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This is the thread for us to enjoy and discuss Translation State.

We start on on about January 10, 2025.

Please don't forget to use spoiler tags where needed.

I read it too recently to reread, but I'll join in the conversation.

I also read it within the last year, so I won’t reread, but I’ll try to join in the convo.

Checking in.

Idem!

Oh, you know that I'm in.

I'll join. It's the next Leckie book on my TBR.

I'll join this, but not sure if i can start Jan 10! What are you submitting it under for the Book Challenge?

I read this in 2024 and really enjoyed it, so I will follow your discussion with interest.

I’ve just read She Commands Me and I Obey and Night's Slow Poison. I think I will start Translation State tomorrow, because I definitely need more of Radch universe.

AJ wrote: "I'll join this, but not sure if i can start Jan 10! What are you submitting it under for the Book Challenge?"

That is a very good question! I've got to see what I can shoehorn into the SciFi Combat group categories from all the series I'm reading in 2025.

Aga, what about the two stories? I'm not sure that any other of these is from the Radch: Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction.

cf.:

I read this last summer and liked it a lot, so I may join in for some of the discussion.

I've been working on Lake of Souls and there are only 3 Radch stories - the two Aga mentioned and "The Creation and Destruction of the World". You can find that one online at - it's read by Diane Severson (a member of this group!)

I just finished The Spellshop, ready to move on to Translation State as my next audio read. Looking forward to Leckie's writing after all that numbing sweetness.

Thanks Kaa, for the shout out about the story I narrated! Huh, I didn’t realize it was a Raadch story. LOL, I think I hadn’t read the Ancillary trilogy yet when I did that story.

Oh yes, I noticed on my reading schedule I was going to start this mid-January. Will start it tonight after I finish another book!

I've got about 100 pages to finish up Children of Ruin and then will start this, probably by Monday.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "Aga, what about the two stories? I'm not sure that any other of these is from the Radch: Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction.

cf.: ..."

Oh, I didn’t know about that short stories collection. I’m adding it to my TBR.

Both of the stories I’ve read are available online for free.
Night's Slow Poison is on reactormag.com
She Commands Me and I Obey both parts on Strange Horizons.

Both are set in Radch universe, before the trilogy.

I’m starting the book again tomorrow. I had an awful sinus infection and I decided that I needed more brain power to enjoy Translation State, so I’ve read some cozy fantasy instead.

Yeah, when I'm sick, or have been floored by insomnia, I usually go the way of podcasts or, recently, sword and sorcery.

This thing kept me awake till almost 6 am. I practically gulped it in one night, finished the last two hours this morning.
This is my favourite Radch book so far, despite all the gender naming craziness.
BTW, is this a thing or something Ann invented? (I mean sie instead of she and the like)
Has Ann spoken about this in more detail anywhere? I need to make it make sense.

Olga wrote: "This thing kept me awake till almost 6 am. I practically gulped it in one night, finished the last two hours this morning.
This is my favourite Radch book so far, despite all the gender naming craz..."

Wow! I've seen today, you have just finished it. I cant't wait to start again tonight.

I started it and I'm loving it! I'm trying not to read it too quickly. I thought I was starting 2025 off with a bit of reading burn-out so it's nice to be reading something that has me this excited.

I feel like Leckie's ideas for this universe have really matured and taken on a lot of nuance that allows her to play with and intertwine things in a very creative way.

Olga wrote: "This is my favourite Radch book so far, despite all the gender naming craziness.
BTW, is this a thing or something Ann invented? (I mean sie instead of she and the like)."

These are called neopronouns and we in the trans and nonbinary community have been using them for a long while, and not just in English speaking communities. They can be controversial to some people, but calling them crazy is tad offensive, I won't lie.

Martha Wells and a number of other contemporary SF/F writers have used neopronouns. It's not just Leckie. It's becoming a creative way to approach gender in fiction that doesn't tie an author down to a normative cisgender make/female binary.

