Category: Book Reviews

I was recently gifted what many consider a SciFi classic. I had heard of it in passing several times but hadn’t gone out of my way to find it. What a mistake that was; The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic for a reason.

The basic premise is an envoy from the joint worlds comes to a planet called Winter as a representative to invite the occupants of the planet to join the 88 other worlds that are considered of social and technological advancement sufficient to warrant a place with the rest of the worlds. Two things make this planet peculiar among the rest: the climate and the nature of the occupant’s sexuality.

The planet is named aptly. The temperature rarely rises above 40C and the only habitable zone falls between 20 degrees above and below the equator. The rest of the planet is essentially matching glaciers and uninhabitable.

The envoy often refers to the race inhabiting Winter as unisexual and the races occupying the rest of the planets as bisexual. It might be more accurate to label Winter’s populace hermaphroditic. Any person on Winter can be either the father or the mother of a child. Each person has a monthly cycle of estrus where hormones begin to run wild and there are physical changes to secondary sex characteristics such as swelling of the breasts or increase in genital size and changes in shape. Two people who are beginning their cycle at the same time engage in a hormonal struggle. The winner becomes male and the loser becomes female independent of past iterations. This means that one person can sire one child and bear another later in life. It is a fascinating concept and the central one for which LeGuin is praised. Not only is it a novel approach to sexuality but she explores the social ramifications of unisexuality as well. She proposes, through the mouth of her protagonist, that war has never become a tool in the arsenal of these people because the battle of the sexes never occurred. Since there is no biological basis for ‘us vs them’, the mindset required for widespread warfare never developed. There are of course fight and battles, but no large-scale war.

Complicating the question is of course the climate which of course would dissuade any army from trying to wage a campaign, as many have discovered in the wilds of Russia. The climate also dictates a small populace which may be yet another factor in the lack of war. These complications further prod the reader into an examination of our own mindset. Do we refrain from fighting simply because we don’t have the attitude required or is it a simpler motivation of self-preservation and preservation of the species? On the other hand, the lack of inhabitable land should have sparked even more warfare than expected, right? And yet perhaps it’s that the lack of an ‘expendable’ sex that causes this unusual species an aversion to mass death.

The complexity of the issues raised by the setting provides a magnificent background for a touching story of friendship, bravery, camaraderie, and honor. Political machinations put our envoy into several difficult situations. His commitment to his goal is tested as is his faith in the few friends he has made since he arrived, alone, on this planet where he can never be really comfortable. He can never get warm enough, nor is he able to warm to the only person on the planet who believes him and wishes for his success. I kept expecting love and lust to blossom in this unusual partnership but what comes of the grueling adventure these two undergo is far more real and meaningful.

I would recommend this book to readers from high school and up. In stark contrast to such popular love stories as Twilight and its ilk, The Left Hand of Darkness presents the kind of love that is steadfast, that is earned, and that is respectful. The story itself is interesting enough to hold the attention of even young readers and encompasses concepts such as loneliness, frustration, maturity, self control, and what makes good communication. It is also complex enough to intrigue more mature readers who would like to discover interesting concepts and think interesting thoughts. I heartily recommend this book and am looking forward to reading more of her works.

Countdown City is the second of three novels by Ben Winters. The Last Policeman is the first and you can find it reviewed here.

The world is falling into chaos. Former detective Hank Palace accepts a request from an old friend to find her husband. In a world full of suicides, murders, drugs, stockpiling, scammers, conspiracy theorists, and ‘bucket listers’ this is no easy task. Armed with only his dog, his police issued pistol, and a hunch he does the best he can to connect the dots and find the missing man. What use is it if the world is ending in three months? No use, but Officer Palace has always been a detective and this is how he chooses to live his last few months: with integrity and the best way he can.

While the novel is on its face a mystery, the setting is what makes it remarkable. Through the eyes of the kind of person who doesn’t leave his post, Winters explores just how quickly and in what ways our world would destroy itself given the chance. Not physically with the impending meteor but psychologically as people face their end. Death is a certainty in our lives, of course, but we can almost always imagine we have more time than we really do. The entire world is diagnosed terminal and instead of a few cancer patients running off to enjoy their last months it’s the entire world. People delude themselves into thinking there is a chance in the world after the asteroid hits, when a thick layer of ash fills the atmosphere and induces an ice age. It’s the same hope we all have: that there might be more time than we thought, our lives might go on, and happily so, eventually. The result of this hope is fierce competition for resources. The tiny town in the middle of nowhere devolves first into a tense community that is slowly hemorrhaging members and resources then into a faceless mob, tearing through and murdering everyone they can find.

Winters watches this devolution through the eyes of Officer Palace and projects an outcome for humankind that is highly unsavory. That is what fascinates me about this series. The characters are all well written and the plot moves enough to keep it interesting, but the real truth is the fall of man.

The third book hasn’t been completed yet and I’m curious to watch the final two months before the meteor hits. It feels like there isn’t any further down for humanity to go so I’m interested in the author’s projections. So far I recommend them both. Light reading, entertaining, and thought provoking but only if you let it, it won’t pressure you into intellectuality.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is one of the great novels everyone is supposed to read. I read it. I also read lots of other novels you’re supposed to read. It did not stand out in whole, but in part.

