|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1841496472
| 9781841496474
| 1841496472
| 3.63
| 648
| 2010
| Jan 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) This book has been getting a lot of play recently from some unusual sources for being put out by a mainstream science-fiction publisher, and the reason becomes obvious once you read it; because although containing some fantastical elements, this is mostly a very astute political thriller that deals with a lot of issues from our own times all the way back to the Nazi era, and even way back into antiquity. The story of a young Scottish female computer programmer originally from "Krassnia," a fictional former Soviet republic that sounds like it's supposed to be located right around where the Victorian Age's Crimean War was fought, the tale is a complicated one involving the ancient half-myth history of the region, a secret about the area that the Russians have been hiding from everyone else since World War Two, a modern "Arab Spring" style uprising that may or may not be taking place there soon, and whether or not the CIA may or may not be helping this revolt along by commissioning the creation of a local-language "World of Warcraft" style MMORPG, that actually exists as a safe gathering place for protestors to make their plans, and which may or may not accidentally actually reveal the location of this giant secret that everyone is trying to get their hands on, because of the videogame's terrain being based on an old out-of-print hippie guidebook to the area's folklore penned by our hero's mother in the countercultural '60s, to cash in on the "Lord of the Rings" craze going on at the time. Whew! It's a lot to take in, but Ken MacLeod does it with a lot of aplomb and humor, making this much more Graham Greene than Ben Bova; and kudos to Lou Anders and Pyr for taking on this hip, ripped-from-the-headlines title to begin with, and expanding their scope beyond the steampunk, urban fantasy, and other traditional fan favorites that they're mostly known for. A hard-to-classify book that will generate a lot of passion from its fans, this is one of the rare genre tales here at CCLaP to get a score in the 9s, and it comes happily recommended to a wide general audience. Out of 10: 9.2 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 18, 2012
|
Oct 03, 2011
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 3.52
| 21
| Aug 15, 2011
| Sep 11, 2011
|
it was amazing
|
FTC DISCLOSURE: I am the publisher of this book. I'm the editor of this book, so I'm of course particularly a fan of it. All the stories are excellent FTC DISCLOSURE: I am the publisher of this book. I'm the editor of this book, so I'm of course particularly a fan of it. All the stories are excellent in my opinion; and I think you'll be surprised by how naturally they all seem to fit, as if the authors had worked beforehand (which they didn't) on making sure all their little details matched. Not for the faint of heart! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 17, 2011
|
Sep 17, 2011
|
ebook
| |||||||||||||||||
| 9780765329462
| 0765329468
| 3.84
| 4,278
| Jan 01, 2011
| Nov 14, 2011
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Regular readers will of course already be familiar with Cherie Priest's remarkable steampunk series known as "The Clockwork Century;" back in 2009 I reviewed the first volume Boneshaker (best described as Victorian zombies meet Doom-style videogame in the bowels of subterranean Seattle), while last year I took on Dreadnought, in which we follow a souped-up locomotive as it winds its way across the Great Plains, deals with a now two-decade-long Civil War, and confronts giant iron military robots. And now we have the third novel in the series, Ganymede, which has yet another impossibly engaging hook to hold together its rambling plot: it's the story of this alt-history's very first submarine, built and lost by the Confederates, rediscovered by a black female brothel owner in New Orleans who secretly works for the Union, salvaged and piloted by a burly zeppelin owner whose usual job is shipping smuggled goods, and with the whole situation complicated by the Texas Republican Army, defiant pirate guerrillas, and shadowy Chinese entrepreneurs. And indeed, as you can see, there's a good reason that a growing number of people are starting to call this perhaps the greatest steampunk series in the history of the genre*; and that's because with each volume, Priest squeezes in several novels' worth of flabbergasting ideas, making each story expansive as hell while still keeping a tight control over the three-act structure. (And please realize, by the way, that it's not just these three novels that make up this series, but also a handful of standalone stories and novellas, plus a comprehensive website.) One of my favorite genre novelists working today, and a fangirl who walks the walk just as well as her readers (her cosplay convention outfits are almost as famous as the books themselves), Ganymede comes with a strong recommendation, and is the exact kind of title for those who only read one steampunk book a year. Out of 10: 9.0, or 10 for steampunk fans *Well, okay, it's hard to beat the steampunk novel that started them all, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine; but still. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 02, 2011
|
Sep 02, 2011
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1936383519
| 9781936383511
| 1936383519
| 3.71
| 52
| May 19, 2011
| May 19, 2011
|
really liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Because I end up reading so much of it (because of the authors in this subgenre having such strong professional networks over at such lit communities as Goodreads.com), I can attest that there are generally two types of so-called "bizarro" fiction that exists, a style equally known by the terms "gonzo" and "strange;" there is the type of odd that's literally like a text cartoon, obtuse and non-narrative and that only appeals to a niche crowd, and then there's the type of odd that gets you a writing job on a Sam Raimi Saturday-afternoon television show, a much more preferable type of odd simply for being more entertaining, which usually succeeds by taking a realistic concept for its core and then hanging a bunch of surreal elements off it. Take for example Patrick Wensick's Black Hole Blues (a writer I've reviewed before), which can be actually fairly well described by the simple phrase "Raising Arizona meets quantum physics," a dual storyline about twin brothers who respectively become a world-famous country musician and a pioneer at Europe's Large Hadron Collider, and how it becomes clear that the pair's pasts are actually complexly entwined after a sudden artificial black hole at the LHC threatens to end all life on the planet. Odd as that may be, it's still pretty easy for most audience members to at least comprehend, a storyline that at least adheres to the normal rules of time and physics; and so that's what lets Wensink add some truly bizarre details to the throwaway moments, such as the delightful chapters narrated not by the grizzled country star but his actual guitar, disgusted at the fat, soft old man the singer has become, and lamenting the days when he got more sex than any of the other guitars that would go out back then on their giant '70s arena tours. That kind of crap is hilarious, without us necessarily losing track of what's going on in our main plotline, which much like Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker" books is the exact kind of bizarro I like best; like all gonzo comedy, it's not for everyone, but definitely is one of the ones you should pick up if you're only going to try one of these types of books this year, a rollicking story that will intensely appeal to all the Monty Python fans and Comic Book Guys of the world. Out of 10: 8.7, or 9.7 for fans of bizarro ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
Jul 22, 2011
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1601830041
| 9781601830043
| 1601830041
| 3.48
| 21
| Jul 01, 2008
| Jan 01, 2008
|
liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I confess -- I so love the guilty pleasure of enjoying a book more than I probably should that I dedicate an entire best-of list to the subject here at the blog at the end of every year; and there's not much better of an example of what I'm talking about than John H. Sibley's Bodyslick, which to be clear is not much better than mediocre in actual quality, but that boasts a high concept I found irresistible, essentially day-after-tomorrow science-fiction meets blaxploitation film, set in a gritty futuristic Chicago and with there being not a single stereotype of "urban fiction" ever invented that Sibley doesn't love. And indeed, to be fair, in relative terms to the other kinds of projects in this vein, Bodyslick actually isn't bad at all, with writing that's essentially on par with, say, the average episode of the cheesy cable thriller Burn Notice, another big guilty pleasure of mine; but even while we can acknowledge something like Burn Notice as a lot of fun, we also must acknowledge that it's simply not that good from a technical aspect, something that's important to note with Bodyslick as well if you want a chance of enjoying it for what it is. A book that probably should've gotten a lower score than it's getting, but that got bumped up a little merely from Sibley's always gleeful embrace of over-the-top melodrama (and yes, I admit, half a point extra just for that outrageous front cover as well, which made me warmly laugh every single time I pulled it out in public this week and caught the looks of all the people around me), this is not only an official product of Vibe magazine's publishing wing but also feels many times like what The Boondocks' Aaron McGruder would come up with if hired to write a parody of Vibe magazine's publishing wing, and it comes specifically recommended to those who enjoy reading with tongue firmly in cheek. Out of 10: 7.8 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
Jul 22, 2011
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 161614369X
| 9781616143695
| 161614369X
| 3.97
| 722
| Jan 01, 2011
| May 24, 2011
|
liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Whenever I read a book like Kristine Kathryn Rusch's City of Ruins, the latest release from our pals at Pyr, I can't help but to think of that endless roster of thirty- and fortysomething nerds who have cranked out livings over the last couple of decades as writers on weekend genre television shows, stuff like "Buffy" and "Farscape" and all those "Stargate" spinoffs; because while these writers are known by name by their most passionate fans, and worshipped as much by them as an NPR nerd might worship Jonathan Franzen, it's hard for me in particular to think of such stories as much more than fodder for teens and stoners on a boring Saturday afternoon, making them certainly a legitimate part of the literary industry but projects that will always and forever have only a limited appeal, and will only ever be fully embraced by those willing to pay for their sci-fi trope delivery with a high tolerance for sometimes mediocre writing. The second title in a situation-based space-opera franchise, this posits a sexy rogue space salvager known simply as Boss and her ragtag crew, who in their quest to track down various pieces of highly developed tech scattered across the universe (remnants of an ancient alien race of whom almost nothing is now known) this time stumble across a far-ranging conspiracy on a planet whose population lives in giant half-open caverns, and where the inner-earth walls seem to almost magically destroy and then reshape themselves on a moment's whim. Competently done but with characters that largely come from Action Thriller Central Casting, and dialogue that will leave a lot of people sighing in frustration, it's the very definition of a novel that only a fanboy could love; and while I wish such authors the best of luck, no matter which genre they work in, such middling titles unfortunately fall beyond my usual purview here at CCLaP, which is why they generally get only middling scores despite being well-loved in certain circles. It should be kept in mind before picking up a copy yourself. Out of 10: 7.4, or 8.4 for fans of weekend sci-fi television series ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 15, 2011
|
Jun 15, 2011
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1582436444
| 9781582436449
| 1582436444
| 3.49
| 404
| May 14, 2012
| Apr 01, 2011
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) It may sound at first to be the height of cheesy cross-genre gimmickry -- a modern-style crime drama set within a James Howard Kunstleresque post-apocalyptic, neo-Luddite America -- but in Ashes of the Earth, mystery veteran Eliot Pattison takes what could've been an extremely eye-rolling experience and actually makes it taut and fascinating, a thriller that I admit I found more engaging than most other crime novels set within much more workaday surroundings. And that's because Pattison chooses to take a sober, toned-down approach to his world-building here, concocting a crime that fits in very naturally with the quasi-Victorian, surrounded-by-ruins milieu of these kinds of novels, making the story much less about radioactive mutants and hidden caches of Barbie dolls (although both these things are there as well), and much more about how the human capacity for both compassion and greed will long survive whatever circumstances we humans find ourselves in, not a utopia or a wasteland like so many post-apocalyptic thrillers are but simply a new way of life and new ways for people to act both honorably and horribly. The twist-filled plot is best left a surprise, which is why I won't mention anything about what actually "happens" here; but let's just say that fans of both Scott Turow and dystopian sci-fi are likely to be highly satisfied with this quickly paced, always fascinating book, a story that manages to be not only inventive in its plot but even introduces lots of original elements to its details, something becoming harder and harder to do in our post-Road times, when an ever-expanding glut of post-apocalyptic novels seems sometimes to be in danger of cannibalizing itself to death. A pleasant surprise and a much better novel than I was expecting, it comes strongly recommended. Out of 10: 9.3 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 07, 2011
|
Mar 04, 2011
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0441020127
| 9780441020126
| 0441020127
| 3.38
| 254
| Dec 28, 2010
| Dec 28, 2010
|
liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) While this is far from a badly written book, I think that maybe Walter Greatshell's Mad Skills is perhaps a victim of mistaken categorization; because now that I've finished it, I find it hard to describe in any other way than as a Young Adult action-adventure version of Daniel Keyes' classic Flowers for Algernon, although it was promoted to me by the publishing company as a grown-up book for grown-up audiences. And so as an adult book, this simplistic novel leaves a lot to be desired, a sort of clunky tale of a brain-damaged girl turned into a supergenius through an experimental procedure after a bad accident, who comes to realize that it is merely a byproduct of a secret governmental/corporate plan to mentally control a docile population through innovative brain implants, with both a plotline and dialogue that feel much more often like they're plodding along instead of sailing or soaring; but if you instead assume that this was meant for teenage readers, nearly all of these things can be excused, with the manuscript suddenly much more on par with something like Scott Westerfield's hugely admired "Uglies" series. I've got another title from Greatshell in the pike as we speak, ready to be reviewed here later this year, and I'll be interested in seeing whether that one appeals more to adult readers, or whether Greatshell simply writes in a style more appropriate for a teen audience. Out of 10: 7.2, or 8.2 for Young Adult fans ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 15, 2012
|
Jan 19, 2011
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 014044906X
| 9780140449068
| 014044906X
| 3.94
| 255,741
| 1872
| May 04, 2004
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) A couple of years ago, when I did a write-up of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the "CCLaP 100" essay series, I heard from a number of his fans that part of the reason I found it rather lackluster was because of the free but ancient translation I had read, and that Verne is one of those cases where it really pays to seek out and even purchase the most recent translations that you can find. And that's because it's only been in literally the last 20 or 30 years, since genre work has really started gaining academic respect, that we've even wanted to go back and explore the beginnings of things like science-fiction or crime novels, and to apply a scholarly eye to such original material; but for a century before that, the dozens of fantastical titles put out by someone like Verne were considered by most to be the literary version of throwaway kiddie shows, pumped out quickly and cheaply to soon part an adolescent from his allowance money at the corner drugstore on a Saturday afternoon, and usually translated on the fly by overworked copyeditors who could care less if they were successfully capturing the subtleties of the original text. So I was glad to recently come across Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics by Jules Verne, a new collection of some of his most famous novels, edited and translated by the quite obvious slavish fan and full-time scholar Frederick Paul Walter, put out in a plain but professional oversized edition and containing all the books' original illustrations. And indeed, as I learned while reading through these 'Anglicized' new translations (i.e. they feature standard measurements and Fahrenheit temperatures), Verne's work at its best contained a kind of dry humor and political awareness that we in the English-speaking world rarely equate with the French speculative pioneer, with dialogue that's not nearly as histrionic as we've come to think of it in books like these, which to be fair really were pumped out originally on a fairly quick basis mostly for the amusement of children and the working class, a series of 54 novels known as the "Extraordinary Voyages" that publisher Jules Hetzel built an entire little commercial empire around, and just like today with most of the duo's revenue coming not from the books themselves but rather the lucrative traveling stage adaptations that were often made of them. And in fact, a full reading of Verne's entire oeuvre remains a personal challenge that I will only tackle much later in life if at all, so I decided not to read even the full five tales collected here, and especially like I said since I had already read 20,000 Leagues and didn't relish the thought of slogging through the entire thing again. So instead I read just two of the titles in this collection, starting with 1864's Journey to the Center of the Earth, one of Verne's first speculative tales after first being an opera librettist for years, while lying to his father the whole time and claiming that he was establishing a fine career in Paris as a young urban lawyer. And indeed, this early thriller shows off what I consider one of the modern main weaknesses of Verne's work, no matter how good the translation; that many of the fanciful scientific theories he proposed in his books have turned out over the decades to be just flat-out wrong, which means that we no longer have the ability to enjoy his work in the same way his contemporary audience did. (Don't forget, readers in the 1800s thought of Verne not so much as a sci-fi author but more like Michael Crichton, a brilliant futurist writing day-after-tomorrow tales about what life would really be like for their children.) Essentially the tale of an eccentric German professor, his nephew assistant and their silent Icelandic guide, as they literally climb down a volcano and discover a vast continent-sized system of caves below the Earth's surface, complete with their own bodies of water and rainclouds, it's hard not to roll one's eyes when watching our heroes stumble across forgotten dinosaurs and house-sized mushrooms, or ride a lava eruption back out to the surface at the end as if they were Victorian surfers; although the story definitely has its charms as well, especially when thinking of it now as pure fairytale fantasy, and with there being lots to enjoy in the cartoonish stereotypes that come with each of our various characters. Ah, but then after that, I skipped straight to the last story in this collection, and undoubtedly the most famous of Verne's career as well, 1873's Around the World in Eighty Days, which has been made into high-profile films several times now over the years, and which turned out to be a much better reading experience. Basically a gentle satire of British stiff-upper-lip determinism in the