Travel Documents 97: The Past Is Red
Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins
Genre: near-future, post-apocalyptic, social change, solarpunk, cultural change
The Dust Cover Copy
The future is blue - endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.
Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
The Scene
Worldbuilding
Whoo boy. That’s right, Valente Went There. The author has taken all the heartbreaking wisdom and whimsey that made the Fairyland Series a delight, all the fun and irreverence that made Space Opera rock, packed it up and set sail into the Waterworld concept to make it her own.
Remember Waterworld? That corny (as hell!) but conceptually fascinating 90s film that shows the world completely drowned? Valente has reworked the concept with fewer eyepatches and a lot more solemn beauty, along with a shivering sense of a story that hits a little too close to home.
The Crowd
Characterization
Tetley, a delightfully level-headed source of stubborn optimism, is also a delightfully unreliable narrator. Growing up in an emotionally distant home, she’s very familiar with the balm of a well-told stories. So when something hurts her, she tells the story of a scenario that goes the way it should have as a part of the narrative.
But Tetley’s not delusional. You don’t live long if you don’t know what’s what in Garbagetown. So she ends each of these scenarios with ‘it didn’t go like that, not really’. And yet, for all the times Tetley brings you down from the storybook ending into the stink of reality, there’s a stubborn zen-optimism here: hers is the viewpoint that says ‘yes, pretend is nice, but the real world is a good place. Even when it’s not a nice place. Don’t run away from it.’
Around her is a fascinatingly human and disturbingly raw cast of characters, showing the sheer weirdness of the human condition in all its most basic contradictions. We can hate someone who tells the truth, because the lie was so beautiful. We can hate someone and love them at the same time. And, most of all, we can survive almost anything. All we have to do is choose to see it as worthwhile.
The Lingo
Writing Style
In the future, people live on what few floating communities could be built as the land was drowned, and they look back on their hubristic ancestors with rage, pity and disdain. Unlike so many post-apocalyptical stories, Valente doesn’t try to get through to you with the SHEER HORROR of the situation. No, she reaches you through the sheer normalcy of her worldbuilding. Tetley sees living in a part of Garbagetown (which happens to be a giant floating trash heap) made from old candles to be a wonderful, fortunate circumstance: after all, her part of ‘town’ doesn’t have as many holes opening in the garbage to drop you into the endless sea, and there are plenty of cats attracted to the tallow for her to catch and eat. Over in The Lawn (where all the organic refuse has been organized and carefully layered) they're starting to grow rice and even some veggies. Isn't that lucky? Through her eyes, Garbagetown is a wonderful place to grow up, because she has so little idea of any other way to be. Sure, she lives with Fuckwit trash showing the old world around her—yep, the future folk call people of our time The Fuckwits. Did I mention that Valente was pulling no punches?—but dreaming of the Fuckwit world is like dreaming of Camelot for our kids.
And that is the truly fucking chilling part of this story. It seems perfectly possible. Perfectly normal. And when children in a school class sing the rhyming song about what The Fuckwits did and what they took away from the people of the future, you get a strong urge to be a much, much better person. I definitely thought ‘man, I don’t want to be a Fuckwit’.
The Moves
Plot
In a powerful story of doing what’s right even when the whole world thinks you’re wrong, The Past Is Red doesn’t wrap things up neatly for you. It’s a messy story. It’s a messy life. But it will lead you to a place where you can say ‘you know what? It is a mess. And it is beautiful. And I’m so lucky to be living it, doing my bit every day.’
Overall Rating
This book is the other side of the coin from Becky Chambers’ A Psalm For The Wild Built, another recent read of mine. I found the two books equally delightful. But where Psalm tells you that a better world is possible and we have the right to choose it, Past gives you a scrappy grin and says ‘okay, everything’s fucked. So, what are we going to do about it? Let’s find out.”