The story is fairly well known and if you don’t know it and don’t like reading, you can watch Apocalypse Now and read the Cliff notes. They will not convey the same impression. I know because I did that. Sort of. The movie isn’t on netflix so I didn’t get to actually watch the film, but I did read the Cliff notes and a series of study guides. You see this was my very first book club book and I wanted to be prepared, especially since it was so… old. And slow. I will first give a short synopsis, then critique the writing itself, then move on to the story.

Marlow is an old man keeping late watch with his crewmembers. There is no wind and so they are stuck anchored at a rivermouth, somewhere safe and close to home. He begins to tell the story of his first command, on the Congo River during the period of Dutch colonialism. As a young man he yearned to explore the blank spaces on the maps and had alwasy been drawn particularly to the Congo River. He pulls a few strings and a friendly (but mostly well-connected) aunt lands him a captaincy on a steam ship destined for a station deep into the Congo. On the way to the mouth of the Congo Marlow begins to see signs of abuse; the ‘pilgrims’ who are supposed to be civilizing the natives are in fact killing and enslaving them, though under the names of ‘enemy’, ‘prisoner’, ‘rebel’, and ‘savage’. Once at the outpost where he is to assume command of the ship, he discovers it has since been sunk and must be repaired before he embarks. The time it takes to rehabilitate the ship gives Marlow a chance to get to know, then develop a thorough distaste for all the people working at this outpost. He finds that his mission is to go upriver and retreive an agent named Kurtz. Based on what the other agents have to say, Marlow decides he respects this rogue agent more than the self-serving men he’s so far met and develops an intense desire to hear him. Marlow and several of the other agents finally make it up the river only to discover that Kurtz, so far thought to be a man of noble intentions, has gone mad and set himself up as a god among the natives. They survive an attack and Marlow rescuse/kidnaps Kurtz in the middle of the night. Kurtz was extremely ill when they captured him and only lasts a few days more on the ship with Marlow and the other agents. His last words, made famous by the film Apocalypse Now, are ‘the horror! The horror!” Marlow finds himself thoroughly disgusted with the whole affair and decides to return home and take time for himself. He disburses Kurtz’s remaining personal effects to pseudo-intellectuals and Dutch Company agents (Kurtz had written what came to be a very famous treatise on the ‘savages’) and finally to his fiance he left behind. He visits her to provide closure, though for whom we can only guess. He tells her that Kurtz’s last words were her name as he can’t imagine telling a woman the truth, she’s too fragile. We are left at the end of a great story. There is action, adventure, unrequited love, insanity, moral ambiguity, and a story arc that cuts through an incredible backdrop of jungle scenery. Unfortunately, much of the potential in the story is stripped away by the too-obvious moralizing and explanations.

The book is remarkable for many reasons. It brings to light atrocities that up until then had been swept under the rug. At the time of publication, slavery had been abolished in Europe for some time but in the Belgian Congo and many other colonial territories, slavery still existed in a very real way, clothed in different names but the same beast within. It is also remarkable in that Joseph Conrad was not a native English speaker. His Polish heritage he eschewed for British citizenship and he adopted the language and culture. Rarely do we find a classic that was not written in the author’s native tongue. The novella is remarkable in that it was shocking, gritty, in much the way the movie fashioned in its image is shocking, gritty, and dark. However, the novel has not matured well.

The title Heart of Darkness is repeated verbatim some ten time in a hundred and twenty pages. That is only the most obvious of the problems and a symptom of the major flaw in this novel. The themes of light and dark might be interesting were they not so overemphasized. Even the light skin of the agents and the dark skin of the natives is used as a metaphor for culture and savagery. It is dark when Marlow ‘rescues’ Kurtz. The jungle is dark and dim any time Conrad wants to make the reader feel apprehension and is light when he wants us to be relaxed and delve into the supporting characters. The use of scenery to induce feelings is not bad, but the way Conrad essentially tells the reader how to feel based on the lighting conditions feels forced, as if we are reading with blinders, not allowed to see anything that might distract us. The most painful use of the light/dark theme is the final scene, when Kurtz’s fiance is dressed all in black, the room is dark, the only light is from the woman’s forehead. Conrad goes to great lengths to make a big deal out of this noble creature, tainted by Kurtz’s darkness but having that one vestige of light left. It just seems so forced.

The most obvious theme and the one most mentioned when discussing the book is the nature of civilization. Kurtz is painted as a man who was once great. He had hopes to convert and civilize the savages. He was one of the few who had a true vision and the oratory power to see it realized. His intensity of being leads directly to his corruption. All we see of his fall are the last few days and a few clues in a treatise he leaves behind. The essay is on how to civilize the savage and it suggests early on that white people should pose as gods in order to win them over and control them so we can teach them and bring them to the light (there it is again *sigh*). The work is brilliantly written right up to the end where a note in the margin reads “Kill the savages” denoting a severe mental break between the civilized agent of the Dutch Colonies and the crazed maniac who engages in unspeakable rites and sets himself up as some sort of divine agent. We are supposed to ask ourselves whether it is the chains of civilization that hold us together or the pull of savagery that draws us into madness. While the question may be posed, it seems obvious by Marlow’s actions that any relatively normal human will be repulsed by the savagery and comforted by civilization which pretty much ends that discussion before it can begin.

