The Seep by Chana Porter
I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – 19/1
Price – £7.99 paperback £4.74 Kindle eBook
Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle but nonetheless world-changing invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.
Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep s utopian influence until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.
Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.
Grief is one of the most horrible emotions we will face in our lives. Death is complex and creates such a fundamental change as people we love are no longer there it can impact us in so many ways – anger, rash behaviour, or depression. Saying we have to move on isn’t like watching one President turn into another it’s trying to rebuild your entire world with some key parts of your life absent. In The Seep by Chana Porter we have one of the strangest but creative science fiction tales I’ve read in a while but one where grief for the past and moving on are key.
Trina and her girlfriend Deeba are having a dinner party when the world as they know it ends; in some ways thinking it was well overdue as we’re in such a bad place of hatred, global conflict and environmental collapse. But as often is the case the world continues. The Human race has been merged with an entity knows as The Seep – who pass into organisms by water or bodily fluids. Mentally The Seep promotes joy, peace and being chilled out but it also makes the world power – you can transform your appearance, enter high states of consciousness at will, never age or die unless you want to. The world knows peace, humans actually grasp the concept of shared empathy and moves from a capitalist economy to more communal style living. The world is …. relaxed. But Trina and Deeba are now married and in their fifties. Deeba is very swept up into the Seep community while Trina has held back. For a long time Deeba has been dealing with a pain in her life she no longer can handle and she announces she wishes to be effectively ‘reborn’ change state to that of a child and in the process lose all her memories. Trina is devastated and betrayed. Five years later she finally has to confront where her life is now going.
We tend to think of alien stories as either invasion (evil aliens) or helpful. I think The Seep is more ambivalent and is more a framing device for how Trina is coping now that the love of her life effectively no longer exists. The Seep has taken away all the usual distractions and pressures of life, so the community is puzzled – why is Trina not moving on? Effectively for those who fully embraced the Seep then painful memories are supposedly gone – everyone feels joy for Deeba starting over. Trina though has held back. As such when we meet Trina after Deeba’s decision she lives in a decaying messy apartment; barely working and at threat of a communal tenement evicting her. She is also furious that people are trying to help.
At this point we go a few days journey with Trina and this strange dreamy landscape. A land of bars that have talking bears working in them; nightclubs where all can share the same experience and coffee cups where once drank you can eat them. The plot is fairly simple – Trina meets a young man from a compound where The Seep was never used but he has rebelled and seeks a whole new life. She however is worried that he may eb under the spell of an ex-friend named Horizon who Trina is aware is constantly pretending to be someone he is not. This gives Trina impetus and a cause to focus on while also meaning The Seep itself has a chance to interact with her and challenge why she is acting this way.
The Seep feels a more conceptual story so those seeking either a huge adventure or a loo into the science of the Seep will be disappointed this is more a tale in the style of Jeff Vandermeer - a trip through the weirder side of life. But I loved the dreamlike flow of the story moving from key scenes to key scenes without too much in between. It reflects that under the Seep the little things aren’t important anymore but I think it’s a great device for challenging how humans and death interact. In the story we meet three characters all having trouble moving on – Trina who has lost her wife forever is really classic grief and importantly she is showing that while grief isn’t healthy it can still be a necessary part of humanity to go through to find out what we can do next with our lives that an immortal entity just can’t get their heads around – it what still makes us human. Horizon however has made himself into a deceased lover’s likeness – lost himself in the process and as the tale develops and is ever more throwing himself into the Seep for his own dangerous ends. Finally, we meet YD a bar owner and friend of Trina who is very old and yet continually worried over where Trina is heading. Someone who is holding back on death because she is scared for someone else. This tale makes each face their fears and for me is the real heart and highlight of the story.
The Seep is ambitious, and I think that is always to be praised. It possibly is trying to do too much for the length it is (one key character vanishes – although we meet them again in a bonus short story in this edition) but I really enjoyed the emotional overload it accomplished. This was like a frenetic punk song full of energy and yet also emotional pain. It washes over you fast but leaves echoes that haunt you for a while. Well worth a look.