CJ wrote: "Olga wrote: "This is my favourite Radch book so far, despite all the gender naming craziness.
BTW, is this a thing or something Ann invented? (I mean sie instead of she and the like)."

These are c..."

I didn't mean to offend and apologise if I did so indadvertedly. By craziness I meant only the fact that there were so many of them and they made little sense for me and I thought that it was specific for the book, nothing else.

One of the surprising and fun things about the Radch is that often the reader has no way of discerning if a character is male or female.

CJ wrote: "Olga wrote: "This is my favourite Radch book so far, despite all the gender naming craziness.
BTW, is this a thing or something Ann invented? (I mean sie instead of she and the like)."

These are c..."

We have some in Polish too, but because we have a neuter grammar from people rarely use them. Neuter form is getting more popular nowadays, because why to invent something new if we have a solution for ages. And it sounds cute. Of course some people don’t like the cuteness aspect and they choose something else, but it’s rare.

I don’t really care about my own pronouns, because I would have to change them twice a day, so why expect everyone around me to keep track XD

I am very interested in sie/hir though, do you know anything more about this one?

[language nerd mode ON]

So you're saying that you have something like the it pronoun that can also be used for people? I know Norwegian has accepted a new gender-neutral pronoun:

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "[language nerd mode ON]

So you're saying that you have something like the it pronoun that can also be used for people? I know Norwegian has accepted a new gender-neutral pronoun: ..."

We have three singular forms in Polish: feminine, masculine and neuter. And two plural forms: masculine and non masculine (feminine + neuter are the same). Every noun in Polish is either masculine or feminine or neuter.

The neuter form is used for children, little animals, some objects and nowadays is reclaimed by non binary individuals.

Because we use feminine and masculine names for children they are usually called he or she. We have almost none gender neutral names because of the church influence on our culture. But it wasn’t always like that. Before Christianity came to our land, our part of Slavic tribes had different customs. A newborn child didn’t get a name, just a nickname the mother used. Later in life the kid got a female or masculine name and there were special festivities. Boys had their hair cut for the first time and girl’s hair were braided with ribbons. But there was a third group, rather mysterious, who got a name connected to nature - a name of a tree or an animal for example. They were considered belonging to gods and joined the priesthood/wizards? We don’t know the details, but nowadays many assume they were nonbinary people or just didn’t want to take the traditional role of man or women. And probably that’s why we have three forms.

Aga, thanks for that explanation. I find it very interesting to think about how different cultures approach gender. I know that some indigenous societies, including Native Americans, had gender neutral terms. I wonder how many pre-Judeo-Christian societies had gender neutral pronounds.

I have always chafed at being confined to the societal and cultural restrictions of girl/woman.

I follow several indigenous accounts on social media and they have repeatedly pointed out that some cultures used to have a variety of genders, and that the masculine/feminine dichotomy was imposed as part of colonisation.

English is actually a largely gender-neutral language.
The whole shebang about pronouns is due to the fact that it is one of the few gendered areas.

In Neo-Latin languages such as mine, everything is gendered, even chairs and skies. Spanish has a handful of neutral demonstrative pronouns (esto/eso/aquello) that have however no bearing on personal pronouns.

Names are also an interesting topic.
I don't think we have neutral names in Italian, less because of the church than of Latin (-o and -a endings). There is however some confusion when shifting language: Andrea, Michele, Nicola and Simone are all male names.

I remember German had three types of nouns = male, female and neuter/neutral. French only had the two which helped somewhat, but what killed me with French was when you wrote a list separated by commas, you had to put the articles in front of each word unlike English.

Actually my English grammar lessons did not prepare me fro French, maybe in the UK they talked about all th verb forms, but my French teacher would say now this is the XX form of the verb and I had no idea what she was talking about

Cheryl L wrote: "Aga, thanks for that explanation. I find it very interesting to think about how different cultures approach gender. I know that some indigenous societies, including Native Americans, had gender neu..."

