The Outside

I've been wanting to read this book since before it came out, and while I wasn't totally sure of it at first - it is a bit slow to get going - it got better and better as it went, and I'm delighted to have finally read it. This book has layers.

First off, it's Lovecraft but science fiction; which, and this is important, is not the same thing as cosmic horror in space. It takes all that Lovecraftian weird horror stuff and looks at it through a science fiction lens, with an eye to practical analysis. So, for instance: Lovecraft's habit of describing things as "too horrible to describe" (and then proceeding to describe them in detail anyway) is translated here as things being literally indescribable; defying description; not looking like anything; "light" being just a human brain's way of trying to interpret something that it literally can't. Looking at Outside stuff too much or interacting with it will make you go mad, so the cyborg angels augment their vision to just black it out. I know people like to say that what's implied is more horrifying than what's said outright, but this "there's something going on here but it cannot and will not be described" effect isn't horrifying at all - it's matter-of-fact, practical, sci-fi-y; so if you're looking at this book like "I like Lovecraft (despite or except for the racism) because he's Spooky so this is probably a good spooky book also!" then this is definitely not the book for you. It is not a spooky book.

What it does with the concept, though, is amazing. The details are spoilery, but it weaves this cosmic horror stuff into something that blends physics with magic with spirituality in a way that's beautiful and resonates, deeply, honors the ... awe, I suppose, that is the line between worship and horror.

Then there's the way it goes into religion - there are a lot of aspects of it shown here, from "organized religion as a tool for control of a population" to "prayer as a means to an end" to "worship (for lack of a better word) as Knowing and Understanding" to "rapture is its own reward", and so on. The AI Gods don't resonate (for me, anyway) the way the Outside does, but from a worldbuilding standpoint they're fascinating. They reap souls, arguably eat them (in general, this book does an excellent job of taking usually-abstract religious/spiritual things and treating them as physics facts in a science fictiony way) in order to maintain their Godhood, which for the humans is a guaranteed afterlife of becoming one with a God - which as long as it's not Nemesis is considered, culturally, to be a good thing; while a single, almost throwaway line about alien linguistics makes it clear that at least some aliens are deeply horrified by this practice. Which makes sense! Souls being an inarguable science fact is only going to make this sort of religious argument higher stakes!

Yasira isn't especially religious; she's "no good at Gods" (which she feels vaguely guilty for, the way an authoritarian theocratic regime which is with 100% certainty going to judge your soul when you die will do) and her interactions with Outside are more in line with horror and, then, necessity than rapture. She's not culturally neutral; the mores of the AI-God-driven society are pretty well ingrained in her; but because she's not super invested in them as Holy and Sacred, the reader has space to form their own opinions of all this nuance.

And then there's the autism. (And neurodiversity as a whole.)

Riayin, Yasira's home, is a disability-rights-forward sort of place, which is neat both because it allows for a realistic spectrum of reactions (across people from different cultures) and because it's a hopeful vision of the future. Yasira had neurotutors growing up, to teach her how to work with her neurotype - which I love. The Gods, meanwhile, have fancy technological therapy tools. They are very concerned with Yasira's sanity - Outside being madness-inducing as it is - and this means neurofeedback games of which Yasira doesn't know how they work, it not being her area of expertise and all. I love this - I love that something seven centuries in the future has these developments, that fancy therapeutic technology is a thing. I also love that thought is given to the trauma and general well-being, including psychological, of a biological alien spaceship.

The "madness" induced by the eldritch horrors is also interesting from this perspective - Yasira objects to the word at once, of course, given her background, but it still sticks. It... isn't a mental illness, exactly, but it mimics them. It also kind of feeds into gaslighting: a person whose perception of reality doesn't match what it's meant to is labelled mad, even if their perception is, in fact, more correct.

There are several autistic characters, and they balance each other out a bit, if only by showing that a character having a trait doesn't mean all of them do. There's Yasira, the protagonist: a math/physics/engineering genius (prodigy) with hypermorality and a tendency to explore; there's Dr Talirr, a major antagonist, who has flat affect, violent meltdowns, strong social difficulties even with other autistic people (Yasira, despite a history of knowing her), and a focus on her goal that totally bypasses morality; and there's Enga, a minor character whose autism is never named but who definitely reads as autistic. She's certainly neuroatypical in one way or another: a transhuman cyborg angel with a computer for a brain, whose ascension was botched, nonverbal and with futuristic accommodations (she speaks via text and has a text-to-speech translation device when necessary).

