A Book That Redefined Speculative Fiction

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice threw wide the gates for inclusion and empathy

An Established Order

There is a stereotype that speculative fiction is a genre dominated by white male authors, characters and readers – and it isn't without reason. From the earliest days of pulp science fiction action heroes to the late 2000s, you would have to work to find a work of speculative fiction that didn't fit the bill.

Which isn't to erase the important exceptions which did exist: Ursula K. Le Guin put an Indigenous character front and center in 1968 and took a serious look at gender in 1969; Octavia E. Butler consistently questioned societal systems and advocated for change, Nalo Hopkinson seamlessly weaves Afro-Caribbean lore together with explorations of family and gender across genres.

Covers of A Wizard of Earthsea, Parable of the Sower and Brown Girl in the Ring

There were also unique, fascinating works that (perhaps) just followed white male characters because that was the expectation: Neuromancer, Foundation and Hyperion to name a few. But for the most part shelves were lined with military science fiction/fantasy featuring power fantasy leads, and with heroic adventure stories emulating Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Just scroll through these lists of sci-fi books from the 90s, 2000s and 2010s to see proof of that, and how much has changed recently.

We've come a long way in the past ~15 years, and today I want to discuss the 2013 novel that feels symbolic of this change – if not partially responsible for it.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Ancillary Justice is a meditation on gender, choice, identity and civilization. It is a book about the horrors of colonialism, from the perspective of a warship personally responsible for multiple genocides. It asks the question of our age: would you stand up for your morals, against orders and in the face of death or torturous re-education? (Perhaps more importantly, what does it even mean to stand up to powerful authority, and where and when do you do so?)

Breq and Seivarden in Ancillary Justice, by Lauren Saint-Onge

The Imperial Radch brings the gift of civilization to foreign worlds with great and terrible violence. A central idea of the trilogy is that the word Radchaai literally means 'civilized', and that only civilized lives have any value; this allows them to commit what we would consider war crimes against a people one day and call them citizens the next, once the annexation paperwork has gone through.

Part of the horror of this is that life on the inside of Radchaai society is pretty great. The gender binary has been completely done away with, solving all issues of discrimination: everyone uses she/her pronouns, surgery is available to those who want it, any two people can reproduce in one form or another. Every citizen has the right to clothes, food and shelter and is generally allowed to pursue whatever craft or career they so choose. (Though the importance of social status and lineage ensure certain ironclad limits).

Race is generally a nonissue in the Radch, though it's mentioned a few times throughout the books that darker skin – closer to Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch – is seen more favorably, and that truly pale skin is rare.

Anaander(s) Mianaai, by Meredith Alden Lewis

Ancillary Justice questions and contradicts so many tenets of established science fiction that some people probably refused it the title – yet science fiction is exactly what this is, with space ships and aliens and clones and subspace gates and AI all essential to its narrative.

Different is the New Norm

I was introduced to Ancillary Justice in the fall of 2015, when it was required reading for a course I was taking on Science Fiction Literature at the University of Toronto, and it opened my eyes to what was possible in a genre I still associated almost entirely with novels from the 80s and earlier.

Since then the genre has seen diverse voices and subversive narratives flourishing in the mainstream. These are the books I write about, exploring empathy and communicating the human experience of situations which mimic or symbolize parts of our own world.

Ancillary Justice by no means pulled off this feat alone; but at least for me, it the types of themes speculative fiction is capable of analyzing and paved the way for countless important stories by a wider array of talented authors.

Shorter post today – will write more about this series soon. Thanks for reading and until next time <3