Published by Rebellion/Solaris on March 15, 2022
Adrian Tchaikovsky blurs the boundary between science fiction and fantasy by providing scientific explanations of the traditional fantasy themes. In Elder Race, a colony of people who had lost their knowledge of science regarded a man who possessed advanced technology as a sorcerer. In Ogres, when humanity was on the brink of an environmental apocalypse, genetic engineering changed the order of things. Now humans serve masters they regard as ogres — large, strong, and powerful, meat eaters who travel in trains and cars, who rule smaller, inferior, vegetarian humans.
The ogres call humans “Economics” for reasons involving Economic Measures that, in the distant past, favored the ruling class. The Economics don’t understand science and have forgotten their history. They don’t know why meat makes them sick. They view ogres as a different species entirely — a species that Economics exist to serve. Or so they’ve been told by the ogres.
Exactly how the ogres came to exist is a secret that Tchaikovsky reveals early in the novel’s second half. The answer is one that astute readers will probably suspect well before it arrives. A later reveal explains why there are so few humans in such a vast world.
Torquell is a young, unusually large and strong Economic with an independent, mischievous spirit. Torquell enjoys certain privileges as the son of the head servant of an important Master in his village, but he likes to hang out in the forest with Roben and his merry band of outlaws. The story gets started when Torquell loses his temper and defies the Masters. When Torquell realizes the severity of his punishment, he reacts in feral anger. Having no choice but to flee the consequences of his action, Torquell embarks on an adventure that leads him to Baroness Isadora, an ogress who makes him into an entertaining pet. Torquell learns to ask questions and devours volumes of history that help him understand his place in the world.
The story recounts a few years in Torquell’s young life as he discovers his place in the world. Ogres might be seen as an allegory of revolution, the story of an oppressed class that is inspired to rise up against its oppressors. Faced with a choice of working for masters or succumbing to death by poverty, it only takes one person to ask: What if there is a third way? The story eventually confronts Torquell with a moral dilemma (the kind leaders often face in time of crisis) between making a pragmatic compromise that improves life for some humans while leaving the rest enslaved or risking an idealistic path that could either free or destroy all humans. The novel’s ending takes a twist that suggests the choice is illusory, that some moral choices have only one answer.
There are echoes of Ukrainian resistance in some of the scenes, although that could not have been Tchaikovsky’s intent unless he keeps his crystal ball well polished. The ogres have superior technology and firepower; the Economics have heart, although (unlike Ukrainians) their testosterone supply has been limited by genetic engineering.
Tchaikovsky illustrates the axiom that history is written by the victors. History books portray Economics who resisted genetic modification as selfish and wasteful. Ogre historians conveniently omit mention of how genetic modification has served the interests of the ogres. I doubt that Tchaikovsky had this is mind, but there is a clear parallel here with the movement in southern states to ban teaching the reality of white subjugation of black people and the institutionalization of racism that followed.
Another timely theme is the ease with which leaders control followers by feeding them lies. Keeping followers uneducated and dependent on their leaders is essential both to ogres and to certain ogrish leaders in the world we inhabit.
A third theme that resonates is the ability of the ruling class to dismiss what their ancestors did as an unpleasantry that’s not relevant to the present because what’s done is done. Why should the generations that benefitted from their ancestors’ actions take any responsibility for actions that they did not personally take? The answer is obvious to non-ogres who still suffer the generational effects of distant horrors.
Ogres is a novella that Tchaikovsky cut to the bone. Not a word is wasted. If I have a quarrel with Ogres, it is that Tchaikovsky wrote it in the second person (a narrator tells Torquell’s story to Torquell). Second person is almost always a distracting point of view, although the choice makes some sense when we learn the narrator’s identity and the circumstances under which the story is told. Setting that aside, I appreciate Tchaikovsky for writing a brand of smart science fiction that is unlike anything else on the market. He never fails to entertain, but he always manages to illuminate social issues by removing them from a familiar context.
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