height of their Empire years, it starts with a group of upper-class gentlemen at a private London club discussing the latest innovations in world travel, with the reclusive and unflappable Phileas Fogg quietly insisting to his peers that a globe-spanning trip could now be realistically accomplished in a flat 80 days, even wagering what today would be two million dollars on the deal and agreeing to leave on such a journey that very night, armed with nothing but an overnight bag and his loyal French butler. And thus starts a rollicking adventure that indeed takes us around the world, spiced up by a British P.I. in Raj India who mistakes Fogg for a fugitive bank robber and tries to trip up his plans the whole rest of the way, and with the incredible journey involving such details as an elephant ride across central Asia, a sudden alliance with Chinese acrobats, a deliberately planned mutiny on a British sea vessel, a shootout with Native Americans on a train ride across the American Midwest, and a whole lot more. (Although let it be noted that the original book features no hot-air balloons, an invention of Hollywood that has become a famous trope of its own by now.) And in fact, I'm sure that a big reason why this succeeds so much more than Journey to the Center of the Earth is that, unlike the outdated speculative nature of the former, Eighty Days is a faithful and now historical look at just what it was like to really pull off world travel in the late 1800s, the first time in history it became commercially viable for anyone besides pirates and explorers to even do so. (And indeed, just a year before Verne wrote his novel, Thomas Cook led history's very first trip around the world designed specifically for tourists, only in their case taking seven months to complete instead of Verne's three.) And that makes the book charming and fascinating instead of eye-rolling, and especially when adding Verne's astutely funny comments regarding imperial aspirations, and of the self-satisfyingly civilized way the British liked to think of themselves during the height of the Victorian Age. (Unlike his reputation in later movies, much of the humor in the original book comes from the conservative, adventure-hating Fogg maintaining such complete composure in the face of such globetrotting chaos, spending the majority of his 80-day trip not enjoying the scenery but playing an endless series of card games with his fellow steamship and railroad passengers.) And that's a delight to read about even today, no matter how dated the actual mechanics of the story itself. (And in fact, gonzo journalists have been recreating the trip in a period-faithful way almost since the publication of the book itself, from an 1889 newspaper reporter to most recently comedian Michael Palin, just a few years ago for a BBC television mini-series.) So it was nice, I admit, to see what all these Verne fans were talking about, as far as the surprising loveliness of his original texts, that for so long have been hidden from us English speakers by shoddy translations; but also like I said, I'm not sure just how much of a general interest I have in Verne even with the new translations, making a sampler like this nearly perfect for the casual fan. It comes highly recommended, but be prepared for it to be one of those volumes you read in little doses here and there for years to come. Out of 10: 9.1 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1609768442
| 9781609768447
| B00439GK80
| 4.06
| 31
| May 13, 2010
| unknown
|
it was ok
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I spent a long time contemplating what to say about Mike Saxton's literary debut, 7 Scorpions: Rebellion, volume one of a coming science-fiction action-thriller trilogy; because while it's obvious that Saxton has put in quite a lot of time and effort with this title, and probably quite a financial commitment too, it's hard to say anything else about it besides that it's pretty terrible, less a finished genre novel for adults and more a profoundly hackneyed collection of violent apocalyptic-lit cliches designed for the "juggalo" end of the teenage-boy spectrum. (I mean, what can you say about a book that sees right on page one the meteoric rise of an unstoppable laser-wielding supervillain, dressed in spike-covered armor and named after a '70s serial killer? That's page freaking one, people.) But then, this may be the saving grace of such a book too -- because I'm sincere when I say that it will legitimately appeal to videogame-playing 14-year-olds, and there are far worse things in the world than to write a story that appeals to such a group, especially given that I used to be a violent little videogame-playing teenage boy myself. It would certainly be possible to print up, say, 500 copies of such a title, market it wisely, do a lot of live events tied into sci-fi and gaming conventions, and be able to make a tidy little profit by the end, all while getting the book into the hands of people who will legitimately love it; and while I can't in good conscience recommend this novel to intelligent grown-ups, I also wouldn't want to stand in the way of Saxton doing something exactly like what I just described, a plan that won't get anyone rich but that would certainly justify the book's existence, in the face of those who are undoubtedly tempted to make vicious fun of it. It's in that spirit that I recommend this today to the "Grand Theft Auto" playing teenage boy in your own life. Out of 10: 5.9, or 7.4 for violent teenage boys ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 13, 2010
|
Dec 13, 2010
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 1438432380
| 9781438432380
| 1438432380
| 4.30
| 217
| unknown
| Feb 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) A couple of years ago, when I did a write-up of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the "CCLaP 100" essay series, I heard from a number of his fans that part of the reason I found it rather lackluster was because of the free but ancient translation I had read, and that Verne is one of those cases where it really pays to seek out and even purchase the most recent translations that you can find. And that's because it's only been in literally the last 20 or 30 years, since genre work has really started gaining academic respect, that we've even wanted to go back and explore the beginnings of things like science-fiction or crime novels, and to apply a scholarly eye to such original material; but for a century before that, the dozens of fantastical titles put out by someone like Verne were considered by most to be the literary version of throwaway kiddie shows, pumped out quickly and cheaply to soon part an adolescent from his allowance money at the corner drugstore on a Saturday afternoon, and usually translated on the fly by overworked copyeditors who could care less if they were successfully capturing the subtleties of the original text. So I was glad to recently come across Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics by Jules Verne, a new collection of some of his most famous novels, edited and translated by the quite obvious slavish fan and full-time scholar Frederick Paul Walter, put out in a plain but professional oversized edition and containing all the books' original illustrations. And indeed, as I learned while reading through these 'Anglicized' new translations (i.e. they feature standard measurements and Fahrenheit temperatures), Verne's work at its best contained a kind of dry humor and political awareness that we in the English-speaking world rarely equate with the French speculative pioneer, with dialogue that's not nearly as histrionic as we've come to think of it in books like these, which to be fair really were pumped out originally on a fairly quick basis mostly for the amusement of children and the working class, a series of 54 novels known as the "Extraordinary Voyages" that publisher Jules Hetzel built an entire little commercial empire around, and just like today with most of the duo's revenue coming not from the books themselves but rather the lucrative traveling stage adaptations that were often made of them. And in fact, a full reading of Verne's entire oeuvre remains a personal challenge that I will only tackle much later in life if at all, so I decided not to read even the full five tales collected here, and especially like I said since I had already read 20,000 Leagues and didn't relish the thought of slogging through the entire thing again. So instead I read just two of the titles in this collection, starting with 1864's Journey to the Center of the Earth, one of Verne's first speculative tales after first being an opera librettist for years, while lying to his father the whole time and claiming that he was establishing a fine career in Paris as a young urban lawyer. And indeed, this early thriller shows off what I consider one of the modern main weaknesses of Verne's work, no matter how good the translation; that many of the fanciful scientific theories he proposed in his books have turned out over the decades to be just flat-out wrong, which means that we no longer have the ability to enjoy his work in the same way his contemporary audience did. (Don't forget, readers in the 1800s thought of Verne not so much as a sci-fi author but more like Michael Crichton, a brilliant futurist writing day-after-tomorrow tales about what life would really be like for their children.) Essentially the tale of an eccentric German professor, his nephew assistant and their silent Icelandic guide, as they literally climb down a volcano and discover a vast continent-sized system of caves below the Earth's surface, complete with their own bodies of water and rainclouds, it's hard not to roll one's eyes when watching our heroes stumble across forgotten dinosaurs and house-sized mushrooms, or ride a lava eruption back out to the surface at the end as if they were Victorian surfers; although the story definitely has its charms as well, especially when thinking of it now as pure fairytale fantasy, and with there being lots to enjoy in the cartoonish stereotypes that come with each of our various characters. Ah, but then after that, I skipped straight to the last story in this collection, and undoubtedly the most famous of Verne's career as well, 1873's Around the World in Eighty Days, which has been made into high-profile films several times now over the years, and which turned out to be a much better reading experience. Basically a gentle satire of British stiff-upper-lip determinism in the height of their Empire years, it starts with a group of