In the beginning of Remnant Population, by Elizabeth Moon, Ofelia has lived on a distant colony planet for decades, working hard in a harsh environment. Her work for Sims Bancorp is dully hostile, and Ofelia fully accepts that this is life. This is just life on an isolated planet that’s hostile to human life, working for a company that doesn’t value workers, part of a society that doesn’t value women or elders. When the corporation decides it’s not profitable any more, the colonists are told to pack up for a new location. They’ll pay for young workers, but Ofelia — despite working constantly — is too old, and they’ll charge her a transport fee for the mandatory relocation. She wonders then if staying on alone might be preferable to starting over where ever the company sends her.
Ofelia considers this all with dulled disappointment, after years of working for a corporation who makes all the rules, has all the power over poor colonists, and doesn’t need to be accountable to anyone. It’s a relatable situation, it felt like dealing with health insurance, knowing that what we need won’t be available if it’s not profitable to the company or knowing that we pay in every month and may or may not get a benefit. Ofelia has paid in, through her labor and childbearing, for decades at this point. Over the time alone on the planet, Ofelia reveals parts of her life, including an abusive husband, loss of most of her children, and the daily rounds of work and more work. It’s never given as a narrative, just revealed in the details, like this in the corporate log.
Falfurrias, Bartolomeo et u. et m., it said. She translated the archaic notation: et ux et mater, “and wife and mother.”
Of course, this is society in which men are the householders and women are minor details.
When the other colonists leave in cyro-sleep for the journey to whatever outpost the company chooses for their now home, Ofelia slips away and plans to live out her life alone, answering to no one. She uses her status as an invisible old woman to do this, and I loved how she just let others underestimate her here, in order to do what she felt like. We see this again and again in this story. When the transport ships leave, she already has a thriving garden, plus stored food and a community replicator left behind, plus all her neighbors’ homes, stores, and gardens. She’ll do what she feels like for however many years she has left, and die alone.
One theme in Remnant Population is about isolation and independence. Ofelia’s solitude is chosen, and it allows her to rediscover herself and reject the constraints of her old life. Her independence isn’t just about a survival story, I never doubted that she could handle the work or the responsibilities. Some scenes reminded me of John Christopher’s Empty World, as both stories ask readers to consider who we are without any social interaction or social norms around us. With isolation came a special freedom for this unusual protagonist, and it’s both wildly foreign (when she’s dancing around naked in a ghost town!) and pretty relatable when she choses her favorite outfits and jewelry for every day wearing.
There are long passages devoted to Ofelia choosing her own clothes, which was interesting the first time, but then draaaaaaaaaaaaaged for ages. I was pleased that she could spend her days on art projects and wear exactly what she felt like wearing, but after a while, the clothes-choosing scenes weren’t particularly interesting or compelling reading.
I enjoyed the scenes with the computer log and with the transmitters. It’s hard to explain, since the story takes place in the distant future but there’s a 1990s vibe here. There’s cool future tech in this world, with new abilities and uses, but the computer is still a destination, not a constant connection.
I thought Remnant Population was one story, about a woman just doing what she felt like, alone in space. In this way, I was reminded of the isolation in Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach, by Nnedi Okorafor, from The Far Reaches collection. But then, a second story opens.
Without revealing too much, it becomes clear that there are intelligent alien life forms on the planet, and that these creatures have the capability of danger. (I realize I’m recapping large sections of the book, so it’s weird to have one spoiler-free bit, but this part will be so much better if you read it and discover it with Ofelia.
But then, after a moment of drama, I found the sequences with the aliens underwhelming. This was such a cool concept, for the character of Ofelia, for the story, and for general science fiction exploration of possible first contact scenarios. The narrative wants to make it clear that the aliens Ofelia encounters aren’t childlike or super-powered, they’re a secret third thing, and tells us this over and over. And over. And over. It’s an intriguing first-contact story that was so slowly paced that I wanted to skim.
Like with Ofelia’s moments discovering her own personal choices and her own inner voice, the scenes of discovery with the aliens were interesting the first time, and then repeated with slight variations until I was underwhelmed. I’ve been reading a lot of scifi short stories recently, so maybe this is me, I might just be looking for a punchier, speedier storyline in general.
At last, her interactions with the alien species eventually lead to feelings of connection and companionship for Ofelia. She develops a reciprocal relationship with the aliens with mutual trust and respect, not based on what she can do for them. This is finally the cool first-contact story I wanted, and it highlights what was missing in her life before. This newfound community creates a new role for Ofelia, which she takes first as stoically as the rest of her life, but eventually it seems to make her happy.
But then there’s a third act, and even though Ofelia has decided to live out her life alone, the company sends scientists and military to make contact and control the aliens. (The planet wasn’t profitable for colonists, but for revenge? There’s definitely money in the budget!)
When we meet these other characters, it becomes clear that it’s not just Sims Bancorp that sucks, it’s a whole society that values men over women, and certain skills over others.
“You need to understand how we’ll go about our mission,” he said, after a moment. “We will study and make official contact with these . . . indigenes. I’m sure you think you have already made contact, but after all you have had no training in this sort of thing. You were a . . . a what? . . . housewife?”
It’s a familiar situation for women today, hearing that her experiences and memories are actually wrong, that she doesn’t really know what she experienced and needs an expert to tell her. This isn’t a man-hating book, it’s more about what society values and doesn’t value, than about men being wrong.
“That’s not how you teach a language,” the woman said. “I know you probably thought you taught your children to talk, but human children don’t have to be taught—they just learn.”
This third section is paced a bit better, or maybe I was expecting another plodding exploration by this point. We get solid resolutions to Ofelia’s story and the future of the planet. Plus, the satisfying knowledge that when Ofelia’s self-centered son wakes from cryo-sleep on whatever outpost he’s been assigned, he’ll discover that his mom jumped ship, had a solo alien adventure and saved the world.
Overall, this was a wild and thought-provoking story, but parts of it were just so slow.