My life is an object lesson about emotional isolation when I look back on it: Mormon in a non-mormon world, doubting Mormon in Rexgurg, exmormon in a Mormon world, and finally neurodivergent mind in a neurotypical world.

The Foreigner series makes flesh a feeling that I've not seen done anywhere else in literature or sci fi quite as well. The protagonist is a human on an alien world, or an alien on the alien's world, and his position requires him to translate back and forth between both worlds. It's not just culture he must take into account in his interface, it's the alien nature of the alien minds he is translating human concepts into. It's a slow-moving story arch that takes place more in the protagonist's head than anything which happens externally, but that's how I live my life. There is so much which happens in my own head from day to day as I translate back and forth between Mormonease to Gentile, liberal to conservative, and neurotypical to neurodivergent. The whole time I'm speaking English, but it feels like whole different languages I'm speaking especially down at the body language level. I feel something akin to the protagonist as he starts to feel trapped in his position and almost desperate to give the "keys to his soul" away to anyone that will take it, human or otherwise.

There's a connection that neurotypical human beings have that autistic people feel left out of, something nonverbal, a shared body language, an implicit understanding. We don't often think about it unless we're dealing with a cultural so foreign that it becomes palpable. For lack of any word for it that I've ever heard anyone else give it, I've dubbed it the NT-net. Getting my diagnosis was like a breath of oxygen from Poseidon when I thought I was doomed to drown in his seas, because I figured out finally where people were getting the secret notes about what tone to use and what things you can say and how you have to say those things and how people share data with mere eye contact sometimes. They get it from this implicit connection that most people share with each other, a connection which seems to work by virtue of shared neurotype. Neurodivergent people can sometimes 'zing' in a similar way, and I've recently had the, idk, "blessing" or "tender mercy" of meeting someone whose mind works almost exactly like mine and sharing such a connection with her. It's more than oxygen; it's more than life. It's just so damned convenient not to have to talk until I'm blue in the face to communicate my thoughts to another person.

I think I'm a master of articulation at this point in my life. I will, with words, slice my presented ideas down to the finest possible nuances because I'm tired of being misheard, misread, and misconstrued. It sucks, because had I never undertaken the task to push myself from borderline nonverbal as a teenager to this, whatever I am now, people would have tormented me for the rest of my life by assuming my mindset, assuming my intentions, or else forcing me to contort myself to their expectations to avoid the discomfort of being perpetually read in a negative way I never meant to broadcast the way it is often taken. After so much frustration, I've found a way to talk to my parents that doesn't require me to pretend to believe in Mormonism, and I can have a good relationship with them while having access to the nevermo world while understanding how to explain the ND/NT interface to anyone who wants to know. God, I've been through so much, and that exasperated feeling is perfectly explored in these novels.

It's an emotional isolation born of a social isolation born of cultural differences, language barriers, and neurological differences of how the nerves themselves are connected. The tension expresses itself best when the translator is trying to find the right way to explain himself to people that will not give him a second chance to say it again. He watches their eyes. He watches their bodies. He is mindful of how they perceive his face and his vocal tone. He remembers everything he can of the culture and of what he's learned through painful trial and error, and despite his anxiety he makes decisions about the right way to proceed and plays them on the stage of his face for the desired effect on the other party. He does this a thousand times every day and then he goes home and tries to recoup so that tomorrow he can take an alien world on his nerves again with breaking. I've not seen another novel capture this drama of simply interpreting faces and intentions and tones the way I experience it.

It's a dry read if you're expecting lots of sci-fi action and lofty intellectual concepts. But if you're looking for the best damn portrayal of what being stuck an alien planet feels like, not just trapped on their planet but stuck masking as one of them in their social hierarchy, this is it. You might learn something about the emotional isolation of high-functioning neuro-divergents too.

Thank you for your post and your book recommendations. I will definitely read the series.

Have you read the Ancillary Justice series?

Haven’t heard of it. Looking it up.

I too shall look up The Foreigner (because I basically read science fiction and history and I read a lot ;-), but I can strongly recommend the Ancillary Justice series, which is possibly the best SF I've read anytime, anywhere. Ann Leckie is a superb writer and "imaginer". In my experience, a lot of the best current SF (and by best, obviously, I mean tolerably written and to my tastes ;-) is being written by women :-D

Tomás, have you read the "Union Station" series, and assorted off-shoots, by E. M. Finer?

They Union Station series is rather tame, but I have been extremely entertained.

It has become my new hope for how things work out for humanity.

Further deponent sayeth naught.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2023 05:35PM by elderolddog.

So happy to read that you love them too!