agree with Joanna Russ that there is something about the overlap of training as a medievalist and the creation of speculative, science fiction, or fantasy worlds, that makes genre fiction a place where we feel at home. As a concluding aside, it is interesting that Classicists and medievalists were among the pioneers of the development of digital humanities as a field; not to mention the number of philosophers of history who were trained medievalists (at least according to a philosophies of history reading group I attended as a PhD student). There's just something about the Middle Ages...

Brief Thoughts on Medieval Whiteness and SFF

My sister, who is a speculative fiction writer but not a medievalist, sent me a copy of A Memory Called Empire not long after it was published at the end of March 2019. In August 2020, in an awards ceremony hosted by G.R.R. Martin, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Martin's hosting of that ceremony is widely agreed to have been terrible (see Nibedita Sen's twitter threads here and here, and this article from Vulture for details). But Arkady Martine's acceptance speech was brilliant, and it, coupled with the other coverage I've linked above, made me think for the first time about the possibility of connections between the assumed whiteness, maleness, and straightness of science fiction and the similar assumptions people make about the Middle Ages. The assumption that the medieval world centred on Europe, and that it was a white world, have been the basis of white supremacist attraction to the period (for an editorial discussing medievalism and the alt right, see here).

Again, my thoughts are not those of an expert, but it seems that the overlap between G.R.R. Martin's version of the Middle Ages, and what Martine calls 'a poison sort of nostalgia', hinges on a similar attitude towards the past, a longing for whiteness.

A Paen to a Memory Called Empire

One of the reasons that I love this book so much is that Martine's academic work shapes the novel's themes and concerns: empire, diplomacy, and the thorny landscape of cultural prestige among them. To give some context for what I am about to say, a brief summary, hopefully spoiler-free, of the plot: Mahit Dzmare, a native of fiercely independent mining station, is sent to the heart of the Texicalannli Empire as the new ambassador. On arrival, she finds out that her predecessor was murdered. She has to figure out why and defend her home from conquest. These two things turn out to be connected...

As someone who works on late antique Gaul, and thinks a lot about a handful of privileged dudes (and ladies!) frantically trying to still be Roman as the mechanisms of empire crumbled and transmogrified around them, my single favourite passage in the novel is this:

...Mahit knew two things: first, that if she wanted to take a turn at this game, all she needed to do was step forward into the circle, and someone would challenge her, same as any other Teixcalaanlitzlim--and second, that she would fail at it completely. There was no way she could do this. She'd spent half her life studying Texicalaanli literature and she was just barely good enough to follow this game, recognize a few of the referents. If she tried herself she'd--oh they would laugh. They'd be indulgent. Indulgent of the poor, ignorant barbarian playing so hard at civilization and--Three Seagrass wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to her. Mahit slipped back, away from the circle of clever young people, and made herself disappear into the great ballroom under the glittering starlit fan-vaults, and tried not to feel like she was going to cry. There wasn't any point crying over this. If she wanted to weep she should weep for Yskandr, or for how much political trouble she was in, not over being unable to describe pool grout while referencing a centuries-old poem on departmental conflict. One department or another, clamoring. She'd read that poem in one of her collections, on the station, and thought she'd understood. She hadn't...Most people avoided her, or greeted her with the formality her office deserved, and that was absolutely fine. That was actually pleasant. She could do courtesy ritual, even without Yksandr's help, and she could be personable--these were all amongst her talents, these were the talents she had been specifically selected for, possessed aptitude in, and no Lsel imago-compatibility test ever looked for fluid improvisational verse. That was just a barbarian child's dream of a desire...' pp. 181-2

Poetry contests to advance character development and plot, for the win. This passage reminded me as well of how scholars of Latin literature play a hobbled version of this game, where we try to spot an author's quotation or paraphrase of a text and use this to get insight into what they were reading and hence what they meant. As someone whose Classical training is partial and whose Latin wobbles, Mahit's recognition of her own limitations felt very familiar.

Secondly, that word in the title: Memory. I love how Martine plays with the idea of memory as something that unites personality and identity, to the point where it can be technologically captured and implanted into someone else via neurosurgery. The way Texicalaanli culture and Mahit's people, the Stationers, view memory differently fascinates me:

'Immoral is being someone you cannot hope to emulate,' Three Seagrass said. 'Like wearing someone else's uniform, or saying the First Emperor's lones from the Foundation Song and planning to betray Texicalaan all at once. It's the juxtaposition is what's wrong. How do I know that you are you? That you are concious of what you're attempting to preserve?'

'You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot--people or ideas or...or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,' said Mahit. 'Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.' p. 291.

And a third thing: in an interstellar empire with energy weapons and an AI running its transportation, the reliance on PHYSICAL OBJECTS to contain letters and messages because those are what's appropriate: this is a goddam delight. And again, something that I, as someone who studies letters and thinks about the way they build bridges across distance and become larger than their words, found resonant in personal and scholarly capacities.

And finally, the fourth thing I love about this novel is the believable pacing. According to one of Mahit's statements towards the end of the book, most of the action of the book takes place over two weeks (the action in full covers two weeks and three months, but most of those three months take place either in memory or offstage), and yet for the sheer amount of drama it contains, the narrative doesn't feel rushed or overloaded, but balanced. 

In conclusion, I love this novel because of the ways it engages with medieval (specifically Byzantine) history and culture, the ways it uses these as the springboard into an exploration of what the author calls in her acknowledgements 'the seduction and horror of empire'. It spoke to some of the things I think about as a scholar, and it expanded my view of the complexity and destructiveness of empires to their citizens and neighbours.

I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace. Roll on 2 March 2021!