Photo: nkjemisin.com
Just short of two years ago, science fiction and fantasy author N.K. Jemisin announced that her novel The Fifth Season was being developed as a television series by TNT. We still haven’t heard an exact date on when to expect it, but two years on, it’s time to start getting excited.
The Broken Earth Trilogy, of which The Fifth Season is the first novel, is arguably the most decorated science fiction or fantasy trilogy of all-time. Jemisin became the first African-American author to ever win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and she went on to do it with every book in the trilogy. All three novels were also nominated for the equally prestigious Nebula Award, with the final book, The Stone Sky, winning the prize. Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been white man clubs, and to have an author of color achieve so much makes the awards extra sweet.
Over the last year or so, I’ve made a point of seeking out more science fiction and fantasy by authors of color. I’ve always been a huge sci-fi nerd, but I realized that about 95% of my “read” shelf was by white men. The sole exceptions were Ursula K. Le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, Haruki Murakami, and Octavia E. Butler among genre fiction writers. This needed to change, so I did a little research and found a bunch of stuff that was getting buzz in the sci-fi and fantasy community that WASN’T written by another white man. The Fifth Season is the best novel I’ve read since then.
Some readers may be put off by the post-apocalyptic setting. I get it; we’re exhausted by the genre. If you’re not like me and live for post-apocalyptia, it’s easy to see why people would be burnt out by end of the world drama. Everywhere you look is another nuclear war novel or zombie television show, and a lot of readers are finally at the point where they want to move on. The Fifth Season isn’t your typical post-apocalyptic faire.
For one thing, The Fifth Season is post-apocalyptic fantasy, not really science-fiction. If you want to be pedantic about it, all post-apocalyptic fiction fits under the sci-fi umbrella, but it reads more like a dark fantasy than sci-fi. More importantly than that, there’s a sense of righteous outrage to the main characters that I really appreciate. They live in a horrible, shitty world, and they’re not afraid to show how mad they are about it.
The novels are set on a planet with a single gigantic continent called the Stillness. It is a world ravaged by environmental disaster, a horrible ecological meltdown that happens every few centuries called a “fifth season.” It is only because of the power of a group of people called Orogones that humanity is able to stave off the devastation of their environment, but those who aren’t gifted with the powers of orogeny see Orogones as dangerous and less than human.
They even have their own slur for Orogenes, “rogga.” Life as an Orogene is dangerous because many are killed simply for being Orogene, despite their necessity to human survival. The culture is so horrible towards Orogenes that even some Orogenes see themselves as less than human, a tragedy in and of itself that shows how far gone society is when it comes to the racial divide between Stills (non- Orogenes) and Orogenes.
The first novel follows three characters, each of which exists at a different time. Damaya is a young girl who travels with her mentor Schaffa to the Fulcrum, a place where young Orogenes are trained to hone their abilities for the greater good. Schaffa is a Guardian, whose sole purpose is to protect Orogenes while also protecting people from them; they can be brutal and horrible, but the Guardians seem to be the only reason society tolerates the Orogenes at all.
Syenite is an Orogene who is up and coming as a member of the Fulcrum. She has great potential power, and the Fulcrum orders her to partner with and conceive a child with Alabaster, the most powerful Orogene alive. She is resentful of the situation and has every right to be, and it only becomes worse as she travels with Alabaster and learns more and more about the ugliness that is the reality of life for Orogenes. Alabaster’s position in the totem pole of Orogenic power gives him access to knowledge that others wouldn’t have.
The third storyline follows Essun, a middle-aged woman with two children who is forced to hide the fact that she is an Orogene for her own safety. To add to her struggle, both her children have shown Orogenic powers, and she uses her own to quell and signs of their abilities to keep them from being discovered. This is one of the more interesting balancing acts of the power— a stronger Orogene can use their powers to cancel out those of a weaker one, though it does take some effort. This becomes a more important point as the trilogy goes on, but I won’t spoil that for you.
If you’re going to watch the Broken Earth/The Fifth Season television series without reading the books first, here’s what you can expect: a hard look at race and our impact on our environment in a post-apocalyptic world with amazing characters that will always surprise you. The plot itself is engaging and unpredictable, and there’s a twist so impactful that while listening to the audiobook I had to pull over and process what I’d just heard.
My favorite part of The Fifth Season is the way it balances old and new sci-fi ideas. It’s great allegory for an idea in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin or Philip K. Dick, but with modern sensibilities and cultural awareness that makes it firmly a series for a modern reader. It balances the traditions with innovation in a way that is so, so satisfying for a reader who lives and breathes sci-fi.
Good sci-fi and fantasy is everywhere, but truly great works of fantasy that stay with you are few and far between. The Broken Earth Trilogy is excellent, and I for one can’t wait to see it on the silver screen.