I dislike it when my emotions are manipulated so obviously. If I want to feel sad I’ll go listen to some soldier-themed country music. If I want to be angry I’ll browse /r/theredpill. If I want to feel smart I’ll read The New Yorker. I read this book because it is considered a classic. It’s supposed to provoke great discussions but I feel like the morals and lessons are so obvious it would take some creativity to draw good discussion from it. It’s supposed to shed light on incredible atrocities but I am with Chinua Achebe when he says that Conrad’s novels contribute more to racial stereotypes than to an understanding or remedying of the atrocities he mentions. It’s supposed to beg some questions about the nature of humanity and civilization but I feel force fed some moral truth, that civilization is important and fanaticism, given a moment of freedom, will return to madness and bestiality. I still want to see Apocalypse Now. The light and dark imagery so obvious in the book might take some actual noticing since it’s only background to a scene in a film. The relevance of the subject matter is pulled into the twentieth century by setting it in Vietnam instead of the Belgian Congo. This is one rare case in which the movie translation, because it is forced by its very nature to trim excess weight, might be better than the book. I’ll let you know.

 

Politics is an interesting topic, oft shunned but still fascinating. We tear apart the lives of those who put themselves up to bat and in turn they cater to the wealthy elite who can afford to purchase their loyalties. We are skeptical of their honesty, motivations, personal lives, commitment… everything. House of Cards is a show that does no favors to the political atmosphere. It follows the machinations of Congressman Francis Underwood as he gets revenge and jockeys for influence with other politicians and businessmen. His quest for power leaves dozens in his wake, anyone who chooses to oppose him ends up manipulated into a corner where they are either forced into the fold or picked off and destroyed.

The show is all about relationships. It has been said that only by giving power can you get it and that is perfectly clear in this drama. The primary relationship in the story is between Congressman Underwood and his wife. The two make the ultimate power couple: ruthless, goal oriented, and fully in sync with each other. They call in favors on each others’ behalf and are complicit in each others’  schemes. Their relationship is both loving and working. We see moments of love and devotion to each other and we also see flares of anger and moments or infidelity. Everything is for the good of the couple as a pair, not for one above the other. Friction arises not when they have affairs or when they expect favors from eacho ther but when one acts for the good of one over the other. I find that fascinating. They are the perfect couple, outwardly. Faithful, loving, supportive, and sweet southern hosts, she plays the trophy wife to a T while being just as manipulative in running her charity as he is in Washington fighting for more and more power. He calls in favors on behalf of her charity and plays the doting husband and southern gentleman as he is expected. Both keep up pretenses so thoroughly that they rarely break down, even at home. Mutual understanding of the working nature of their relationship allows for moments of genuine love and appreciation. It’s difficult for me to fathom, much less analyze their relationship as I’m incapable of that kind of duplicitousness, manipulation, and drive. Something motivates these two, some sort of thirst for power and influence, that is beyond the thoughts of someone such as I who is content to build a little nest and spend time sharing it with no strings or second thoughts.

There are few other consistent relationships in the narrative, a testament to the shifting alliances between politicians. Each relationship is worth only what it can contribute to the Congressman’s power base and as each person’s offering change, the relationships become worth more or less all the time. It’s difficult to figure out exactly what the plans are and what the Congressman’s intentions are because one moment he’s pressuring someone to lose a battle and the next moment he’s fighting for the same person to win a different fight. He builds and destroys people based on whether they are helping him or getting in his way. It’s like watching a boxing match or a controlled burn. Everything is orchestrated for maximum destruction, but only where necessary. Other things are protected as long as they are useful. It’s horrifying and fascinating at the same time.

Congressman Underwood is scripted to break the fourth wall judiciously and to great effect. His asides let us in on some of his motivations, strategies, and Machiavellian words of wisdom. It’s a fun way for the audience to join him in his plans and uncertainties, as well as his many moments of gloating. I have to admire him for his ambition, but his methods are far beyond questionable. I will watch this show to the end, just to find out what happens and how they get there. Intrigue? Excitement? Murder? A web of lies and machinations? count me in!

Warning as to nudity and swearing and some crude attitudes, especially towards sex workers, but it is plot critical. I like it. If you have time it’s worth checking out.

I recently posted on TRB a short blurb about the sexuality in the novels of Robert A. Heinlein. I’ve read several of his books of late and I find a great deal of sexual permissiveness in his fictional societies. I’ve said before that science fiction is less about one or two people and more about humanity. However, this particular novel is very much a story about just one person.

The novel ‘Friday’ is written as an autobiography of an artificial person living on a planet earth far in the future. An artificial person is one who has been designed from the ground up, then grown in a lab and raised in a group home. She is genetically human and has no (well, not many) post-production add-ons. However, due to the careful selection of her genetic material she is the strongest, fastest, most clever a human can possibly be. She was selected at a young age by ‘Boss’ a paternal figure who runs an organization of spies, assasins, couriers, doctors, information analysts, and more. He is a great player in the world and he has her trained to be a combat courier, someone who can get whatever, wherever, with a minimum damage to herself and none to her cargo. Her highly specialized training and temperment are evident in the calm way she deals with any number of events. Someone is following her? She kills him, hides the body thoroughly and quickly, and gets out of there. She talks about how she makes crazy round trips to shake anyone who might be following her. She outlines the lines of thought she goes through during torture and interrogation. It’s very matter-of-fact in almost every way.

