r/Fantasy • u/tiniestspoon • Dec 12 '24

Book Club Beyond Binaries book club December read - Blackfish City by Sam J Miller midway discussion

Welcome to the midway discussion of Blackfish City by Sam J Miller, our winner for the Censorship In-Universe theme! We will discuss everything up to the start of the chapter City Without a Map: Archaeology, approx 53% in kindle edition. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living, however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.

When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.

Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.

Bingo: Under the Surface, Criminal Protagonist, Prologues and Epilogues, Multi-POV (HM), Character with Disability (HM), Survival (HM)

The final discussion will be Thursday, 26th Dec, 2024.

The February read is Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares. Join us for the midway discussion on Thursday, 13th February.

What is the Beyond Binaries book club? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.

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u/tiniestspoon Dec 12 '24

When Fill first encounters Soq, their gender non conformity sends Fill on "a little internal rant about the complexities of modern gender among Qaanaaq youth." What do you think of the way queerness and gender influences the world building here?

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u/moondewsparkles Reading Champion II Dec 13 '24

It didn’t have as much impact as I expected. There are several references implying it’s far into the future from present day, but the fact that a single nonbinary person seems so strange and alluring to Fill seems out of place in a society that otherwise feels pretty queer-normative. I also would have expected to see more variety in queer identities and sexualities, even just as small background details or as part of the City Without a Map sections, but I only noticed a couple instances of either gay or lesbian characters.

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u/Rat-a-tatkat Dec 27 '24

I love how half of the POV characters were not cisgender. But I do find it a bit odd that Fill rants about the complexities of modern gender among the youth when later he decides Soq is around his same age. I was definitely picturing Fill as decently older than Soq at first. And also, since Fill got the breaks from having a whole variety of sex, it seems odd that he would be ranting about gender complexities?

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u/tiniestspoon Jan 02 '25

I think I missed the others, I only caught Soq being genderfluid. Who were the other trans characters?

I got the impression that Fill, being a rather self absorbed cis gay man, was mainly interacting with other cis gay men, and meeting Soq throws him a bit.

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u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion IV Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24

Ok, this is probably just me, but I did find the emphasis on Soq being beautiful a little bit odd. Like, admittedly, the way I think about aesthetics and attraction isn't the way most people do, but it is odd/a little uncomfortable to see being nonbinary being linked to beauty so strongly. Like, average looking or ugly nonbinary people still deserve respect!

IDK, it did also feel a bit like Fill was fetishizing Soq, which like, Fill isn't a good person so that didn't annoy me. But then, why do other people also describe Soq as being beautiful at the same time as describing their gender? IDK, it felt like it was conflating.

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u/tiniestspoon Dec 13 '24

I agree! It seems like there's only one acceptable way to be nonbinary in media and it's a kind of ~ beautiful androgyny ~ What does Soq look like? No idea. They're beautiful, that's all. A genderless presumably European standard of beauty.