The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein

[James Nicoll]

http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4909464.html

In what fellow FASS member Mark Jackson-Brown charmingly refers to as
"the Before Times [1]", book distribution in Ontario was pretty patchy and
while I remember that word of mouth on rec.arts.sf-lovers was very positive
about The Steerswoman, I didn't manage to find a copy of it for my own until
1993, four years after it was published. I can tell this because when I look
at the back of my copy it has a sticker from A Second Look Books dated 1993.
Which I guess means the author didn't make any money off me so let's move
quickly on to the next paragraph.

These books are what SF should aspire to be; it is a shame they are not more
widely known.

There will be some spoilers.

Both the original Hescox cover (which I will get back to) and the current
cover involve maps and that's significant. Rowan, the protagonist, is a
Steerwoman; the steerswomen seem to have begun as navigators but they've
expanded past that into gathering and cataloging all of the knowledge they
can, and beyond that to trying to arrive at coherent explanations for what
they see around them. They are this world's scientists, sharing information
freely on the condition that people share information with them freely;
anyone who lies to a Steerswoman or refuses to answer a question finds
themselves under the Ban, unable to query any Steerswoman.

The text itself begins like a thousand fantasy stories (and even more fantasy
role playing campaigns), with the two lead characters meeting in a tavern
somewhere on the road to adventure. On the one hand, we have the lead, Rowan
the Steerswoman, on the trail of information and on the other Bel the
Outskirter, a woman from a culture of herders and raiders on the edge of
the inhabited territories. The two soon agree to become companions, Rowan's
civilized skills complimented by Bel's somewhat less civilized skills.

Bel also gives Rowan someone to explain things to, which is very useful.

Rowan the Steerswoman has become intrigued by odd gems whose origin is
obscure; they can be found across the known lands in a pattern that seems
to suggest they were scattered from a single event; her people have enough
grasp of physics for her to work out what sort of event this would have had
to be and the answer is seemingly absurd, involving giants and ridiculous
velocities.

The plot takes a turn when Rowan is ambushed on the road out of town. It
is very likely that if she had not been in Bel's company she'd be dead. As
it is she's now aware that someone wants her dead and it's not that hard
to work out that the person responsible is almost certain a wizard, masters of
magic who stand on contrast to the Steerswomen: where the Steerswoman share
information freely, the wizards hoard theirs, and where the Steerswomen get
by on persuasion, the wizards enjoy lofty positions of power because they
are in the habit of killing people who try to say no to them (and often,
those who say yes because wizards don't really care about collateral damage).

As Rowan points out, she is in no way an unusual Steerswoman so it is not hard
to deduce that the issue must be not who she is but what she is doing and the
only thing she's doing is to research the gems. For some reason, this is a
question the wizards or at least one persuasive wizard does not want answered
and the fact that he or she is willing to kill a Steerwoman over it means the
long period of tolerated indifference between wizards and Steerwomen may be
ending, and the wizards have all the magical weapons.

The cover of my first edition mass market paperback is by Richard Hescox

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/f3/96/9a6f124128a06806af644010.L.jpg

and at first glance it looks very much like a standard fantasy novel cover of
the era; two people in faux-mediaeval clothes, conversing over a map in a
room that could be a wizard's or an alchemist's laboratory, if not for the
anachronistically advanced looking orrery to the right and the flat screen
visible to the left. This mix of signals foreshadows the contents of the
book (as does the fact Del Rey stuck a little "SF" in the colophon rather
than fantasy) and the way in which it delivers some diamond hard science
fiction wrapped in fantasy tropes.

I expect the question of how to market this book was a vexing one, because
part of the fun is working out what's going on but on the other hand someone
expecting a pure quill fantasy might react badly if they discover they've
picked up an SF novel by mistake.

Kirstein continues this game of presenting what is slowly revealed to be a
science fiction story in fantasy garb through the book: the setting is
comparatively low tech, the social organization more or less feudal in the
civilized areas, and the wizards are repeatedly said to use magic. Bel is
a barbarian of a type familiar from dozens of stories and goblins and dragons
abound. As the book continues, it becomes increasingly clear that as much
as the setting may look like a secondary world fantasy, it's actually a
mundane world (whose true nature is better explained in later books), a
world much of whose surface is uncharted and uninhabited because it appears to
be uninhabitable:

"The southern shore of the Inland Sea is inhabited, too, but not to
any great distance. The vegetation gets odd farther south, and it's
hard to introduce anything useful. It might be a worse version of
what you have in the Outskirts."

In fact, a discerning reader will likely conclude that that this world is
either the Earth after some Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind-level
ecological calamity or (more likely) an alien planet comparatively recently
settled, whose technologically backward condition may be due to the
machinations of the wizards. What the reader cannot tell is if the wizards
are simply power-mad autocrats or if they have some good reason for acting
as they do. In fact, even the wizards seem unclear on this point because
their habit of sequestering information means even they are vulnerable to
manipulation from within their ranks.

