(Universali)Tea in Speculative Fiction [Swift Riffle]

Tea is social, religious, therapeutic, symbolic of status and more

Everyone Loves Tea

When you've read enough books of any genre, you begin to recognize patterns in how certain ideas are mirrored and paid homage to by many authors. In a way, that's what inspired me to begin writing this blog: realizing how dedicated many speculative fiction writers are to pointing out systemic injustices in our world by portraying them through a fresh, fictional lens. It's no coincidence that so much of science fiction and fantasy deals with issues of corruption and colonization when they are and have been the fundamental sources of so much pain in our own world.

Then – not unrelated – there's tea, which shows up just about everywhere in speculative fiction once you start looking for it. I first became conscious of this trend when reading discussions of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch novels, then grew more interested when I recently read Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Tea is a surprisingly deep and ingrained symbol in both worlds, being the civilized drink in Leckie's Radch and serving as the medium for Sibling Dex's therapy work in Chambers'.

So today I want to take a look at a few of the many stories where tea plays a cultural or narrative role and note any commonalities that arise. This won't constitute the deepest look at any of these books, but may either inspire you to read them or inspire me to write more concretely about them in the future! Without further ado, let's take a sip.

By Yuumei Wenqing

What is Tea?

Don't worry, I'm not actually writing an essay here on Camellia sinensis – but you're welcome to read up on the history of tea in our world if that's of interest to you!

This question comes up in Leckie's novels, and I think it's an interesting idea to briefly consider with regard to many ideas as they're depicted in speculative fiction. As I already mentioned, Leckie depicts tea as a core part of Radchaai 'civilization' in the books – at one point this gives to an argument about 'real' tea when the characters are presented with a non-Radchaai culture's take on the drink.

It's not made clear that either version of 'tea' has significant that of our world, beyond the idea of adding ingredients to boiling water. The novels don't necessarily even depict a humanity that arose from Earth, their origin so obscured by the depth of time. The same is true of most of the books I'll be discussing today, and likewise their 'tea' might or might not technically match our understanding of it. But the authors are using the term with our understood meaning in mind, and to have us bring our expected associations to the term.

In North America, coffee and alcohol play the role that tea does in many of these stories. They serve as the medium of many social interactions, have varieties which indicate status and fashionable taste and can even play a role in religious ceremonies and (informal) therapy. A generous observer from the Radch might well call these drinks tea, even if it is a deeply uncivilized variation.

The Imperial Radch novels by Ann Leckie, Cover Designs by Lauren Panepinto

Examples Near and Far

Tea is such an accepted part of both life and fiction that it easily melds into the background until you begin actively looking for it. I've therefore been rather surprised to realize it's harder to find books that don't mention tea than those that do.

To be fair, many books are fairly straightforward in their depictions. Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series associates tea with meetings between the aristocracy and their political games; Josiah Bancroft's Books of Babel take inspiration from historical England and subtly use tea to contrast its noble and working class characters. Even in Tamsyn Muir's 10,000 years-distant The Locked Tomb series, tea serves as a standardized drink in addition to providing some relief from the characters' physical and mental exhaustion.

Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan and especially Katherine Addison's The Cemeteries of Amalo series come closer to Leckie and Chambers in the level of importance they place on tea; even though I can't parse Thara Celehar's frequent thoughts on his preferred varieties, they evoke for me the way many people speak about wines or IPAs. Tea is also deeply restorative in both of these series, just as Sibling Dex aims to provide the perfect brew of tea to their clients in Psalm.

The Cemeteries of Amalo by Katherine Addison, art by James Paul Jones

I think this is the first time I've written about it – and what a strange angle to first approach this book from – but Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself uses tea to great effect in just a single page. The recently introduced wizard Bayaz brews and drinks it, offering some to protagonist Logen who refuses. It's a short scene, but it does a lovely job of establishing Bayaz' worldliness and wisdom in addition to foreshadowing the fact that he is very much from a different time and looks down on the world as it now exists. (Also a fun contrast to his introductory scene, but that's perhaps for another time.)

Speaking of topics I should devote more time to, the proliferation of tea along with notions of civilization in series like The Imperial Radch and Teixcalaan has very real roots in our own world history. China introduced tea to Japan and Korea along with small elements of culture and religion; the British Empire later brought tea to every corner of the globe, alongside all the other new standards of 'civilization'. Leckie even subtly mirrors the British Empires's economic motivations in Ancillary Sword, with a prominent tea grower exerting influence and trying to defend her profits.

Too Many to Count

Seth Dickinson's Masquerade novels mirror a pre-Age of Exploration Europe, where tea is still associated with deep mysteries of the world. Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire links tea with a few of its greatest schemers and has its more straightforward characters rebuff it, playing off of similar associations of aristocratic socializing as Terra Ignota and mirroring the Bayaz/Logen conversation from The Blade Itself. I could (obviously) go on.

While researching, I learned that Leckie (and perhaps other authors) were inspired to include and explore tea to such an extent by C.J. Cherryh's The Foreigner series; I sadly haven't read that one yet, but have recently started into some of her other work. Given the ratio of tea being featured in books I've read, I have to imagine it's also present in thousands more that I haven't.

Are there any in particular that come to mind for you? Or are there any of these books that you'd like to learn more about? I'd absolutely love to hear!

Thanks for reading and until next time <3