Talk Back

[malabar]

Giraut Leones ("gear-out Lee-own-ess", as he keeps having to explain), is born and raised on Nou Occitan, a remote planet whose culture has been carefully constructed to resemble that of the medieval troubadours of Earth. The traditions of artistic endeavor, sexual inequality, and dueling have been taken to their height. As a young man, Giraut can hold his own with any of the poets, musicians, swordsmen, or lovers he meets.

Nou Occitan's society is about to change, though, as instantaneous interstellar travel arrives in the form of the "springer". Every one of the humanity's Thousand Cultures must learn to accept and adapt when representatives of any one of the others might suddenly appear.

When Giraut finds out that his lover has betrayed him, the only imaginable response is to either fling himself off a cliff in the best romantic tradition or accept a post in the retinue of Occitan's first Cultural Ambassador to a world whose culture couldn't be more different from his own. His experiences in a culture based on purest reason and functionality will change him - and their culture - in ways nobody could have foreseen.

This book, along with its sequel, Earth Made of Glass, (next review), provides an intensive examination of the impacts of globalisation within a science fiction universe. This first installment sets things up: we have a fairly standard story of culture clash with eventual adaptation. What's interesting about the cultures involved here is that they are both completely artificial - designed by rich artists and aesthetes in one case and by evangelist Christian economists on the other - yet both are convinced that their way is the One True Way until they come into contact with each other. The situation is developed more in the next book.