upper-class gentlemen at a private London club discussing the latest innovations in world travel, with the reclusive and unflappable Phileas Fogg quietly insisting to his peers that a globe-spanning trip could now be realistically accomplished in a flat 80 days, even wagering what today would be two million dollars on the deal and agreeing to leave on such a journey that very night, armed with nothing but an overnight bag and his loyal French butler. And thus starts a rollicking adventure that indeed takes us around the world, spiced up by a British P.I. in Raj India who mistakes Fogg for a fugitive bank robber and tries to trip up his plans the whole rest of the way, and with the incredible journey involving such details as an elephant ride across central Asia, a sudden alliance with Chinese acrobats, a deliberately planned mutiny on a British sea vessel, a shootout with Native Americans on a train ride across the American Midwest, and a whole lot more. (Although let it be noted that the original book features no hot-air balloons, an invention of Hollywood that has become a famous trope of its own by now.) And in fact, I'm sure that a big reason why this succeeds so much more than Journey to the Center of the Earth is that, unlike the outdated speculative nature of the former, Eighty Days is a faithful and now historical look at just what it was like to really pull off world travel in the late 1800s, the first time in history it became commercially viable for anyone besides pirates and explorers to even do so. (And indeed, just a year before Verne wrote his novel, Thomas Cook led history's very first trip around the world designed specifically for tourists, only in their case taking seven months to complete instead of Verne's three.) And that makes the book charming and fascinating instead of eye-rolling, and especially when adding Verne's astutely funny comments regarding imperial aspirations, and of the self-satisfyingly civilized way the British liked to think of themselves during the height of the Victorian Age. (Unlike his reputation in later movies, much of the humor in the original book comes from the conservative, adventure-hating Fogg maintaining such complete composure in the face of such globetrotting chaos, spending the majority of his 80-day trip not enjoying the scenery but playing an endless series of card games with his fellow steamship and railroad passengers.) And that's a delight to read about even today, no matter how dated the actual mechanics of the story itself. (And in fact, gonzo journalists have been recreating the trip in a period-faithful way almost since the publication of the book itself, from an 1889 newspaper reporter to most recently comedian Michael Palin, just a few years ago for a BBC television mini-series.) So it was nice, I admit, to see what all these Verne fans were talking about, as far as the surprising loveliness of his original texts, that for so long have been hidden from us English speakers by shoddy translations; but also like I said, I'm not sure just how much of a general interest I have in Verne even with the new translations, making a sampler like this nearly perfect for the casual fan. It comes highly recommended, but be prepared for it to be one of those volumes you read in little doses here and there for years to come. Out of 10: 9.1 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
Nov 17, 2010
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765321505
| 9780765321503
| 0765321505
| 3.75
| 6,671
| Apr 13, 2010
| Apr 13, 2010
|
really liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) The reason I put this older (2010) urban-fantasy alt-history novel on reserve at my local library is because its sequel The Coldest War just came out, and the premise sounded interesting enough to warrant going back to the first book and catching up; set within a Johnathan Strange like alt-reality where magic is real (via evil, ephemeral cosmic aliens who we barely understand but who some can take advantage of), it tells the story of a World War Two where the Nazis have literally invented supermen and crusty upper-class "magic scholars" in the UK are made MI6 operatives to stop them. But alas, although the idea itself is just really quite amazing, the execution of the idea is only subpar; the plot itself is quite clunky at times, the level of characterization uneven, the dialogue sometimes flat, and perhaps worst of all (or at least a big personal pet peeve of mine), a paper-thin wife is invented for one of the main characters exclusively to serve as a flimsy deux-ex-machina for the story's climax, otherwise servicing as a disposable distraction for the other couple of hundred pages we have to deal with her. I can see why the book's gotten so much attention, because it really is a captivating story idea, unique and historical and yet another great modern take on the Nazi's real-life obsession with the occult; and while it's sure to satisfy hardcore urban-fantasy fans, I doubt that I myself will be reading volume two of the series, and do not recommend it except to the most diehard Joss Whedon fans out there. Out of 10: 8.4 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 07, 2012
|
May 18, 2010
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765322005
| 9780765322005
| 0765322005
| 2.96
| 165
| Jan 05, 2010
| Jan 05, 2010
|
it was ok
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) At first glance, the "trippy" "cyberpunk" novel Brain Thief by Alexander Jablokov looks like something that'd be right up my alley, to the point that it's one of the few titles I've ever bothered to put on reserve at my local library, instead of my usual habit of choosing books based on whatever random titles happen to be there on the day of my visit. But alas, this novel is neither trippy nor cyberpunk, but rather a sorta ham-fisted gonzo comedy that shares exactly enough surface-level elements with trippy cyberpunk to justify some lazy marketer slapping the words onto the dust jacket, a book that supposedly concerns the day-after-tomorrow high-tech industry centered around Boston and an artificially intelligent entity that has gone rogue, but whose entire first half (which is as far as I read) mostly consists of zany chase scenes that for some unknown reason are set in locations that feel more like rural California in 1956. Of course, details like these have been forgiven in other bizarro novels I've reviewed here, but Brain Thief also happens to be egregiously guilty of the most common crime among all genre fiction in general, of ignoring character development in their service of an overly convoluted plot; and so not only does this book mostly consist of zany chase scenes when it's been advertised as a brainy thriller, but they are chase scenes set among disposable cartoon characters, completely failing to generate any interest among the reader as to what their fates might be, and instead forcing the reader to judge the book solely by how clever it is (which unfortunately is "not very"). I mean, not every book out there has to be Proust, but for God's sake, I want an artist to at least make an effort at getting us to feel like we're following the fate of a real human being, and not just some cardboard chess piece that emerged whole-cloth from their mind's eye; and this of course is the big problem among CGI-obsessed Hollywood these days too, and why such big-budget spectacles like Avatar still end up feeling flat and listless no matter how inventive the special effects. This book is the textual version of that, and it comes recommended to only the most hardcore fans of bizarro and gonzo fiction out there. Out of 10: 5.7 ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jul 09, 2010
|
Apr 22, 2010
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0671037544
| 9780671037543
| 0671037544
| 3.80
| 345
| Dec 31, 2000
| Mar 04, 2002
|
really liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) (This is being published today in honor of "Ian McDonald Week" at CCLaP. For an overview of all the content regarding McDonald being posted here this week, you can click here.) One of the things I like most about British science-fiction author Ian McDonald is that, unlike a lot of writers in his genre, he's able to slip effortlessly between different styles and themes in his work; so even though, for example, he's mostly known here in the 2000s for his more mainstream developing-world day-after-tomorrow tales (think "third-world cyberpunk" if you will, stories that feel like William Gibson or Neal Stephenson but set in such places as India, Brazil and Turkey), he's also loved by a generation of '90s fans for his urban fantasy tales set in Ireland, which much like many of the projects by Neil Gaiman or Joss Whedon posit a sort of hidden world of magic and fairies and demons that exists in the shadowy corners of our own real world. And so too is he also loved by a third group for his Charles-Strossian far-future "hard SF" stories, many of which play out almost like complex linguistic experiments, combining the expansive visions of such Silver Age authors as Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury with the literary style of such academic favorites as Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and indeed, his very first novel, 1988's Desolation Road which I've also reviewed here in the past, is a rather literal homage to the latter's 100 Years of Solitude, only in McDonald's case set on a terraformed Mars a thousand years in the future, where such Marquez-inspired magic-realism touches as ghosts and angels have actual scientific explanations for their existence, while still being just as poetic nonetheless. It turns out, in fact, that McDonald actually revisited this terraformed Mars in 2001, penning a "companion volume" of sorts called Ares Express, which is only coming out now in the US for the first time this month, thanks to our friends at genre upstart Pyr, and which I finally got my own hands on a few weeks ago. And indeed, it's important to point out that this isn't a traditional sequel, not only in plot terms but even its overall scope; becuase that was one of my few complaints about the original, actually, for those who have read that older review, that it limits itself by adhering too closely to the structure of Solitude, making it for the most part a beautiful but sometimes frustrating look at merely one tiny village within this utterly fascinating speculative world, with many scenes that contain literally no speculative elements at all, and which could be reset in the Mexican desert in the 20th century with no one