Glory Season
Encyclopedia
Glory Season is a 1993 science fiction
novel
by David Brin
. It was nominated for both the Hugo
and Locus
Awards in 1994. An announcement in the back of one edition of Earth
is for a novel titled "Stratos", to be released in Spring of 1992. It seems likely that this was delayed, and renamed "Glory Season".
Briefly, she developed a strain of human beings that conceive clones in winter, and normal children in summer. All clones are female, because males do not bear. Further, males and females have opposed seasons of sexual receptivity. Men are sexually receptive in summer, and women in winter. This scheme is said to be stable over evolutionary time because women gain an evolutionary advantage from self-cloning, while men only reproduce themselves in summer. Finally, men have been adjusted so that they are far less aggressive during the times that they are less sexually receptive.
The social result is that the vast majority of the population of Stratos consists of financially successful groups of female clones. Over centuries of normal self-interested business and political arrangements, these groups dominate the society. The society is also extremely stable, because, it is said, most violence is initiated as competition between males.
Stratos is portrayed as a practical feminist society, literally dominated by numerous strains of identical, financially successful women. Men are confined to relatively few professions (such as sailors), and characterized as helpless.
However, Stratos is not static. Variations still exist. People conceived in summer are normal mixtures of male and female genes. This provides a continuing source of sexual variation, letting the society perform biological adaptation. A small fraction of each generation of variant women becomes financially successful against the intense competition, and founds a hive of clones.
However, men and most variant women remain despised "vars", financially unsuccessful hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Maia and Leie are twins, non-clone var daughters of the "hive" of "Lamatia," a group of female clones that specialize in commercial import/export banking. Lamatia is a typical hive, one of many on the planet of Stratos. Like most such hives, when its children reach late adolescence, it retains its clones, and ejects its male and female variant children.
Maia and Leie conceive a plan to team up and pass themselves off as two members of a much larger hive. They hope to work as sailors to explore Stratos, find their niche, and found a successful hive. Unbeknownst to them (they have a practical, not a classical education), they are named after characters in a classic novel in which twins attempt to do just that, so that their plan is doomed by their very names.
Almost immediately, the ships' masters (men) separate the twins to different ships, so as not to cause friction with the var sailors. Maia meets Naroin, a female bosun's mate. Later, a group of legally sanctioned pirates sink Leie's ship in a naval battle that also involves Maia's ship. Leie is lost at sea. Maia, injured and heart-broken, recuperates. She finds a job on a railroad.
On the railroad Maia discovers a courier running illegal drugs. The drugs are sexual stimulants to rearrange men's period of receptivity. They are part of a plot by the "Perkinites" (Named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman
, author of Herland
), to eliminate men from an isolated valley, and perhaps later all of Stratos.
Maia notifies the "Planetary Equilibrium Authority" and is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Perkinites. In prison, she discovers another prisoner who is electrically telegraphing messages. She talks with Renna, and she and Renna develop a friendship via telegraph.
After a long period of imprisonment, Maia engineers an escape during a period of upset, and discovers that her fellow prisoner is actually the "Visitor," a male interstellar visitor from an unengineered branch of humanity.
During the escape, Maia becomes involved with political radicals, and a platonic friendship develops between Renna and her. A faction of the radicals steal Renna to an island base, fighting another legal faction. Naroin reappears as a mate among the larger group of legal radicals.
Maia follows the illegal radicals, to rescue Renna. In the island base, Renna somehow disappears.
Maia solves many problems. Maia recruits a crew of helpers from some prisoners, including some virtuous male sailors. She discovers that Naroin is a member of a clan of detectives. She also finds that her sister is alive, but on the other side of the conflict!
Ultimately. Maia finds the mythical "Jellicoe Former" an advanced manufacturing facility (possibly based on molecular manufacturing) that can produce any device. In the pastoral, low-technology society of Stratos, the Jellicoe Former is the beginning of a social earthquake. Unfortunately, Renna is killed trying to escape in a spaceship he completed with the help of the Jellicoe Former.
Maia is then severely injured at the end of the climactic battle. By opening a defense facility and helping Naroin to escape, she and Naroin had summoned numerous groups of police, who overcame the political radicals, and freed the vars and helpless male sailors.
Afterward, while recuperating, Maia is dragged into politics, because she has become a symbol. She tells her story to a group of prominent men, heads of male societies. For her actions, they offer her "clan" an alliance (i.e. the right to invite them to "spark" winter clone-daughters), with the sole exception of one man, who reveals himself as her long-lost father.
At the end, Maia escapes her keepers, and decides that Stratos' current society is evil because its pastoral culture impoverishes people, causing famine, poor health and poor education. She resolves to fix things and be her own woman.
utopia, others holding it to be a dystopia
n work functioning as a post-feminist critique of feminism. The structure of the society is complex enough to make either interpretation possible, though the society's origin and structure is based on an extreme of separatist feminism
. Also, the structure of the society as seen within the narrative supports the view of biological determinism
when it comes to the relationship between genetics and gender roles.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by David Brin
David Brin
Glen David Brin, Ph.D. is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.-Biography:...
. It was nominated for both the Hugo
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
and Locus
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
Awards in 1994. An announcement in the back of one edition of Earth
Earth (novel)
Earth is a 1990 science fiction novel written by David Brin. The book was nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1991.-Plot introduction:...
is for a novel titled "Stratos", to be released in Spring of 1992. It seems likely that this was delayed, and renamed "Glory Season".
