Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia
   Mike Resnick
  1998 DELREY/Ballantine Pub.Group NY USA
   ISBN: 034541702X


Koriba, a distinguished, educated man of Kikuyu ancestry builds a utopian colony on a terraformed planetoid. Like a benign god, he reinstates ancient customs, stringent laws & decides everyone's fate. In time the colony's desire for knowledge brings him his greatest struggle.

Mike Resnick calls Kirinyaga his finest work & I'm going to agree with him. There is a biblical breadth to this book of fables. The idea of starting over again fascinates me & gives me opportunities to start my own life over each morning, however, joining a sect or cult to start up another Eden, makes me very nervous. Given our history, what makes us assume we won't mess it all up again? Hey, it takes a lot of practice to undo millennia of behavioral modifications, ask the Kosovo residents: Christians & Moslems alike.

As all genesis fables are told by a wise man who has seen troubles among his people even as he is supported by them yet lives apart from them, this wise man tells his stories with the opening mantra: "In the beginning, Ngai lived alone atop the mountain called Kirinyaga... ".

The fables unfurl before the children of a replicated pre-colonial Kikuyu village, on another planet. With a computer connection to Maintenance: from whence all weather flows, we meet an erudite mundumugu(witch doctor) who has convinced the villagers that he is all-knowing by creating illusions with the cooperation of Maintenance & some intelligent coincidences.

Koriba, the spiritual leader of his group, takes them away where their pleasures will be few so they may live a truly good, if harsh, Kikuyu life according to Ngai & the traditions handed down for generations which only Koriba knows as the modern world has nearly expunged them from living memory.

Each fable has a deeper meaning, often metaphor within metaphor. Lulled by the prayerful language, we listen to not only the mundumugu's teaching stories; we are privy to his insights as to how to heal, hurt or help villager or visitor. We are also witness to the clashes of egos, the quashing of spirits & the general pontifications of a benign dictator, a dictator who is being observed from afar. When this teacher commits a dreadful deed, sacred duty notwithstanding, all sorts of uncomfortable clashes occur.

What a peculiarly marvelous read Mike Resnick has composed. In his Author's Afterword he explains some of the sources of his ideas & lists how each of his stories has been received - very well, actually, winning all sorts of international, prestigious awards.

In Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga I see a likeness to the village of Mungoi in Karl Maier's Into the House of the Ancestors/Inside the New Africa [also reviewed], who, after turning their backs on all that the modern, white world has brought, managed to create an oasis amid the murderous mayhem of civil war swirling around them.

I know I was often offended by the way the women in this utopia are portrayed. I know, my modern-day-ness balked at all the "good old days" replication: ..."if it was good enough for our ancestors, it's good enough for us" & the common knowledge that women's lives in those good old days were deeply unenlightened. It all sounds so worthy, so seductive, so romantic. & so very false, artificial & manipulative.

Still, Kirinyaga is a book I shall return to again & again to remind me: lest we forget! Even if I was disturbed & distressed by the implications of this adventure I recommend it because it is very well done!

Mike Resnick's Opus is huge & varied:
The Soul Eater; Tales of the Galactic Midway; Tales of the Velvet Comet; Lucifer Jones; The Oracle Trilogy; The Galactic Comedy; The Widowmaker Trilogy
(07/04/99)

Rebecca