AUDIO

C. J. Cherryh is the prolific author of many novels set against a background  known as the Alliance-Union Universe.  With an academic background in anthropology and engineering, among other fields,  she is an expert world-builder, who has created a history of space-faring humans and the planets or space stations they inhabit. Though planet-dwelling aliens exist and interact with humans, none have the technology for space travel. However, from time to time there are rumors of space-faring aliens in an unexplored section of the galaxy, much as Pyanfar Chanur knows of old “bunk yarns, like ghost ships. Like aliens outside the Compact” (145). The Chanur Saga (and two additional volumes) is the history of these aliens and their first contact with the human race. 

Cherryh’s SF novels are usually classified in two ways – as space opera and as anthropological SF.  

 
Anthropology

If you need more information on the alien species of the Compact, and you don't have Cherryh's helpful Appendix (found on p. 674 of the Saga edition),  Wikipedia also provides information.

By the point in the narrative that you have, I hope, come to, you are most familiar with the villainous kif and probably most perplexed by the knnn, those "black nests of hair snarl with spider legs"(685), with their ever-present song. It was the song that drew Tully and his people toward their unfortunate encounter with the kif, like the siren’s song drew sailors to the rocks. The song unnerves both Tully and the crew of the Pride, and even the Mahendo’sat are uncomfortable. It  recurs  throughout the novel like an eerie refrain:  “There was silence at table, except for the knnn, who wailed on alone, rapt in whatever impulse moved knnn to sing” (75), a constant reminder that alien means alien.  The oxygen breathers may not like or trust each other—distrust pervades every aspect of this novel and not only distrust of one species for another but distrust between factions within the species and between individuals.  But oxygen breathers can understand each other to a degree; the methane-breathers are the truly alien aliens:

“A car shot past her on the dock, from behind: globular and seated, it wove along avoiding canisters and passers-by and lines with greater speed than an automated vehicle would use. That was a methane breather, more than likely, some official from beyond the dividing line which separated the incompatible realities of Meetpoint.” (ch 2, 15)
 

Narrative Technique

Though the narrative is third person, we are most often –- except at the beginning of the book -- restricted to Pyanfar’s point of view. The book opens with the rather ominous sentence: “There had been something loose about the station dock all morning.”  We are momentarily seeing this “something” from the perspective of the crew of a spaceship: “It was pale, naked, starved-looking in what fleeting glimpse anyone on The Pride of Chanur had had of it.[….] The crew reported it only to the captain and chased it, twice, from the Pride’s loading area. Then the crew got to work on necessary duties, having settled the annoyance to their satisfaction”  (ch 1, 1).

From this brief look over the shoulders of the crew, we now zero in on Pyanfar and her reaction, or non-reaction:  “It was the last matter on the mind of the noble, the distinguished captain Pyanfar Chanur, who was setting out down her own rampway for the docks.  She was hani, this captain, splendidly maned and bearded in red-gold which reached in silken curls to the middle of her bare, sleek-pelted chest, and she was dressed as befitted a hani of captain’s rank…” (ch 1, 1-2). Though this may be indeed what Pyanfar thinks of herself and her appearance, the narrator maintains a certain objective distance. We need this distance to be introduced to the central character.  But from then on the viewpoint is mostly hers and we are privy to her thoughts and feelings. 

It is ironic that she barely notices the intruder at first. She is confident, brave, resourceful but not without self-doubt. There are times when she blames herself bitterly. Her life is a continual adventure as she maneuvers among the aliens she must interact with, and among, later, her own people. Unlike the cardboard characters in most space opera, she learns from her experiences.

But we see only what she sees. This creates intense strangeness for the reader, since she is not human and knows much that we are unaware of. In that way, we are similar to Tully. We experience a jarring sense of dislocation and reversal, perhaps a little like going through jump without drugs. 

Reversal 1: Human Beings

We first see Tully as a frightened animal seeking refuge with Pyanfar and her crew. They refer to him as “it” and don’t know if he possesses “sapience,” that species-centered term we use to refer to ourselves and only ourselves, but which here refers to a number of different species.

Tully later tells Pyanfar that he chose her ship because she and her crew were able to laugh, but another factor might well be her resemblance to a species native to earth, lions .  A pride is an extended family of lions, so the ship’s name and the title of the book itself is a complex pun.  The hani are the most earth-like of the aliens assembling at Meetpoint Station. 

Humankind are unknown in Compact Space until Tully escapes from the kif.  We have come a long way from the old space operas in which human beings were the unstoppable masters of the universe. Cherryh is using the conventions of the space opera to say something else.  The cover is telling, the human male in the background protected by the gun-toting lionesses.

Reversal 2: Male/Female

That the hani resemble lions allows for another difference from conventional science fiction. Not only are human beings not the center of Compact Space, but in hani culture males themselves are backgrounded, kept on their home world Anuurn, where they are free to go about their hormone-driven battles. Indeed when she first sees Tully, Pyanfar thinks: "Male, maybe.  It had that over-the-brink look in its eyes” (3).

Thus Tully is twice an alien:  both human  and male.  The sole human survivor in Compact Space where humans are unknown and a stowaway on a hani ship where men are not welcome, he is powerless.  By the end of the section you read last week, his prospects have improved: he is able to converse with the hani and communicate his needs for sedation during jump as well as for warmer clothing (He is not covered with fur like his hosts).  He has told them the sad tale of his ship’s encounter with the kif and how he and his few remaining shipmates resisted them with guile until he was the only remaining human alive. Though he is often on the brink of offending the hani by his repeated attempts to touch (perhaps because he is a member of a species without claws), fortunately he is among space-farers more  accustomed than he is to differences among species' customs. Tully and the hani are able to laugh together as they try to outwit the kif by the decoy corpse, which is swiftly grabbed up not by the kif but the scavenging knnn. In spite of the differences between human and hani, then, there are many possibilities for fruitful contact.

In a conventional narrative, we might expect Tully, being male and human, to steadily assert himself and take on increasingly heroic proportions. We’ll see if he does so.