Sine qua non: Gillian Conahan, Marco Palmieri, and Jennifer Jackson.
Endless thanks to Rachel Swirsky, Ann Leckie, Kameron Hurley, Max Gladstone, Yoon Ha Lee, Brooke Bolander, Mia Serrano, Alyssa Wong, Amal El-Mohtar, Ilana Myer, and all the others who talked me through this process. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Some of the wonders of Baru’s world are less fantastic than they seem. The naturally occuring nuclear fission reactors in Mzilimake’s hot lands existed on Earth in the past, although long before human history. Baru’s brain injuries, while somewhat idiosyncratically presented, are all known to occur in real people, though I make no claim of clinical accuracy. While the specific gender of “lamen” is fictional, many societies around the world have a third gender, and the partible paternity practiced on Taranoke is as real in our world as the matriarchy of the Bastè Ana. Cancer can be transmitted not just clonally between individuals (as in the sad case of Tasmanian devils) but across species—tapeworm to human transmission has been observed. The famous case of Henrietta Lacks, in which a woman’s unethically harvested and quite immortal cervical cancer cells provided the necessary human tissue for polio vaccine research, is a striking example of the durability and longevity of cancer cell lines. More than twenty tons of HeLa cancer cells are now thought to exist, spread around the world in a distributed superorganism which has contaminated other cell lines. The Cancrioth’s immortata is a similar superorganism, though it has been divided into specialized “breeds” targeting specific areas of the body by the selective amplification of tumors with the desired effects. Readers repulsed by the Cancrioth’s practices would be well cautioned to consider that both Oriati Mbo and Falcrest are hardly unbiased observers, and that it is easy to demonize that which offends our own sense of hygiene.
Stranger ways of life exist in Baru’s world; we must not be too quick to pass judgment.
Those who fear cliff-hangers may rest assured that the end of Baru’s story is written. We must only help her reach it!