''Ancillary Justice'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel by the American writer

Ann Leckie Ann Leckie (born 2 March 1966) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel '' Ancillary Justice'', in part about artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as ...

, published in 2013. It is Leckie's

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...

and the first in her Imperial Radch

space opera Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and soc ...

trilogy, followed by ''

Ancillary Sword ''Ancillary Sword'' is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in October 2014. It is the second novel in Leckie's "Imperial Radch" space opera trilogy, which began with ''Ancillary Justice'' (2013) and ended with ''A ...

'' (2014) and '' Ancillary Mercy'' (2015). The novel follows Breq—who is both the sole survivor of a starship destroyed by treachery and the vessel of that ship's

artificial consciousness Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness (; ), is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The aim of the theory of artificial consciousness is to "Define that w ...

—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. The cover art is by John Harris. ''Ancillary Justice'' received critical praise and won the

Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

Nebula Award The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of prof ...

BSFA Award The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) to honour works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members. More recently, m ...

Arthur C. Clarke Award The Arthur C. Clarke Award is a British award given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It is named after British author Arthur C. Clarke, who gave a grant to establish the award i ...

, and

Locus Award for Best First Novel The Locus Award for Best First Novel is one of the annual Locus Awards presented by the science fiction and fantasy magazine '' Locus''. Awards presented in a given year are for works published in the previous calendar year. The award for Best Fi ...

. It is the only novel to have won the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. Another novel, ''

Provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

'' (2017), and two short stories, "Night's Slow Poison" and "She Commands Me and I Obey", are set in the same

fictional universe A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes ma ...

Setting and synopsis

''Ancillary Justice'' is a

set thousands of years in the future, where the principal power in human space is the expansionist Radch empire. The empire uses space ships controlled by AIs, who control human bodies ("ancillaries") to use as soldiers. The Radchaai do not distinguish people by

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...

, which Leckie conveys by using "

she She most commonly refers to: *She (pronoun), the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English. She or S.H.E. may also refer to: Literature and films *'' She: A History of Adventure'', an 1887 novel by H. Rider Hagga ...

pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...

for everybody, and by having the Radchaai main character guess, frequently incorrectly, when she has to use languages with gender-specific pronouns. The narrative begins nearly twenty years after the disappearance of a Radch

starship A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between planetary systems. The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 1882 in '' Oahspe: A Ne ...

, the ''Justice of Toren'', when the sole surviving ancillary (and a fragment of the ''Justice of Toren''s consciousness), Breq, encounters an officer, Seivarden, who had been a lieutenant on the ''Justice of Toren'' 1,000 years earlier. The two are on an ice planet, and Seivarden is in precarious condition. The plot switches between two strands: Breq's "present-day" quest for justice for the ''Justice of Toren''s destruction and flashbacks from 19 years earlier when the ''Justice of Toren'' was in orbit around the planet of Shis'urna, which was being formally brought into the Radchaai empire. The reader eventually finds out that the ''Justice of Toren''s destruction was the result of a covert war between two opposed strands of consciousness of the Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, who uses multiple synchronized bodies to rule her far-flung empire. At the end of the novel, Breq associates herself with the more pacific aspect of Anaander Mianaai while waiting for an opportunity to exact her revenge.

Critical reception

The novel received widespread acclaim and recognition, but also some criticism. Russell Letson's '' Locus'' review appreciated the ambitious structure of Leckie's novel, which interweaves several past and present strands of action in a manner reminiscent of Iain M. Banks's '' Use of Weapons'', and its engagement with the

trope Trope or tropes may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept * Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device * Trope (music), any of a variety of different things ...

s of recent space opera as established by Banks,

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...

, C. J. Cherryh and others. He concluded that " is is not entry-level SF, and its payoff is correspondingly greater because of that." In the opinion of

Genevieve Valentine Genevieve Valentine (born 1981) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her first novel, ''Mechanique: A tale of the Circus Tresaulti'', won the Crawford Award for a first fantasy novel, and was shortlisted for the Nebula. Genevieve V ...

