“Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows.”
Early in his career, Orson Scott Card wrote a little sci-fi adventure novel titled A Planet Called Treason. When a second edition was due to be released, the author wanted to rewrite the novel entirely, but instead merely beefed up the introduction and re-edited the book to remove some annoying stylistic tendencies that he felt were present in his early writing. For the new edition of the book the title was shortened to Treason, denoting a theme that runs throughout the novel. Though the book is a thrilling sci-fi story full of unique twists on familiar ideas, its main thrust is not merely to entertain but to prompt a self-examination of the reader. It’s a quest to discover the foundations of morality in the face of an evermore materialistic society. For the most part, Card’s unique combination of sci-fi ideas, body horror, and moral questioning is an engaging read; but there are several logical gaps in the narrative as well as a tiresome “self-enlightenment-messiah-complex” ending that kind of dampened my attitude toward it by its conclusion, though its questioning of our relationship to technology and our proclivity toward chauvinism were a welcome surprise.
There are several simple elements of the story that must be gotten over in order to enjoy the book. For the framework of Lanik Mueller’s story, we must believe that a group of intellectually elite professionals were exiled to a prison planet for attempting to assert themselves as rulers over the earth’s republic. We must believe that these people, all experts in different fields, pushed their knowledge past any previous plateaus in their respective domains, and that the warring factions of Treason are each named after and descended from one of these elites. This allows for natural magic to occur, e.g. growing extra limbs, tinkering with carbon chains, manipulating the earth with thought, etc. but each tribe is limited to one ability.
Additionally, since Treason is a metal-poor planet, the government that cast them out provided each province with an Ambassador—a teleportation machine that allows them to sell their creations to the government in exchange for iron, which each clan intends to use to build a spaceship and rejoin the outside world. Since our story concerns the descendants of these people some 3000 years later, it is hard not to question whether or not the desire and know-how to build a spaceship from iron wouldn’t have abated by that time, and why the tribes know so little about one another despite being at war all the time.
But once you accept Card’s contrived world for what it is, the minutiae of it are actually quite fascinating. Similarly intriguing is his exploration of how easy it is to be tricked into doing the bidding of others all the while thinking we are following our own desires or pursuing what is fundamentally good and right. The story is told from the perspective of Lanik Mueller, the descendant of a eugenicist, and begins when he discovers he is a radical regenerative. This means that, though he grew extra limbs, ears, noses, etc. during puberty like the rest of the royal family of Mueller, he will continue to do so as an adult, and so cannot inherit his father’s throne. Instead of sending him to the pens where radical regeneratives have their extra limbs farmed and fed to the Ambassador (considered an inhumane and disrespectful punishment for the son of a king) Lanik’s father “banishes” him from Mueller, sending him as a spy to the Nkumai—a savage people who live in trees—in order to find out what they give to their Ambassador in exchange for iron.
Throughout his travels, Lanik uncovers the secrets of Treason’s most powerful nations, often learning the skills for himself and in the process becoming a kind of superman. By the conclusion of the novel Lanik can regenerate body parts, slow down time, absorb energy from the sun, heal wounds, and speak to the earth. Because of this, and the fact that the story is told from Lanik’s point of view, much of the tension is sapped from the narrative before you even read it. For instance, one of the chapters ends with the line, “I hadn’t even taken elementary precautions, didn’t even have the sense to arrive in quicktime, which is why they caught me in Gill and killed me.” Had the book been written in third person, that could have been a heck of a hook; but since you know he survived (and we’ve already gone through several rounds of him basically being killed and then regenerating), you know that he will survive. There are only maybe two or three other characters that you might care about, otherwise the real draw here is the world that Card has created.
There were several scenes that had very intense imagery that I really felt hit a certain preternatural perspective that is often tried for but seldom works. (I was routinely reading this book just before bed, until I could barely keep my eyes open, so that might also have played a role in this). One of them takes place after Lanik is gutted by an adversary and flees deliriously into the woods, losing blood and consciousness quickly.
