The Moon and the Other
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A Washington Post Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Selection of the Year
“Charming, sexy.” —The Washington Post
John Kessel, one of the most visionary writers in the field, has created a rich matriarchal utopia, set in the near future on the moon, a society that is flawed by love and sex, and on the brink of a destructive civil war.
In the middle of the twenty-second century, over three million people live in underground cities below the moon’s surface. One city-state, the Society of Cousins, is a matriarchy, where men are supported in any career choice, but no right to vote—and tensions are beginning to flare as outside political intrigues increase.
After participating in a rebellion that caused his mother’s death, Erno has been exiled from the Society of Cousins. Now, he is living in the Society’s rival colony, Persepolis, when he meets Amestris, the defiant daughter of the richest man on the moon.
Mira, a rebellious loner in the Society, creates graffiti videos that challenge the Society’s political domination. She is hopelessly in love with Carey, the exemplar of male privilege. An Olympic champion in low-gravity martial arts and known as the most popular bedmate in the Society, Carey’s more suited to being a boyfriend than a parent, even as he tries to gain custody of his teenage son.
When the Organization of Lunar States sends a team to investigate the condition of men in the Society, Erno sees an opportunity to get rich, Amestris senses an opportunity to escape from her family, Mira has a chance for social change, and Carey can finally become independent of the matriarchy that considers him a perpetual adolescent. But when Society secrets are revealed, the first moon war erupts, and everyone must decide what is truly worth fighting for.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kessel's latest is thoughtful, slow-churning social science fiction mashing together what might be seen at first as near-utopias to reveal the underbellies and clashes of dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement, where the haves enjoy almost unimaginable freedoms while the have-nots are ground down. Mira is a young scientist trying to find her place in the 22nd-century matriarchal Society of Cousins on the moon, a struggle that includes taking on another identity: the subversive video artist Looker. Her lover, Carey, begins a fight for his parental rights against laws and traditions that give him none when the child's mother is still alive. Erno, a biotechnologist exiled from the Cousins and now living in the Western-leaning Persian lunar society Persepolis, has a fateful encounter with Amestris, rebellious daughter of Persepolis's most powerful family. All of them, and their societies' political good intentions woven hand-in-hand with oppression, are about to be entangled in a Cousins upheaval heading towards possible disaster, alongside the search for a quantum machine whose bizarre effects could upturn everything. Kessel's complex ideas and worldbuilding will appeal to any fan of character- and culture-driven speculative fiction.)