The memoir follows Friday as she searches for a sense of belonging. Artificial persons are officially segregated and considered soulless and unnatural. It’s a fairly heavy handed analogy for racism, the difference lying in that artificial persons are indistinguishable from anyone else except by their super human abilities. As long as they keep those abilities under wraps they remain incognito. It’s difficult to give a synopsis of the book because there are several sequential story arcs that kind of jump around. Halfway through the book her organization is disbanded so even the intrigues she’s been tasked to discover fizzle out in the immediate story. It kind of feels like how I would write the story of my life: my personal story with world like 9-11 and the Ukranina protests as a backdrop. There isn’t some grand overarcing theme, every few years there is a new theme and in the case of this book about every three or four days there’s a new adventure. As simply an adventure story it is delightful but I will probably wait until my children are in their late teens before recommending it. I’ll get to why a little later.

Several obvious themes jump from the pages in a similar way to the last two Heinlein novels I read. He seems to be lacking a little finesse as far as morality lessons are concerned. Racism and rejection are constant and glaring themes. Friday lives with the constant knowledge that people who initially treat her well would refuse to consider her a real person if they knew that “[her] father was a knife, [her] mother was a test tube.” At one point she tries to buy her way into love and belonging by joining an S group, a group marriage that is also a corporation in which each family member buys shares. When she finally reveals her origins she is greeted with disbelief, then loathing, then rejection. We, the readers, know Friday is a great person and we wouldn’t consider her anything other than the protagonist, the character we identify with, one who has a beautiful soul and deserves respect if not regardless of then despite her origins. The short chapter in her life is a not very clever way to push the unsavory nature of racism.

Of course the racism leads us to our other theme of rejection. Friday, as an unacceptable member of society, must now drown her sorrows in sex and booze, using it as a way to seek love and acceptance. She winds up in bed with a few delightful people who turn out to be supportive and helpful, loving, accepting, and recurring characters in her search for a home. It’s so patently unrealistic that the lesson doesn’t really work. Friday’s emotions are written so casually that they come across as inhumanly shallow. We can identify with rejection, lust, hatred, fear, anger, and passion but Friday expresses these emotions almost robotically. It would be unnerving if I didn’t know exactly how that is. More on that later. Of course in the last two pages she is rescued, loved, and accepted. She bravely (except not really bravely because she wasn’t ever afraid of anything) overcomes the prejudices of a planet by leaving the planet behind and starting over mostly new. Forgive me if I sound a little jaded, but it did feel like he was feeding his audience a little too obviously, and perhaps could have had a little more character development in his main character.

That being said I loved the book. I could barely bring myself to put it down. I loved the humorous way Friday describes the cultures she finds herself in, enjoyed the easy cameraderie of the supporting characters, and found the world overall creative, fun, interesting, and a bit satirical when the political climate was relevant. Heinlein broke the world into smaller nations (the US is now California, Texas, the Midwest, the Southeast, and part of Washington is now part of the part of Canada that became British Canada) and gave each nation a political identity that takes their current ideologies to their illogical extremes. California is described as painfully democratic and their high cheif is a Native American in full tribal gear. The midwest is ruled in part if not completely by corporations. New Zealand is exactly as far from everything socially and geographically as it is now. We don’t even really hear about Europe, now that I think of it. We have colonized the habitable planets several billion light years out and even they have social aspects that seem like they may be poking fun at certain populations.

The social aspect I like the most and the personal attribute of our protagonist I identify with are the two reasons I would be careful about sharing or recommending to young adults. I love the sexual attitudes of almost the entire world and definitely of the characters portrayed as kind, accepting, loyal, and just generally good. Their emotionally welcoming personalities lend themselves well to open sexual relationships, not bound by guilt or fear or poor health. The only character portrayed as cold or unsexual is the mother-wife who ultimately rejects Friday from her ransomed sense of home. Lack of sexual openness is found in characters with low morals, little intelligence, and poor attitudes. At every turn Heinlein secures a place for open sexuality along side the satisfaction of the primary conflict: belonging. I think this is inapropriate for young people with a developing sense of self because, while I agree that sex and being sexually open can help form and strengthen bonds, I think it is not a good thing to base relationships, much less a sense of self-worth on. In today’s slut-shaming culture, it is too easy to see a strong woman, kicking ass and making love, and emulate her as a reaction without realizing the dangers of building self-worth around sexuality and sexual desirability. I did this for a while. It took several years and a few solid mistakes for me to realize that we and our sexuality exists in a much larger context than we think. I’m getting more ideas for posts all the time! Anyway, I think that sex and relationships are far more nuanced than Heinlein presents in any of the three novels I’ve read and this book should either wait or be dealt with carefully. I do, however, think it’s a very good way to introduce the ideas of a plural sexuality to friends and partners who might otherwise be averse. It presents happy, healthy, low-stress sexual encounters as healing and wholesome, almost heavy-handedly, and could open up lines of communication.

