Digital Sextant

Shikasta

Personal psychological historical documents relating to visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (Grade 9) 87th of the Last Period of the Last Day, by Doris Lessing

Sigh. I picked this book for my book club and it’s a bear. I didn’t really like it much until the last 100 pages or so, and even then I only kinda liked it. The book moves glacially, without much in the way of character to capture your imagination. In all honesty, I only remember the last portion very well, since it’s in that last part that the story solidifies with a narrower set of characters.

Shikasta tells the story of a world (which we come to discover is Earth) that’s being monitored by aliens from elsewhere, some of whom are good and some of whom are bad. These aliens compete to control the destiny of the people on the planet by influencing our behavior through visits both direct and unseen. The end of the book focuses on a single visit by “Johor” in which that particular administrator visits Earth to try and influence the symbolic trial of the white race held by the youth of the world. The trial, which takes place an unspecified amount of time in the future from present day, suggests that the imperiled and dying white race is responsible for the rapacious and cruel modes humankind has adopted. No clear resolution is given, though perhaps it appears in one of the remaining books of the series (which I won’t be reading). Some additional thoughts:

• The trial aspect reminds me of James Morrow’s work, particularly This is the Way the World Ends and Blameless in Abaddon, both of which focus on symbolic trials (of humankind for the death of future humanity and of God for all things bad, respectively). I think Morrow’s work is much more accessible. And good.
• Lessing writes the book in the bureaucratic tone, creating the idea of a giant bureaucracy overseeing Shikasta. The book is a compilation of primary documents from that supervision, as well as reports written by the supervisors. There’s a reason people don’t like reading reports, generally. It’s because they’re usually boring as snot.
• The book has an interesting allegorical connection to the idea of heaven and hell. Jenny has just read This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti, an evangelical story that describes Angels and Demons at war in our midst. This book has a similar feel, except that the war appears in dribs and drabs, undescribed and mentioned bureaucratically.
• The idea of “Zones” seems to suggest alternate universes to which people go when they die, and a big part of the supervisory project is returning those people to Shikasta again by means of reincarnation, I think. There are also some sort of spiritual vampires that live in these alternate zones.

Ultimately, I feel like the plot description on Wikipedia makes the book sound far more interesting than it actually is.

P.S. — my thoughts on this book expanded a bit after the book club.  Check out the summary of that meeting at our blog.