WEAVER

Archival fragments, testimonials, and ephemera tell the story of space-traveling humans discovering two alien races in dire straits and how the multiple species enter into bitter conflict while sharing Earth.

In this SF novel, Jacobson uses an epistolary style to describe—via ingredients in some kind of multimedia “virtual exhibit”—a fateful clash of Earth and alien cultures. In the mid-22nd century, after humanity attains technology to explore millions of galaxies, Earth explorers stumble across the Laffians, tall humanoids in need of a helping hand. They escaped the tectonic destruction of their home world to settle the only other planet they could find supporting life, which they dubbed Adalaffa. But Adalaffa is a globe completely covered in ocean, and the refugees have to unhappily adopt a floating subsistence existence off the ubiquitous (and carnivorous) seaweed. With superior star-mapping, Earth’s emissaries promise the Laffians a better planet—but only in exchange for the aliens meeting impossible harvest quotas of precious Adalaffian flora. The flora turns out to have restorative properties for Earth’s badly damaged biosphere. Ultimately, the Laffians figure out they are getting the raw end of the deal and rebel. This leads to the Laffians meeting (and becoming allies with) the HoFe, another species victimized by Homo sapiens. The HoFe are tree-dwelling feline creatures with a strong warrior heritage—and a doomed home planet for which time is running out. Can the three races possibly share an abundant Earth in peace, acceptance, and respect?

In a narrative woven from bits and pieces of correspondence, diaries, official reports, and even a sort of movie script excerpt, the plot is fragmentary and a bit sketchy in aspects—asking readers to swallow that the distressed, less advanced Laffians and HoFe could suddenly mount an effective Earth conquest (even granted that all of the planet seems ground under the high heel of one bitchy but strategically vulnerable corporate-monopoly CEO). That being a given, the two alien species, charitable and ethical despite their grievances, attempt a cooperative existence and try to blend together into an established society. But the author’s intriguing point of view is similar to that in the Walter Tevis classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. Humanity’s pathologies, such as religious extremism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, consumerism, and capitalism, turn out to be, as with H.G. Wells’ microbes, the subtle threats that undermine and daunt the interplanetary visitors, no matter their thoroughly benign intentions. Previous books by Jacobson took a strong LGBTQ+ orientation, and indeed here, as in Ursula Le Guin’s landmark The Left Hand of Darkness, the aliens are ambisexual, flipping from male to female as mating conditions dictate. While it’s not a prominent theme, a significant subplot deals with the first domestic coupling of a Laffian and a human (“It was our court case that made marriage between our species legal”). And, as with all things where humanity is concerned, complications ensue in this absorbing story.

Humanity does not play well with others in this untraditional and engrossing SF tale.