The Faded Sun Social Concerns

The Faded Sun Social Concerns

Cherryh's Faded Sun is one long narrative despite the publishing exigencies that required it to appear as three separate novels: The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978); The Faded Sun: Shon'jir (1978); The Faded Sun: Kutath (1979). The narrative explores profound social concerns through the interaction of three races in the aftermath of an interstellar war won by the Terrans over the trading regul, who expended most of their mri mercenaries in the conflict. In the struggle of the lone surviving mri warrior to preserve his people and their way of life, Cherryh probes eternal questions: the nature of honor and power; the necessity of cultural coexistence; the balance between male and female; the problems of suffering and evil. She weaves them all into the strange rich tapestry of mri society enhanced with the wonders of interstellar travel.

Although reviewers of The Faded Sun praised its command of the "alien anthropology" genre of science fiction when it was published in 1978-1979, some expressed reservations about Cherryh's essentially optimistic view of technology and her generally sympathetic treatment of autocratic societies and personal honor. These issues, made hypersensitive during the 1960s when duty, honor, country, the ideals for which the mri exist, became matters of wholeheartedly wrongheaded ridicule, need the saner perspective that years offer. Naive expectations of antitechnological primitivism may also still be clouding a balanced understanding of Cherryh's view of future technology and its importance to the lives of reasoning beings. The Faded Sun suggests that success — and survival — depend upon the most severe of disciplines, that of the self.