Ian McDonald's "The Djinn's Wife": A marriage gone sour
This is a tired, complicated, & sad adult version of the tale of mermaid marrying a man. Whatever part of the world you are from, you probably have local folklore on this theme.
This is also a robot story. Plot will appear quite familiar to those with a background in Asimovian reading, though the robot in question is closer in behavior to Mike in Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
I didn't like this story because
- it didn't stir any emotions,
- it has an extremely techy & contrived environment, &
- it uses a lot of environment components & words from north India, but they are often applied in a clueless & not-normal way - making the story rather hard to follow for those familiar with India.
Story summary.
At some future date where the story is set, current India comprises of multiple countries - among them Bharat & Awadh. Former with capital in Benaras, later in Delhi! And they have a dispute sharing water of Ganga river - very similar to current conflict down south between Karnataka & Tamil Nadu. Description of this background takes substantial space in the story, but it is actually irrelevant to the story.
This is a world littered with robots - "aeai"s (AI, short for Artificial Intelligence). One of these robots is A J Rao. "He" is a diplomat working in Delhi; I don't recall if it works for Bharat or Awadh. Rao also runs many other essential infrastructure services, or at least is capable of interacting with & influencing them. He doesn't have a physical body, but is everywhere via network. He can also produce realistic sensory environment around you if you are wearing an appropriate gadget - aka Asimov's Solarians. He can also produce a physical body comprising of nanobots if you have the right device in the room, in a manner reminiscent of Michael Crichton's Prey.
Esha Rathore is a classical dancer in Delhi. Rao, because of his sense organs everywhere on the network, is extremely aware. And falls in love with Esha, who reciprocates. They marry, in spite of social damnation Esha receives.
Marriage goes sour when Esha realizes Rao is also elsewhere doing other tasks even during their most intimate moments.
Rest is a bizarre tale of jealousy, espionage, robot gone mad, some deaths, & finally the robot's "excommunication"!
Eventually, we are told all aeai's go find some safe home somewhere - a separate race from humans, much like gravitonic robots in Roger MacBride Allen's "Isaac Asimov's Utopia".
Fact sheet.
The Djinn's Wife, short story, review
Also published under the title: "Little Goddess"
Rating: C
First published: Asimov's July 2006
Winner of Hugo Award 2007 in novelette category
Related: All Hugo Award stories.
2 comments:
Tinkoo,
I recently read this story and in spite of my high hopes for it I was quite disappointed. Being set in India I was very much looking forward to your thoughts on the story. Once again I think your review is spot on - that's why I subscribe to your feed and anticipate reading your posts. Nice work.
Anyway, I agree that it is a tired tale told in a little bit different form. However, I was surprised to see you refer to Rao as a robot - I had him pegged more of an image that was projected into Esha's mind. I thought that idea was kind of cool.
The AI's creating a safe haven reminded my of Hyperion - not sure if you've read those books or not, but they were good.
I also liked how the story was set in India. Since I have no idea about the environment and words from North India that part completely escaped me. I thought the water war was interesting and I could see that being a believable conflict.
However, those few good points aside, I thought how the author told the story was absolutely terrible! Parts of it were like listening to a teen aged girl whine to her friends! Very distracting! Also the parts about sex and revenge seemed like overkill to me. Too bad, because I really wanted to like this story - I should have read your review first and saved myself the time! I am very surprised it won the Hugo award, hopefully 2008 will be better.
Rusty:
"I was surprised to see you refer to Rao as a robot": When I started this site a little over 6 months ago, my exposure to sf genre was very limited - mostly Clarke & Asimov. This might well have been my first story with an AI in it. I just could not connect, & kept seeing it as a robot. I guess now, with 400-500 genre stories behind, I might look at it differently.
I've heard a lot of favorable commentary about Hyperion, but haven't read the novel. But I've now read many stories about AIs & direct projections on brain, or senses - so may be I'll look at this aspect differently today.
"water war" is not only believable, but current. There is one currently on in South India; & also between India/Pakistan & sometimes India/China. But these are currently being fought in politicians' rallies, courtrooms, & as part of diplomatic one upmanship. Fortunately, no large scale organized violence yet.
With reports of receding Himalayan glaciers that feed northern rivers, conflict of the kind seen by Ian might, in fact, can actually happen in said region too.
It's been a while since I read it. If I recall correctly, my main trouble with Indian part of the story was: he kept referring to things about which I have learned expectations. And his references often violated those expectations.
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