Friday was raised without a very thorough emotional atmosphere and it shows. This is the other reson I feel this book is inappropriate for young people. We are social creatures and base far too many of our decisions on how we feel. There’s nothing wrong with following your heart, as long as your head is prepared. I feel as though I am capable of that: making impulsive decisions while realizing and accepting the consequences. I went through a time in high school where I felt apathetic. Not agressively anti-family/school/whatever but actually inemotional (I don’t even know if that was a word but it is now). It wasn’t the typical teenage “ugh, I’m so apathetic, look at me being cool and not caring” it was simply a contentedness without satisfaction or disstisfaction. I wasn’t happily content, nor was I unhappily content, I was simply…. content. My emotions were shallow and breif and because of that I identify with Friday. However, I feel my experience is atypical and I think teaching young people that a consistently low emotional state is ‘cool’ isn’t probably the best lesson.

Overall Friday is recommended as are the other Heinlein novels I’ve read. I found it engaging, fast paced, sweet at times and at others brutal, imaginative, a pure delight to read. While less nuanced than it could have been there are strong themes which I feel my audience in particular will identify with. It’s also quick and easy. Enjoy!

Oh. My. God. I finished the novel ‘Wool’ only moments ago and my heart is still pounding. It is the best book I have read in some years, combining a rich post apocalyptic world with well rounded characters and riveting plot.

The foreshadowing is brilliant, giving the reader just enough clues to figure out the mysteries but hiding things well enough that there isn’t much lead time between the ‘aha’ moment and the author’s reveal. The title is an allusion to the phrase “pulling the wool over their eyes” which was fairly obvious early on but the imagery echoes in little ways a few more times before we’re sure the central theme is deceit.

I know I go on and on about science fiction but there is something captivating about exploring a new world. In the world of ‘Wool’ life is underground, in a silo over a hundred and fifty levels deep with modern technology such as computers and radios common place but things we think of as common such as water and paper in short supply. Within the limited environment of the silo, everything is recycled, including people. It’s no soylent green solution, but the garden is the graveyard, reusing the nutrients in the human body to feed those who are left. Reproduction is strictly limited with legitimate couples allowed a chance at children by lottery and all others implanted with birth control in the cradle. Labor is divided and modeled after an apprentice style of teaching for trades such as gardening, mechanical, or IT. Yes, this post apocalyptic world has an information technologies department to run the screens that show the outside world. The View.

The View takes up the top level of the silo. There are cameras above ground that feed into a huge display in the cafeteria that is ever present. It is so critical to the maintenance of the social atmosphere that on occasion someone will be sent to clean the cameras exposed to the dirt and grime of the toxic atmosphere. The cleaners are only sent if they commit a crime worthy of the death sentence, or if they express a wish to go outside. Though many years of hard work have gone into improving the protective suits they wear, none make it farther than the next hill. Tragic but necessary, it is a way for people to blow off steam, a holiday when you can come see the crisp picture through clean cameras, and a reminder to keep your head down and not even think about outside.

Our heroine Juliette is brought from the down deeps, the floors past floor one hundred, where the mechanics live and work keeping the drills pumping up oil for the generators, making electricity to grow food and live and work. She is brought up top to fill the vacancy left by the sherriff, the character from the opening scene, the man last sent out to clean. During her few short days in office she discovers something about the suits given to the cleaners: they are fake. They are built with materials designed to fail in order that the men and women don’t live long enough to discover a bigger world. The visor is a screen, programmed to show the cleaners a vision of paradise, a clean world, a vision to induce their cooperation, to ensure they clean the servers like they are supposed to and never leave or try to come back. She knows the secret and so she is sent outside to clean and to die before she can infect others with her knowledge.

She does neither. One other person who can help her knows the secret and has her suit built with materials designed to work, designed to succeed and give her time, more time than anyone has had before. Instead of behaving as she’s ‘supposed to’ she walks past the hills and discovers the bigger secret: they aren’t alone. She discovers another silo and an open door. After this discovery the novel moves quickly. We’ve solved the mystery, now it’s time to save the world, or at least her world. The last few chapters went so fast I almost flew through the pages. There is love and sorrow and action and anger and resolution and then another problem to solve. My heart was racing. My eyes kept skipping ahead to find out what happens next, unable to wait as long as it takes to finish the page.

Howey’s world is beautifully rich. Every page reveals a new social norm that is alien, but makes perfect sense in a world like that. The next page is a twist to the plot that you almost saw coming. We see a moment of weakness and then of strength that carves each character from pure literary marble, so captivating as to make Rodin envious. The last time I read a book that caused such a physiological response was years ago and is a book I have treasured since childhood. This novel is great. I reccomend it far more highly than the last few. You will at least admire it, if not simply love it.

Greater than the story, richer than the world, more personal than the characters is the what if factor. The greatest thing about science fiction is that the author is writing about us, but not us. He writes about humanity driven to the breaking point and what happens when we reach it? The war that destroyed the earth and made it uninhabitable is not outside the realms of possibility but what is truly interesting is how the author mused we as a people might prepare for that and how we might deal with the aftermath. In this case it is with lies and deceit, a strict purge of anything that might bring out the truth, a sophisticated method for murder in the interest of preservation. The author’s projection of our capacity for ruthlessness in the case of the war and of the daily deceit of an entire small world is frighteningly possible. And that is the beauty of SciFi 🙂

I finished another post apocalyptic science fiction novel recently called “The Last Policeman” and really enjoyed it. The last book I finished was, while not exactly disappointing, not as engaging as it could have been. TLP is a human interest story if ever there was one. The premise is suggested in the title: there is an impending doom, an asteroid heading towards Earth. Several Km across, it will if not destroy at least severely limit all life on earth, specially human life and definitely life as we know it. The exact date the asteroid will impact is already known, though the place is not revealed until later in the novel, but the impending doom is more of a backdrop than a plot point. This story is a mystery, a murder staged as a suicide at a time when suicide is a popular choice across the board. The character is a detective, recently promoted due to… losses in the force. He is young, but has good instincts and has not left his post, not for anything. The atmosphere is a combination of pre-apocalyptic and charmingly mundane.

