Review: The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar

Review: The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar

by Rich Horton

This is a new novella, perhaps 23,000 words, from Sofia Samatar. It should go without saying that anything by Samatar is in the must-read category. This book certainly is. It's strange, dark, depressing but hopeful. Excellent work.

The story centers two characters, one a teenaged boy who has grown up in the Hold of a mining spaceship, the other a professor of the "Older Knowledge" at a school in the more privileged levels of that spaceship. We learn over time that the ship is part of a fleet of ships, in which live what seem to be the survivors of a ruined Earth. They maintain themselves by mining necessary material from what seem to be asteroids. 

The boy has some artistic talent, which brings him to the attention of the professor, who has him freed from the Hold, and from the chain that the people in the Hold always wear. She is the daughter of a man who was also brought up from the Hold to be educated, during a brief period when scholarships were offered to some Hold denizens. The professor has fought to reestablish the scholarships, and the boy is the first attempt at making this work.

The boy has a hard time adjusting to life on this new level. In particular, he misses a friend of his, called the Prophet, who preaches a religion (with Christian echoes) to the people down there. He has dreams, even visions, especially of some of the people in the Hold who were killed due to the negligence and cruelty of the Ship's leaders. The professor, too, has difficulty. She has to spend time helping the boy catch up with his studies, which affects her own work. And it becomes clear that her status in her school, in her whole society, is fraught, due, clearly, to her father's origins. And, too, we realize that she, and the boy, and other people in her orbit, called the Ankleted, are in a sense in chains as well -- an electronic device around their ankles, which helps them communicate with others, turns out to have additional uses.

The book, then, slowly reveals a truly awful and hypocritical society. The professor's treatment by her colleagues, at the same time a satirical depiction of academic politics and a searing depiction of class prejudices, is dreadful. The boy is treated as a sort of pet, though his innocence allows him to overcome this in the way the professor really can't. The story finally turns on the boy's realization of some unexpected abilities, and a reunion with the the Prophet, and an attempt to rescue the Prophet's daughter. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, is presented as SF, but it's more a sort of parable, and a dark commentary on class and power hierarchies in our world. It's an effective and powerful story.