Throwback Thursday: The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You Is Both of Its Time and Startlingly Relevant
I first encountered Dorothy Bryant’s incredible, incredibly strange novel The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You in college, where it was assigned reading for a class. Science fiction novels assigned in 100-level college courses are naturally going to be a bit more cerebral and a bit less rayguns-and-space battles, and this one is perhaps the ultimate example of the college-course science fiction novel: a story about a man who learns to question his reality and embrace a spiritual, emotional existence that binds him to everyone around him, an exploration of gender roles, equality, and a utopian philosophy of life.
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You
Paperback $16.00
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You
In Stock Online
Paperback $16.00
It is also, therefore, the ultimate novel written in 1971. If you can name an SF novel that more thoroughly embodies 1971-ness, I’d love to read it.
The mystery
This was Bryant’s second novel; her first, Ella Price’s Journal, received good reviews, but she had trouble selling Ata, in part because it was a genre shift from her debut. Instead, she wound up launching her own publishing house to get it out, though it was later reissued by Random House. It’s easy to see why it was a tough sell: at its heart, it’s a dreamy, slow-moving contemplation of the human condition, but Bryant kicks it off with a wonderful hook: a murder.
The unnamed narrator is a very successful—and a very nasty—man who, after making a name for himself as a poet, ruthlessly exploits his small measure of fame and position to acquire a cushy teaching job that allows him to do very little work while seducing his students nearly full time. He lands a wealthy wife to further support himself, exploiting her father’s contacts in the publishing world to launch himself as a writer of bestselling spy novels that eventually make him rich and famous. He’s a misogynist and all-around terrible person from the first scene, a drug-fueled fight with a girlfriend that ends with her apparent murder. He speeds away from the scene in his car, gets into a wreck, and awakes on a mysterious island called Ata where the apparently primitive, multi-racial natives (who call themselves “the Kin”) nurse him back to health. The limited point-of-view means we’re just as mystified as the narrator, and the mystery propels the story forward, the simple desire to find out what’s happening.
The strong dreamers
Dreams are everything in this novel. The narrator suffers terrible nightmares before arriving on the island; the Kin focus their energies on retelling and amplifying their own dreams. Slowly, the narrator begins to see Ata for what it is: a higher plane of existence, one that influences the “real” world. The Ata send their “strong dreamers” to our plane in order to bring balance—to, in fact, counter-balance the actions of men like the narrator. Since the Ata are a utopian people—beings of all races and colors, with speech that incorporates vocabulary from all languages, and a society without gender or other prejudices—this influence is a powerful force for good.
The real heart of this pensive, philosophical novel is the narrator’s slow assimilation into the Kin, his realization that he has discovered a better way of existing. There’s a reason this book still gets talked about in conversations about feminism, consciousness, and the reason for our existence. It’s one of the strangest SF novels I’ve ever read, and everyone seems to react to it differently. Many novels offer good stories that are nevertheless forgotten the moment you finish the last page. Whatever else The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You is, it’s not easily forgotten.
It is also, therefore, the ultimate novel written in 1971. If you can name an SF novel that more thoroughly embodies 1971-ness, I’d love to read it.
The mystery
This was Bryant’s second novel; her first, Ella Price’s Journal, received good reviews, but she had trouble selling Ata, in part because it was a genre shift from her debut. Instead, she wound up launching her own publishing house to get it out, though it was later reissued by Random House. It’s easy to see why it was a tough sell: at its heart, it’s a dreamy, slow-moving contemplation of the human condition, but Bryant kicks it off with a wonderful hook: a murder.
The unnamed narrator is a very successful—and a very nasty—man who, after making a name for himself as a poet, ruthlessly exploits his small measure of fame and position to acquire a cushy teaching job that allows him to do very little work while seducing his students nearly full time. He lands a wealthy wife to further support himself, exploiting her father’s contacts in the publishing world to launch himself as a writer of bestselling spy novels that eventually make him rich and famous. He’s a misogynist and all-around terrible person from the first scene, a drug-fueled fight with a girlfriend that ends with her apparent murder. He speeds away from the scene in his car, gets into a wreck, and awakes on a mysterious island called Ata where the apparently primitive, multi-racial natives (who call themselves “the Kin”) nurse him back to health. The limited point-of-view means we’re just as mystified as the narrator, and the mystery propels the story forward, the simple desire to find out what’s happening.
The strong dreamers
Dreams are everything in this novel. The narrator suffers terrible nightmares before arriving on the island; the Kin focus their energies on retelling and amplifying their own dreams. Slowly, the narrator begins to see Ata for what it is: a higher plane of existence, one that influences the “real” world. The Ata send their “strong dreamers” to our plane in order to bring balance—to, in fact, counter-balance the actions of men like the narrator. Since the Ata are a utopian people—beings of all races and colors, with speech that incorporates vocabulary from all languages, and a society without gender or other prejudices—this influence is a powerful force for good.
The real heart of this pensive, philosophical novel is the narrator’s slow assimilation into the Kin, his realization that he has discovered a better way of existing. There’s a reason this book still gets talked about in conversations about feminism, consciousness, and the reason for our existence. It’s one of the strangest SF novels I’ve ever read, and everyone seems to react to it differently. Many novels offer good stories that are nevertheless forgotten the moment you finish the last page. Whatever else The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You is, it’s not easily forgotten.