One of the impressive things about this book and the series in general is
the way Kirstein resists having Rowan deduce too much too quickly; she's
smart, she's good at working out how things behave but there are many moments
where the reader will work out what is going on and Rowan will not, because
Rowan's context denies her information about phenomena like electricity or
gunpowder.

As I've mentioned, this book and the rest of the series were very favourably
reviewed online in the Before Time. Even now, of the 21 reviews on Amazon
17 are five star and three are four star. Jo Walton reviewed the whole series
on tor.com in 2008; the comments were almost uniformly positive save for
dissatisfaction with the lack of availability at the time and the slow pace
of publication. Despite that, I believe if you were to grab a passing SF
reader and question them according to the customs of their people [2],
they would admit to having never heard of The Steerswoman books. It's
irritating that fame depends so much on dumb luck; there are much worse
novels that have enjoyed greater, more sustained fame.

The Steerswoman can be found at the other end of this link.
http://www.amazon.com/Steerswoman-Rosemary-Kirstein-ebook/dp/B00HH1U8Z2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395731321&sr=1-1&keywords=rosemary+kirstein

The author's site is here:

http://www.rosemarykirstein.com/


1: In a glorious celebration of my venerable age, some members of the rest
of the cast and crew have spoken openly about holding up "I wasn't born yet"
signs during my many informative anecdotes.

2: Speaking of "according to the customs of their people", I was not thrilled
to discover there's a scene in which Bel tortures a prisoner for information.
In her defense, she's a murderous thug who leaves a trail of bodies behind
her. Rowan doesn't help, exactly, but she also does not put up a spirited
case against torturing the guy.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

[Andrew Plotkin]

Here, James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> What the reader cannot tell is if the wizards
> are simply power-mad autocrats or if they have some good reason for acting
> as they do.

One of the early signs that I was going to love this book was that the
wizards were not tropishly divided into "light+good wizards" and
"dark+evil wizards".

Instead, as far as the non-wizardly population knows, there's some kind
of schism into the "red wizards" and the "blue wizards" and *only the
wizards understand the difference*.

(Several books later, the reader has some hints, but only hints.)

--Z

--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*

[Robert A. Woodward]

In article <lj6gv2$6em$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:

> Here, James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> > What the reader cannot tell is if the wizards
> > are simply power-mad autocrats or if they have some good reason for acting
> > as they do.
>
> One of the early signs that I was going to love this book was that the
> wizards were not tropishly divided into "light+good wizards" and
> "dark+evil wizards".
>
> Instead, as far as the non-wizardly population knows, there's some kind
> of schism into the "red wizards" and the "blue wizards" and *only the
> wizards understand the difference*.
>
> (Several books later, the reader has some hints, but only hints.)
>

My reading of the hints is that the "schism" (like just about
everything else about the wizards) is a fraud on the population. It
exists as an excuse for wars (the reason for the wars is a bit
unclear, my current suspicion is that one of the goals is to keep
the secular lords from accumulating more resources then the wizards
want them to have).

--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>

[erilar]

I'm one of the odd ones who discovered thes books long ago and loves
them 8-)

--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist

[Kay Shapero]

In article <drache-1C371F....@news.eternal-september.org>,
dra...@chibardun.net.invalid says...

>
> I'm one of the odd ones who discovered thes books long ago and loves
> them 8-)

I just discovered them courtesy this thread. I've read the first and
enjoyed it, am now into the second. Much fun.

--

Kay Shapero
Address munged, try my first name at kayshapero dot net.

[David DeLaney]

On 2014-05-04, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
> dra...@chibardun.net.invalid says...
>> I'm one of the odd ones who discovered thes books long ago and loves
>> them 8-)
>
> I just discovered them courtesy this thread. I've read the first and
> enjoyed it, am now into the second. Much fun.

And I recently read the third and fourth, based on the recommendations and
summaries here, and just read the first one to-day. Dave-Bob says two thumbs
up.

Dave, well, you see, there are interesting oddities in what one's local
library system owns vs how long interlibrary loan takes and what it can get
for you
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[Kay Shapero]

In article <09mdnU7bg7obWfjO...@earthlink.com>,
davidd...@earthlink.net says...

>
> On 2014-05-04, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
> > dra...@chibardun.net.invalid says...
> >> I'm one of the odd ones who discovered thes books long ago and loves
> >> them 8-)
> >
> > I just discovered them courtesy this thread. I've read the first and
> > enjoyed it, am now into the second. Much fun.
>
> And I recently read the third and fourth, based on the recommendations and
> summaries here, and just read the first one to-day. Dave-Bob says two thumbs
> up.
>
> Dave, well, you see, there are interesting oddities in what one's local
> library system owns vs how long interlibrary loan takes and what it can get
> for you

Bought the lot as ebooks off Amazon, thus can read 'em in order.