The plot, the mystery, is not particularly original. The culprit is somewhat easy to figure out and the steps the detective takes are about par for the course for a mystery. What truly sets this novel apart is the human aspect. What happens when you have six months left? What if everyone on the whole earth has only six months left? What happens when everyone in the world decides to pursue their ‘bucket list’ and leave their work and family behind? They are called ‘bucket listers’ in the novel and are the reason for many vacancies in the ranks of business and industry. Those who stay behind do so because they already are where they want to spend the rest of their lives, they are too scared to run off, or they don’t have the resources to do so. Emergency laws are enacted authorizing the death penalty for drug related crimes while at the same time illegal drug use skyrockets. Marijuana is decriminalized in the hopes that harder drugs will be less desirable. Our hero has to deal with mundane results of extraordinary circumstances, for example being unable to access criminal records from Colorado because there has been some sort of rioting that destroyed critical infrastructure. The local McDonalds is no longer affiliated with the franchise because it collapsed. The government tries to reign in inflation with price controls but the detective casually leaves a thousand dollar tip. It’s the day-to-day life of a man who feels like doing the right thing, set in between the lives of people facing the end of their world. The juxtaposition of our protagonist’s almost disregard for the impending disaster and the rest of the world’s insanity is both bizarre and thought provoking. It’s not only a question of what would you do, but the certainty that life can go on despite whatever else threatens it.

The plot does have some interesting and unexpected twists, and more deaths than I had anticipated. The novel covers the span of a week or so meaning the reader doesn’t get to see the asteroid hit, we don’t see the end of the world, we just see a bit of it. As usual with science fiction it’s not the plot as much as the universe that most interests me. The more mundane the activities of our hero the more humanized the impending doom and people’s reaction to it. I feel as though I’m not getting the feeling across very well. It would be like calmly filing paperwork on the top floor of the first tower on 9/11: nothing on the floor will ever be seen by another human being. It doesn’t matter if the paperwork gets filed, but you do it because it’s what you do, and it makes you feel better. It’s almost comical the level of calm detachment the detective has about the end of the world and it’s absolutely the most interesting part of the book.

It’s an easy read, and not very long as scifi novels go. I would recommend this novel both for its thought provoking power and for its sheer entertainment value. The writing is clear and engaging, pacing is good, and the little details add a sense of the philosophical. Overall a good read.

With classes nearly finished I found time to read a science fiction novel given to me by one of my delightful gentleman friends. It’s called ‘The Unincorporated Man’ and is written by brothers Dani and Eytan Kollin. As a first novel it is… fabulous. And interesting, and a little confusing. There are similarities to Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ but mostly in structure and basic story arc: it’s essentially a two-part book with the first half exploring how a stranger from the past fits into the world he wakes up in and the second half following his adventures getting the world to fit his personality. There will be spoilers here so if that bothers you, you may want to skip this review until you’ve read the book.

The main character, Justin Cord, is a wealthy older businessman, widower, and cancer patient living in the early twenty first century. He spends his billions on a suspension unit that will freeze him until such time as he can be safely revived. Because he distrusts the world, he has himself hidden in an empty mine, entrusts his faithful assistant to administer his affairs, and has all record of his tomb and efforts to defeat death erased. Three hundred years later he is revived into a society that has developed nanotechnology, eliminated aging, can revive any deaths provided there is minimal brain damage, and has terraformed several planets, the moon, and the asteroid belt. This, of course, is all expected: these are the technological wonders we dream of and would not be surprised to discover were we able to travel centuries into the future. What is unexpected, however, is the social change.

Every child, at birth, is incorporated. They are given seventy five thousand shares of themselves, their parents are given twenty thousand, and the government is given five thousand making a total one hundred percent. In order to fund education and pay for medical costs, a person sells shares of him or  herself to raise money. The shareholders are then able to exercise certain rights over the incorporated person. These include the right to do a psychological evaluation (nanobots essentially rebuild your nervous system should they deem it necessary), the right to audit your assets and, in the case of a person who holds fifty percent or less, dictate which school you attend, job you hold, and where you live. Corporations have their own currency, private companies provide the services that in our era are under the jurisdiction of the government such as public defense, utilities, courtroom proceedings, and most transportation, though roads and a few other things are still the government’s job. It is a utopia in that no one ages, most people don’t die, everyone has access to adequate food and shelter, and people are generally entertained. They’re happy and content and many are essentially slaves.

Into this world comes steely eyed, blue blooded, free and brave Justin Cord who spends the first half of the novel learning why, exactly, he can’t fall in love with Neela, why people are content with corporate ownership of each other, how to interact with his ‘avatar’, why virtual reality is prohibited, how nanotechnology works and how to use it, and the history of the grand collapse of society shortly after he was entombed. It is interesting and entertaining. The reader experiences along with Justin the delights of fast travel, gourmet food, technology that changes anything into anything else, and huge new buildings.

