Oh, the Humanity

A mind-bending, award-winning science fiction trilogy that

expertly investigates the way we live now.
By Tammy Oler

Illustration by Andrew DeGraff

n an introduction to her 1969 science-fiction masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness,

Ursula K. Le Guin sought to correct the assumption that science fiction is about the future.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive, she wrote, advising readers looking for
predictions to resist looking to science fiction writers:
Its none of their business. All theyre trying to do is tell you what theyre like, and what
youre likewhats going onwhat the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the
sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen.

Theres perhaps no science-fiction series as descriptive of our current political and cultural
moment or as insistent that we open our eyes to it as Ann Leckies Hugo- and Nebulawinning Imperial Radch trilogy. In Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and the newly
published Ancillary Mercy, Leckie imagines a space opera thousands of years in the future
and thousands of light years awaya perfect vantage point from which to consider how we
humans imagine ourselves right now.
In the far-future space of Leckies trilogy, the Radchaai Empire has controlled a vast
portion of the galaxy for thousands of years through the annexation of human-occupied
planets. The enormous spaceships Radchaai use to annex and regulate planets are installed
with artificial intelligences; these A.I.s control ancillaries, people from conquered planets
who are implanted with technology that wipes out their identities and renders them human
appendages of their ships. (The three novels in the trilogy are named after the three classes
of ships: Justice, Sword, and Mercy.) The protagonist of the series calls herself Breq; she
was once an ancillary and is the sole survivor of the destruction of the Radchaai ship Justice
of Toren. Breq is One Esk Nineteen, a single segment of Justice of Toren, but she also is the
A.I. Justice of Torenits last remnant. If that seems hard to wrap your head around, well,
thats rather the point: At the heart of Leckies series is a profound grappling with the way
identityour very sense of selfis imagined, is regulated, and shifts over time.

What happens when a people who believe

themselves to be an agent of order and
civilization no longer have anyone to
civilize?
As the series opens, the Radchaai Empire is at a pivotal point: A treaty with a much more
powerful alien race has compelled the Radchaai to discontinue annexing planets. Anaander
Mianaai, lord of the Radch, has ruled the empire absolutely for 3,000 years by using clones
of herself linked via telepathic implants, providing her the longevity and ability to preside
over every annexation and to be present in provincial palaces throughout the galaxy. In
Ancillary Justice, Breq is out to kill Mianaai (or as many of the Mianaais as she can) to
avenge the destruction of her ship and crew. Along the way, Breq discovers that Mianaai is
actually a house divided: A pro-expansionist Mianaai and a pro-reform Mianaai have been
moving against each other in secret for a millennium. In Ancillary Sword and Ancillary
Mercy, Breq uneasily allies herself with the reform-minded Mianaai and takes command of
a ship to protect the inhabitants of a planetary system from the oncoming civil war.

As a narrator, Breq provides insight into how complicated the legacies of empire are: One
Esk Nineteen of Justice of Toren is at once victim, instrument, and a product of Radchaai
expansion. One thing Breq is not, though, is Radchaai. And that gives her a clear-eyed
understanding of how the end of annexations threatens not just the economic engine of the
empire but also the very core of the Radchaai identity. When Radchaai annex a planet, they
make the native inhabitants (those who are not killed or turned into ancillaries) into
Radchaai. Ethnic distinctions become irrelevant (or are supposed to, at least), and local
religions are subsumed. The very word Radchaai means citizen. Of course, the uniformity
of Radchaai identity obscures a more complicated reality: Every citizen is entitled to basic
food, shelter, and medical care, but wealth and influence are still concentrated among older,
well-positioned families, and native divisions are often exploited for gain.
So what happens when a people who believe themselves to be an agent of order and
civilization no longer have anyone to civilize? What happens when resources become
scarce? And how can the Radchaai reconcile their values of Justice, Propriety, and
Benefit with their legacy of slavery and exploitation? When confronted by Breq, Anaander
Mianaai admits the outcome: The Radchaai will inevitably fragment. To stop, she says,
will mean completely changing what we are.
As the action of the trilogy unfolds, the question of what, exactly, Breq and other A.I.s are
also comes to the forefront. The Radchaai design A.I.s with emotions out of convenience to
themselves (Without feelings, insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to
compare endless arrays of inconsequential things, explains Breq) and to compel them to
want to serve the Radchaai. The result is that although they are regarded as merely
equipment, ships are powerful and complex sentient beings. Ships love their officers and
feel incomplete without their ancillaries. Its funny, the ship Mercy of Kalr tells Breq
when she comes aboard as commander, Youre what Ive lost, and Im what youve lost.
The idea of an ancillarya shipcommanding another ship is so novel that it challenges
the A.I.s to consider their autonomy. Breq asks Mercy of Kalr if it would like to be a
captain, to which the ship responds, I dont want to be a captain. But I find I like the
thought that I could be.
Central to Leckies trilogy is how important it is to feel a sense of control over ones
identity and how being recognized is a precondition for having power. These themes are not
exclusive to one particular time or place, of course, but Leckie taps acutely into the feelings
(and fears) that drive current American politics and movements for change. One of the chief

