A truly strange book, The Seep by Chana Porter is extremely short (for long-form) science fiction. In fact, it’s really a novella and has small pages, large margins, and space between the lines. And really, I suppose, the book itself isn’t that strange, but the feeling while reading it is of being among strangeness. It is full of intriguing ideas and world-building, and puts the reader in a dystopian, not-too-far-off future that will lead them into thinking about things now. And it is also the fairly depressing tale of an alcoholic mourning the loss of their wife. I’m having a hard time determining whether I “liked” it or not, but I think many people would like to read it. And with such a small time-investment, why not?

It is the near-future and the alien invasion we were all waiting for has come, but there is nothing about it that we had expected. The Seep came silently and peacefully and invaded our minds, bodies, and culture in a curious, helpful, and yet creepily passive-aggressive way, bettering the society of the world so that people eat, drink, and are merry all the time, freeing themselves to dream the impossible and live forever. Trina remembers the old days, before The Seep, and can’t help being old-fashioned. When her wife, Deeba, dreams of reincarnating as a baby, Trina is left alone, resentful, confused and depressed, which The Seep (and her neighbors) don’t approve of.

I read this book because it was the second book in the speculative fiction book club that I joined (at least temporarily). The last book was fantasy, so maybe they jump back and forth? Sci fi is less of my jam than fantasy, but I have read a fair amount of it (my favorites being anything Ray Bradbury, The Giver, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and, if you count it as such, The Hunger Games trilogy, though there are others that I also liked). This book is more along the vein of what I have been seeing in science fiction short stories lately, like the stories that I will blog about soon, “Rabbit Test” (Samantha Mills) and “To Carry You Inside You” (Tia Tashiro). I can’t say I love this style, as it always sorta creeps me out and leaves me, um, empty-feeling, but it is also intriguing and often thought-provoking.

The Seep is hard-core sci-fi, but it is also a mash-up of a fable and an odyssey (or quest). It makes me think as much about Gibran Khalil’s The Prophet or Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince with its trippy allegory and journey-of-discovery-which-is-also-an-actual-geographical-journey, than any science fiction I have read (or seen), including alien invasion or creepy-crawly, hedonistic utopias. Though all of that is there. As for a fable, it is the right length. As for a quest (or odyssey), it is quite short, which left the plot and characters as vehicles more than participants in a dramatic story. Both of these things tend toward the random, but Porter leans heavily on Trina’s humanity, writing from inside her head, and we do dive pretty deep for such a short read. And yet, it felt cold and calculated, in the long run. I was far from emotionally invested, even though alcoholism and loss are things that have touched my own life. I was paying much more attention to how The Seep worked and how people had reacted to it than to Trina herself. We never really get to what this book might be considering.

Speaking of Trina, she is supposedly a trans woman, Native American, and 50. Um. I wasn’t even sure about any of these things except that they were in the write-ups and on the book jacket. Not only do the first two of these things not really play out, they are not important to the story. We have other characters and situations that are more contemplative about gender, and ethnicity seems not to matter at all. I am at a loss for why these two things were included, except as a chance for representation? If that’s the case, I would have liked to even notice either of these things, let alone feel like they belonged and contributed to the character and her story. (There is one instance in which the transgender-ness helps with the plot and understanding a relationship, but it was a little confusing, just a few hints, and could have been missed altogether.) There is something in this book about identity, but I can’t quite put my finger on it amidst all the lists, too-direct writing, and lack of (plot and character) development.

This is one of those modern stories that leaves you to picture these people however you want to… until all of a sudden it says “long hair” near the end and you’re like, nu-uh, she’s been in a pixie cut the whole time, thanks to my imagination and your lack of description. (Porter does give us some description of some of the characters, just not Trina so much.) I know lots of readers take issue with the stop-the-action and give a straight-forward description thing. But I don’t think filling us in on some pertinent details so that we can picture a person or place is a bad thing (and, more importantly, don’t get contradicted much later). I think it’s a great thing, actually, and can be done creatively. Occasionally, you come across a story where what the characters look like or where they are don’t matter so much, but I still think readers should be given enough information to place themselves in a scene and look at the characters you are having them meet. Plain and simple. And when you throw in a physical detail late in the book, well I’m just annoyed. It’s not just you, Porter. Not at all. (I was forced, during my recent reading of Biography of X to eventually assign the characters actors—Sigourney Weaver and Rosie Perez, actually—just so I could keep seeing the events in my head; their amorphousness led them to shift constantly in my reading, which was—and is—as distracting as a lame paragraph of description.)

There is also something about Porter’s writing that feels a little new, a little student, to me. I think her ideas are great, but something about her voice made me feel like she was not an authority, that she was not the one to tell me this story. The writing is sparse, yes, but in a way that seems accidental. You have all these short sentences and simple phrases, and then you have a paragraph giving us the components of all three meals served to Trina and some strangers at a café. (I love food, so I was happy with this, but not with the writing tone.) I guess what I’m saying is that this book read to me like Porter is still finding her voice; her concepts were much stronger than her execution. Again, wouldn’t be the first time.

That’s it for me. The Seep is one of those books I totally might recommend to someone (like my husband, which I did), especially since it is so short. But I also can’t honestly say I liked it as a work of literature. And the cover weirds me out; it’s just not balanced right. It was a pretty good experience, but not exactly because of the writing. It was like a rough draft that needed a whole lot more fleshing out and consideration of themes, etc. Then again, it was easy to read. So read away and I’ll just sit here wishing Goodreads had a half-star option.

After all that I just said, The Seep is Chana Porter’s first novel. So, she was sorta just starting out (in 2020) with that one, except that it won some awards (or almost-awards) and she is a MacDowell fellow who has taught at several places. She also started a STEM/spec-fic writing summer program for girls and non-binary kids. And she is a playwright. And now that I say that, I wonder if I wouldn’t see the writing style differently if I knew that she writes more plays than novels.

“…The Future, that shimmering, mercurial beast, constantly breaking our hearts” (p2).

“I don’t know if this is the end of life as we know it, or the beginning of a grand adventure, or perhaps both. All I have is my uncertainty. And really, that’s all I’ve ever had” (p9).

“After years of struggle in the old scarcity paradigm, Trina finally had freedom to think about what she wanted to do with her copious time” (p13).

“Talking was easy. Communication was hard” (p108).

“If she shot Horizon Line, the person she’d really be killing was herself, her old self. She’d no longer be Trina, the person who would never fire a gun at someone” (p108).

“You people, you think happiness is the only important thing about being alive. I’m serious when I say I’m not interested in happiness. This old body hurts. That’s as worthy an experience as any” (p109).