The Hungry Gods
(Terrible Worlds: Innovations)
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Solaris
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In the toxic ruins of civilization's collapse, there is little room for compassion or the weak... which is why Amri is so desperate to find fuel to bring back to the Rabbit tribe. Without close kin, she knows she is one bad harvest away from being sacrificed for the survival of the others. She pushes further than she knows she should, into the city ruins and into the territory of the bloodthirsty Seagulls - but instead of death at the hands of their champion Beaker, four great smoking fires roar out of the skies.
It is the end of the world as Amri knew it, and the beginning of one she and the other clans might not survive.
Those fireballs carry "Gods" from the long-lost golden age of humanity, returned from centuries in their distant space utopia. They intend to "fix" Earth... but each of the four have their own ideas how to go about doing that, mutually exclusive goals that only share a complete disregard for whatever life still clings to the worn-out planet. As Amri falls into the company of one of these new warring Gods, an artificially enhanced man known as Guy Vestin, she will need all her wits about her to navigate the changes ahead - but what chance does the littlest, weakest Rabbit stand when faced with the might of the world-changing Gods themselves?
REVIEW: The Hungry Gods takes the old-school trope of the technologically superior spaceman arriving on a primitive (and/or postapocalyptic) world and single-handedly saving it from itself by (re)starting civilization and becoming a veritable god among the worshipful, superstitious "savages" (a trope with clear roots in cringeworthy racism and colonialism), and knocks it firmly on its ear by the end. Told from the perspective of Amri, one of the first witnesses of the "Gods" descending - and one of the first survivors of their wrath, when one of the Gods lands right in the Rabbit village and wipes out her kin with the bioengineered plants and fungi that are meant to turn Earth into his vision of a new Eden - it clearly establishes the notion that, even if humans no longer can sustain civilization in the ruins left by their ancestors, they are not entirely stupid or mindless or hobbled by superstition. Amri knows full well that the ruins of the city were created by people, and also knows that the outcast "God" Guy is just a man, if a man with technology long lost to this reduced, exhausted Earth. Still, even if he is "just" a man, he is a force that is remaking her world, and she quickly realizes that the only way she is going to survive is by sticking by him and learning as much as she can about him and his one-time colleagues who are now his rivals. The other three "Gods" each have monstrous ideas about how to best re-imagine the ruins of Earth, and Guy - whose own vision and tech was sabotaged on the way - sets himself up in opposition to them... but what is his ultimate goal, and is it any less devastating to the people remaining on Earth? Do he and the others even see Amri and her kind as human, or just more obstacles or tools or biomass to be fed into their machinations? Like today's billionaires, Guy insists he is the only one who can lead the people out of "savagery" into a bright new age, but Amri can see how little he truly thinks of humans other than himself. There are a few times where the story hits its themes a little hard on the head, but overall it moves well and makes its points clearly, with a truly satisfying conclusion. One thing that becomes abundantly clear throughout is that the greatest threat to the world's future is the people who insist that they, and they alone, can lead us there.
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