I picked up We Lived on the Horizon, by Erika Swyler, because it tries to imagine a place designed to survive cataclysm. The book is an examination of utopia that falls short in many ways while offering an incredible look at an artificial consciousness inhabiting a human-shaped body.
The city of Bulwark seems to stand alone after a series of cataclysms put humanity on its heels. The AI in charge of the city rewards the sacrifices of citizens that keep the city running. Over generations, the families that gave the most became known as the Sainted. Saint Enita Malovis is nearing the end of her life without anyone to pass her decades of knowledge in bioprosthesis to. In an attempt to preserve her legacy, she designs and constructs a body to encase her house’s AI named Nix. In the background, something odd is going on that threatens to upend her life of quiet luxury and giving.
There is a pretty applicable meme that applies to my experience with We Lived On The Horizon, “they had me in the first half.” The book spends a good amount of its page count setting up a really interesting world that presents a lot of contradictions. A new society had to be built from the ruins of the old world, and new ways of living developed to survive the harsh conditions. Bulwark is managed by a city-wide AI, giving it a sheen of logical legitimacy as resources are distributed by “need” and social standing. While I found the system fascinating and compelling, it doesn’t offer a historical need for its continued existence. This does a great job of insulating the reader, giving them the same kind of perspective that the characters themselves live in. But it sort of nagged at me that the only real explanation is that “this is just how it had to be.” It mirrors our own explanations for the system of global capitalism in a way that pleases me while also having zero trails to follow backward, unlike our own world. This also just makes the background revolution a little weird – but we’ll get to that.
My excitement about the world in We Lived On The Horizon is centered around the fact that it feels like a compassionate-intent-gone-wrong version of our world. Life hours are the name of the game, and some people are born into a debt accrued by their forebears, while the Sainted live off the good deeds their ancestors have accrued over generations. Life hours earned by sacrifice replace the hard currency we’re used to, with debts accruing by using someone else’s service. But that’s if the person offering the service chooses to log it.
Enita, the main protagonist, is known to the denizens of Bulwark as the stitch skin. With her work in bioprostheses, she can craft limbs and organs that are functionally equivalent without needing someone else to donate a part of their body. Since she is a Sainted, she sees no need to charge those less fortunate for her services. So, her moniker is both a curse and a term of endearment for those seeking her services. It pains Enita, and gives her a sense of pride that she is the sole arbiter of this knowledge, which gives her character some depth.
Other aspects of Enita’s character revolve around her relationship with Nix and her former lover, Saint Helen. I honestly don’t remember much about Helen beyond her penchant for studying history and the awkward ways in which the two long-time friends/frenemies/lovers snipe at each other. There were some real feelings here, laced with some melodrama that wore thin fairly quickly for me. Nix themselves were a real delight, though. The exploration of their body, its limitations, and their journey of losing aspects of themselves to gain other learnings to be of help to those around them was clever and carried me through the story. If any of the themes about giving and sacrifice were fully realized it would be through the character of Nix as they interact with humans and other AI systems. Their life was both beautiful and sad as they tried to emulate humanity, torn between two people who couldn’t help but fight about what Nix was. It’s the kind of story about AI consciousness on an emotional level that could be better explored in the genre.
Where I started to have issues with the story was with Neren. Neren is a body martyr. In the time in which the story takes place, their role is vestigial, but their history feels interesting. A body martyr is someone who is basically a walking organ donor. In the history of Bulwark, they were citizens who had an innate desire to give so that others would not have to suffer. Neren took special pride in their ability to give, recover, and devote their life to continuing to give, even after sacrificing a lung. The problem is that the only people who really want things from body martyrs in Neren’s time are the Sainted. And if a body martyr had their body tainted by nano-machines or any mechanical supplementation, they were deemed impure by the Sainted and no longer able to give. My ultimate problem with the story is that the characters refused to actually talk about who benefits from the body martyr system in their present. I think there are some interesting discussions that occurred and exist as the barest of scratches on the surface of the iced over lake that is the body martyr discussion. Now, I am not well versed in how to portray disability in fiction, but it just feels like there was a lot to be desired in terms of examining Neren’s vocation as a body martyr and the pride they felt at their own bootstrap rehabilitation, and the disgust they felt at receiving treatment.
This seems to be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the book. Hints at grander ideas while circling the same talking point again and again. We Live on the Horizon posits an interesting thought experiment but kind of leaves a huge glaring issue on the table. The city of Bulwark is functionally a form of capitalism, measuring people’s contributions to society as a form of time. It even dives into similar language with the notions of “debt” and “sacrifice.” How often do we hear about the rich being the ones who are taking the risk while the workers are there just to get paid? It isn’t really that hard to make the leap that the Sainted are just the “good billionaires,” or at least the ones we engage with who offer their services for free to people who live in apartment blocks prone to collapse on their residents. Luxury items like tea are shown as status symbols and the book spends a lot of time explaining why mechanically that is so. It’s frustrating because all the pieces are there, but We Lived on the Horizon refuses to look in the mirror. It just sort of slowly collapses on itself without any agency. Society goes through cycles and someone has to pay the price. Most of the time, it’s the poor, but maybe once in a while, the rich get it too.
After having read so many books that engage in the concept of revolution, examining faults, triumphs, and the costs of it, materially and spiritually, We Lived on the Horizon falls flat in its portrayal. Personally, I actually liked that it was something that was brewing in the background. A sort of historical process that the characters can only prepare for. But at the same time it robs the “revolution” of its agency and its power. We don’t know why it’s happening (we do, it’s just nebulous within the book), or who is involved. There is a vague sense that the AI of Bulwark is trimming the fat to feed the anger of the masses, but it feels lame. It’s a bog-standard revenge mob searching the city for the Sainted so debts can be lifted from the invisible toiling masses. It was just so vague and incomprehensible – which would have been an interesting route had it had more presence. But it just sort of happens all at once near the end of the novel. And without the hard work of deep discussions about what it all means, I’m just sort of left wondering – what the fuck it was all about. That vague feeling then starts to become the main thought about revolution “what the fuck is it all about if nice people die?” That feels insidious to me.
In the end, the bits that worked for me beyond Swyler’s prose were the sections about Nix’s awakening. Their wrestling with the knowledge that in order to gain something, you might have to give up something was engaging. It wasn’t the most in-depth examination, but the novel sold Nix’s specific encounters with that contradiction. Neren, too, offered some interesting discussions on the nature of giving, but without diving deeper into who Neren was giving to and why, her story didn’t stick the landing. And while I can leave the conversation about “what is utopia,” behind, I will at least remember the trials of Nix and the things they gave me.
Rating: We Lived on the Horizon Could have made a really sick novella.
-Alex
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
