Virgin Land by Chloe Smith
I would like to thank Francesca from Luna Press Publishing for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Luna Press Publishing
Published - 7/2
Price - £8.99 paperback £3.19 Kindle eBook
Shayla Gainrad is a young woman raised in a splinter community of reactionary would-be settlers who abandon interplanetary society for newly discovered planets.
Shayla has achieved the settler dream-a home on the frontier world Erde, surrounded by rich and fertile lands-but she is increasingly lonely, homesick, and alienated from her husband.
Although Shayla has told herself to endure, events on Erde begin to push her new life into disarray. The arrival of spacers from outside the settler community, a freak accident, and the persistence of Erde's wild flora and fauna all add to Shayla's growing realisation.
The teachings she accepted as a child cannot explain reality's complexities, and webs of action and reaction will have far-reaching consequences, both in her own life and across the strange landscape of Erde's ecosystem.
I was listening to a reviewer I respect this week say Science Fiction can only tell a limited range of stories - I hugely disagree. I think SF is at the time its just starting to realise you don’t just need to tell ‘hard’ SF stories only based on tech and physics while at the other end the high octane space operas take the rest. I strongly believe that SF is evolving to allow what once where viewed as ‘softer’ sciences to take the stage as people realise how important they actually are to our world’s future (just look at the environment) and of course we actually are allowed to have SF stories with actual characters these days too. Reading Chloe’s Smith’s excellent Virgin Land we get a tale that certainly tips its head to the past of SF but also shows where the future is heading.
Shayla lived her early life in space as art of a family of miners. Then she met Gerald a man with a desire to be a settler on the newly discovered planet of Erde. Life is tough with hostile predators known as Shirka; vegetation to be tamed and a farm to be built on what Gerald calls Virgin Land. But it’s when a group of offworlders arrive to help the farming Gerald suffers a major injury and Shayla finds herself in charge and starts to realise many things that were thought to be simple are indeed more complex and dangerous than she realised.
In many ways that summary could sound like a golden age SF plot focused on the ingenuity of man making farms in space. The kind of mindset that now thinks of course we can take over Mars if we have the right kit purchased by the right billionaire. But what Smith does is deconstruct the whole myth that lies through these tales. Importantly this isn’t Gerald’s story who of course in older tales is the hero no here we see it’s Shayla the woman already sidelined to being a farmer’s wife now take central stage.
Very early on we can see Shayla’s marriage is unhappy - he is controlling; expects to be listened to and she must cook and clean not work in fields. The type of relationship to set off all the warning bells when Gerald finally exists to get his injuries seen to the story starts challenging the archetype of the frontier being a glorious adventure taming the universe.
A key aspect of the plot is how trying to change a planet’s ecosystem to farm what humans want will have consequences and as well as seeing Shayla realise she is empowered to make decisions she also realised that Gerald’s plans have had an impact on the local wildlife. This is helped by her more advanced off world farmhands who it turns out have a good knowledge of environmental ecosystems. You can’t just change a world to fit your needs it creates big ripples and that can as we see have dangerous consequences. Smith even noted how often Settlers get lied to to take over dangerous lands to feed a company’s own profits. Compared to the simple space farm tales of yesteryear we here get a tale exploring the environment and corporate greed all of which has modern day and historic precedent.
The other key aspect showing how SF is changing is Shayla herself. A woman finding she has a voice - we see even her previous life in space was very traditional and focused on very gender based roles. Her offworlders and in particular their leader Alys show her the complexity she has heard of but never realised she could have for herself. A universe that offers science, not conquering wonders but getting to understand them and also a society that accepts relationships come in all forms even same sex relationships. Her growing bond with Alys is handled delicately but powerfully and is heartwarming after we see the cold sterility of her life with Gerald.
I hugely enjoyed Virgin Land - a tale that shows science fiction is not dead and indeed perhaps now has the opportunity to start telling many more types of tales than we ever knew possible - human relationships, economics and environmental sciences are all equally important to our future. Smith has written a fascinating and thought provoking tale well worth your time.