I love Enga. She's minor and not especially sympathetic - she's disdainful, certainly not on Yasira's side, and tends to solve problems with violence - but I love her. She has a clicky device in her super-fancy prosthetic arms just to stim with.

Dr Talirr is a villain, but one whom I immediately found sympathetic, possibly partly because whenever the word "heresy" comes up I automatically side with the heretic. It's great to see a villain with flat affect whose affect isn't equated with her villainy; part of the reason this works is that Yasira can read her body language. Her disregard for human life is partly because of the way she perceives the world because of Outside, but also partly because of her autistic sense of priorities; she isn't so much inherently amoral as she just bypasses morality completely in pursuit of the goal she's focused on. This, too, wouldn't work as well without Yasira's hypermorality to balance it out. She has also got an extremely understandable villain backstory, more on that in a bit.

As for Yasira herself - she's a well-drawn autistic protagonist, relatable, melts or shuts down in unexpected and stressful situations, likes to tinker, has lost her passion in an all-too-relateable way but still has the skills, etc, all good; but where the representation is really excellent is in that of her autistic traits, it's not the way she's an utter genius at physics that really matters. I mean, that's very plot-relevant, but only in terms of what she can do and what others want to use her for. In actual climaxy bits, and in her character in general, it's the hypermorality that saves - not just the day - but Yasira's whole sense of self.

(And it's not just a question of making correct choices, the way heroes tend to.)

Where things start to get dodgy, but in a really interesting way that I'd love to discuss with someone if the ideal discussion partner existed, is in the way autism reacts with Outside. Basically: some people can sense it; some people can even interact with it. Dr Talirr is one of these people. So is Yasira. Both are autistic.

Dr Talirr operates on the assumption that it's not just autism, that not all autistic people have this quality, but the book provides no concrete evidence of this either way. (Enga would be a valuable data point here, except that a) she's not confirmed autistic in text; b) she's never shown to attempt any non-violent interaction with it; and c) as an angel on this mission, she almost certainly has the blacking-out-all-Outside-stuff program installed over her vision.) Dr Talirr's villain backstory involves this ability being noticed when she was a child, and described as "presenting as autism". Attempts were made to torture it out of her using a method suspiciously similar to ABA.

I'm not sure if this is just a narrative parallel or if there's a connection being drawn here. The thing is, autism often does involve perceiving things which others do not (but which are nonetheless real). And it does involve pattern-friendly thinking. Yasira eventually perceives Outside as a complex fractal pattern; does she interpret it that way because she's autistic, or does the fact that it is like that make it easier for her, an autistic person, to interpret?

I'm reminded of Gemma Files' Experimental Film, another book that seemed to straddle the magical autism line, which I also wished I could have had someone to discuss with.

One final thought: I really liked the handling of Yasira's girlfriend, Tiv, who was absent for much of the book and served no narrative purpose except to give Yasira emotional motivations - but who nonetheless felt like a complete person (despite the way Yasira thinks of her - with a great deal of love, yes, but also some condescension), and whose relationship with Yasira nonetheless felt real and complete.

Selling points: autistic protagonist; varied autistic representation; lesbians; sci-fi handling of cosmic horror; transhumanist cyborg angels; so many layers

Warnings: very long chapters; unreality; gaslighting; torture; self-injury; nonconsensual drugging

This was a very unusual science fiction/AI story with surreal alternate-universe elements; maybe a little like Vernor Vinge's Deepness universe but crossed with Lovecraft and an autistic lesbian protagonist. If you can imagine that. The setting is somewhere in our future; humans have clearly moved to other planets and formed new cultures (although apparently Canada is a strong influence, as their engineers still wear iron rings, which is a Canadian thing - heh).

Yasira, the protagonist, is a scientist who's developed a new type of energy drive, but her experiment goes fatally wrong and she's summoned by the gods to help clean up the mess by tracking down the rogue scientist who mentored her in the theories that created it.