Plot summary
Three thousand years before the story starts, Lysos, founder of the human colony on the isolated planet of Stratos, led an effort to reengineer human life into a happier, more pastoral life.Briefly, she developed a strain of human beings that conceive clones in winter, and normal children in summer. All clones are female, because males do not bear. Further, males and females have opposed seasons of sexual receptivity. Men are sexually receptive in summer, and women in winter. This scheme is said to be stable over evolutionary time because women gain an evolutionary advantage from self-cloning, while men only reproduce themselves in summer. Finally, men have been adjusted so that they are far less aggressive during the times that they are less sexually receptive.
The social result is that the vast majority of the population of Stratos consists of financially successful groups of female clones. Over centuries of normal self-interested business and political arrangements, these groups dominate the society. The society is also extremely stable, because, it is said, most violence is initiated as competition between males.
Stratos is portrayed as a practical feminist society, literally dominated by numerous strains of identical, financially successful women. Men are confined to relatively few professions (such as sailors), and characterized as helpless.
However, Stratos is not static. Variations still exist. People conceived in summer are normal mixtures of male and female genes. This provides a continuing source of sexual variation, letting the society perform biological adaptation. A small fraction of each generation of variant women becomes financially successful against the intense competition, and founds a hive of clones.
However, men and most variant women remain despised "vars", financially unsuccessful hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Maia and Leie are twins, non-clone var daughters of the "hive" of "Lamatia," a group of female clones that specialize in commercial import/export banking. Lamatia is a typical hive, one of many on the planet of Stratos. Like most such hives, when its children reach late adolescence, it retains its clones, and ejects its male and female variant children.
Maia and Leie conceive a plan to team up and pass themselves off as two members of a much larger hive. They hope to work as sailors to explore Stratos, find their niche, and found a successful hive. Unbeknownst to them (they have a practical, not a classical education), they are named after characters in a classic novel in which twins attempt to do just that, so that their plan is doomed by their very names.
Almost immediately, the ships' masters (men) separate the twins to different ships, so as not to cause friction with the var sailors. Maia meets Naroin, a female bosun's mate. Later, a group of legally sanctioned pirates sink Leie's ship in a naval battle that also involves Maia's ship. Leie is lost at sea. Maia, injured and heart-broken, recuperates. She finds a job on a railroad.
On the railroad Maia discovers a courier running illegal drugs. The drugs are sexual stimulants to rearrange men's period of receptivity. They are part of a plot by the "Perkinites" (Named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...
, author of Herland
Herland (novel)
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis . The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination...
), to eliminate men from an isolated valley, and perhaps later all of Stratos.
Maia notifies the "Planetary Equilibrium Authority" and is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Perkinites. In prison, she discovers another prisoner who is electrically telegraphing messages. She talks with Renna, and she and Renna develop a friendship via telegraph.
After a long period of imprisonment, Maia engineers an escape during a period of upset, and discovers that her fellow prisoner is actually the "Visitor," a male interstellar visitor from an unengineered branch of humanity.
During the escape, Maia becomes involved with political radicals, and a platonic friendship develops between Renna and her. A faction of the radicals steal Renna to an island base, fighting another legal faction. Naroin reappears as a mate among the larger group of legal radicals.
Maia follows the illegal radicals, to rescue Renna. In the island base, Renna somehow disappears.
Maia solves many problems. Maia recruits a crew of helpers from some prisoners, including some virtuous male sailors. She discovers that Naroin is a member of a clan of detectives. She also finds that her sister is alive, but on the other side of the conflict!
Ultimately. Maia finds the mythical "Jellicoe Former" an advanced manufacturing facility (possibly based on molecular manufacturing) that can produce any device. In the pastoral, low-technology society of Stratos, the Jellicoe Former is the beginning of a social earthquake. Unfortunately, Renna is killed trying to escape in a spaceship he completed with the help of the Jellicoe Former.
Maia is then severely injured at the end of the climactic battle. By opening a defense facility and helping Naroin to escape, she and Naroin had summoned numerous groups of police, who overcame the political radicals, and freed the vars and helpless male sailors.
Afterward, while recuperating, Maia is dragged into politics, because she has become a symbol. She tells her story to a group of prominent men, heads of male societies. For her actions, they offer her "clan" an alliance (i.e. the right to invite them to "spark" winter clone-daughters), with the sole exception of one man, who reveals himself as her long-lost father.
At the end, Maia escapes her keepers, and decides that Stratos' current society is evil because its pastoral culture impoverishes people, causing famine, poor health and poor education. She resolves to fix things and be her own woman.
Major themes
The nature of the novel is a subject of some contention, some believing that the setting is a feministFeminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
utopia, others holding it to be a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n work functioning as a post-feminist critique of feminism. The structure of the society is complex enough to make either interpretation possible, though the society's origin and structure is based on an extreme of separatist feminism
Separatist feminism
Separatist feminism is a form of radical feminism that holds that opposition to patriarchy is best done through focusing exclusively on women and girls...
. Also, the structure of the society as seen within the narrative supports the view of biological determinism
Biological determinism
Biological determination is the interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view, and it is closely related to genetic determinism...
when it comes to the relationship between genetics and gender roles.
External links
- Glory Season at Worlds Without End