And I dreamed that as I traveled I was not alone. I dreamed that someone traveled with me, someone to whom I spoke softly and explained all the wisdom of my fevered brain. I dreamed I held a child in my arms. […] I dreamed, and then tried one day to set the child down so I could drink.
But the child would not leave my arms. And gradually, as I struggled to push the child away, I realized that birds were singing, the sun was shining, sweat was dripping from my chin, and I was not asleep.
The boy was whimpering.
The boy was real.
Of course, it then goes onto explain exactly how Lanik’s disembowelment led to his still-connected intestine regenerating an entire body around it, and so created a duplicate Lanik Mueller. I wish it would have left the dream unexplained and let the reader toy with its contents until the extra Lanik makes his second appearance. Oh well.
The book is successful in criticizing the entire world’s unshakable desire to build a spaceship in order to return to the former republic. Setting aside the unfeasibility of the endeavor, it works very well as a stand-in for goals thrust upon us by manipulative people, the government, and society. Likewise its examination of the desire to belong, socially and aesthetically, tied up in Lanik’s banishment from Mueller due to his extra body parts, is solid and unobtrusive.
Where the book doesn’t fare so well is in its pacing and its self-enlightenment mumbo-jumbo conclusion. The book begins with a compelling horror story of a man realizing one day that he is growing a woman’s body parts. As he is cast out into the world to fend for himself, he gradually begins to become used to the idea, taking offense at men who look at his bosom and feeling shame at the removal of his clothing. It’s awkward writing at times, but at least interesting. But the novel has several big tonal pivots that leave the previous sections in the rearview mirror. By the end of the book, the main concern is that a race of perception-manipulating “illuders” are going to take over the world by changing people’s memories. That’s really cool, and several of the latter portions are a true joy to read, but it kind of tramps all over what had been set up in the beginning of the novel.
I thought that the magical abilities of the different families were neat, but their integration was very leaky and led to an underwhelming ending where Lanik gets to become savior of the world. Ostensibly these families have been at war with one another for three thousand years, and their ancestors knew one another; but, none of them know what the others sell to the Ambassador in exchange for iron? That seems silly. Lanik’s evolution into a messiah is all fine and dandy, but his moralizing in the book’s final third (paraphrasing, “I must cleanse the world of the illuders, but can I endure the screaming of the earth at the death of so many?”) seems a bit too heavy handed. At least he has the sense to question himself in the closing pages.
Whether Treason is a better place to live now I’m not the one to judge.
Whether we are progressing as well as did before the Ambassadors were destroyed I don’t know. It’s not up to me to evaluate how well we’ve done with the opportunity I made.
[…] And for all the planning and plotting that I did before I acted, I know that I was shaped more by circumstance than by my own will. I wonder sometimes if I’m not, after all, a piece in some other player’s game, following blindly his grand designs, without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men.
I think the biggest mistake that Card made when writing the book is that the story is told in first person past tense (the main character is telling you of his past); this naturally leads to the reader guessing plot elements that were presented as revelations, as well as a relatively limited perspective from which to understand the world of Treason, which is the main appeal of the book. Lanik as a character is in constant flux, not developing but changing back and forth as the narrative requires. Had the author been allowed a rewrite rather than a revision, I think many of the dangling plot threads and deficiencies of Treason would have been buffed out and the book would have been much better.
Thankfully Card, at least at this early stage, had a nice brisk pace to his writing that allows you to speed right through Treason. There is moralizing, sure, but the book never really gets bogged down by it, and plays out just fine as a fantasy adventure. If you are intrigued by the premise, you’ll surely be engaged by the blood and guts, time manipulation, tree-dwelling tribes, and face dancers. The planet of Treason is a wonderful stage upon which we can examine humanity’s tendencies, from patriotism and desire for social acceptance to our relationship to technology. It could have used a bit more fine tuning, but what we got is plenty satisfying.
Sources:
Card, Orson Scott. “Treason and A Planet Called Treason”. Hatrack River Forum. 12 April 2005.