being the wiser. Ares is instead a much greater look at this entire environment, which while referencing the dusty small town of the original actually concerns itself with a lot more than just that, taking us finally all the way around the planet to explore not just different geographical environments but the wealth of different urban societies that exist there; and unlike the more limited writing style of the twenty-something newbie McDonald of Desolation, the forty-something veteran McDonald of Ares delivers a knockout of an actual text, the kind of sophisticated manuscript that can be enjoyed not just by fanboys but those who usually stay far away from science-fiction, whose very idea of "speculative" is to pick up a title by Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy. Everybody wins! Everybody wins! And in fact this is probably the first important thing to know about Ares, that it's not just the typical terraforming story of grubby domed colonies out on a distant barren world, but instead enfolds far-future ideas into a lush vision of the mechanical meeting the biological, a world where nearly omniscient artificially intelligent weather-generating satellites have the capacity to go insane and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting population (and in fact have a bad history of doing exactly that), a world where nerds with body-image issues can simply digitize their consciousness and upload their "souls" into the literal ring of orbiting devices necessary to keep Mars habitable for humans, using quantum mechanics and a type of science that sometimes seems more like magic. And indeed, I found myself thinking a lot about that famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke while reading this book, how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; and in fact McDonald gets a lot of play out of this idea in Ares, that in another millennium science will have become so sophisticated to once again start resembling the Medieval idea of wizards and alchemy, of self-flagellating wise men in the desert conjuring up unstoppable forces of both good and evil. Like Desolation, the Mars of Ares Express is conceptually held together through the massive railroad track making a complete circle around the planet, the only thing holding these far-flung communities together; this time, though, we actually get on one of the trains using this track, following the fates of the various, again Medieval-sounding, hereditary families making up the various technicians needed to make those oversized train-cities run, the multi-generational groups of "Royal Engineers" and "Royal Cabin Stewards" who devote their entire lives to the time-honored traditions of those who came before them. And in good cyberpunk style as well, the actual plot revolves mostly around the exploits of a teenage girl in one of these families, one Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th, who starts the novel learning that she's been promised in an arranged marriage she is against, so "runs away from home" in a manner that will have her family paying penance in this deeply caste-run society for years to come. This then gives McDonald the perfect excuse to explore all kinds of different environments within this profoundly strange world of a partly green and completely breathable Mars, as Sweetness hops her way from one random place to another in a constant flight from both her family and others who wish her harm, taking her from a floating religious compound to the planet's largest city (scattered with the non-eroding "giants' skeletons" of a grand rocket program that hasn't been needed for centuries), a visit to a sleepy suburb whose citizens have lost the ability to have dreams, a jaunt across the desert with a mad genius in a dune buggy powered by floating box kites, and all kinds of other flabbergasting concepts from this utterly original, utterly addictive world. Along the way, then, McDonald also takes the opportunity to add a good amount of historical backstory to this environment, and even something resembling a three-act actioner plot, both of which were missing from Desolation, including an intriguing thread about the natural symbiosis and thus disdain between the humans who live on the planet's surface and the haughty AI society out in orbit who are needed to keep it all running, and the complicated way this relationship would play itself out after a thousand years of both groups now being there and relying on the other. And that of course is probably the last important thing to know about this book before reading it, that there is a real sense of gravitas to it, a sense of vast amounts of time passing, which is what makes it feel so much weightier than many other so-called "hard SF" tales. As I often seem to be saying with McDonald's work, Ares Express has turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the year so far, and the only reason it's not receiving a higher score is becuase of a standing policy here at CCLaP, that genre books aren't allowed to score in the 9s unless they're able to transcend their genre, and become a book that even non-fans of that genre will have a chance of obsessively loving. (For example, McDonald's other new novel, The Dervish House, whose write-up is being published here tomorrow, expressly did get a score in the 9s, which should give you a good idea what the main difference is in their subject matter.) Nonetheless, it definitely is the kind of genre novel that usual non-fans of the genre would be wise to take a chance on, the kind of infamous "hey, this sci-fi stuff ain't so bad" title perfect to give your pretentious friend who likes Boing Boing and Lost but scoffs at your "Dragonriders of Pern" collection. Although they may end up scoffing at this too, it's at least worth the effort, a book that will show many for the first time just how artistically savvy science-fiction can be at its best. Out of 10: 8.9, or 9.9 for science-fiction fans ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 04, 2010
|
Jul 21, 2010
|
Apr 04, 2010
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0553803190
| 9780553803198
| 0553803190
| 3.85
| 26,265
| Jan 28, 2010
| Feb 02, 2010
|
liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) It's time once again for the Hugo Awards, which with the Nebulas is considered one of the two most prestigious honors in science-fiction; and as usual, I ended up reading all five nominees for Best Novel in the three months between their announcement and the picking of a winner, taking place this year on August 20th at the rotating Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. (By the way, next year's Worldcon is being held in Chicago, and CCLaP's planning on having a large presence at that particular convention; but more on that as we get closer to the actual date.) I've already read this year's frontrunner, Ian McDonald's The Dervish House (and in fact also conducted a long interview with McDonald about the writing of that book, for those who still haven't seen it); here below, then, are my looks at the other four nominees, all of them read within the last month. Feed, by Mira Grant (Orbit/Hachette). Every year, it seems that at least one Hugo nominee earns its status not from its actual quality, but rather from being a favorite among fanboys and fangirls precisely for making fanboys and fangirls the heroes of their action-based wish-fulfillment plots; take for example Mira Grant's Feed, a cliche-filled look at life after a zombie apocalypse chock-full of groan-inducing details (a rash of post-zombie children named "George" in honor of filmmaker Romero, a world where teenage emobloggers are the new Pulitzer-winning super-celebrities), but which posits the engaging idea that within an actual zombie apocalypse, the ones who would best survive would be the actual zombie-movie-loving Comic Book Guys of the world, the ones taking the threat seriously from day one while the rest of the planet still thinks it to be a hoax or media stunt, and thus building society back up so that it looks curiously like the average episode of a Joss Whedon television series. It's one of those books that has almost no chance of actually winning, but is still nice to see nominated, an only middling title but that is passionately loved by the niche fanbase that knows exactly what it's looking for, and is so happy to see it delivered here that they've elevated the book into award status by sheer will alone. It comes recommended in that spirit to those specific readers, but certainly not to a general audience. Out of 10: 7.3, or 8.8 for fans of zombie-apocalypse stories Cryoburn, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen Books). And then here's another common type of Hugo longshot often seen at the bottom of each year's nomination list, which is perhaps best described as "My Big Fat Convoluted Space Opera, Part Seven;" so that is, the latest volume in one of those endless Star-Wars-like sagas that hardcore conventioneering fans are such suckers for, full of spaceships and laser guns and evil aliens and with a backstory so complicated by now, casual readers can't even hope to get caught up. In this case, it's the 13-volume "Miles Vorkosigan" series whose origins date all the way back to the 1980s, which according to Wikipedia is vaguely about a future humanity which colonizes a whole series of planets connected by interstellar wormholes, and the feudal aristocracy that develops on one of those worlds when its wormhole collapses for several hundred years, our titular hero being some sort of rogue count on the planet who for decades now has been going on a whole series of galaxy-spanning adventures, competently written but frankly the kind of clunky, mediocre title that only a fanboy could love. I mean, don't get me wrong, this is precisely often enough to actually win -- past titles in this series have won a remarkable four Hugos just on their own, which with her Nebulas and Locuses makes Bujold one of the most award-winning writers in science-fiction right now -- but in my opinion, I just can't imagine this simplistic shoot-em-up having even a chance of beating out an industry-changing title like Dervish. A book only for existing fans of weekend syndicated Canadian sci-fi television shows (I'm looking at you, Stargate lovers), this comes recommended to them but not to a general audience. Out of 10: 7.5, or 8.5 for fans of weekend sci-fi television shows Blackout, by Connie Willis (Spectra/Random House). If anything could be considered a serious competitor to Dervish for this year's Hugo, a lot of people would