I think Ann Leckie’s works provoke thinking about how the language is connected to culture view of a gender role/identity.

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "I follow several indigenous accounts on social media and they have repeatedly pointed out that some cultures used to have a variety of genders, and that the masculine/feminine dichotomy was imposed..."

Latin had a huge impact on Polish language, especially grammar.

There is a huge debate in Poland now about introducing feminine forms of nouns connected to occupations if there is none. For example the word "minister" is exactly the same as in English but it is masculine, so now there is a feminine version "ministra" used for women. Some people are not very happy about it. Than imagine how hard it is for people using neuter forms to introduce their versions.

I wonder what other grammatical genders could be. It is so interesting.

I'll start next week; probably as soon as tomorrow if I can.

I'll be starting today!

I’m 30% in and taking it slow. I wanted to know more about the Translators, and oh boy, this is so fascinating.

Early on I find the sie/hir and e/em/eir kinda grating.
Which, as a scholar of languages, I see with curiousity.
We're used to encountering new words all the time, and in speculative fiction they're pretty much a given: nouns, verbs, even adjectives... but not pronouns.
I guess that after establishing a protocol regarding genders for the Radch, Leckie enjoyed the opportunity to literally go somewhere else for these outside systems.

I'm about a quarter in, and happy to proceed at a clip. The short chapters help.

The Ancillary trilogy reminded me of the Expanse in places, especially in the settings (space stations and the titular spaceships); possibily in the politicking as well. So it doesn't surprise that this novel uses the familiar structure of alternating points of view among characters. (view spoiler)[I was also expecting they would cross paths, although not so soon. (hide spoiler)]

a.g.e. montagner wrote: "I guess that after establishing a protocol regarding genders for the Radch, Leckie enjoyed the opportunity to literally go somewhere else for these outside systems."

(This is only vaguely spoiler-y, but hiding just in case, as I don't recall at what point in the book this came up) (view spoiler)[One of the things I found interesting about this book was the interaction with the Radch gender structure, and the way we now see the Radch practicing a sort of linguist imperialism. In one of my other book groups, we talked about how the Radch ambassador's refusal to use/remember other pronouns wasn't really malicious toward the individual, as it can be when someone intentionally uses the wrong pronouns for another person, but it did still feel like there was a kind of malice in her purposeful ignorance of other people's pronouns. (hide spoiler)] It felt like Leckie was in dialogue with herself on the topic of gender, and it seems like her view/depictions have gotten more nuanced.

Also, I've been (slowly) reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built in Spanish, which has many non-binary characters, and it's been informative to see how that is navigated in the text. One example that hadn't occurred to me before was the use of "adres" as a gender-neutral term for parents (rather than padre/madre).

I expect to finish this during the weekend, then I'll have a lot to talk about. I mean I could start now, but I've just had a very busy couple of days and couldn't find the time to sit down and dissect the book.

In the rush to move forward with my reading list, I clean forgot to post here.

Translation State is another strong entry in the Radch series. Or rather... outside of Radch space, where the trilogy was entirely set, and it was interesting to see it from different perspectives.

I agree with Kaa that Radchaai gender neutrality, however positive in challenging our own norms (and downright hilarious when you can't tell the gender of characters, even as they have sex...), is nonetheless too normative.
In fact the first thing that happens to Breq in Ancillary Justice (well, the second, after finding Seivarden half dead) is having to navigate languages that recognise genders, seniority, &c., for which she is ill prepared (incidentally I have a hard time believing that a ship AI such as Justice of Toren, that for centuries had access to detailed biometrics from implants, couldn't learn to tell the difference between sexes).
Pretty much everyone in this novel makes fun of the Radchaai universal 'she' and finds it insufficient and flattening, as they are instead perfectly used to a plurality of genders and genders choices; in the case of Qven, I think it was, even trying more than one to see how they fit.

