#140 Plucked from the past: Picnic on Paradise (1968) by Joanna Russ

A feminist subversion of SF adventure on a snowbound world.

Joanna Russ was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy best known for her strident feminist perspective. Her most acclaimed book is The Female Man from 1975, in which several women - each from their own parallel universes - confront misogyny and patriarchy.

In Picnic on Paradise (1968), Russ' debut novel, a thief from ancient Tyre is recruited to save the day on a holiday planet plunged into a "commercial war".

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Transcript

A feminist subversion of SF adventure 

Paradise is a snowbound vacation world which attracts wealthy tourists. When it is drawn into a “commercial war”, a group of visitors are trapped there with no way out. Due to restrictions on technology, a special kind of agent is needed to rescue them from the harsh environment. Alyx is that agent - a thief from ancient Tyre, accidentally pulled into the future by a malfunctioning time machine. 

Picnic on Paradise is the first novel by American SF author Joanna Russ. It represents a feminist subversion of a traditional adventure story, and a precursor to Russ’ best known novel The Female Man (1975). 

Introducing Alyx

Picnic on Paradise is unusual in that it is an SF novel which is part of a larger story cycle that began in a fantasy mode. The Alyx character was introduced in two stories published in the anthology Orbit 2 (1967) edited by Damon Knight. These stories were influenced by Fritz Leiber, and referenced his popular Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tales. The complete cycle of stories was not collected until the publication of The Adventures of Alyx in 1983.

Alyx is a capable female hero who is used by Russ as a means to criticise and subvert traditional fantasy and SF models of storytelling. In Picnic on Paradise, Russ’ first novel, this is done by projecting the character into the far future and into a science fiction setting. 

Welcome to the future

Alyx’s presence in the future is an accident. The time machine in the story is designed and operated by scientists who think of themselves as highly rigorous and moral. They programme the device to recover artefacts from the past, and only at a safe distance from settlements. It is also calibrated to leave behind living beings. Alyx is swept up by this timescoop because she was in the process of dying, drowning after an attempt to steal from a ship.

Having previously lived in Tyre in the Phoenician Empire, Alyx is bemused by a strange starfaring future. She is diminutive compared to the towering Ubermensch of this time, who are enlarged and “perfected” by advanced science. Their customs are foreign to her, including their language, dependence on drugs, their neo-religions, and officially sanctioned wars for profit. 

The war on Paradise makes the use of technology impossible. Being a “primitive”, Alyx is used to operating this way and so is uniquely suited to rescuing the stranded tourists. The gruelling journey leaves neither the tourists nor Alyx unchanged.

Wish you weren't here

Picnic on Paradise is not as much fun as the adventure stories it sets out to subvert, but it does have its moments. Early on, Alyx rapidly dominates a man who doubts that she is really the trans-temporal agent. Later, the group work together to fend off a huge polar bear, which has been unwisely introduced to the snowy wastes of Paradise.

Much of this short novel is about exposing the contrasts between the supposedly primitive Alyx and the supposedly civilised future. In this way, it amusingly anticipates Demolition Man (1993). Alyx is a relic, but she has a self-reliance and resilience that has all but died out in a future placated by drugs and over-reliant on machines. Ironically, Alyx forms a relationship with a young man in the group who calls himself Machine. Her influence helps wean him off his habitual immersion in a kind of simulated environment.

The book stands some comparison with Ursula K. Le Guin’s own debut novel, Rocannon's World (1966). In that book, Rocannon is a sophisticated agent of a high-tech, interstellar culture stranded on a world of backwards primitives. Picnic on Paradise inverts this; Alyx’s innate “primitivism” is precisely her utility to the stranded group. The book was itself inverted by Poul Anderson's Time Patrolman (1975), which is partly about an agent from the future travelling back to ancient Tyre. Anderson called Picnic on Paradise “an extraordinary book.”

An adventure in subversion

Taken as an SF adventure, Russ’ debut novel is only adequate. Alyx is a likeable, unusual protagonist especially for a book from the 1960s. However, there is little action and most of the story consists of the group laboriously trekking from point A to point B - almost literally by these names. The value of the book is in its feminist ethos. With The Female Man (1975), Russ would abandon traditional forms altogether, and use an experimental approach to make a bracingly angry critique of patriarchy.