“The Affinities” by Robert Charles Wilson – Positive Segregation

Ever since the human being has noticed that individuals differ from one another, we've been striving to classify, label and identify ourselves as part of groups based on certain traits.

It feels like with the advent of social media the sudden urge has appeared in people to sort themselves based on finer and finer criteria.

For instance, many see the various makings of their identity – such as one's career, the school they attended, food preferences, weight, hair color...etc...etc... – as being good criteria based on which they can classify themselves. A while ago, we mostly made due with skin color.

Taking this need of identification and classification to the next step is Robert Charles Wilson in his novel, The Affinities. It takes place in a very near future where people are classified into one of twenty-four affinities (family-like groups), based on various traits such as genetics, brain-mapping, as well as cognitive and behavioral cues.

As our young protagonist Adam first discovers it, being assigned to an affinity is akin to a utopia: one is surrounded by the people they can best work with in all areas of life, whether they be spiritual, financial, interpersonal, romantic or creative.

Needless to say though, no idyllic life lasts forever, and as time goes by the affinities seem to be chipping away at the government's power, eventually being pitted in a war against each other.

To begin with, storywise The Affinities has an overall-engaging plotline, one that stutters here and there, sometimes fails to bring the excitement, but remains solid on the whole. There are certain moments and descriptions we could have easily done without, as some of the characters came across as perhaps being a bit dull, resigned and depressive in their ways... maybe it's the author's mindset spilling over into his work.

The love story feels a bit too familiar and though Adam's dysfunctional family does add an emotional element it sometimes feels like a bit of a drag to be reading about them when there are far bigger things in play.

Going beyond the plot itself, I believe that The Affinities is superior in terms of being a meditation on human nature and our seemingly-undefeatable drive to bring a divide between us, to be surrounded by those who are like us and push away all who are different.

How we long for the entire world to be like we are, and how given the chance, we may very well throw logic and reasoning out the window, if only it means the end of difference between creatures.

There is most certainly a rather heavy tone of resignation to the whole thing, for the author seems to have lost faith in mankind as a race, predicting nothing but an eventual downfall in its future.

All things said and done, The Affinities is a good science-fiction novel, one that is an interesting exercise through about the human nature and an entertaining foray into a world that may very well be ours one day.

If you enjoy slower science-fiction novels that meditate on the bigger picture, I'd recommend you check this one out.

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Robert Charles Wilson Personal site Robert Charles Wilson is an American-Canadian author who decided he'd spend his career focusing on science-fiction. He already won the Hugo Award for his novel Spin and The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for The Chronoliths, just to name a couple of them.