On a tangent, this most recent novel of Leckie's doesn't even appear on her website; on the other hand, there are some curious FAQ on pronunciation and, again, gender pronouns:

Rephrasing: even in the context of the trilogy it was implied that Radchaai protocols were far from optimal; this includes more than an ungendered language, such as the downright genocidal creation of ancillaries.

I've already mentioned being reminded of the Expanse, mostly for some similarities in settings. Among the differences are a much more refined prose and a tighter timeline: the James Corey duo purposefully stressed the length of interplanetary journeys, sometimes months on end; while I don't remember any of the Radch novels being more than a few days in plot development (at least in real time: the two narrative strands in Ancillary Justice are originally 20 years apart, and ultimately the chronology referenced spans millennia).

This feels a bit like shouting into the void at this point, but I wanted to add a few things, though weeks have passed. They are perhaps best kept within spoiler tags.

(view spoiler)[It's been my impression that Leckie avoids far-fetched solutions when building the climax of these novels, relying instead on what is at hand plot-wise. In fact, more often than not, rather than move the plot forward, she quite literally suspends it in mid-air (Ancillary Sword, if I remember correctly) or unspools it (Translation State). I find this process quite curious. (hide spoiler)]
I wonder if something similar also happens in her one, stand-alone, fantasy novel, The Raven Tower.

Sorry it took me so long to read the book and for not being active in the thread. I have a lot on my plate since the beginning of the year. Seemed like one extremely long week. But it starts to clear up a bit.

I’ve learned a lot about modern pronouns in English reading this book. I looked for more information about the gender related topics. But I didn’t think about what was characters� biological sex that much. It may be that I don’t perceive those things as neurotypical people usually do.

I would describe the storytelling in Radch series as "honest�. The story goes where it goes and characters are truthful to themselves in their actions. There are no plot twists for the sake of plot twists and other fireworks. I am very curious about The Raven Tower, but I think I’ll check out Provenance first.

I think it has some similarities to Expanse series but at the same time it is something completely opposite. And it is connected to the storytelling style.

I loved the translators related parts. It is hard to explain but I felt seen. The ridiculous training reminds me of English lessons for kids in the nineties mixed with Social Skills Training program still popular in Poland for kids on the spectrum.

Actually I had a similar conversation about shapes (as the one in the book) last week. I had classes with one sweet kid and he went from non verbal to masking. He was extremely polite and tried to make a nice small talk. And he asked what is my favorite shape in the game we are playing. Blue circle of course! It was so similar. I spent the rest of the hour making him feel safe enough to stim and unmask.

Oh, and about the FAQ on Ann Leckie’s page I loved this part

Q: So, then, what gender is [Character]?

I probably don’t know. Because it didn’t matter to the story and because of the pronoun choice I’d made, I didn’t have to figure it out.

This is what I felt while reading. It was not relevant for the story itself, so I didn’t have to include it in my visualization of the characters.

Yeah, I loved that too.
Isn't that exactly the case with Tisarwat, for example?

I agree with your observation about honesty.
While reading Leckie's novels I was often reminded of Le Guin's remark that she hated action sequences written for the sake of action, unless they also brought about character development. I'm trying to find the quote again...

Exactly, Tisarwat has strong troubled teenager vibes, no matter the gender.

I remember reading The Song of Ice and Fire and having the feeling that George R. R. Martin is trying to impress me and shock me as a reader. I was impressed and shocked but anyway�

There are some strong similarities between Leckie’s and Le Guin’s prose for sure. The out of the box and progressive thinking. Characters are carefully built with unique personalities to the point I don’t think I can name one generic or stereotypical one.

Aga wrote: "Exactly, Tisarwat has strong troubled teenager vibes, no matter the gender.

I remember reading The Song of Ice and Fire and having the feeling that George R. R. Martin is trying to impress me and..."

I think you've just articulated one of the reasons I like Leckie's writing so much. That is, her characters are not stereotypes. I often have trouble getting through books with strongly stereotyped characters, such as Jurassic Park or Cryptonomicon.