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When people talk about wanting more diversity of sexuality in SFF, one of the things you hear (though far from the only thing) is: “I want more stories with characters who just happen to be [insert axis of diversity here], but where that’s not what the story’s about.”
What does that mean? What does it look like? I’m not sure those are questions that can be answered in any sort of definitive way, but one thing that it can look like is the world of Beth Bernobich’s River of Souls series. Tomorrow I’m going to be reviewing the third novel in this series (Allegiance) but there are things I wanted to talk about that don’t fit well into a standard review format. I regularly find myself awkwardly trying to do two different things in reviews: a standard review of the book (here is how it did/didn’t work for me and why), and an exploration of what certain aspects of the book meant to me personally. Sometimes those can be integrated well, and sometimes not. So in this case, I’m going to split them up.
Although the world of River of Souls is evocative of certain historic cultures of our world, especially in the names and languages and the political structure of kingdoms and empires, it is very clearly a distinct secondary world with no shared history, geography, or culture. (Also: magic.) Within this world, the question of whether one’s desires and affections fall on someone of the same or a different sex (or without regard to sex) is not entirely a personal matter – questions of inheritance and lineage are quite relevant at certain social levels of play – but it’s a matter that doesn’t carry the moral judgment inherent in the peculiar history of western culture on Earth.
One feature that is highly relevant to interpersonal relationships is the phenomenon that gives its name to the “river of souls”: a sort of reincarnation of the spirit in which people may have distinct memories of previous lives, and of individuals they were connected to in those livse, and in which certain individuals or groups of individuals are bound together over time, intersecting in current lives in ways that echo, or continue, or expiate their interactions in previous lives. (One gets a sense that destiny influences the circumstances of birth, making the likelihood of encountering those who are bound to you better than chance.)
This doesn’t take the form of an absolute “we are pair-bonded soul-mates” sort of thing. In some cases, clusters of individuals play tag across the ages, experiencing a variety of different relationships: sometimes lovers, sometimes siblings, sometimes rivals. And—most relevant to the topic of this essay—spirits are not bound to a particular sex in these reincarnations (although I got an impression that a spirit might be more predisposed to be born in one sex than another).
This is relevant to sexuality because, even if one were to object that evolutionary pressure might be inclined in all possible worlds to develop societies that privilege reproductive units (and I’m not saying that this is a valid objection, but it is A Thing people bring up), this phenomenon entirely silently creates a motivation for a society that recognizes the equal status of all affectional bonds. If you are bound to someone across time regardless of the bodies you’ve been born into, then anatomy is not something that creates a valid bar to enjoying that bond.
Yet within this context, we don’t simply have an erasure of sex as a relevant aspect of desire. Many (perhaps even most) of the characters in the story give evidence for preferring particular types of relationships, at least within their present incarnation. We even see some reactions along the lines of, “Wait—what? I thought he preferred men,” which again reinforces the impression that orientation as a concept exists in this society. Similarly, although we see women participating in occupations that would be male-coded in our own history, there are still inequities of strength, of social power, and of consequence with regard to the sexes that affect individual choices and life paths. This is not an erasure of difference, but a re-prioritization of what difference means.
When I talk about “diversity of sexuality, where that’s not what the story is about”, I’m talking about how all of this is woven into the world-building. The reader is an anthropologist, seeing the emergent workings of this society and world from the actions and reactions of the characters, not by having an authorial voice describe and explain it to us, much less explicitly contrast it with our own culture. The gender and sexual dynamics of the world of River of Souls are only one possible way to create and express the diversity I look for, and it’s a way that might not work as well for other readers as it does for me. But the series is something I can point to when I want to say, “I want more like this.”
What does that mean? What does it look like? I’m not sure those are questions that can be answered in any sort of definitive way, but one thing that it can look like is the world of Beth Bernobich’s River of Souls series. Tomorrow I’m going to be reviewing the third novel in this series (Allegiance) but there are things I wanted to talk about that don’t fit well into a standard review format. I regularly find myself awkwardly trying to do two different things in reviews: a standard review of the book (here is how it did/didn’t work for me and why), and an exploration of what certain aspects of the book meant to me personally. Sometimes those can be integrated well, and sometimes not. So in this case, I’m going to split them up.
Although the world of River of Souls is evocative of certain historic cultures of our world, especially in the names and languages and the political structure of kingdoms and empires, it is very clearly a distinct secondary world with no shared history, geography, or culture. (Also: magic.) Within this world, the question of whether one’s desires and affections fall on someone of the same or a different sex (or without regard to sex) is not entirely a personal matter – questions of inheritance and lineage are quite relevant at certain social levels of play – but it’s a matter that doesn’t carry the moral judgment inherent in the peculiar history of western culture on Earth.
One feature that is highly relevant to interpersonal relationships is the phenomenon that gives its name to the “river of souls”: a sort of reincarnation of the spirit in which people may have distinct memories of previous lives, and of individuals they were connected to in those livse, and in which certain individuals or groups of individuals are bound together over time, intersecting in current lives in ways that echo, or continue, or expiate their interactions in previous lives. (One gets a sense that destiny influences the circumstances of birth, making the likelihood of encountering those who are bound to you better than chance.)
This doesn’t take the form of an absolute “we are pair-bonded soul-mates” sort of thing. In some cases, clusters of individuals play tag across the ages, experiencing a variety of different relationships: sometimes lovers, sometimes siblings, sometimes rivals. And—most relevant to the topic of this essay—spirits are not bound to a particular sex in these reincarnations (although I got an impression that a spirit might be more predisposed to be born in one sex than another).
This is relevant to sexuality because, even if one were to object that evolutionary pressure might be inclined in all possible worlds to develop societies that privilege reproductive units (and I’m not saying that this is a valid objection, but it is A Thing people bring up), this phenomenon entirely silently creates a motivation for a society that recognizes the equal status of all affectional bonds. If you are bound to someone across time regardless of the bodies you’ve been born into, then anatomy is not something that creates a valid bar to enjoying that bond.
Yet within this context, we don’t simply have an erasure of sex as a relevant aspect of desire. Many (perhaps even most) of the characters in the story give evidence for preferring particular types of relationships, at least within their present incarnation. We even see some reactions along the lines of, “Wait—what? I thought he preferred men,” which again reinforces the impression that orientation as a concept exists in this society. Similarly, although we see women participating in occupations that would be male-coded in our own history, there are still inequities of strength, of social power, and of consequence with regard to the sexes that affect individual choices and life paths. This is not an erasure of difference, but a re-prioritization of what difference means.
When I talk about “diversity of sexuality, where that’s not what the story is about”, I’m talking about how all of this is woven into the world-building. The reader is an anthropologist, seeing the emergent workings of this society and world from the actions and reactions of the characters, not by having an authorial voice describe and explain it to us, much less explicitly contrast it with our own culture. The gender and sexual dynamics of the world of River of Souls are only one possible way to create and express the diversity I look for, and it’s a way that might not work as well for other readers as it does for me. But the series is something I can point to when I want to say, “I want more like this.”
