An intriguing premise that turned out to be an explosive
disappointment
 |
| Stryker, James. Assimilation. Momentum, 2016. |
What if you died, and were floating on towards the
proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, your soul gearing up for a major
change of pace as you are about to be reincarnated…but were sucked away from that
light by being reanimated? (I’m not spoiling anything here, as this is like the
first two pages of Assimilation.)
It might be a bit bizarre, but that’s just an awesome
premise, if you ask me. Stryker had me at “about to be reincarnated”, in fact,
even without the intriguing cryogenic pseudoscience that explains the mechanics
of the main character’s reanimation. And I was even more excited when Stryker
revealed that the soul in question, formerly belonging to a woman (mangled in a
car crash), had formed quite a firm identity as a man, only to find itself back
in the woman’s reconstructed body! It sounded mesmerizing to me—the sort of
story that Self/Less should have been, adding a bit of Tiresias-style wisdom on
the matter of biological sex and gender into the mix.
Yeah, it sounded mesmerizing, and parts of it were—but the
extreme hostility shown by the character (Andrew) towards the idea of being a
woman was nothing like Tiresias (who, you’ll recall, used his experience at
having been both a man and a woman to conclude that women enjoy sex more than
men, and for this answer was rewarded with a face-full of going blind from the
irate Hera). Without presuming to know anything about the author, I can
nonetheless conclude that he has neither interest in nor empathy for heterosexual
women or their troubles. Is it really that
awful to imagine being a woman that Andrew (trapped in his soul’s former body,
and known to everyone as Natalie) has absolutely no interest in it at all?
Stryker indicates that Andrew has lost all but the faintest memories of being
Natalie, so it’s not like he’s bored of being biologically female. Speaking for
myself, if Hera or Zeus or whoever cursed me to forget what it was like to
inhabit a body whose biological sex was consistent with my own gender identity,
then zapped me into a body that did not match said gender identity, I’m sure I’d
be upset, but hopefully without oozing visceral disgust for everyone of the
biological sex to which I’d been transplanted!
Moreover, the protagonist shows basically no empathy at all
to Natalie’s son (or the admittedly kind of horrible husband). The kid looks at
Andrew and sees his mother, but Andrew is so uncomfortable at this that he
starts lacing the kid’s drinks with sleeping pills. Natalie’s former BFF, who
has several of her own kids, comes in for particularly scathing
monologue/description from Andrew, who, it seems, is openly contemptuous of
women who choose to have children.
This brings us, finally, to the husband. Without giving too
much away, I can say that the husband is definitely the antagonist, the
greatest obstacle preventing Andrew from self-realization. And as readers, we
are obviously meant to sympathize with poor Andrew while hating the controlling
micromanager of a husband. Stryker stacks the deck with signals of the husband’s
‘evil’, and to a large extent they’re effective in preventing the reader from identifying
with the husband. But the thing is, for most of the story the husband is
extremely understanding, and only goes bonkers right near the end (or in other
words, viewed from his perspective, he was extremely slow to anger, and only ‘snapped’
after an incredible accumulation of slights by Andrew/Natalie). Andrew is even
worse than the husband, in fact, displaying an almost ludicrous
single-mindedness about getting what he wants at any cost.
For example, in the beginning Andrew thinks all he will need
to do is pacify the husband for six months before declaring himself desirous of
a new identity…and can’t/won’t even do the bare minimum required to pass this threshold
despite thinking it’s in his own self-interest to do so. Being with Natalie’s
former BFF repels him so thoroughly he avoids her completely after a single
queasy encounter, but keeps up a steady stream of lies to Natalie’s husband about
seeing her all the time so he can instead do whatever he wants (despite the
incredible danger of this, since the husband, in a sense, ‘owns’ the reanimated
Natalie). To sum up—Andrew’s a selfish, irrational dick.
He
monologues about how repelled he feels when Natalie’s husband touches him, no
matter how fleeting or innocent the contact (and keep in mind, to the husband all
he’s doing is touching his own wife’s body!). Probably many readers will assume
this is a sort of homophobia on his part, a sense of discomfort at physical
intimacy with a man given that he is identifying as a man internally (very much
despite the female body). But later he falls in love with a man, so that
certainly complicates the ‘homophobia’ diagnosis, leaving one more puzzle at
Andrew’s core. And his reaction when the female friend jumps to the conclusion “Natalie”
is pregnant was probably the most misogynistic thing I’ve read in years: to
paraphrase, the idea of a baby growing inside him was so repugnant he was
physically sick, etc., etc. (way to take a dump on gazillions of women and
their experience there, Stryker!).
The story
also takes aim at the very idea of cryogenic reanimation, introducing several
other characters who suffered brain damage during the painstaking procedure and
strongly implying (in the absence of a single ‘success story’) that radical
personality changes are the norm, not the exception. So a remarkable (if
decades distant!) technology is being denounced, Michael Crichton style,
because of the risk that it might
lead to personality change in some of the people who are freakin’ being resurrected? Stryker’s denunciation
notwithstanding, cryogenic reanimation sounds pretty awesome to me, and I fail
to see how being alive—and in a perfect, problem-free reconstructed body, no
less!—could be worse than being dead. Stryker suggests the process would
interfere with reincarnation, but this all really boils down to a “it ain’t
natural” sort of objection, to say nothing of the (ahem) lack of compelling
evidence on reincarnation. In short, Andrew et al should focus on the
positives: they’re alive!
And
speaking of being alive, the ending of the story, which I can’t discuss in
detail for fear of spoilers, was a big, explosive disappointment. Still, at
least Styker thoughtfully brought Andrew’s constant and rather shockingly
selfish monologues to a merciful end…
In short, if you want to read about an intriguing premise,
only to have the story derail into a frustrating pity party by one of the 21st
century’s least likeable characters—you’ve picked a winner!
The Math
Objective Assessment: 4/10
Bonuses: +1 for wonderful premise
Penalties: -1 for rampant misogyny, -1 for creating a main
character so unlikeable he might be able to outdo Donald Trump
Nerd coefficient: 3/10 “not at all what I’d call ‘good’”
This is how we
score stuff.
This review is by Zhaoyun, a regular contributor at Nerds of
a Feather since 2013 and usually a gentle soul who dislikes scathing reviews
but had no choice but to scathe in response to this.
