Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

 

23. “Surviving” by Judith Moffett

Queer, somewhat erotic tale. The major caveat for this story would be that it revolves around two white women, one of whom was raised by chimpanzees between the ages of 4 and 13, and the other who devoted her professional career to studying the first woman.

The substance of the story revolves more around the bond they build as friends and lovers and their unspoken attempt at cultural exchange. Trying to bring to bring the one more fully into the human (western, academic) world she was supposedly already assimilated while the other perhaps seeks to shed somewhat of her humanity to live out the Tarzan fantasies that drew her to her research (a novel both the women in this story find a strong connection with).

I liked this story enough to develop a list of flaws and maybe-flaws.

1. The psychologist, Jan’s relationship with Sarah (the ‘Chimp Child’) is threaded with her desire to complete Sarah’s healing and bring her fully into human society, an intention she never makes explicit for fear of spooking Sarah and their connection being severed. I don’t know if we are supposed to understand that this is on an unspoken level also what Sarah wants - there are some moments which point to this - or whether this is only the rather creepy using of another person as a means to serve one’s ends. I found it uncomfortably undermining any sense I developed of parity in their relationship.

2. Particularly at the end when Jan’s role has reversed and she is using the ‘chimpanzee living’ skills she has developed to help re-wild formerly captive chimpanzees and she claims there is no difference now between her and Sarah. I feel like she is committing an error particularly prominent in colonial psychology, mistaking the acquisition of physical skills and customs for an assumption of identity. No matter how practised she becomes at arboreal movement, or feeding, etc., she will never have psychologically been a chimpanzee for a decade of her childhood. If this isn’t meant sincerely by the story, I couldn’t tell.

(also, I’m very uncomfortable with how engaging with “Survival” seems to demand approaches normally used for addressing colonialism and race, especially wert the history of ape analogies and racism. but I don’t think I have an alternative while taking it seriously as a story.)

3. Something which commonly irks me about short SF fiction, the story hangs at a comfortable ‘now’ for much of its span, then barrels along to an abrupt conclusion. I tend to feel jarred and rushed by this sort of story-telling, as if the author has finished saying what ey aimed to say and is now grasping for some way to make it stop ASAP. I’m almost certainly guilty of that in my own little efforts, but that does not require me to enjoy it.

In conclusion, if I did not like “Survival” more than most in this collection I would not have gone at such length about its problems. Also, do not read this story if you are not willing to deal with human-chimpanzee sex, or sexual activity involving pubescent teens (that’s an official recommendation, stamp and all).