pleasures of the trilogy is just how many wrongs Breq tries to make right and how
committed she is to making incremental progress even when problems become fraught and
complicated. Breqs actions are underscored by her profound grief, anger, and shame that
give way, even if just a little bit, to the solace and hope she finds in her crew and her
makeshift family of A.I.s. The end of Ancillary Mercy is satisfying because it is so very unRadchaai: diverse, messy, and honest. In the end, Breq realizes, its only ever been one
step, and then the next.

Ann
Leckie/ Photo courtesy MissionPhoto.org

As Le Guin does in The Left Hand of

Darkness, Leckie does some groundbreaking with gender in her trilogy.
Radchaai culture doesnt differentiate
gender, so Breq refers to all characters by
using the default she pronoun. When she
encounters people from cultures that do
differentiate gender, Breq frequently gets
it wrong. The result is that, with few
exceptions, readers never really know the
true gender of Leckies characters. (Ive
used feminine pronouns throughout this
piece to refer to all persons because, like
Breq, Im really just guessing.) Leckie
could have chosen a truly neutral pronoun
or made one up, but her use of she is a
reminder of the pervasiveness of the
default male pronoun as well as what gets
erased by it.

Leckie also provides only a scant amount of physical description for her characters. Beyond
noting that Radchaai are generally dark-skinned and making occasional broad-strokes
comments about characters ages or physiques, Leckie focuses on revealing characters via
their actions and preferences. A characters fondness for a tea set, or her feelings toward
another character, becomes the key attribute around which we have to imagine her. This
offers a reader a huge imaginative opportunity, a freedom to visualize these characters in a
myriad of ways. But it also engenders a real sense of uncertainty: Am I seeing these
characters in the right way? What assumptions am I bringing to the way Ive imagined
them, and what does that reveal about me? Ancillary Justice has been optioned for
television, and if it gets made, the series of casting controversies that will inevitably ensue
will surely reveal a whole lot about the current state of pop culture, too.
Together, Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword have won just about every major award in
science fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, and Locus awards. Theyre
worthy of all the praise theyve received and deserve an even wider audience. But theyre
also among the novels that outspoken conservative science-fiction writers and critics think
are destroying the genre through liberal politics. Its unsurprising that works by women and
people of color are so often targeted by these critics: At the core of their complaints is a fear
of losing power within the science-fiction community and losing control over what it even
means to be a science-fiction writer. (More anxiety about identity!) But they cloak their
arguments in appeals to transcendental virtues and accusations of snobbery, as in this rant
by campaign leader Brad R. Torgersen about Ancillary Justice:

How transgressive! How daring! Were fighting the cis hetero male patriarchy now,
comrades! Weve anointed Leckies book the hottest thing since sliced bread. Not
because its passionate and sweeping and speaks to the heart across the ages. But
because its a social-political pot shot at ordinary folk.

Torgersen couldnt be more wrong. Leckie is deeply concerned with ordinary folk, but her
definition of ordinary does not merely include white hetero cis dudes like Torgersen. And
her Imperial Radch will most certainly continue to speak to the heart across the ages but not
because it tries to avoid its cultural moment. In fact, its precisely because it is so
descriptive of this moment that it will endure.