Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

[starlady]

Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy "syntax" in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to "hold together." This is why utopias permit fables and discourse: they run with the very grain of language and are part of the fundamental fabula; heterotopias. . .desiccate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences.
                 --Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

It's hard to believe that this book (originally published as simply Triton; I think the new title is much better) is 33 years old, that Samuel R. Delany got this book published by a major house in 1976. But he did, and though some small details have aged (televisions as standard furnishings in the Outer Satelittes, for instance), the story as a whole is maybe even more relevant, if no less controversial, than it probably was then, because the vision it presents is no less radical for its being, perhaps, incrementally closer to reality.

The book follows the travails of one Bron Helstrom, who thinks of himself as a "happily reasonable man," a recent immigrant to Triton, Neptune's larger moon--he's Martian, from Bellona, by birth, and by training he's a metalogician. The "trouble" of the title refers at once to Bron's troubles in relating to the people around him, on a moon in which marriage is illegal and "the subjective is politically inviolate," and the troubles of Triton itself, which is on the brink of being drawn into the war between the Outer Satelites and the Inner Worlds. That war, like all wars, is no longer fought with soldiers; instead, spys and agents provacateur inflict casualties on civilians. Complete and total sex changes, as well as reorientations of sexuality, not to mention just about every possible permutation of sexuality, are completely de rigeur in moonie society, but Bron, a relentlessly heterosexual man, mostly holds himself aloof from such things. Part of Bron's problem is that he doesn't know what he wants. The other part of Bron's problem is, to be blunt, that he's an asshole.

It took me a bit to realize that Bron being an asshole is merely scratching the surface of what makes him tick as a character, and once I realized that, it became a lot easier to interpret and to enjoy the novel. Another way of saying "Bron is an asshole" is saying that Bron is a classical humanist subject in a society of posthumanist subjects who quite reasonably feel no particular need to kowtow to the fact that he is straight, white, male, able-bodied, and rational when they aren't--and that Bron, quite understandably if quite irritatingly, simply can't deal with their refusal. Inasmuch as Bron's outlook is that of a typical straight white male from the late 20th century transported to the future, Trouble on Triton reminds me a lot of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, in which Eco sets a more or less 20th century detecting intelligence to play in a 12th century monastery. Delany's making Bron a tall blond metalogician seems to skirt dangerously close to self-parody; not only is the humanist subject necessarily rational, but this particular subject makes his living refining logic-puzzles--a humanist subject's humanist subject. Still, after a while, Bron's self-absorption becomes almost comical.

Almost, but not quite. One of the many people who seem drawn to Bron (though they ought to know better) tells him that he's a logical sadist looking for a female logical masochist--which is another way to say that Bron strings women along (or tries to), assumes because a woman isn't interested in him that she's a cold-hearted bitch who's never been in love, assumes that love is the same as possession, is obsessed with other people's deviant (because not like his) sexuality though he's not self-aware enough to even admit the obsession to himself, thinks men are necessarily somehow "alone" and that women are more emotional than men. I think most women can name at least one man they've met who has all these traits in spades. Satisfyingly, though, one woman, the Spike, does give Bron what-for in the book, though of course (like most people) her criticism goes completely over his head--since she sends it in a letter, I was reminded of that scene in Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth reads Darcy's letter; though Bron reacts to the Spike's letter by becoming a woman. That's about the point at which Bron's chauvinist self-aggrandizing self-absorption starts tipping over the line from amusement into outrageousness (and outrageously offensive), but part of what's so infuriating is that the bilge Bron spouts is alive and well in the contemporary world.

