#154 Trial by fire: Rite of Passage (1968) by Alexei Panshin

Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid

The critic Algis Budrys said of this novel, "one feels a real shock as one realizes that Panshin after all has never been a girl growing up aboard a hollowed-out planetoid". He was praising Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin's 1968 novel which went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel while up against tough competition.

A part of the first series of Ace Science Fiction Specials edited by Terry Carr, Rite of Passage is both a powerful coming of age story in a science fiction setting, and a challenging allegory for the world economic system. 

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Transcript

Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid

In 1969, competition for the Nebula Award for Best Novel was fierce. Nominees included Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Joanna Russ’ Picnic on Paradise, and John Brunner’s formidable Stand on Zanzibar - which won the equivalent Hugo Award that year. But in 1969, the winning novel was by a much less familiar writer. Rite of Passage is the first novel by Alexei Panshin (1940 - 2022), better known as a prominent scholar and critic of SF. 

Set in 2198, this is a coming of age story in a science fiction setting, specifically an unusual treatment of the generation ship theme. The protagonist is Mia Havero, a young girl who must undergo a gruelling challenge on an underdeveloped colony world to prove herself an adult and a citizen. The novel explores the changing perceptions that come with growing up, the nature of life on a starship which is home to 30,000 people, and the topics of colonisation, exploitation, and justice.

Much admired at the time for Panshin’s believable portrayal of a changing teenage girl, Rite of Passage has strong contemporary relevance in its examination of what the wealthy few owe the struggling many.

Downwards to the colony

The novel is written in the first person as a retrospective account by Mia of what happened to her before, during, and after her Trial. We know, then, that she will survive these events. What engages the reader is instead what changes Mia and her society undergo.

When the novel opens, Mia's father has just ascended to a lofty position of authority on the ship - which is made of a hollowed-out asteroid and, unusually, is never named. He decides that he and Mia should move districts within the vessel, which she interprets as a means to acclimatise her to further changes still to come. She begins taking classes with the man who tutored her father 60 years earlier - an indication of how long-lived the people of the ship are.

In time, Mia's Trial finally arrives and she is deposited on a colony world peopled by the agricultural labourers Mia knows as “mudeaters”. The children undergoing Trial become embroiled in a deadly conflict with the locals, but Mia still begins to feel that the relationship between the people of the ship and the colonial communities is inequitable and wrong. Attitudes on the ship more generally may be changing - but a new approach to ship-colony relations could arrive too late.

Growing up as conceptual breakthrough

Rite of Passage has an interesting relationship with a key fundamental of SF, the conceptual breakthrough. In a number of generation ship stories, the characters do not realise or have forgotten that they live on a starship. Examples include Robert A. Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky (1963, composed of stories originally published in 1941) and Brian Aldiss’ Non-Stop (1958). Panshin approaches the idea differently. Mia is well aware that she is on a starship - to her this is a mundane fact, and all she has ever known. It is her visits to planets which expand her horizons.

Through Mia’s perspective, Panshin shows that growing up is a real-life process in which we all undergo a series of sometimes confusing conceptual breakthroughs. Our view of the world is shaped by our formative experiences. In this way, Rite of Passage is not only a coming of age story in an SF setting, but also allows the application of an SF lens to the process of growing up. The novel also arguably emphasises the arbitrary nature of a rite of passage - when the story closes, Mia still has a lot of growing up to do. Her values are still forming, and she has only begun to see the colonists as humans in their own right.

The novel as allegory for the global economic system

In Rite of Passage, Panshin uses science fiction to deliver an allegory for the global economic system. The ship represents the “imperial core”, the wealthy nations where science is most advanced and where industrial capacity is concentrated. The colony worlds represent the “periphery”, those countries where the bulk of natural resources can be found and where labour is cheapest. The ship has an almost purely extractive relationship with the colonies, suppressing their development in order to better control them. The few enjoy a lavish existence at the expense of the many.

In this way, Rite of Passage can be readily interpreted as a formidable critique of the world order in 1968 - which in essence remains unchanged today. In the novel, as in reality, there are dissenting voices arguing for a more equitable system but in the meantime, exploitation goes on. One of its effects is that the people of the core tend not to regard the people of the periphery as truly human. It is a challenging message. 

The Trial itself forms a surprisingly small part of the novel, but brings to mind the military adventurism of the time Panshin was writing, not least the Vietnam War.

Change does come, but sometimes too late

Rite of Passage is a deft and effective SF novel which makes good and convincing use of its teenage protagonist. It explores complexly the themes of growing up, colonial exploitation, and change - suggesting that change does come, but that it can arrive too late.