James Nicoll Reviews

Eric James Stone’s 2010 That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made is a Nebula-Award-winning novelette.

For most of humanity, Sol Central Station figures as the waystation to the stars. For Harry Malan, it is where he presides over a small Mormon ward. Malan’s congregation may be small, but it is noteworthy because most of the members are aliens, plasma beings that humans call swales.

To Malan’s distress, not only is station-mate Dr. Juanita Merced a Gentile (so she can be no solution to Malan’s celibate solitude), she is a godless Gentile who opposes Malan’s good works.

A very few swales have joined the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Malan considers his mission a worthy project. Merced, who studies swales, considers Malan’s mission egregious cultural contamination. Luckily for Malan, Merced’s debate skills are as subpar as her breasts are magnificent. Therefore, they agree to disagree.

Swale Neuter Kimball approaches Malan with a theological question. As is swale custom, a larger swale forced Neuter Kimball to have sex, which Neutral Kimball enjoyed, although they did not consent. Has Neuter Kimball sinned?

Discussion follows, during which Malan learns three facts previously unknown to him. First, swales have no concept of rape. Clearly, Malan should use all of his rhetorical powers to convince the swales to agree to conform to human standards in this matter.

Second: the concept of gods is not novel to the swales. Neuter Kimball did not convert because it lacked a god. It converted because it considered the god it had unworthy of worship.

Third: the swale god isn’t an abstract concept. It is the oldest, largest swale, Leviathan. Leviathan is a jealous god and prudent swales have no god before Leviathan. Furthermore, Leviathan would like a word with Malan and Neuter Kimball, a word to be delivered deep in the heart of the sun.

Even with the assistance of the staggeringly attractive Merced, Malan may be hard-pressed to survive.

~oOo~

Some have called this the Mormon Space Whale Rape story, but I feel that is unfair, as it undersells the Relentlessly Horny Space Morman Missionary angle. Those are different plot elements.

I was going to review Stone’s collection Rejiggering the Thingamajig and Other Stories, but the thought of rereading all 288 pages of steadfastly mediocre stories prompted me to question the life choices that led me to seek out and review the worst SFF works. Instead, I focused on the collection’s most noteworthy story, as it appeared in Stone’s Createspace-published chapbook. The chapbook had interesting-looking ancillary material.

To my annoyance, the ebook offered by Kobo has the same cover as the chapbook. It does not have Stone’s acceptance speech or his essay about writing this story. A bit of digging turned up the acceptance speech. No luck on the essay.

As for the story itself… it’s not great. One could say it’s dreadful. There are many intriguing details a better author would have expanded upon. Take for example this assertion by Malan:

Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 

Given that swales are intelligent superheated plasma, which is quite inimical to water, is there a point to converting swales to the Church of the Latter Day Saints? The only benefit conversion seems to offer is that now swales get to worry about sin, as well as being bullied by larger swales. Malan isn’t an introspective man, though he does seem to possess superior debate skills, honed as they were in the fiery forge of high-school and college debate teams¹. He is not going to be able to answer this pressing question. Perhaps some of my Mormon readers (if I have any) may want to speculate in comments.

Another note re the religious aspects of this story: It seems to me that swale theology and the fact their god is someone with whom one can converse if one is feeling lucky, bold, or suicidal, should have provoked more reaction from Malan than it did.

To sum up, the story is very nearly the Platonic ideal of a particular sort of entirely forgettable Analog story: the premise is a bit stupid, the execution spared from tedium only by brevity, and Randall Garrett himself might have been a bit embarrassed had he delivered the Metropolis-style male-gaze-o-vision inflicted on Merced². (Which Metropolis? Check out the linked video in the footnote.) Although perhaps Garret wouldn’t have been embarrassed; he was an inveterate male gazer.

What made the tale stand out wasn’t its quality (or lack thereof). It was that Leviathan somehow won a Nebula³. How was that possible?

The benefit of having selected a novelette for review is that I could spend an entire evening researching that question. I do in fact have the answer. Leviathan won because the Nebulas use first past the post, and Leviathan got the most votes.

As for why it got the most votes, who knows? Perhaps the result reflected authors voting for their pals. Perhaps the majority strongly preferred other stories but vote splitting gave Leviathan the victory. Perhaps the SFWA voters sincerely enjoy displays of stupendously banal piety⁴. Perhaps it simply reflects American culture having run its course, with only decline ahead of it⁵. Indeed, nothing says only one factor led to victory. SFWA doesn’t release voting data, and as far as I could tell, nobody interviewed SFWAns to see why they selected Leviathan in particular. We may never know.

Another way to say this: no explanation, no matter how paranoid, ill-conceived, or ill-supported, could be disproven with the evidence on hand. Theorize away!

In Stone’s defense, some of the story’s glaringly dubious choices are rooted in the fact that the tale began as a classroom exercise. Specifically, the story had to be about ​“a main character based on (Stone), set in the middle of the sun, in which the problem was ​‘can’t get a date.’” Knowing that makes me more charitable about the story, although not so much that I’d recommend Leviathan out of anything but spite and whatever the German word for ​“I read it so why should you escape?”

Leviathan reminds me of They’d Rather Be Right, the very first work I reviewed in my series What’s the Worst That Could Happen. That book was also an astoundingly mediocre work subjected to more intense, far more hostile scrutiny that it would normally have garnered because it too won a major award, also for reasons that are unclear. There’s a lesson there, although I am unsure if it is ​“write better” or ​“beware accolades.”

Who knows? Perhaps I was unduly harsh. Maybe the Nebula voters saw qualities I overlooked. The only way to know for sure is to read the story yourself.

That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made is available here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Kobo), and here (Words Worth Books). Leviathan is available as a podcast at Starship Sofa.

I did not find Leviathan at Bookshop UK or at Chapters.

1: Judging by the skills Malan demonstrates, the other high schools and colleges fielded debate teams composed of limp celery.

2: Enjoy!

3: The nominees were:

That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone

Map of Seventeen by Christopher Barzak

Pishaach by Shweta Narayan

Plus or Minus by James Patrick Kelly

Stone Wall Truth by Caroline M. Yoachim

The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard Van Oost and Oludara by Christopher Kastensmidt

The Jaguar House, in Shadow by Aliette de Bodard

Most of which I have not read.

4: Hugo voters certainly do.

5: USA delenda est.