The gods, it seems, are AI constructs; inconceivably powerful beings that evolved from quantum computers originally built by humans, but which eventually became godlike in scope and power and began to guide humanity. While humanity on the whole seems pretty happy about this and doesn't seem to have any extreme restrictions, there are clearly some fields that humans no longer learn at all (cybernetics is an unknown word) and there are some areas of knowledge and questioning that are considered heretical. Humans strive to be worthy of the gods so their souls will be uploaded to become part of the appropriate god:

The Gods rewarded people when they died; that was part of the point of Gods. They collected souls and sorted them. Souls were somewhat diffuse, and even Gods couldn’t data-mine all the specific details of a single life. But souls took on patterns, and the Gods’ technology could recognize those patterns. They could discern the deepest passions that had driven a person through their life. And when the Gods chose souls to become part of Themselves, to keep Themselves running, they chose by matching the soul’s pattern to the most appropriate God. Hence Aletheia, who took the people driven by a thirst for knowledge. Techne, who took engineers and artists, people devoted to creation in its every form. And so on down the list, from Gods like Arete who took brave heroes, to Gods who took the worst of the worst.

Yasira's mentor Evianna Talirr has become a heretic, it seems, by learning to contact and manipulate the fairly unspecified forces of The Outside, a force which can channel complete chaos into the human worlds. Angels - formerly human cybernetic constructs who serve the gods directly - need Yasira to help find and stop her from causing further damage. To do this Yasira will have to get back into contact with Talirr and learn how to manipulate The Outside herself.

It's a complex book with some great treatment of neuroatypical people, not to mention interesting predictions about AI and some interesting aliens too. It was a bit slow-going in places but overall an interesting read.

This book... Where do I start?

It took me two months to read this book. I'm not a fast reader, but that's slow even by my standards. Please don't assume I read slowly because it was boring. And it's not as if it's hard science fiction, wherein I need to spend hours trying to understand the science being flung around all willy-nilly. It's not actually that science-intense.

Oh, but it is intense. Dense. Rich.

One time I bought a bottle of stout that was so exquisitely intense in its flavour (not to mention its alcohol content) that I couldn't drink more than a 100 mL at a time. This book is like that beer.

In the far future, Yasira is a physicist in charge of a new power reactor on a space station. Only instead of producing power like it's meant to, it tears a hole in the fabric of the universe. Some people escape, but many die. The space station is destroyed. And then the angel Akavi (working for the AI God Nemesis) comes for Yasira. She's guilty of unknowingly committing heresy, but because the one the Gods really want is Yasira's former mentor, Evianna, Akavi makes her an offer. Instead of killing her, she can work for them to help take town Evianna.

It's all very complicated and convoluted and wonderful. I think I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it, but I just don't have the words.

In this world, interstellar humanity is ruled by the AI gods their ancestors created. The gods need humans, and claim their souls after death, so they mostly rule them with an eye to their well-being. Mostly. One of the greatest threats to the gods and, (perhaps?) humanity, is the Outside, a force/worldview/way of thinking that threatens reality. Humans touched by it tend to go mad, and spread their madness, so the gods are ruthless in excising Outside influence.

I love this book's world-building. The Outside is a sort of cosmic horror that is a bit more cosmic than usual, in this book. It undermines physics and causality and seems to have an agenda of destruction. The gods, on the other hand, are ruthless dictators with the agenda of all dictators: to hold on to power by whatever means necessary, but with a light touch on the day-to-day lives of their subjects. They let the worlds under their power develop independently, so long as they hew to the laws of the gods, and offer them worship.

Yasira, the protagonist, comes from a world that is better about disability and mental health than some. Her autism was celebrated and supported there, although she's encountered other attitudes when she went to school. She's trying to build an energy source that will decrease her world's dependence on god-technology. This is a problem because it turns out she's been contaminated by the Outside, but the gods are giving her a long tether to try to discover new means of confronting their old enemy.

This does not go well for Yasira, or, ultimately ,the gods.

I want people to read this, but if you don't like cosmic horror, you might not like this. It doesn't marinate in it the way Lovecraft does, but it certainly visits that territory. There's also some accounts of abuse in a therapeutic context that maps pretty well onto ABA. This is not a major theme, but it's central to one character's back-story.