The second half of the novel begins at Mardi Gras. This holiday has become a system-wide week of insanity. It’s the week where anything goes. During this week people get body modifications so thorough that a woman can actually be a succubus, complete with functioning wings and tail, and a man can be a spider with a spinneret and eight long, hairy legs. Justin and Neela finally consummate their passion and Justin finally decides that he wants to start a movement to end incorporation, or at least make it voluntary. What follows is a series of physical and legal battles against the premier corporation and it’s primary underling, Hektor Sambianco, over Justin’s lack of incorporation

Though Justin becomes an instant celebrity, he is also an instant enemy of all who believe incorporation is critical to a functioning society. The major players in the heroic drama come and go. Hektor’s fortunes rise, fall, rise, fall, skyrocket, are nearly assassinated, and then float off into the mist of the sequel, so we must read it to find out how he continues to go after Justin. ‘The Chairman’ is a mysterious figure who often seems to work against Justin but is ultimately an ally. Even the underlings play a dangerous game of deception against each other to throw everyone off balance. In all this chaos, a revolution breaks out, terrorists begin attacking, new foes rise and fall in a dozen pages, our hero nearly changes his mind, then becomes firm in his convictions, then wavers again. For a short time I actually wanted him to give in, to incorporate, and to find out it’s not as bad as he thinks it is. I’ve never rooted for the bad guy before, but one conversation between Hektor and Justin is so compelling that I wouldn’t have been surprised, may even have been pleased at the turnabout, had Justin given up and become part of this strange land.

I’ve always enjoyed watching new universes unfold in the minds of authors. I love seeing the characters they devise, the worlds they share, and their imagining of what humanity might do when confronted with certain circumstances. In that this novel rises admirably. It is a new and interesting concept, this personal incorporation thing, and it makes a certain sense. If I own a share in your stock, I get part of what you make. Ok, what if you fall ill? It’s in my best interest that you get well again as soon as possible. What if you are not content and your productivity suffers? It’s in my best interest that you have some way to feel better, say bringing your family with you to a remote assignment. In theory, incorporation takes the interest we have in ourselves and uses it to make us responsible for each other. In reality, it turns minority shareholders into slaves, subject to the desires of their stockholders. It is this that Justin sees and this that The Chairman has observed over his lifetime.

The concept is thought provoking, the characters are down to earth and the pacing is fast enough that in one night I read nearly half the book, because I had to know what happened next! However, the last few chapters seemed rushed, forced, and a little too neat. The reader is left with a few loose ends, but we are promised a sequel so no worries on that. What does worry me is the sheer number of times the reader is thrown back and forth in ideology once we get near the end of the novel. Justin ‘wavers’ and considers what the opposition has to say. The opponents come out of the woodwork but the read is given too much, too soon. We meet them, know their personality, and then they are removed from the novel all in a chapter or two, it seemed like. Plus there’s this whole side plot of the avatars having gained sentience and influencing humanity with only one of the billions of people figuring out they are self aware. It’s… a bit too full of plot devices. It would have been well served by a bit of streamlining, or by having all those twists and turns actually end with a climax other than the patent “hero gets the girl and leads a revolution which the reader can essentially assume he will win.” Overall recommended but wouldn’t read it twice.

I’m less inclined to read the second novel in the series as I am to read more of the novels given to me a few weeks ago. I’m trying for one review a week but we’ll see. With school nearly finished I should have less guilty time and more actually free time.

I just finished a book called Sweet Tooth, written by Ian McEwan. He wrote the book Atonement also which is a film I absolutely loved so I had high hopes. They were not fulfilled.

The book describes itself as kind of a coming of age, a tale of lies and romance and spying and whatever else they put on the dustjacket. I found it a tale of youthful angst, foolishness, and not even any kind of moral to justify the foolishness and conceit of his main characters. The book opens on a young woman, Serena, just finishing secondary school in Britain during the Cold War. She is somewhat aimless, in a relationship with a man she can’t satisfy but who is content to love hew physically, and wholly self indulgent. She begins a relationship with an older professor and becomes the mistress until after graduation. He finds her a job with MI6, leaves her, and allows her to essentially find her own way. All this is punctuated by long, self indulgent monologues about the suspected motives of other characters that I personally found to increase Serena’s arrogance. It reminds me of a British Twilight: a Mary Jane with little to no personality, inexplicably loved by everyone she meets and who never has a real obstacle to overcome in the entire novel. The second half of the novel follows Serena through a promotion she didn’t earn and a relationship based on dishonesty which culminates in a contrived plot twist that is supposed to make the reader suddenly empathize with her and realize that the whole time her arrogance is justified because she’s been right about everything. It was one of the most difficult books to force myself to finish since Les Meserable and didn’t have the epic story line or the moral outrage to hold the reader’s interest. Overall I found it to be shallow and condescending.

I did find one literary device to be interesting: When Serena is preparing to solicit a young writer to write for the government, she reads his short stories as part of her handling of an undercover agent. We are treated to a summary of his short stories, complete with italicized lines drawn from this supposedly inspired writer. I found the use of passages from the book to be a good way to draw me in and help me develop interest in the short stories which I felt were far more interesting than Sweet Tooth as a whole. I also found her analysis of her relationship with this author/secret government agent interesting when she compared herself to characters in stories he had written. She thinks things like “He did x like the character in his story” and uses the stories as a window into this young man as she develops a deeper love for him.

