The humans are the most alien characters in Under the Pendulum Sun
Under the Pendulum Sun is a novel by Jeannette Ng that achieved notoriety last year when it won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and the acceptance speech that Ng gave exposed Campbell’s past as a fascist and led to the award being renamed as the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.
The novel itself is an interesting and unusual read. It’s set in the Victorian era and is about a woman who goes in search of her missionary brother who has disappeared after traveling to Arcadia, the land of the fairies, to convert the fay to Christianity. It makes perfect sense that if the fay lands were discovered in the 19th century, then the Victorians would try to convert them.
The novel feels very Victorian. Not just in its setting, but in its characters’ outlook. Siblings Catherine and Leon Helstone are driven by values and an outlook on the world that appears very different to ours. I haven’t read many Victorian novels, but to my untrained eye this novel’s characters are believably Victorian.
Victorian characters
The characters’ Victorian-ness feels strange to us as 21st-century readers. The siblings are devout Christians, which is unusual today but not unheard of. However, there is an earnestness to their faith that seems very uncontemporary. The characters spend a lot of time discussing the Bible, its verses and their meaning, as well as the nature of God and the question of whether the fay have souls. Being so outspoken about faith seems unusual to me, as I was raised in a world where religion is a private matter.
In some ways, the deep religiousness of the characters is more unusual than the setting of Arcadia. As an avid sci-fi and fantasy reader I am used to novels populated by strange lands and bizarre creatures, but not to such religious fervor. By contrast, the fay in Ng’s novel seem more like us. They are motivated by a desire to express their individuality. They desire entertainment and immediate self-gratification and don’t care for larger belief structures.
This seems more like the people of today then the pious and self-sacrificing missionaries. As characters in a fantasy novel, the humans seem more like an alien or fantasy creatures, from a very religious society, than the non-human characters in Ng’s book
Spoilers ahead
The next section of this article drops a spoiler, so if you haven’t read the book and you want to approach it unspoiled then skip ahead. If you haven’t read the book, and I strongly recommend you read it, it’s better not knowing the spoiler I am about to drop … last warning … okay.
Siblings Catherine and Leon also feel very different from people we know in our world because they engage in quite a lot of incest. There are many reasons for this in the book, but one is that they are isolated as people. There are very few characters in the novel and there is little mention of friends or companions for the siblings. Catherine and Leon have been isolated from everyone else and thus have developed sexual desires for each other out of lack of intimate connections to other humans.
This sense of them being isolated pervades the novel. They are alone in a strange land and living in a large, almost empty building. This seems remote and difficult for us to understand. In today’s hyperconnected world, where people can be reached so easily via Zoom or Whatsapp (even during a global pandemic that is limiting human contact). It is strange that people could become so isolated that they would feel like they were the only people in the world.
Seeing the world from another point of view
Under the Pendulum Sun invites us to see the world of Arcadia through the eyes of humans, primarily Catherine as the novel is written in the first person from her point of view. However as a protagonist, Catherine, is alien to us as she has different values and a different perception of the world.
The book is well written and encourages us to empathize with Catherine, despite her being different to us. I find it hard to understand what would motivate someone to become a missionary to a strange land, yet alone one as bizarre as Arcadia, but Ng’s writing makes the reader completely believe in Catherine and her journey.
I have written before about the power of science fiction and fantasy to make us see the world through the eyes of characters who are very different to us. What is different about Under the Pendulum Sun is that the strange characters whose different perspectives we are seeing the world through are not aliens, but are humans.
Good writing is political
This is why good writing is political as it invites us to spend a few hours walking in the shoes of someone else. This is a political act as it opens our mind to the idea that other people’s views and experiences that are different to ours, maybe even unimaginable, are valid.
We can use fiction to break from our perspectives. This is what Under the Pendulum Sun does so well: it lets us understand the lives of people who are different to us and opens our minds to new perspectives, which is why it is essential reading.
