Slow Gods by Claire North

This is a once in a lifetime novel. A science fiction book that felt both so real yet so alien. So heartbreaking yet so calming. A book that made me cry, not just tears of sadness or empathy, but of love. Catharsis.

In Slow Gods, we learn about the life of Maw, a most curious man. He is and he isn’t. Before he wasn’t, he was a regular person. He did his job. He lived in the hyper-capitalist world that prioritized Shine, flash over empathy. He never protested or complained. He simply fled a burning building during a protest to try to see his parents. And for this, he arrested. This starts the journey of his becoming or unbecoming.

But Maw’s state of matter isn’t the most important part of Slow Gods. His origin story, his life on Tu-mdo aren’t the motivations for some grand revenge story. He is a witness. Maw flies ships, yes, and occasionally becomes too curious about what it would feel like to hold a beating organ in his hands. The beauty of Slow Gods isn’t in these dramatic moments, but in the witnessing. Gebre’s willingness to accept her fate, knowing her people will persist. Renki’s watchful eye and qir journey to become even more. The absence in the sky where the Lovers shone.

This book made me love the world around me more. This made me focus on being grateful. Life is a transient thing. Humanity may be too. But we are part of some grand history or story of the universe. I am a speck of dust that became a person and one day I will be dust again.

All are born equal, and by their labours shall they rise. This philosophy was the underlying constitution of the United Social Venture.

I love when an author describes your world back to you, but somehow their description calls to light how strange and alien and unfeeling our own world is.

Skilled people required education, and in the experience of the Ventures, education was a double-edged weapon. Teach someone how to come up with new ideas, new concepts in the realm of engineering, design, industry, and what is they then came up with new ideas for something else? What if they turned and said, “But isn’t there another way of looking at this…?”

and isn’t there?

There is a lot of trust, in civilization. There is a lot of faith in the results returned in each other’s function, and when that faith fails, so does everything else.

This made me think of the pandemic. There had been so many movies of the world falling apart when a deadly virus spreads across the world. But I remember all the kindness I saw in 2020. The neighbors who offered to share toilet paper. The visits through the window. The phone calls. Oh yes, I remember the bad parts. Chance. But the beauty of civilization is that it didn’t collapse. We went through something challenging and worked out okay. We worked together. We relied on each other. We lost a lot, but we didn’t completely disintegrate. This is a different kind of faith, a humanism, that can’t be denied.

We are the seeds of the forest, we blaze so bright, no life is special. No life is special. No life is special and all of them are. No love matters more than any other, no story is more important, nothing matters more, nothing matters less, so choose, choose, we choose every day to be more than just ourselves, to live for more than just ourselves because it is beautiful…. Billions of stories, billions of loves, so many people love so potently, our song sung in the stars long after we are gone, and just because you cannot feel it does not make it any less true.

Gebre’s words moved me. We read romantic stories and we think “What wouldn’t I do for my loved one? I would burn the world down for them!”. But Gebre reminded me that we shouldn’t. No lover is more important than another. They’re all love. And that is so incredibly comforting and strangely shameful to think about. Why should my love be special? Why is my life special? It isn’t. Every life has value, every love has value, every person is valuable. Even when I rage (righteously or not), I cannot forget. Nothing matters more. Nothing matters less. It is freeing.

…but as you, personally, the hero in this tale, may be powerless to prevent a surprise attack or a corporate takeover that destroys your home, these things are not conspiracy at all. Just macroeconomic forces, and you happened to be there too.

And then in the midst of it all North will drop a hilarious little quip like this. It describes so many experiences - just an unlucky intersection fo macroeconomics and peoples’ lives. Maw learned it and so many others do too. I think of the events of the day. The war. How most of the people in Iran and Lebanon did not ask for conflict. How they were living their lives, the way I live mine. And then macroeconomic, political forces happen and turn it all to rubble. No one should matter more. No one should matter less.

I wonder whether it is possible to exist as a person at all without measuring yourself against others. I wish sometimes that I was strong enough to be myself in company without company turning me into something else. I wonder who that person would be, and am sometimes grateful never to find out.

I too wonder who I would be without the comparison. The physical measuring I experience every day. Would I be me? Maybe being around people makes me better, though. Probably does. Would I be as kind if others didn’t expect it of me? Would I be generous if no one was watching? I want to say yes, but I don’t know. Maybe these things only matter because I think others think they matter. But the outcome is the same. People, societal expectations, they make us better.

I don’t know how you’re meant to be this small in a universe this big, this insignificant in a galaxy where every decision matters, where every life is precious. I don’t know how to feel so huge and loud inside, and so small and quiet before the dark.

How can any of us grapple with our places in the universe? How can anything matter when nothing matters? We are witness to our own lives. We are witness to the world. And there’s something beautiful in that. The Jade Plant Project. We can’t change everything and undo the horrors. We can witness. We can feel. We can remember, until it is washed away.

“…You should learn Adjumiri. They have five different ways of asking for help, and at least three ways of saving ‘mercy’. Mercy for one whose suffering should cease. Mercy for a foe; mercy that is a gift given without ever needing to be asked for.” Another way too, a fourth definition on the tip of my tongue. Trying to remember the sounds of it, shape it into some kind of meaning that would translate into Mdo-sa. Mercy for yourself, when you have lived too long in shame.

And we should never miss a chance to have mercy for ourselves.

Slow Gods is a book about the power of community, of civilization. The beauty we can find in simply being with others, even if we are not loved, even if we are, even if we are best friends, even if we are simply neutral. Slow Gods gives me hope. Slow Gods makes me grateful.

Slow Gods inspires me to consider why I love reading so much. Why I woke up early before work and stayed up late to devour this. I sometimes feel insatiable. Insatiable for emotion? for narrative? for puzzles? catharsis? Maybe. But I read this and I think I’m insatiable for the way I feel changed by reading. How an author can cut into me and shed light upon the parts of myself that I have trouble seeing. How books can alter your heart and reinforce a thought you had in passing 5 years ago. No life is special, but we are a part of a beautiful lineage of humanity. When I stand on the Presidio, I’m standing where my grandmother lived as a baby, where people have lived for hundred of years, where they will live for hundreds more. And if California falls into the oceans there will be seals and crabs and algae swimming over this land. Still a universe overflowing with science and life and mystery. A universe that inspires curiosity.