I compared it to another book I read some time ago called Shop Girl, written by Steve Martin. My first shock at that book was finding out that he is not only an accomplished actor, but a skilled writer and also talented banjo player. Neat guy. Anyway, the reason I compare the books is that they are both about young women in relationships with both older men and then younger men later on. They are both about a young woman’s formative years and they both are from her perspective, written by men. Where Sweet Tooth felt as though it was wishful thinking by an older man wishing he had the love of a young woman and pretending he understood them, Shop Girl felt more like it was written by a father, to other fathers, showing them that a young, independent woman can have relationships with whomever she chooses and, while they may not be perfect or seemly, they can be happy and good and a learning experience.

Shop girl opens in a quiet department store in the glove section with a young bored girl named Mirabelle leaning on the counter, watching people in cosmetics. It’s familiar, mundane, made special only by the presence of this girl and her few customers. Mirabelle and Serena share an aimlessness and interest in an older man followed by an interest in one of the same age.The older lovers, a professor in Serena’s case and a businessman in Mirabelle’s, are purported to be wise, they take care of the young women, genuinely love them, but don’t end the relationships well in either case. The young lovers, a musician for Mirabelle and a writer for Serena, are a bit daft, mildly charming, broke, and redeem themselves in the end. Both young women have some sort of learning experiences, but Serena seems to be simply proven right at every turn while Mirabelle actually does some character building and ends the novella a different person than she started as.

The more I write about it the more I feel that is my problem with Sweet Tooth: everyone is so damn right all the time. The older lover is right to end the relationship the way he did, even though it was emotionally destructive: it’s ok in the end. Serena was right to lie to her agent, even though it was really rough, int he end it was the right thing to do. Her jealous rival was right to drive wedges into her relationship because it all worked out in the end and we’re all right and smug as shit about it. It’s as if McEwan didn’t want to do any actual character development so he just introduced stock characters at the appropriate times. Shop girl is a tenth the length, has three main characters and half a dozen supporting roles, and tells a far fuller, more complex, touching, and real story than Sweet Tooth.

I just finished another novel by Robert Heinlein. I mentioned before that I was reading it and now that I’m finished, I almost feel let down. My past with Science Fiction, and this author particularly, has led me to expect more than I found. Of course this makes me think I’m likely just missing something. Stranger in a Strange Land was far more straight forward and resonated with my religious upbringing and later conversion to atheism. It was simple to see the parallels he drew between modern man and those who crucified Christ two thousand years ago. I agreed with most of the ideas the protagonist put forth since they all were essentially live and love and realize we are all parts of one big cycle. Why fight? Why not enjoy and explore each other and each others’ sensuality? Of course that appealed to me 😉 My satisfaction with this book is one reason I’m so surprised at my dissatisfaction at the next one.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress pleased me with the community Heinlein had created (judging by his books it seems he is in favor of a free love kind of society where everyone takes care of everyone else and big government is bad) but I was disappointed by the shallow development of the primary mover and shaker of the book. In the first few pages the narrator meets ‘Mike’ (short for Mycroft with the obvious allusions attendant) and computer which runs the entire lunar colonies and then some. Mike has developed enough connections to become self aware and over the first third of the book we begin to see a personality emerge as Mike befriends the narrator, expresses opinions, questions things, shows off a little, and just generally behaves like a teenager. It’s charming and incited the reader to invest in the character. However it goes little farther than that. The narrator goes to Earth for the middle third of the book and by the time he comes back, we interact with Mike only a few times until the end of the book. Without spoiling the end, I can only say it didn’t have the impact it should have. The protagonist from Stranger in a Strange Land is far more beloved by at least this reader so we are more invested in his fate. It makes us feel as though we knew him, at least as much as you can know a character in a book, a figment of the author’s imagination. My connection with Mike, and even my connection to the narrator, was thin enough that at the end of the book I felt let down. It was too abrupt, not real enough.

Of course I’m sure this was the author’s intention. Science Fiction is a tricky animal, much like any cerebral literature, in that the author is trying to make you think in the what ifs. Are we unattached to the protagonist because of the writing or because he is a computer? Does the reader feel the ending is abrupt because we are too used to fairy tales as opposed to real life in which there are no epilogues or is it truly the fault of the author? What events sparked the parallels between the primary conflict and the true to life events of the many revolutions here on Earth? Why is the author so explicit in his description of the propaganda and censorship? That especially was hard to swallow. It made him sound either like a conspiracy theorist or a proponent of this sort of thing because his protagonists used propaganda and manipulation liberally for the revolution which the reader is encouraged to support.

All in all I was conflicted about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I felt that the community and the characters were, if not exactly believable, at least understandable and proponents of a lifestyle I personally would enjoy. I felt the story line was interesting but the premise of a computer spontaneously arising was too common in Science Fiction and Heinlein did an only ok job of making it unique. I would recommend Stranger in a Strange Land far more heartily than The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I didn’t exactly mean this to turn into a book review, but I like the idea of doing more of them. I’ll start with some of my favorites and try to keep up with current reads. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my own interludes of fiction and fancy.