Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia in Beyond Reality

Jun 22, 2021 Tomislav rated it it was amazing

Shelves: utopian-dystopian-great-course, 5-stars, science-fiction

I have noticed, in my systematic read of classic and modern utopian novels over the past year, a tendency for these utopias to incorporate sexual freedom. Limits and channeling of sex are, of course, both a fundamental purpose of society and a powerful tool of social control. The breaking of sexual rules is often portrayed as both a metaphorical and literal challenge to authority. On my more pessimistic days, I notice that it also helps popularize the ideas and sell the books. However, Delany’s I have noticed, in my systematic read of classic and modern utopian novels over the past year, a tendency for these utopias to incorporate sexual freedom. Limits and channeling of sex are, of course, both a fundamental purpose of society and a powerful tool of social control. The breaking of sexual rules is often portrayed as both a metaphorical and literal challenge to authority. On my more pessimistic days, I notice that it also helps popularize the ideas and sell the books. However, Delany’s Trouble on Triton went beyond the popular images of sexual liberation of the 1970s into areas that probably did not help it commercially. I think that Delany’s use of gender identity and sexual orientation was breakthrough for its time. He envisioned a future society in the Solar System’s outer moons which allows individuals to inhabit co-ops and communes chartered in alignment with their particular identities and needs, where homosexuality and heterosexuality are equally accepted, and where sex change is a common step. Reading it now, almost 50 years later, I noticed that modern thinking of gender identity as a multi-dimensional spectrum has superseded the male/female binary alternatives of this novel.

The story is told by a young immigrant male from Mars named Bron Helstrom, a meta-logician at a social engineering institution known as the Hegemony, on Triton, the largest moon of Neptune. He meets and becomes obsessed with a well-known but elusive female conceptual artist named The Spike. While Helstrom pursues her, on Triton and through a war with Earth, Delany exposes more of his dubious utopia and free society. I found the performance of wealth and gender roles during Helstrom’s date with The Spike in Mongolia to be hilarious.

Helstrom considers himself an expert at meta-logic, defined in this writing as a way of thinking logically about things that goes beyond pure logical constructions and extends to real-world situations. However, in reality, his meta-logical thinking is just a way to justify what he wants to think in the first place. When rejected by the Spike for his self-absorption and low emotional intelligence, he concludes that those are male characteristics of his, and his solution is a physical and cognitive sex change. Afterward, and this is the brilliance of Delany’s characterization, Helstrom is still a self-absorbed and low emotional intelligence person – just now a female one, who ventures forth into her changed role at work, in dating, etc. Her transition pushes her to the internal experience of endemic sexism, which still exists in this utopia. Yet her failure to become a better person is also a statement in contrast to the literary portrayal of female moral superiority such as in the works of Russ and Tiptree.

I can’t figure out how I managed to miss reading this book when it came out. I was reading literary SF then, including works by Delany. In fact, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee during the semester after I finished my bachelor’s degree there. Well, better late than never. I’m highly recommending it.

I read Chip Delany’s complex SF novel Trouble on Triton; An Ambiguous Heterotopia, because it is discussed in Lecture 17 of Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature. It was originally published under the title Triton, in 1976, and was nominated for 1977 Nebula Award. The Wesleyan University Press edition I read includes some Appendix material – one item of which is an excellent examination by Delany of the term “science fiction” and how it functions in distinction from mundane literature. ...more

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Oct 16, 2008 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: pocmaincharacters, sci-fi, queer-characters

Stylistically, this felt close to the Heinlein that I've read, with lots of free love, gender bending, libertarianism, communal relationships, and non-Terran humans at odds with Earth. Plus lots and lots of infodumping--not a chapter went by without several pages of the classic sf "as you know Bob..." explanations. The concepts were interesting enough; the method of conveying them, deeply boring. I starting skimming them about halfway through this book.

The plot itself is thin: Bron is very self- ...more

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Jun 27, 2013 Gretchen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Bron Hellstrom is a good example of an unreliable narrator, a misfit in the free-wheeling culture of Triton and the other moons, who are on the verge of war with Earth and Mars. The society shown through his eyes is neither utopic nor dystopic; it's very different from our own but it's very much its own thing.

I'm going to be honest -- I skimmed the dive into metalogics, for the most part. But other than that dense indigestible chunk this is a fascinating dive into worldbuilding, with discussion ...more

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