I'm glad I finally tracked this book down, because it forms an important bridge between Delany's magnum opus, Dhalgren (Bellona is actually the name of the city in that book), and his Return to Neverÿon sequence, which is actually the way I first discovered Delany and the second book of which, Neveryòna, remians my favorite of his works--a bit character in Trouble on Triton has the sane name and is the same age as the protagonist of Neveryòna (Prynn), and the moonies play a multi-dimensional fantasy game, vlet, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the landscape of Neverÿon itself. Indeed, Trouble on Triton forms Part One of "Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus"; Part Two is in the novel's supplemental materials, and the Neverÿon books contain parts three through five. It may be that these books appeal only to those people like me who find critical theory entertaining; at one level all of these books are Delany's attempt to wrestle with the implications of various parts of critical and literary theory through fiction. But I have to recommend them to people not afraid to have their preconceptions about society, gender and sexuality radically challenged.

Comments

[aquaeri]

I've (hangs head in shame) never read any Delany. Can I read this without having read Dhalgren, or do I need to track that down first? Or do you have other intro-to-Delany recommendations? Because this sounds right up my alley provided I don't virtually assasinate Bron first.

[starlady]

This can totally be read without reading Dhalgren--I didn't make it clear that the connections are thematic (and in motifs, too, such as people wearing mirrors), not plot-wise.

Intro to Delany, hmm...I think this book is as good a place to start as any, really. The thing is that his career divides into sff and not-sff, and his sff further divides into, basically, the 60s (culminating with Nova), and the 70s-80s. The later stuff is what's chock-full of critical theory in action; Trouble on Triton or maybe Tales of Neverÿon are good places to start on that front. For his earlier stuff, my favorites are Nova, Babel-17, and The Fall of the Towers.

I wanted to kill Bron too. But I think the narrative makes it fairly clear that Bron doesn't deserve too much sympathy, which makes it easier to read.

[aquaeri]

Excellent! Thank you, I think I'll try Triton first then.

[starlady]

Glad to help, and I'd be interested to hear your impressions. ^_^

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

I know I've read Triton because I remember the sex changes. But I was maybe about 20 at the time and didn't have the intellectual background to make sense of the book. I've put it towards the front of my mental "to re-read" list.

It may be that these books appeal only to those people like me who find critical theory entertaining

I'll admit that I often have trouble reading Delany. I do find critical theory entertaining, but I also find Delany's refusal to provide unfractured narratives frustrating. I get why he doesn't, and I can see the ideological basis of my own investment in narrative, and yet . . .

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

As much as I like Delany, I have trouble getting fully involved in the narrative voice in his later works--reading this one, I was absorbed but not involved--there's just that slight knowing hint of artifice. In that respect I think his earlier works are a lot easier to get into and just to simply enjoy. I think Nova and Babel-17 are the two books where he comes closest to balancing the intellectual and the entertaining, though both books are featherweights compared to the stuff he wrote in the 70s and 80s.

Who needs (or wants?) critical theory!

[ed_rex]

Here via your post on the Science-Fiction community.

I first read (what was then still only Triton for a science fiction class back when I was 14 or 15. Thought it a flawed experiment at the time, I think now, mostly because I didn't get a great deal of what he was doing; at the time I found Bron's stereotypically American, het-male characteristics implausible and so, frustrating.

However, even if I thought it a come-down from Dhalgren (which, 30 years later, remains of those novels I come back to again and again), I still enjoyed it quite a lot, as I did (and do) most of Delaney's novels — despite the fact that lit-crit egg-heads like Lacan and Foucoult don't interest me in the least. (Weirdly, perhaps, I've also enjoyed Eco.)

All of which is to say that at least for some of us, being interested in Delaney's influences is no prerequisite for being interested in Delaney's fiction itself.

Re: Who needs (or wants?) critical theory!

[starlady]

I like critical theory for a variety of reasons, but I think Delaney and Eco are both able to translate it really well into fiction, which theorists themselves aren't really able to do, perhaps by definition.

Of course, one of the reasons I like critical theory, I think, is because I read Neveryóna and the rest of the Neverÿon books at a very impressionable age, before I really understood what Delaney was doing. I still remember reading the back matter of Neveryóna and being blown away by his working definition of patriarchy.

But yeah, I definitely wouldn't have liked this book half as much if I didn't, with time and training, have the tools to spot and understand what he's doing in it.