, writing for

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, the "assured, gripping and stylish" novel succeeded both on the large and on the small scale, as the tale of an empire and as a character study. Tor.com's Liz Bourke praised Leckie's worldbuilding and her writing as "clear and muscular, with a strong forward impetus, like the best of thriller writing", concluding that ''Ancillary Justice'' was "both an immensely fun novel, and a conceptually ambitious one".

Nina Allan Nina Allan (born 27 May 1966) is a British writer of speculative fiction. She has published four collections of short stories, a novella and two novels. Her stories have appeared in the magazines '' Interzone'', ''Black Static'' and ''Crimewave'' ...

's review in ''Arc'' was more critical: while she found "nothing lazy, cynical or even particularly commercial-minded" in the novel, she criticized its characterization and considered that its uncritical adoption of space opera tropes and the "disappointingly simple" ideas it conveyed (such as that empires are evil) made ''Ancillary Justice'' "an SF novel of the old school: tireless in its recapitulation of genre norms and more or less impenetrable to outsiders".

Awards

''Ancillary Justice'' won the following awards: *

for best science fiction novel of the year, 2014 * British Science Fiction Association

BSFA Award for Best Novel The BSFA Awards are given every year by the British Science Fiction Association. The Best Novel award is open to any novel-length work of science fiction or fantasy that has been published in the UK for the first time in the previous year. Seriali ...

* Hugo Award for Best Novel from the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), 2014 *

Kitschies The Kitschies are British literary prizes presented annually for "the year's most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic" published in the United Kingdom. Awards and criteria The Ki ...

Golden Tentacle for best debut novel, 2013. *

, 2014 *

Nebula Award for Best Novel The Nebula Award for Best Novel is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novels. A work of fiction is considered a novel by the organization if it is 40,000 words or longer; a ...

from the

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, doing business as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, commonly known as SFWA ( or ) is a Non-profit organization, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization of professional science fiction an ...

, 2013 * Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel, 2016. The novel was also nominated for the following awards: * Finalist for the

Compton Crook Award The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best English language first novel of the year in the field of science fiction, fantasy, or horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society at their annual science fiction convention, Balti ...

for best first science fiction/fantasy/horror novel from the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. * Named to the James Tiptree Jr. Award Honor List, for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. * Shortlisted for the

Philip K. Dick Award The Philip K. Dick Award is an American science fiction award given annually at Norwescon and sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and (since 2005) the Philip K. Dick Trust. Named after science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, ...

for distinguished original science fiction paperback.

Television adaptation

The novel was optioned for television in October 2014 by the production company Fabrik and

Fox Television Studios The second incarnation of Touchstone Television (formerly known as Fox 21 Television Studios) was an American television production company that is a subsidiary of Disney Media Networks' Walt Disney Television owned by The Walt Disney Company. I ...

. Leckie wrote that the producers responded positively to her concerns about how the ungendered, dark-skinned Radchaai characters could be presented in a visual medium.

References

Relevant literature

*de Vogel, M. E. "Serious Shenanigans The New Space Opera and Social Commentary: An Analysis of Iain M. Banks's Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata and Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch Trilogy." Utrecht University: Master's thesis, 2018. *Gibson, Rebecca. In Gibson, Rebecca. “Blood Stays Inside Your Arteries, Dlique”: Aliens, Cyborgs, Death, and Tea Ceremonies in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch Trilogy. ''Global Perspectives on the Liminality of the Supernatural'', Edited by Rebecca Gibson And James M. Vanderveen. Rowman and Littlefield. *Töyrylä, Roosa. "“I Might As Well Be Human. But I’m Not.”: Focalization and Narration in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch Trilogy." (2020). *Wright, Wendy L. 2022. Ann Leckie's Ancillary Trilogy and the revolutionary potential of care. In ''ContactZone : Rivista dell'Associazione Italiana per lo Studio della fantascienza e del Fantastico,'' ed. by Paolo Loffredo. 1,57-69.

External links

''Ancillary Justice'' on Ann Leckie's website
{{Authority control American science fiction novels Space opera novels 2013 American novels 2013 science fiction novels Novels about artificial intelligence Hugo Award for Best Novel-winning works Nebula Award for Best Novel-winning works Debut science fiction novels Literature by women Novels set on fictional planets 2013 debut novels Novels by Ann Leckie First-person narrative novels Orbit Books books