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juushikaTitle: A Different Light
Author: Elizabeth A. Lynn
Published: New York: Ace, 2000 (1978)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 183
Total Page Count: 130,685
Text Number: 382
Read Because: fan of the author/discussed by Jo Walton, borrowed fromcentury_eyes
Review: In an age when disease has been all but eradicated, Jimson has cancer. If he stays on New Terrian, it can be treated; if he makes a faster-than-light jump through the Hype, he can visit new worlds and rediscover old lovers, but the cancer will metastasize and kill him. A Different Light is a looseknit travelogue composed of small, vivid details rendered in Lynn's deceptively terse style, seemingly undirected but with a distinct focus: the nature of one man's identity as formed by his relationships, his body, his mind, and his choices—the persistence of self for a man whose self is especially limited by the standards of his society. It's an uneven effort: forgettable plot, Lynn's brevity fails to invoke Jimson's identity as artist, the worldbuilding is both patchy and heavy-handed; it's also a dense and intensely thoughtful little book. Lynn writes racial and sexual diversity with grace; Jimson's illness is not so deftly handled, but his mortality and social isolation is convincing—and so while his attempts to achieve persistence are often disposable, the desire which motivates them resonates. There are stronger and more successful books, and while this has many of Lynn's trademarks it is not her best, but A Different Light lingered with me, if more for the thoughts it has than the actions it commits, and in that regard I consider it a success and recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
And from my 2016 reread:
#of the Lynn I've read (nts: read more Lynn) A Different Light is the book in which I am least invested #but my favorite thing in all her books is how characters and societies navigate interpersonal dynamics #Kel inviting Kerris not to break but to overturn social taboos both of incest and of monogamy #in a way cognizant of but entirely uncowed by those taboos #(in The Dancers of Arun) #Jimson both repressed and liberated by the conventions of privacy and learning how to operate within them to form new relationships #varied dynamic healthy forgiving motivating relationships that expand him as much as his search of the stars expands him #(here in A Different Light) #the fluid free love in all of her work which leans towards idealistic wish-fulfillment but is ultimately a wish that NEEDS to be fulfilled #because of the way it defies monogamy and heteronormativity #opens up new dynamics and normalizes queer relationships and allows diversity to be simply taken for granted #published 40 years ago and this STILL feels defiant and liberated #nts: read ALL the Lynn she is so amazing
Author: Elizabeth A. Lynn
Published: New York: Ace, 2000 (1978)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 183
Total Page Count: 130,685
Text Number: 382
Read Because: fan of the author/discussed by Jo Walton, borrowed from
century_eyesReview: In an age when disease has been all but eradicated, Jimson has cancer. If he stays on New Terrian, it can be treated; if he makes a faster-than-light jump through the Hype, he can visit new worlds and rediscover old lovers, but the cancer will metastasize and kill him. A Different Light is a looseknit travelogue composed of small, vivid details rendered in Lynn's deceptively terse style, seemingly undirected but with a distinct focus: the nature of one man's identity as formed by his relationships, his body, his mind, and his choices—the persistence of self for a man whose self is especially limited by the standards of his society. It's an uneven effort: forgettable plot, Lynn's brevity fails to invoke Jimson's identity as artist, the worldbuilding is both patchy and heavy-handed; it's also a dense and intensely thoughtful little book. Lynn writes racial and sexual diversity with grace; Jimson's illness is not so deftly handled, but his mortality and social isolation is convincing—and so while his attempts to achieve persistence are often disposable, the desire which motivates them resonates. There are stronger and more successful books, and while this has many of Lynn's trademarks it is not her best, but A Different Light lingered with me, if more for the thoughts it has than the actions it commits, and in that regard I consider it a success and recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
And from my 2016 reread:
Jimson suddenly understood an effect of the custom which prohibited personal questions. You could never demand intimacy—you could only volunteer it. To know another person you had to make yourself vulnerable to her.
#of the Lynn I've read (nts: read more Lynn) A Different Light is the book in which I am least invested #but my favorite thing in all her books is how characters and societies navigate interpersonal dynamics #Kel inviting Kerris not to break but to overturn social taboos both of incest and of monogamy #in a way cognizant of but entirely uncowed by those taboos #(in The Dancers of Arun) #Jimson both repressed and liberated by the conventions of privacy and learning how to operate within them to form new relationships #varied dynamic healthy forgiving motivating relationships that expand him as much as his search of the stars expands him #(here in A Different Light) #the fluid free love in all of her work which leans towards idealistic wish-fulfillment but is ultimately a wish that NEEDS to be fulfilled #because of the way it defies monogamy and heteronormativity #opens up new dynamics and normalizes queer relationships and allows diversity to be simply taken for granted #published 40 years ago and this STILL feels defiant and liberated #nts: read ALL the Lynn she is so amazing