consider it this, both because of its pedigree (Willis is already a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and this is the only of the five nominees this year to be put out by a traditional mainstream press) and because of its inventive, nerd-friendly premise -- that in the future, time travel is so commonplace, it's become as regular a part of the average Oxford experience as a semester abroad, full of time-tested rules and fussy procedures, all of which start falling apart in this case after a group of student time-travelers all get stuck in World World Two Britain for some mysterious reason. But alas, what should've been a delightful romp along the lines of a "Tuesday Next" novel instead often comes off sounding as if Willis was saying to herself, "Wow, look at this amazing book of World War Two trivia I found at a rummage sale last week; now, how fast can I slap together a half-assed sci-fi conceit as an excuse to reprint word-for-word as much of this trivia as possible?" Because while this has all the makings for a fast-paced yet light-toned actioner in the style of, say, the new Doctor Who, Willis unfortunately on nearly every page uses this story to ploddingly insert some obscure fact or another about this real building that got bombed in the early '40s, or that real shopkeeper who became a minor hero, sometimes handled so awkwardly that on more than one occasion she literally just has characters sitting around reading textbooks out loud to us; and I can think of few disappointments bigger in genre literature than a young-adult sci-fi action adventure where the characters spend their time sitting around literally reading expository material out loud to each other. A big letdown, especially given that this is my first Willis novel, although I'll be sure not to judge her entire career by this title alone. Out of 10: 7.2 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit/Hachette). And then this is the final Hugo nominee I tackled, which I deliberately saved for last because of it being a fantasy novel; and as regular readers know, I not only am not a fan of fantasy literature in general, but its most well-known tropes tend to make me roll my eyes in full schadenfreude glory (Hail Thee, Fair Land of the Sexy Dark-Eyebrowed Platinum Blondes With Pointy Ears!), so I wanted to make sure in this case to be able to read this extra slowly and with a very open mind. But although I found certain elements of this saga-in-the-making to be quite interesting -- just to mention one near the beginning, the idea of a giant floating castle that hovers above the ground-based city that serves it -- even with the extra attention I unfortunately found this to possess the same main problem as all other fantasy literature I've come across (including the HBO series Game of Thrones that I'm currently in the middle of watching, but more on that in my write-up next month), which is that no matter how inventive their details, to me they all end up sounding vaguely like Lord of the Rings -- there always seems to be these warring royal families, and they always seem to live in these ridiculously ornate castles, which always seem to be leftovers from a previous "heroic age" from thousands of years previous, set in a world that always seems to have at least one sort of race full of creatures who all look and act like goth musicians, and always within a universe where magic is commonplace yet no one has ever thought of inventing the concept of word contractions. ("Erethon, I do not use those words which would be better expressed in the modern tongue as a series of short apostrophized phrases!" "You do not, sire?" "I do not, I can not, and I will not! I WILL NOT, ERETHON!") Granted, this is something you can say about every genre in existence, the main thing that makes them genre stories to begin with, which is why I try not to give fantasy novels too much flak merely for containing the things its fans are looking for; but certainly that makes it difficult for me to objectively review such a novel, and especially here where I'm being asked to compare it to a genre I like a lot more. So instead I will just give a generic middle-of-the-road score, bump it up for genre fans, and humbly ask for the forgiveness of fantasy lovers for the lackluster nature of my write-up. Out of 10: 7.5, or 9.0 for fans of fantasy literature And of course, as mentioned, don't forget to read my review last year of Ian McDonald's The Dervish House if you never have, which by the way has also been nominated for this year's Nebula, Locus, BSFA, Clarke and Campbell awards, and which has a small but real chance of winning every freaking one of them, and which I'm convinced is going to serve in the future (along with last year's winner, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl) as a sign of a real sea change going on in science-fiction right now, and the first embrace by the mainstream of so-called "Third-World Cyberpunk" as a major new movement in genre literature. It really is that good, and I encourage you to read both it and the interview I did with McDonald last year about writing it, if you never have before. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 16, 2011
|
Dec 25, 2009
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765318415
| 9780765318411
| 0765318415
| 3.52
| 33,741
| Jun 01, 2009
| Sep 29, 2009
|
it was amazing
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.) Ah, steampunk! The very definition of a literary subgenre, steampunk tales fit not only within the general category of science-fiction (in that the storylines usually hinge on technology that has not yet been invented), but then bury this uninvented technology within a past that never was, usually the Victorian Age to be specific, imagining various scientific breakthroughs that never actually happened and then imagining what life would've been like if those breakthroughs had been real (for example, the idea of computers actually being invented in the 1860s instead of 1960s, the concept behind one of the first steampunk novels to really define the genre, 1990's The Difference Engine by famed "cyberpunk" authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, resulting in a room-sized monstrosity covered in gleaming brass and powered by steam, thus explaining the origins of the term itself). And thus just like serial-killer crime thrillers or Georgian romance tales, so too does steampunk have a very specific audience in mind, and so too does its success mostly depend on its ability to offer up a series of specifically fetishized details that its small, fiercely loyal audience is specifically looking for. And thus do we come to Cherie Priest's mindblowing new Boneshaker, which as industry fans know has been causing quite a stir over the last few months, seemingly coming out of nowhere to make both Publishers Weekly and Amazon's "Best of 2009" lists, and with such genre veterans as Warren Ellis and Cory Doctorow tripping over their own feet in their attempt to gush more and more about how marvelous it is. And there's a very good reason for this; because this novel is perfect, or at least "perfect" as it's defined within the narrow confines of what makes a genre project truly great. And in fact, this book is so great that I thought I would use my write-up of it today as an excuse to rather wonkily go through step by step and explain where exactly Priest gets things so right; that's how good it is, that it's not just entertaining but can serve as a useful tutorial as well to fellow genre authors who are facing problems with their own projects. So let's start with what's the most obvious strength of Boneshaker, and what's been getting it so much attention in such a short period -- it's a book with not only a fascinating grand hook behind its plot, but filled with enough fascinating incidental details as well to easily propel a 400-page manuscript. And this of course is where so many genre authors get things wrong, as seen again just last week for example in my review of Peter Crowther's "Forever Twilight" series -- that in their zeal to come up with a great concept to propel their book in general, they forget that an entire three-act storyline needs to be constructed out of that great concept too, leading to stories that often have huge gaping holes in their middles, giant hundred-page sections where literally nothing happens, as the characters essentially sit around having frivolous conversations as they wait for the next lever in that storyline's Grand Concept to kick into gear. So in Priest's case, she starts with a doozy of a concept, which like I said is basically step one in writing a great genre novel -- she imagines an alternative-history late-1800s, in which the Russians have hired an American mad scientist named Leviticus Blue to construct a giant drilling machine he calls the "Boneshaker," so that they can go prospecting under the ice in Alaska and jump-start the Klondike Gold Rush a good half-century before it happened in real life. But something goes terribly wrong in the Seattle basement where Blue is constructing the machine (an accident? sabotage? the mystery behind the incident is yet another part of the complex storyline), creating a giant sinkhole that essentially collapses the entire downtown district; and that's where the real trouble starts, in that the subterranean rift ends up releasing a poisonous underground gas, which just happens to turn anyone who comes into contact with it into a flesh-eating zombie. And since Washington is still a territory instead of a state, the US government wants nothing to do with this accident's complicated and expensive clean-up; and so as a sloppy stop-gap measure, the residents of Seattle basically build a giant 200-foot wall around downtown, turning the entire district into a yellow-haze-filled wasteland of wrecked Victorian parlors and the rotting undead, along with a small community of gas-mask-wielding smugglers, criminals and other libertarians, who have carved out a hardscrabble existence for themselves through an ingenious series of underground tunnels and basement living spaces, filled with clean air from impossibly long tubes snaking over the walls and industrial-strength bellows run by sweaty Chinese laborers. Yeah, an astonishing concept, like I said, but then Priest backs this up with a whole series of smaller developments, all of them related to the main Grand Concept but pedestrian enough to fuel the page-to-page action that keeps the manuscript moving forward: a gang war within this underground community; a diluted version of this poisonous fog called "yellow sap" that those on the outside use as a recreational drug, basically Priest's version of opium; the owners of the weaponized zeppelins who transport this yellow sap in and out of the contaminated zone; the steel-helmeted Hessian criminal warlord who may or may not be the surviving, horribly disfigured Dr. Blue. And that leads us to the second big thing that Priest gets right in Boneshaker, which is that all the truly great genre novels in history are ones filled with startlingly unique visions; and here Priest is just overflowing with such visions, delivering mental image after mental image that most of us never even thought possible until she came up with them, deftly combining steampunk with a post-apocalyptic zombie tale, a first-person-shooter videogame, and the John Carpenter classics Escape From New York and Big Trouble in Little China (which let's not forget, was originally meant to be a steampunk tale itself, until the producers fired the first screenwriters and updated the story from the 1880s to 1980s). After all, this is the particular fetishistic detail that fuels both steampunk and science-fiction in general, the delivering of stunning visions of technology that never was; and here Priest does a superlative job, not only with the grand scheme of things but all the way down to its gritty details. And that leads us to the third big thing Priest gets right here; that like so many of the best genre projects in history, she comes up with a grand mythology that informs the entire book and more, while still not getting lost in telling this one specific story. Because for those who don't know, Boneshaker is actually only the first volume of a coming trilogy Priest calls the "Clockwork Century," a sweeping look at an entire alternative 1800s, one in which the Civil War has turned into a twenty-year Vietnam-like bloody stalemate, and where the Republic of Texas discovers oil a good 50 years before they do in real life, funding a this-time successful revolution which leads to them now being their own sovereign nation. All of these things inform this first novel of the trilogy, and especially when it comes to the dueling airships which make up an entire beguiling subplot on their own (one of the many things that has led to the Civil War lasting so long in the first place, the invention of a modern-style Air Force out of armored balloons, a technology that is perfected much more quickly by the Confederacy); yet Priest doesn't allow this mythology to spin out of control either, but rather doles it out in these delicious little scoops, making you constantly wanting a little more just like the best genre projects do. And that leads us to the fourth thing Priest does right with Boneshaker, the crucial yet subtle element that eludes so many mediocre genre projects that could've been great; she takes the time and attention to populate this fantastical environment with very real-feeling, highly complex characters, thus corralling this insane plotline and grand mythology and bringing it down to a human level that we can intimately relate to. For example, the entire story itself is told through the eyes of Dr. Blue's widow, the proud yet frazzled single mother Briar Wilkes, who only gets involved in this mess in the first place in an attempt to rescue her smart yet naive teenage son Zeke, who one day sneaks into the contaminated zone in an attempt to gather proof that the father he never knew was in fact not guilty of deliberately causing the sinkhole for material gain, as the 15-year-old popular rumor that has ruined his reputation has it. This essentially boils the entire book down into a family drama, which is nice enough on its own; but now add all the morally dubious yet sympathetic people the two meet along their separate journeys, from the massive yet kindhearted airship captain Jeremiah to the mechanical-armed tough-talking saloon owner Lucy, not to mention the dozens of fully realized incidental characters along the way. Add all of these things together, and you get what you see here in Boneshaker, a book that literally could not be written better than it currently is, which is why today it receives a perfect score of 10 among those who are already genre fans; but of course, keep in mind that this definitely is a genre project when all is said and done, which is why its general score is a bit lower, because don't forget that in order for a book to score in the high 9s here at CCLaP, it must be able to transcend its intended audience and appeal to a large general crowd as well, which this book definitely does not. It is for sure the book to try if you've always been curious about steampunk, and want to pick the absolute best of the genre so to not waste your time; but if you simply have no interest in steampunk at all, you will be unable to see this book as anything other than ridiculously silly no matter how well it's written, a fact which should be tempered against all my glowing praise of it today. That said, I'm confident in proclaiming that it will appeal to most people out there, and of course for existing genre fans it should immediately be moved to the top of your reading queue; needless to say that it'll be making CCLaP's own "Best of 2009" list coming next month, and that I'm now eagerly awaiting the release of volume two in the series (Clementine, coming from Subterranean Press next summer, which is apparently about Civil War spies and is partly set in Chicago -- hmm!). Out of 10: 9.0, or 10 for steampunk fans ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 16, 2009
|
Sep 23, 2009
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1906301077
| 9781906301071
| 1906301077
| 4.41
| 46
| May 01, 2009
| May 01, 2009
|
really liked it
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CC
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.) Of all the ways that I discover the various books that I end up reviewing here, perhaps my favorite is when an author I already admire will recommend to me an author they admire; and that's not only because these authors and I tend to share the same tastes, but also because these authors tend to not want to ruin whatever good graces they have with me, so tend to only recommend writers who are legitimately quite great ones. Take for example New Weird veteran Robert Freeman Wexler, who I've reviewed twice now here in the past; he recently contacted me regarding another author recently signed to the same small press where he belongs, a writer similar in nature to him named Sebastien Doubinsky but based out of Europe instead of the US, and to see if it'd be all right for their mutual publisher to send along Doubinsky's latest book for possible review. And I'm glad he wrote, for Doubinsky's The Babylonian Trilogy turns out to be yet another great New Weird work, a trilogy of novellas that like Wexler's books are not quite science-fiction, not quite noir and not quite horror, but a strange and pleasing combination of them all, hence earning the all-inclusive "New Weird" moniker in the first place. The three long stories are all set in an alternate-Earth version of New York named "Babylon," although it's not until the third tale that we actually see any alternate-history-type stuff happen to justify the fictional setting; it's a large urban center that behaves almost exactly like we expect such places to, except with such fantastical elements as murder being legal there (as long as one has the correct licenses and expensive paperwork), the publishing industry being state-controlled, America still embroiled in Vietnam but with Vietnam now an official state within China, and other believable but not-quite-real touches. It is the New York of Raymond Chandler and other pulp writers, only filtered through the contemporary lens of tabloid television and rampant drug abuse, definitely an otherworldly environment but in about the least alienating way to non-genre readers as possible. What Doubinsky does within this environment, then, is present us with the intertwined stories of over a dozen different characters, each of the novellas standalone tales with their own themes and self-contained plot arcs, but with a series of developments that bleed over from one to the next; the first, for example, "The Birth of Television According to Buddha," is a Carver-like ensemble piece about the intersecting lives of a number of different, supposedly unrelated Babylon citizens (who of course turn out to be more related than they at first seem), while the second and third novellas ("Yellow Bull" and "The Gardens of Babylon") are much more stereotypical noir tales, albeit with running characters and storylines that pop up here and there throughout all three. In effect it gives the entire project as a whole the type of dreamlike, synchronicity-style causal connection that Doubinsky is obviously shooting for, a seemingly contradictory situation where we both feel that we are in that city ourselves and suspect that we're perhaps hallucinating the entire thing. Now, that said, there are some problems within The Babylonian Trilogy as well, and let me make it clear that this is not a book for everyone; with plotlines this fleeting, for example, it's easy to feel dissatisfied by the time one reaches the end, and with the tales themselves sure to be frustrating for those who don't naturally like at least a little unexplained weirdness to their genre fiction. Also, I have to confess that I'm not the biggest fan of the way this book was laid out, with the three novellas further chopped up into hundreds and hundreds of "mini-chapters" only a few paragraphs long apiece, each of them presented on a separate page and with their own chapter number or title; I know this is a big hot thing among a certain crowd of contemporary fiction lovers these days, but I tend to find such deliberate artificiality to do nothing but get in the way of actually getting lost in the story itself, and in general always prefer that the actual mechanics of the book-layout process cause as little undue attention to themselves as possible. But still, all in all I found The Babylonian Trilogy a highly entertaining and thought-provoking read, not the best that the New Weird community has to offer but certainly more than worth your time, a book definitely to pick up if you're already a fan of such bigger names as Jeff Vandermeer, China Mieville or Wexler himself. It comes highly recommended to genre fans, and is also not a bad title at all for non-fans to take a chance on. Out of 10: 8.6, or 9.1 for New Weird fans ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 29, 2009
|
Sep 10, 2009
