The Fifth Season Should Be Required Reading for Geologists

***This post contains spoilers and discussion of difficult material, especially child abuse and murder.***

I am beyond thrilled that in exactly one week the final book in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is going to be released to the general public. This series should be required reading for everyone who calls themselves a geologist, geophysicist or other kind of earth scientist. First of all, it is the only series I have ever read that centers on geology. Not like how mountains are important in The Lord of The Rings series, climaxing at the molten core of Mordor. No. In this series some people are TIED to the land with the gift/curse of orogeny. These orogenes (derogatory term: rogga) are capable of literally moving mountains.

This creates an incredibly intricate and rare thing to occur: Jemisin aggressively does not allow the separation of the doer of science from the scientist as a person. In American science academia, separating the work of a scientist from the health and wellbeing of the scientist themselves is an imperative mechanism upon which STEM practitioners rely to keep discriminatory practices in place. By presenting a world where no such separation can exist, the Broken Earth series shines a light into what it may be like to be a scientist of color.

I mention specifically that this is a racial experience because, as a White woman, this book was the first time I have experienced vicariously what it like to be the victim of a structure based on oppression of “my (the protagonists’)” people. Jemisin accomplishes this tremendous feat by immersing us in an excellently built world with relatable characters and then bombarding her characters with intense personal tragedies.

In the world of the ironically named Stillness, everything has sinister movement just below the surface. Thumbing through Appendix 1 (both books), we get the abridged history of all Fifth Seasons in the Stillness. Many of the Seasons are mentioned throughout the book but none are discussed in great detail because they were long before the living memory of our characters. I particularly love this section because The Seasons are named for of the types of tectonic blowback that would make a planet uninhabitable for 2-100 years.

The specific attention to detail of what would actually happen if a global scale tectonic event occurred allowed me to completely suspend my disbelief in this world. Jemisin didn’t just read a few Amazing Geologist posts and surf around on mindat.org. She thought through what would actually happen if an entire ocean became acidified for 100 years. (This information is terrifyingly relevant.) The series hinges on the opening of a continental rupture the likes of which would make the breakup of Pangea tame and sweet. The environment responds similarly to how we project the Earth would respond to such tectonic upheaval. Across two books I have only found very minor issues with her geologic constructs and I let them go because Jemisin is not a trained geologist and she is human. And humans are allowed to change physics for artistic license sometimes. See: any video game ever.

Starting from this place of incredibly well researched world building I entered into the Broken Earth trilogy able to suspend disbelief to an unusually deep degree. Part of investing in this world, I quickly come to discover, is accepting the systems of oppression that allow The Stillness to “function.” The Sanzed’s crumbling empire is built on the hatred and fear of orogenes. Now, to be somewhat holistic on this viewpoint--orogenes have TREMENDOUS power and it is in fact an orogene who literally severs the continent in half.

The fear of this power is the justification Sanzed uses to completely subjugate, coerce, immobilize and borderline encourage murder of orogenes. The main reason they don’t fully endorse genocide is because they empire seems to know there are non-human entities which will quickly overpower all humans if there were no orogene protectors.

So I am brought along on the journey of several orogene characters and am held witness to the atrocities of their lives. What stands out to me, what I never ever get used to, is the unrelenting violence against children. The rite of passage into the school for orogenes is a cruel trust ceremony where each Guardians breaks the hands of their wards. (Toto, I don’t think we’re at Hogwarts anymore…) I am helpless on the sidelines as the characters witness the murder of their children. I watch parents murder their children. I come to expect the interaction of the Guardian caste to be cold abusers, enticing children to do their villainous (also sometimes murderous) bidding.

I think it is this aspect that has increased my appreciation for certain American Earth communities, particularly Black communities. Within communities of color this level of devastation is real and felt on a scale I cannot understand. Prior to reading the Broken Earth series, I have read about and sometimes marched in Black Lives Matter events. Not being within any community of color myself, I have always been a generic ally without having direct connection to the pain and tragedy behind this movement.

But the murders of kids like Trayvon Martin are the reality that some of my friends and co-workers experience. There was a deeply moving video that went around a while back where Black parents explained to their kids how to act if they were stopped by a police officer. One day a mentor of mine, a brilliant scientist who is a pioneer in their field, told me the gripping story of getting beaten up for driving while Black in America. Even though I have heard these stories, I still don’t have to check the local and national news every day to see if anyone I know directly has been murdered. As Dr. Chandra Prescod-Weinstein mentions in her interview with Ebro being Black in science is still a taboo topic to directly discuss. But in not discussing it, scientists ask members of the Black community to essentially check their identities at the door.

With the Broken Earth series, NK Jemisin opens us to a world of hurt, a world of love, a world of geology that I have never thought possible to understand so intuitively. By refusing to separate the people of the Stillness universe from the ground of the Stillness we see the orogenes perhaps as more whole than we allow ourselves to see each other.