The Seep
Chana Porter
“I’ll tell you a secret. This is something no one else knows. But you’re my oldest and dearest friend and I want to share this with you. This isn’t my real face.”
To me, a good book has to have a few essential things apart from style and it being well-written: believable characters with flaws and emotions, a good plot that is going somewhere, good world-building, and above all a powerful change. A change that has lessons to learn from. I have come across books that have all of the above, they just tick all the boxes, but that book list however will only fit on one-page maximum despite all my reading. There are books that are simply enjoyable and light and I may take something out of them for one reason or another, again other books I might like and will recommend despite not wanting to read them again, yet others are breath-taking and simply amazing. It is those books that have a lasting impact on me and to those, I will return for comfort or as a reminder of what I loved about them in the first place. It’s like love affairs! The difference between flings, infatuations, and true lasting love!
I read a lot. I mean, a lot. I get withdrawal symptoms if I don’t! Books are my salvation, my comfort, my teachers, my soul food. But I am choosy when it comes to which books I read, even more so over time. I can no longer read books with too much violence, abuse, murder, scary stuff, or even boring romance without a good storyline or a decent message. It was Stephen King who said there are 3 functions of storytelling: entertainment, escapism, and education. For me, that rings true, books also have to resonate with me, as if they speak to me personally and to my soul and the path I am currently on. Sometimes I don’t even finish a book if it doesn’t hold my attention past twenty percent, or the characters are too weak or if I don’t like them, there is unnecessary violence, or if the plot is lacking so I skip to the end to find out what happened often confirming my reservations about the book. I mean, why waste my time, right? Some might say I miss out on really great books this way, but I don’t know, my instinct is often right. And everybody is different, what may be a great book to me might not for you and vice-versa. Despite it being well-written, it has to grab me. I suppose that is why there is such a thing as a rating system on platforms such as Amazon and Goodreads. Some good books deserve three or four stars and they may still be good books, but they lack something that your most beloved books don’t. It is a personal opinion after all. And that may change over time because we change. I may have read some books I absolutely adored when growing up, or when I was a young adult, and which were meaningful at the time, but when I reread them now, it won’t be the same and that is fine. So…let me tell you about…THE SEEP by Chana Porter.
THE SEEP is one of those rare finds that have become one of my favourite top reads to cherish already and I couldn’t stop talking about it for days! It is one of those rare, gorgeous treats you just want to indulge yourself in and you don’t want it to end. It’s a book that is already recognised by the literary world and it has received numerous awards since its release last year. Everything is just right with this book: the feelings portrayed by the main characters, the style, the dry humour, the raw emotions of loss and not wanting to let go of what is familiar and safe, a study of what identity is, and the impossibility of perfection. It is a utopian near-futuristic novella and weird at times but all in a good way, not like an Octavia Butler book for example, as nothing is too obscure like in most other utopian or alien invasion books. It’s not a long read but it feels longer and I like that! I read this with an open mind and everything made perfect sense to me especially because everything feels so familiar. This is our life and this is what could happen if presented with this kind of experience to people. That is why I love speculative fiction so much. It explores all possibilities.
The main character is Tina, a fifty-year-old Native-American transwoman and likable and easy to identify with regardless of the reader’s own gender or sexuality. She has been married to Deeba for a while and lives a good life with friends. They drink, they party, they have meaningful conversations. When alien beings without a physical body come to Earth in the form of a substance that can enable psychic bonds between all living matter, whereby you can be transformed into anything imaginably. Humans can turn into other species, or give themselves animal-like qualities like horns and scales and wings; they can become other genders or ethnicities, and they can even take on the very faces of people they know and admire. A great many people are concerned about what that might mean for the world and the human way of life. Some people choose to live in special compounds designed for them and continue life as if the aliens have not come at all. The compounds are co-created by the humans and the benevolent aliens who are known as The Seep who only wished to give humanity as many different choices in life as possible so that all beings may be free, happy, and at peace. The hive-like aliens have done this by adding chemicals to the water supply that alter people’s personalities and the chemical structures that make up their bodies and the rest of the organic materials on Earth. Suddenly, our planet is peaceful, blissful, capitalism is gone, hierarchies are broken down, violence is gone, separation is gone and all things are possible… but instead of Earth becoming a utopia, it becomes a orgiastic love fest where everyone is just part of a seething mass of modified bodies writhing together towards some hazy idea of what is good. The concept is clever, even the execution of it. It reminded me of the sixties hippies on drugs raving about transcendence without really grasping it, but rather losing themselves.
Tina is one of the rare people who still, twenty years later, doesn’t really fully embrace this new change especially as her wife of many years announces she wants to become a baby (!) and leaves her to begin her new life in the South of France with Persian parents. Tine is heartbroken since in the whole, identity is so crucial to her own experience, she is horrified by what she sees around her as a tremendously insensitive act of mass misuse and of course because she loses her wife. We follow her as she grieves like a widow and slowly tries to find herself again amidst a world that has turned upside down. Understandably she is seeking revenge against someone who is using The Seep in an evil way, someone who used to be her friend, and a young boy who is untouched by The Seep she needs to protect from him. I loved the pamphlet The Seep talks through and that could read her mind. It is the closest we come to talking and understanding the aliens.
Above all the story is an exploration of what it really means to be human as explored through the eyes of an entity that is not.
“People need to give each other space to make choices. We can’t live solely for other people. Even if it hurts them. Even when it breaks your heart.”
“I’ve come to understand that all things are letters. That is, all words are messages, and all actions are known and recorded, in some way or another.”
“We’re only on this planet to grow and change, and sometimes that can only happen through struggle.”
It’s great to see a science-fiction work that features an older woman of color who is LGBT+, as a lot of popular science-fiction books tend to feature younger, heterosexual white heroes and heroines.
I was also happy to find a short story at the end of the main story, so make sure you read that one if you want to find out more about one of the young protagonists mentioned in the main story called Aki, and his escape from one of the compounds. It is just as recommended! I can’t wait to find more books by the same author as this is her debut novel I really hope she will write more books about The Seeps, or other books similar! I am a new fan! You don’t have to be a fan of science fiction to enjoy this book. This is a book for our times. Read it!
The book can be found HERE
Speculative Lesfic Author Natasja Hellenthal 