James Nicoll Reviews

Hoa Pham’s 2022 Empathy is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

Vuong is one of five clone sisters. She has not seen her siblings in years, ever since it was decided that it would best if the clones were fostered separately. Vuong’s years of dutiful obedience to Việt Nam’s Department¹ are rewarded with the news that Vuong will be reunited with her sisters.

The first sister with whom Vuong is reunited is Lien. Access to Lien is controlled, as it is with all persons who have committed murder. Lien’s explanation is that her foster father killed and ate pigs. Lien felt more kinship with the pigs than with her foster father. Therefore, she murdered him.

The Department wouldn’t mind knowing whether or not the clones share Lien’s homicidal tendencies. However, that’s not the parameter in which they are most interested. Not that they share their goals with Vuong, who is after all part of the experiment.

Berlin offers sister My an altogether more enjoyable life than Vuong’s. My is no worker bee. Berlin offers a banquet of bars and partying and dancing. My will no doubt have to grow up and get serious… but not just now. Not when hunks like Truong are available. Not when Truong can provide My with an exciting new drug, empathy.

Who supplies empathy? More importantly, why do they supply empathy? Most importantly, what has the new drug to do with five clone sisters scattered around the world?

~oOo~

Vuong’s reward for working hard is the opportunity to work harder. My seems to have got a far better deal, in that her life features ample leisure time, with an option for debauchery.

It’s not clear to me when Empathy is set, but if it is in the future, it’s not more than a few years into the future. The grander scale issues facing the world are ones familiar to us.

Việt Nam has a rather cunning way of keeping their human cloning secret. They don’t. It’s just that people outside Việt Nam find it hard to believe that a minor nation like Việt Nam has somehow managed to clone people, and find it easy to dismiss the claims as wild urban legends.

There are parallels with Christie’s A Passenger to Frankfurt, in that the world is beset by a rising tide of racism and fascism², and that there is a new drug, benvo, that might mitigate this, if widely distributed. For that matter, empathy (the drug) reminded me of VC (the drug) in Brunner’s novel The Stone That Never Came Down. All these books explore the impacts that such drugs could have on the world, the Brunner and the Pham more effectively than the Christie.

Hoa Pham’s novel is ambivalent about whether or not widely distributing empathy would be a good thing. The other two novels I mentioned, the Christie and the Brunner, lean towards approving the drugs. Characters in the Pham believe what some would see as a beneficial boost in public spirit and good fellowship is actually a way to pacify the masses. The litmus test here might be whether the people dosing the masses also take empathy… or would they treat it as just a means of keeping the peons in line³?

This is the second Pham I’ve read. I found Empathy more engaging than Hoa Pham’s 2014 The Other Shore. This might come down to a factor as simple as Empathy being SF, while The Other Shore is fantasy. In any case, Empathy is worth a read.

Empathy is available here (Goldsmith’s Press), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find Empathy at Bookshop UK. Odd, given that the publisher is British.

1: The book doesn’t tell us that this is a Department of; it’s just the Department.

2: USA delenda est.

3: If I were such a leader, I’d worry about the emergent properties of a population whose ability to identify with each other was suddenly vastly enhanced. I leave referencing the obvious Greg Egan stories an exercise for the reader.