reading Eclipse by K.A. Bedford

Was shopping at Robin's (the discount one) & bought Eclipse by K.A. Bedford, an Australian writer. The cover art itself seemed kind of queer: a shadowy close up of a sharp-featured man's head. The jacket copy didn't indicate anything homo but did tell me it was going to be on a space ship. That was enough for me.

It's written in the first person in the voice of a 21 year old newbie space officer. I was immediately skeptical of this P.O.V., because I like my space stories chock full of smart information and not didactic and that's a hard mix for the first person. But the voice of James Dunne is smart without being didactic, is informative without being dry, etc. There's real darkness in the narrative that keeps me turning pages, but I don't actually feel as if the theme is integrated into the speculative elements as much I'd enjoy. I mean, finding aliens affects the crew and how they act/feel, but the emotional verifiability of these characters is not necessarily an organic part of the speculation. (In contrast to something from Joanna Russ, for instance; in The Two of Them, Irene's actions, reactions, etc. completely flow from the realities they move between, the proto-Islamic back to their normal world, & from her lover's attitude about her actions vis-a-vis the girl they "rescue." The story is the speculation, or the other way around.)

Bedford's characters are specific and emotionally verifiable, and interesting, too. The most interesting character, the tough woman (surprise, surprise) doesn't get enough page-time and isn't playing an active role yet (though I'm 2/3 through). So far she's mostly there to make Dunne swoon (also a product of Bedford's use of the first person), but her early characterization showed her to be bold and powerful, so I'm hoping that the author is saving her up for the third act. There's at least one confirmed homosexual who manages to be self loathing and closeted despite the book's assertions that his own family gave him positive images of gay life. And there's plenty of male-on-male rape and rape anxiety.

The violence in the text is interesting in the way it thematizes women in the military and ignores them. According to the Bedford's universe's status quo, men and women are equal and discrimination is dead. But his characters know that's a crock of shit, because, as Dunne says early in the novel, power equals violence and there's a functional and entrenched patriarchy. It's a fascinating text to think about sex, gender and violence in a speculative novel, in particular because it's from the point of view of a straight-identified man but is written in a way that questions the fundamental political assumptions of our patriarchies. It's an attractive and almost hypnotic use of this voice.