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bannedfrombookclub 's review for:
The Hair Carpet Weavers
by Andreas Eschbach
Really good example of elevated SF that succeeds in telling a story about people and their problems rather than problems and their people.
The problem, or theme, as stated on the blurb of my copy is "the absurdity of work and life itself". I also saw comment on the nature of power and slavish devotion to 'a greater cause' - be it a God-Emperor or The Economy.
Eschbach structures his story very cleverly, with each chapter telling a single experience of someone trapped in the system that produces literal hair carpets for the God-Emperor, or one of the members of the post-Emperor regime uncovering this insanity. Through each small person we /unweave/ the banal evil of the whole.
My criticisms are few and I still highly recommend the book, but to explain my four stars,
1. The final final reveal lacked punch for me.
2. I know this is a 90's work and may as well be another era in terms of gender and race representation expectations, but it's hard to separate what are the assumptions and prejudices of the world, and which are the authors.
Three (of 27) chapters are written from a female POV and two of those I thought where comparitively weak (that final final punch was one of them). I can't even complain about this second-last chapter properly because it would be a spoiler, but it got a huge eye-roll from me and feels weirdly clumsy compared to the rest of the book.
Also this intergalactic far-future empire is familiarly white (I'm inferring from the description of blonde and redheaded women) and patriarchal. I'm willing to find meaning in the use of traditional patriarchal structures for the carpet weavers, I'd just like to know it was thought out and intentional rather than automatic. Because, like a lot of our real world social structures, there's no actual objective reason for a lone male carpet weaver to make carpets out of the hair of his wives and daughters and kill off any extra boy children. Like ... boys can grow hair too? It doesn't naturally fall out at crew-cut length? Why turn down this hair-resource? Women can weave carpets? You know?
This is never questioned in the text and I find these kind of defaults pretty boring, but it is a 25 year old book. If it were explored more explicitly I think it would be an excellent comment on traditional family structures under capitalism but ah well.
The problem, or theme, as stated on the blurb of my copy is "the absurdity of work and life itself". I also saw comment on the nature of power and slavish devotion to 'a greater cause' - be it a God-Emperor or The Economy.
Eschbach structures his story very cleverly, with each chapter telling a single experience of someone trapped in the system that produces literal hair carpets for the God-Emperor, or one of the members of the post-Emperor regime uncovering this insanity. Through each small person we /unweave/ the banal evil of the whole.
My criticisms are few and I still highly recommend the book, but to explain my four stars,
1. The final final reveal lacked punch for me.
2. I know this is a 90's work and may as well be another era in terms of gender and race representation expectations, but it's hard to separate what are the assumptions and prejudices of the world, and which are the authors.
Three (of 27) chapters are written from a female POV and two of those I thought where comparitively weak (that final final punch was one of them). I can't even complain about this second-last chapter properly because it would be a spoiler, but it got a huge eye-roll from me and feels weirdly clumsy compared to the rest of the book.
Also this intergalactic far-future empire is familiarly white (I'm inferring from the description of blonde and redheaded women) and patriarchal. I'm willing to find meaning in the use of traditional patriarchal structures for the carpet weavers, I'd just like to know it was thought out and intentional rather than automatic. Because, like a lot of our real world social structures, there's no actual objective reason for a lone male carpet weaver to make carpets out of the hair of his wives and daughters and kill off any extra boy children. Like ... boys can grow hair too? It doesn't naturally fall out at crew-cut length? Why turn down this hair-resource? Women can weave carpets? You know?
This is never questioned in the text and I find these kind of defaults pretty boring, but it is a 25 year old book. If it were explored more explicitly I think it would be an excellent comment on traditional family structures under capitalism but ah well.