Elder Race: Clarke's Third Law, squared

Adrian Tchaikovsky's novella & and an axiom of speculative fiction

Back to School

Up to this point, I've rarely touched on any widely-accepted fundamentals of the speculative fiction genre in my exploration of different novels and ideas. Discussions about the necessary formulae and elements of a piece of art always feel prescriptive to me; also the genre itself has changed massively since the era when many of these ideas were being established.

I believe the idea of [Author]'s Laws in speculative fiction is the result of mixing Asimov's Laws of Robotics (which don't follow the formula of the rest, applying in-fiction) with eponymous laws such as Hanlon's Razor or Murphy's Law. Among the most famous in speculative fiction are those three attributed to Arthur C. Clarke and more recently Sanderson's Laws of Magic, but there are plenty accepted and/or known on smaller scales, such as LeGuin's Law or Niven's Laws.

So with that background out of the way, let's get into Clarke's Third Law and how Adrian Tchaikovsky wrote a great novella around it!

(Just a short piece today as I'm still fairly sick; general spoilers for Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race below – consider giving it a listen if you have Spotify Premium, just takes four hours of your included monthly fifteen!)

Cover of Elder Race, art by Emmanuel Shiu

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law simply states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It's just the idea of bringing your smartphone with you back thousands (or maybe high tens) of years ago to bamboozle the locals; that without understanding the mechanical underpinnings of a thing we can only assume it is supernatural.

I've always been fascinated by this liminal space between the genres of science fiction and fantasy, where context and expertise are really all that might distinguish the one field from the other. For example, I've seen electricity and overhead lighting used in a few places (most recently in Ashes of the Sun) as a mysterious arcana of the ancients.

At first glance, Tchaikovsky's Elder Race is doing exactly the same. We follow Lynn and Esha, from a post-technological society on a planet long ago colonized by Earth, approaching the daunting and alien tower of the ancient wizard Nyrgoth the Elder, hearts filled with hope and desperation in equal parts.

Then we quickly switch to Nyr's perspective, an augmented human anthropologist feeling alone in the universe, powerless and floundering in the face of guests after hundreds of years in stasis.

Nyr and Lynn on the Catalan cover for Elder Race, art by Elsa Velasco

(I'd love to find a reason to explore international book covers sometime; they can be drop dead gorgeous and this is no exception.)

Tchaikovsky executes this all wonderfully, with likeable characters and a fun language barrier which prevents Nyr from ever quite getting his confessions across; his variations of "scientist" and "scholar" constantly being interpreted as "magus," "magician" and "wizard."

It's really amusing to see how hard the characters push on the Third Law without budging it's hold on their relationship, to the point that it almost seems like the novella will center on the moment Nyr's companions finally see through the veil to the truth he's trying to share with them.

But a twist!

Turns out, though, that Lynn's quest isn't quite as humdrum as Nyr had been expecting. The 'demon' becomes more eldritch and alien with every step they take into its affected territory; an unnerving prospect for technologically-adept Nyr yet taken in stride by Lynn and Esha because they can't necessarily distinguish the one level of advancement from the other.

Even though Nyr approaches the demon with the scientific method and a logical mind, it might as well be magic. Blindly infecting and controlling flora and fauna while having little-to-no understanding of their physical shape and function, apparently communicating through other planes or dimensions, manifesting as a gate to a bizarre reality? I'd say that's sufficiently advanced technology, all right.

It's fascinating to see how Tchaikovsky went about doubling up on (or squaring, perhaps) Clarke's Third Law in this story. The idea that Lynn and Esha don't necessarily know the difference between Nyr's tech and the demon's is great, though the reveal that they do understand the demon is somehow coming from outside felt a little out of nowhere considering that previous encounters like this are never mentioned.

Lightbreak, by Julia Powell

Reawakened

By the end of the novella, Nyr has been able to tentatively rise above his depression and existential crises and has rekindled his passion. I think that's quite a fitting idea here; I often feel like I know all this dull world has to offer, but it always turns out there's something new around the corner – whether a new meal, story, or horrifying and implacable eldritch being.

Thanks for reading, until next time <3