We Who Are About To... by Joanna Russ
Publisher – Penguin
Published – 1976
Price – £9.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
An explosion in space, a starship stranded at the end of the universe, a group of strangers alone in a barren, alien wilderness. Facing almost certain death, the human survivors of a deep-space crash are determined to ignore the odds and colonize an inhospitable planet, recreating a civilization like the one they have lost forever. Only one woman rejects this path, choosing instead a daring and desperate alternative: to practice the art of dying. But her fellow passengers require her reproductive skills for their survival plan, and they are prepared to impose their regime by force if necessary...
With all the fuss about billionaires just scraping the edge of the atmosphere its tempting to think in no time at all we will be out there among the stars, but space is dangerous and immense. If we can get super speed travel, we could zoom around like intrepid explorers, but it also leaves a huge room for disaster for those who decide to risk it. If it goes wrong what choices can be made and what right do they have to make them. In Joanna Russ’ sharp and uncomfortable novella, We Who Are About To… where we see one woman lost in space with a team of strangers and no sign of any help or even a giant robot to help her escape.
A small group of space travellers are ejected onto a distant planet after a disaster with their ship. Eight passengers with limited skills, limited resources, and no way to easily contact Earth oir any other nearby ship. The groups unofficial leaders decide to make the best of a bad situation and make this an earth colony and hope one day rescue arrives. One nameless passenger finds herself in sharp disagreement with this. For her they are already doomed, and she would like to live her final days as she chooses. This leads to a schism and violence that threatens disaster to everyone.
This is a fascinating bleak piece of SF horror asking some awkward questions of the reader and challenging our choices. How many of us introverts have sighed at the idea of a team building session – imagine that you like our nameless narrator were just a Music Lecturer and suddenly you’re being asked to help build a brave new world with your bar hands with strangers you only spent a few days with previously. In Stark Trek it is all gung-ho let’s do the show in the barn but here Russ explores society’s flaws. In this alternate 21st century sexism has been abolished but within just a few days the male members of the group are assuming dominance and planning to mate with the female passengers for the good of the species. One very capable and ambitious woman is physically attacked by a man for arguing with him over how he wasted precious resources. Russ very smartly makes the point that in a new wild frontier of space are we absolutely sure our gender biases won’t resurface.
That itself would be interesting but then we get a question of choice. Is someone allowed to opt out of a society in dark times. Our narrator wants to just go off and ultimately die in a manner of her choosing – she feels based on her knowledge of these set-ups this group is too small, too badly resourced and there is no hope of rescue. The rest of the group is horrified. We are made to feel sympathy with their opinion and SF being very fond of the rights of the individual makes this come across from our narrator’s perspective. The easiest solution would perhaps be to shake hands and let them leave the group. But we see the wider group worried about what this means for their overall cohesion and so they very firmly ensure no one can leave. This leads to violence and death. I don’t think Russ makes a very finely balanced argument here why the group can’t le someone do this (although perhaps in 1976 this was even more shocking) although reading this now think about how we now react to people who do refuse to follow the social rules of recent years and engage with the rest of us. But it creates an interesting tension I’ve not seen before in SF where usually the answer is focused on co-operation. Our narrator doesn’t want power, to change the law but just to check out of the whole world – it is quite a unique tale.
With all this then Russ very gently thrusts a knife in our ribs when we were not looking. A sea of violence erupts and our perceptions of characters including our unnamed narrator change again. Even in 2022 I would confirm what I read was fairly shocking. All this built up tension unexpectedly explodes without warning hurting everyone and there was a bit of me going wow where did that all come from? It’s a sobering set of tragic scenes and I found myself disgusted with someone rather than cheering them on as they put their own desire to live their life over others. It’s a brilliant gut punch but then the impact is slightly lessened by quite a long monologue of someone explaining their life and history which feels that it could have been explained more naturally at the story rather than tacked on at the end.
This is a fascinating yet challenging trip into the darker side of science fiction. Humanity is shown not at its brightest and best and our worse instincts under pressure are seen. In some ways that could be said to be possibly closer to the truth when adversity strikes . Its my first exposure to Russ’ work and won’t be my last. Well worth a read!
