In her first novel, Portia Elan delivers something few other writers seem able to do. They’ve written an anti-dystopian novel. It’s a clever, thoughtful story of a journey by several ordinary people. People who are trying to do ordinary things against the seemingly extraordinary challenges of their society. In doing so, Portia Elan reminds us what is really important.
Homebound by Portia Elan is an excellent read and an inspiring tonic to dystopia.
‘Yesiko looked across the deck, out over the water. The ocean was the freest place she knew, and yet the robot beside her remained trapped and by what she did not know’.
The story hinges around a family of youngsters, an elderly couple and a robot. The characters are fated to meet and their lives become entwined around a common need for each other and their metal friend.
The robot dubbed Chaya, is an Aye, a type of machine developed to do people’s work. But they have since become obsolete. However, Chaya was gifted a particularly advanced articifial intelligence capable of introspection and feeling. It’s on a mission. But when its own reality begins to crumble, it finds purpose slipping away.
In what some might consider an ode to Marvin, the paranoid android in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Chaya’s mind becomes increasingly fragile. Meanwhile, each human character is discovering new purpose.
Chaya’s dilemma shines a light on what it really means to be human in a world where humans use computers to control nature.
‘That record of electrical impulses is each person’s individual reality. Maybe big parts of it overlap with other people’s realities, but some of it doesn’t. Some of it is just mine, or yours. So, there are as many realities as there are people, and each one is different’.
The characters are on a sailing ship named the Babylon. They survive by mending ropes and winches, while maintaining a smattering of futuristic life-support technology. After the characters are thrown together they become challenged in new ways, as they resolve to search for a spaceship that promises to save humanity. But in doing so, they find something altogether more profound.
Homebound by Portia Elan cuts to the heart of our relationship with nature, community, our own minds and the panacea of artificial intelligence. While other authors write about the dangers of AI, Elan’s story points to its futility. How the advancement of ideas, separate from our humanity and community, can lead to hopelessness. Hope comes from being and purpose. Without purpose, our programming fails us.
Elan’s writing, instead, is deeply understanding of systems thinking and our ultimate connection to nature and each other.
‘ … the science right now is pointing in the expensive but unglamorous direction of systems over specificity. How are plants, fungi, bacteria, insects and animals adapting to change’.
It brings to life an adventure without hope or hopelessness. The idea that life was always, and will always be, what we imagine it to be.
Homebound is out in paperback on 12 May 2026.
