Papillon IV

"Papillon IV is a science fiction story about environmentalism. The story follows Ao, a 5 year old who gets in trouble for teasing her brother. Her father, an elder in the village, sends her to “Odom’s” library for education. 

In the library, she is exposed to history, starting on earth, and visiting various parts of the galaxy. Odom, an AI, guides her through this journey.

There Ao learns about the history of the Papillon IV ship and its lasting impact. Pavilion IV was an ark ship, a pilgrim ship that takes generations to arrive to its destination. The first ark ship in this universe was a success, but the second a failure. As there was fear subsequent ships might face a similar fate, this ship was sitting unused. 

The earth at this time was terribly polluted, requiring masks for everyday use. Ao is told about a young girl, Pauline, whose school room collapses and garbage floods in, killing some of the students. Pauline becomes an activist and wants the garbage blasted into space. They decide to use the ark ship for this purpose. Unfortunately, all the garbage doesn’t fit, and so a less scrupulous world leader decides to just attach a net to the ship to hold the remaining trash. 

In a sense, the story of Papillon IV is the story of this trash. The ship and poorly packaged trash is blasted into space where it causes not one, but two incidents as well as leaving a trail of trash behind in space. 

The book has a few recurring themes, for example, the book often features youth as agents of change, whereas oftentimes older people who are set in their ways pose problems. The book notably has an 8 year old girl saving an entire civilization of people. Call me a bit of a cynic, but the message is a little optimistic in the role that an individual can make to the universe. That isn’t a slight on the book by any means, if anything, it might be on me.

I think most of the sci-fi in the book is good and makes sense. Some of the ideas presented in the book stretch the imagination slightly. Like the idea of putting trash into space is a little questionable for me, at least with current tech it makes no sense. Granted this is in the future, so technology could have improved. In fact, maybe with one of those gravity elevators or something this could work. 

The way the trash leaks from the net was also a bit of a problem in my mind, as it leaves a trail to Earth. The problem here though, is any trash that escaped the net, would continue moving forward at the same speed as the ship it escaped from, as there is no friction in space to slow the trash. Granted, depending on the acceleration of the ship, there could still be some trash left behind, as the ship begins to move faster than the trail. Still though, there is quite a lot of time between when the trash is left in space and when the trail is relevant again in the story. Perhaps with some kind of warp drive which alters space time in the front of the ship, the trash would be left behind moving incredibly slow and therefore maintain a trail over the course of the 100s of years from when it was left there.

In any case, I don’t think those potential issues/ non issues really detract from the book. I enjoyed the book and read it pretty quickly. The book has great profluence, I think mostly because you want to know what happens next in the narrative. Without spoiling anything, the ending really ties everything together. The book really comes full circle in a way I think is really neat. The environmental message of the book is poignant, although, perhaps slightly heavy handed at times. In any case the book is still most certainly worth a read and I highly recommend it."

"After fighting with her younger sibling, five-year-old Ao is sent by the elders to study at Odom’s Library, a place where knowledge from various species of the universe is contained for all to learn from. In Ao’s lessons from Odom, she is presented with ten tales that depict Earth’s history and the initiative to manage the growing problem of humanity’s production of refuse with their plan to send it into space to rid the planet of their waste; however, their plan has unforeseen repercussions for another species, which impacts and instigates their evolution before drawing the two species’ fate together toward a new future. Throughout the tales of history she’s presented, Ao learns valuable lessons and proves to possess an astute mind as she proactively connects the stories without Odom needing to do so for her. Having gained a greater appreciation for what her ancestors endured, Ao returns home with a renewed perspective to guide her actions.

Structured in such a way that each story is a “book” as a chapter within the larger narrative and with interludes of Ao’s experience within Odom’s Library to further flesh out context and her understanding of the situation and world (and therefore the reader’s), the story is easy to follow as it progresses, presenting new characters and facets to consider. Episodic yet also building upon one another, the series of stories connect to the present for a fuller account of the historic events that led to the evolution of the narrative’s current imaginative interspecies societal composition in which Ao resides; the events in each of the tales and how they relate to the broader story depict how precariously one seemingly small action in the moment can have a large, and lasting, impact on and in the future, neatly tying into the theme of butterflies seen throughout. There’s an innocence and a precociousness to Ao’s character shown through her eagerness to learn and delight in experiencing new things, the questions she asked, and the relative easy acceptance of the answers she received in turn, even if her growth is rather rapid as the story takes place over a few short days; the use of a educating a young child as a mechanism for imparting messages and wisdom is a convenient way to avoid coming across as dryly pedantic while discussing vital topics of import such as of climate, resources, and community collaboration."

"Papillon IV is the last book in what I call the Strul series (this because I read one after the other, haha), and since I’ve had this opportunity, I thought it would be neat to focus this review on growth—technical writing skills and choice of themes. Let’s start with the latter.

Once again we have sci-fi mixed with environment, something already touched in the previous book. The angle is different, though, enough to make it worth it. I have to say I am not pro authors who come up with the same story over and over again, just packed in a different way. To me, it’s boring-to-tears material. Giving a theme (and its adjacents) a fresh spin while the genre doesn’t change is a mark of quality, something Strul handles like a pro. I have zero doubts that Strul’s next sci-fi story, should he choose to keep following this route, will have similar themes while managing to read new and engaging. Yay!

I do feel we’re back on the length of the book—295 pages—clashing with the style, as sometimes it reads as the telling overshadows the showing. It’s not easy to balance them, of course. Tell the reader about events is (a) necessary (evil), else we’d end up with doorstoppers needing doorstoppers; if it’s too prominent, however, it can make a story feel too crowded.

The balance between dialogues and prose, however, is perfect. I already said I’m all for dialogues heavy stories and explained why; prose has its merits in the creative process, and when handled well, it aids the rhythm and the flow rather than hindering it. Bravo, Strul! I’m really pleased.

Third time in a row, I have to stop and praise the grammar. I’m running out of ways to compliment it, so I’ll just say it’s flawless. How to use grammar and punctuation is something that can be learned, of course—far easier to deal with this than with other issues. Still, when a book is well-written, it’s always a good feeling.

4,5 stars on GR"