''Ancillary Justice'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

novel by the American writer

Ann Leckie Ann Leckie (born March 2, 1966) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel ''Ancillary Justice'', which features 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 pu ...

and the first in her Imperial Radch

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

trilogy, followed by '' Ancillary Sword'' (2014) and ''

Ancillary Mercy ''Ancillary Mercy'' is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ann Leckie, published in October 2015. It is the final novel in Leckie's "Imperial Radch" space opera trilogy, which began with '' Ancillary Justice'' (2013) and was followed b ...

'' (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, also known as machine consciousness, synthetic consciousness, or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws ...

—as she seeks revenge against the ruler of her civilization. ''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 (Worldcon) and chosen by its members. The award is administered by th ...

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 Association (SFWA), a nonprofit association of pr ...

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, 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 Fir ...

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

Provenance Provenance () 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 in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...

'' (2017) and '' Translation State'' (2023), 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, also known as an imagined universe or a constructed universe, is the internally consistent fictional setting used in a narrative or a work of art. This concept is most commonly associated with works of fantasy and scie ...

Setting and synopsis

''Ancillary Justice'' is a

set thousands of years in the future in which the principal power in human space is the expansionist Radch empire. The empire uses spaceships 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 social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

, which Leckie conveys by using " she"

pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( glossed ) 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 con ...

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 interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems. The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 1 ...

, the ''Justice of Toren'', when the sole surviving ancillary, Breq, a fragment of the ''Justice of Toren''s consciousness, 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 then being annexed into the empire. It eventually becomes clear 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 novel's end, Breq associates herself with the more peaceful 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 and entertainment * 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 in medi ...

s of recent space opera as established by Banks,

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

, C. J. Cherryh and others. He concluded that " is is not entry-level SF, and its payoff is correspondingly greater because of that." According to Genevieve Valentine, writing for

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

, the novel is "assured, gripping, and stylish," succeeding both as a tale of an empire and as a character study. ''

Tor.com ''Reactor'', formerly ''Tor.com'', is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The magazine publishes articles, reviews, original short fiction, re-reads and commentary on specul ...

''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'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: * Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year, 2014 * British Science Fiction Association BSFA Award for Best Novel *

Hugo Award for Best Novel The Hugo Award for Best Novel is one of the Hugo Awards given each year by the World Science Fiction Society for science fiction or fantasy stories published in, or translated to, English during the previous calendar year. The novel award is ava ...

from the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), 2014 *

Kitschies The Kitschies were British literary prizes presented annually from 2009 to 2024 for "the year's most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic" published in the United Kingdom. The awa ...

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 Association (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; ...

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 and commonly known as SFWA ( or ) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization of professional science fiction and fantasy writers. Whi ...

, 2013 *

Seiun Award The is a Japanese speculative fiction award given each year for the best science fiction works and achievements during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by , the awards are given at the annual Nihon SF Taikai, Japan Science Fic ...

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 by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) to the year's best English language debut novel in the science fiction, fantasy, or horror genres, as voted by its members. BSFS confers the award at their annua ...

for best first science fiction/fantasy/horror novel from the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. * Named to the

James Tiptree Jr. Award The Otherwise Award, originally known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award, is an American annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. It was initiated in February 1991 by science ...

Honor List, for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. * Shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award 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 and a subsidiary of the Disney Television Studios, a subsidiary of the Disney Media Networks business se ...

. 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. She later wrote that the option had been exercised, but that the project had collapsed in 2024.

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 Locus Award–winning works