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0553147374
| 9780553147377
| 0553147374
| 3.87
| 868
| 1978
| Feb 01, 1981
|
it was amazing
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
not set
|
Apr 02, 2009
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0553293389
| 9780553293388
| 0553293389
| 4.18
| 91,649
| Oct 1982
| Dec 31, 2010
|
it was ok
|
THE GREAT COMPLETIST CHALLENGE: In which I revisit older authors and attempt to read every book they ever wrote Cur THE GREAT COMPLETIST CHALLENGE: In which I revisit older authors and attempt to read every book they ever wrote Currently in the challenge: Isaac Asimov's Robot/Empire/Foundation | Margaret Atwood | JG Ballard | Clive Barker | Christopher Buckley | Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | Lee Child's Jack Reacher | Philip K Dick | Ian Fleming | William Gibson | Michel Houellebecq | John Irving | Kazuo Ishiguro | Shirley Jackson | John Le Carre | Bernard Malamud | Cormac McCarthy | China Mieville | Toni Morrison | VS Naipaul | Chuck Palahniuk | Tim Powers | Terry Pratchett's Discworld | Philip Roth | Neal Stephenson | Jim Thompson | John Updike | Kurt Vonnegut | Jeanette Winterson | PG Wodehouse 2022 reads, #29 and 30. And so, three years after writing the first review of this 15-book megaseries, do we finally come to the end of my look at Isaac Asimov's so-called "Future History" volumes, in which he took three formerly unrelated trilogies he wrote in the 1950s (the "Robot," "Empire" and "Foundation" books) then in the '80s and early '90s write six "bridging novels" that legitimately (if not awkwardly) turns the entire thing into one unified, persistent, arguably paradox-free 22,000-year timeline. Inspired by his buddy Robert Heinlein's ability to pull this off in his career as well, it takes us in 15 books (novels and short-story collections) from a day-after-tomorrow future of increasingly intelligent robots to a far future in which a humanity now in its trillions is scattered across 25 million planets, governed under one giant empire whose bureaucracy is the size of an entire planet (where George Lucas got his inspiration for Star Wars' "planet-sized city" Coruscant). As I've mentioned in previous reviews, I was 13 when I first read the original '50s Foundation trilogy, after finding it on my grandparents' guest bedroom's back bookshelves, filled with all the leftover sci-fi my father and uncle read in the 1940s through '60s when they were kids themselves; and then I was actually in high school in the early '80s just a few years later when all these bridging novels first started coming out. 1982's Foundation's Edge, one of the two books being reviewed today, was the very first one of these bridging novels, released at the beginning of my freshman year; the other, '86's Foundation and Earth, came out at the end of my senior year, right before entering college and getting introduced to the cyberpunk genre and Dark Age comic books (and the indie music and drugs that accompanied them) by all the cool hipsters there who were older and smarter than me, and actually included girls for the first freaking time in my life, which is why I quickly ditched the Silver Age of sci-fi around the mid-'80s for a diet of all cyberpunk, Vertigo, urban fantasy, and cute industrial/goth girls. Even with it being that long now since first approaching those books, though, I can still remember two very distinct things about that initial wave of public reaction to these '80s books that tie all these series together: both how much it was celebrated as the triumphant return of a grand master to a genre he hadn't regularly published in for twenty years at that point (spending most of the late-'60s to late-'70s actually writing in a wide variety of nonfiction subjects, eventually receiving the designation [I believe still not broken] of being the only person in history to publish books in nine out of the ten Dewey Decimal System categories); and how disappointing the books turned out to be as reading experiences, just this page-padding nonsense from an old man with not much left to say, not when compared to such mindfuckery in those same years as from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, which is why all us young readers were gravitating to those writers back then. That's been the same conclusion I've drawn again 35 years later, reading all 15 of these books in a row, that the '80s titles in this megaseries simply aren't very good, with Asimov having no more than about a short story's worth of actual plot to convey in any of them, but who then pads them out to sometimes 100,000 words or more so that they'll feel "weighty enough" to deserve all the Hugos and Nebulas the awards people were already lining up to award him, book unseen at that point. It was a weird time to be a young sci-fi fan, I'm now starting to realize, when the so-called "Silver Age" authors who had their heights in the '50s and '60s were now at the twilight of their careers, and us teenagers were veering towards this particularly outre, hardcore, outlandish style of the arts, lit by the harsh neons of Japanese logos and shiny rainlit back alleys full of consumer-tech trash. I was already a (young) adult in these years, so I distinctly remember with this adult eye how much authors like Asimov and books like these were being pushed towards the sci-fi community as these "objects" to be "revered" from a "master" who we all have the "privilege" of seeing "going out on a high note," not just concerning him and the Future History books but also reflected in mid-'80s projects like Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001, the creatively titled 2010 which went through a similar pre-public veneration before the project itself was ever released. My friends and I were not really having any of that, and we knew what we liked and we gravitated towards it, which I suppose it why you see this strange schism between the "con-going" sci-fi fans in these years and the "cyberpunk" fans who mixed these books in with the indie comics they were also reading, the indie music they were listening to, the computer work (legal and non) they were doing, the drugs they did and the fashion they followed. People wanted these aging '60s masters to have one last hurrah to their careers, and that's admirable; but Asimov at least was largely not up to the task, and should have in fact just written six short stories in the style of the original 1951 Foundation that covers all the plot of these six '80s bridging novels, and publish just it as one book which neatly ties together all nine of the original books from the '50s and makes the entire "Future History" megaseries a tidy decology. Maybe one day in the far future when these books are in the public domain, someone will do exactly that; but until then, now that I've gone through the entire thing myself, let me recommend first reading the Robot short stories and the three Robot crime novels, then reading just the Wikipedia entries (or my reviews) of the bridging novel Robots and Empire, the entire original "Empire" trilogy from the '50s, and the two modern "Foundation" prequels, to then pick up with the full books again for the original '50s "Foundation" trilogy, and back to the recaps for these last two "Foundation" sequels being covered today. That's still a worthy achievement, and as we saw in my original looks at them, both the "Robot" books and the original "Foundation" ones are all still great reads that are worth your while; but you can skip all the empty words and "magical robot" nonsense of the modern bridging novels without missing anything important, so I suggest sticking to just the six books that most demonstrate why Asimov and his work is still worth continuing to look at, all these decades later. Isaac Asimov books being reviewed for this series: I, Robot (1950) | The Caves of Steel (1954) | The Naked Sun (1957) | The Robots of Dawn (1983) | Robots and Empire (1985) | The Stars, Like Dust (1951) | The Currents of Space (1952) | Pebble in the Sky (1950) | Prelude to Foundation (1988) | Forward the Foundation (1993) | Foundation (1951) | Foundation and Empire (1952) | Second Foundation (1953) | Foundation's Edge (1982) | Foundation and Earth (1986) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
Mar 27, 2009
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060541830
| 9780060541835
| 0060541830
| 3.62
| 172,933
| 1980
| Oct 28, 2003
|
liked it
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
not set
|
Mar 24, 2009
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.63
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 18, 2012
|
Oct 03, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.52
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 17, 2011
|
Sep 17, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.84
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 02, 2011
|
Sep 02, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.71
|
really liked it
|
Jul 22, 2011
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.48
|
liked it
|
Jul 22, 2011
|
Jun 24, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.97
|
liked it
|
Jun 15, 2011
|
Jun 15, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.49
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 07, 2011
|
Mar 04, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.38
|
liked it
|
Feb 15, 2012
|
Jan 19, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 3.94
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
|||||
|
| 4.06
|
it was ok
|
Dec 13, 2010
|
Dec 13, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.30
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 13, 2011
|
Nov 17, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 3.75
|
really liked it
|
Aug 07, 2012
|
May 18, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 2.96
|
it was ok
|
Jul 09, 2010
|
Apr 22, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 3.80
|
really liked it
|
Jul 21, 2010
|
Apr 04, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
liked it
|
Jun 16, 2011
|
Dec 25, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.52
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 16, 2009
|
Sep 23, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.41
|
really liked it
|
Sep 29, 2009
|
Sep 10, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.87
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Apr 02, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.18
|
it was ok
|
Jun 12, 2022
|
Mar 27, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.62
|
liked it
|
not set
|
Mar 24, 2009
|
Loading...
