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0061474096
| 9780061474095
| 0061474096
| 4.17
| 72,430
| Sep 09, 2008
| Sep 09, 2008
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it was amazing
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Just to come right out with it, this is probably my favorite book. It made me feel homesick for a home that exists only in the imagination. It’s about Just to come right out with it, this is probably my favorite book. It made me feel homesick for a home that exists only in the imagination. It’s about philosopher-mathematician-scientist monks. It’s about Plato’s allegory of the cave and his world of forms. It’s about the power of ritual. It’s about the conflict between dogma and skepticism. It’s about the love affair between human beings and ideas. It’s about the beauty of the human mind, unchained from economic bondage. If you’ve read any of my reviews, it should be clear why this appeals to me. Philosopher-scientist-mathematician monk? Yeah that’s everything I aspire to be. If a daemon appeared before me and offered me the chance to be reborn within the world of Anathem, to become a mathematician-monk within the Mathic world, I would take it without hesitation. I love to explore the works of philosophers, scientists, and artists - because these are people whose thoughts have escaped the drudgery of the economic present. Like everyone else, they must abide by this economic reality, this need to dwell in a daily mundanity, to fulfill animalistic needs for shelter, food, and community. But their minds manage, on occasion, to pierce that veil and transcend into higher realms. They can see worlds that do not exist but could exist, if time or physics or color or geometry or genetics were different. As the Buddha wrote, life is dissatisfying. I sometimes liken it to a fog of darkness which can feel impossible to understand or navigate. Well these philosophers and scientists and artists create works that serve as beacons of light that grant both clarity and warmth. Or as the character Orolo advises: “Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.” And while Anathem has a fun sci-fi (though better to call it phi-fi) plot, the surface narrative is ultimately only a staging ground from which to explore larger, grander questions. How do philosophers and scientists and artists come up with their ideas? What differentiates a good idea from a bad one? How can we tell? What is the ideal world or system in which to cultivate such thoughts and thinkers? What is the thinkers’/scientists’/artists’ relationship, both their responsibility and their expected recompense, with the unreflective majority? Is the point of existence corporeal or cognitive? Roughly mid-way through Anathem, the protagonist Erasmus has an epiphany that I believe serves as the keystone for the entire novel. In a discussion with his extramuros (i.e. not one belonging to the mathic world) sister, he talks about how much more advanced their basic machines could be, if the mathic world were allowed to improve them. His sister counters that she wouldn’t like that… because the machines would be too advanced for her to understand. From this, Erasmus has a major epiphany - he generalizes their discussion to the pursuit and communication of ALL knowledge. He asks himself in despair, “What is the point of pursuing and gaining complicated knowledge if no one else will be unable to understand or appreciate it?” In considering that question, avoid any temptations to consider the technological/economic applications of knowledge. For example, suppose we were considering building a solar system sized particle accelerator to gain better knowledge about the quantum world - knowledge that, by the way, only the 0.00001% of humanity with the necessary mathematical background will actually grasp. However, suppose we were somehow absolutely certain it wouldn't help us advance our technology or economy one bit. Should we undertake such an endeavor? That question and the ways in which we might think about answering it is basically what Anathem is all about. As is my life's pursuit. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 05, 2022
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Sep 05, 2022
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Hardcover
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0316332879
| 9780316332873
| 0316332879
| 4.57
| 69,044
| Mar 26, 2019
| Mar 26, 2019
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it was amazing
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The style of this review brought to you by Mordin Solus. Wonder, wondrous, awe. Let’s talk about it, let’s chat, k let’s go: My previous book, Soldier o The style of this review brought to you by Mordin Solus. Wonder, wondrous, awe. Let’s talk about it, let’s chat, k let’s go: My previous book, Soldier of Mist, took me 3-4 months to read. Fantasy novel. Complex. Bit of a bore. Didn’t even finish. Then Tiamat’s Wrath, I burn through in less than a week. Speedy like a hedgehog or a roadrunner. Or a particle of light. So huge contrast in reading time. Kinda disturbing. Why? Why one book drew me in, and another did not? Complicated answer: plot structure, issues with protagonist passivity, obfuscation, one is a story, the other… a fog. But don’t really care about that. Not this time. No, this time, care about WONDER. Big difference in WONDER with these two books. Soldier of Mist: no wonder, no curiosity, no transcendence. Protagonist Latro meets a beautiful nymph in the woods. “Hi. Wanna make out?” he says. More or less. Meets the goddess DEMETER in her temple: “Hi. Wanna make out?” Where’s the wonder, where’s the awe? This is intentional, to ground mythology, strip its mythos, transmute into grittier reality. But why? To what end? Transmute Gold into Lead. Success doesn’t look like success, looks like failure. Then I read Tiamat’s Wrath. Great contrast in wonder. Like cloudy sky to infinite blue. One sky tells us to hide, hunker down. The other beckons, promises adventure. Want to go explore. In final two books, we explore. Who are the Protomolecule Engineers? Who are their adversaries? How do they function? What do they want? Mysteries. Fun to explore: A solar system, with no planets but a giant diamond. A history gem? Library of the ancients? Crystallized consciousness? Yes. Or a neutron star, nearly brimming over. On the cusp of collapse. A whisper, a breath, an iota more, then devastation. Ponder the beings with such Physical mastery. Like Gods - or Demons. Or creatures moving through the void. Shadows stalking like lions through electric and magnetic fields, rending ships and people. How do we stop them? First, we must know how they do it. To conquer, first you understand. And once you understand, do you still wish to conquer? So science and peace are brothers. All this Wonder is like a Bedouin cistern, unsealed before a wanderer’s thirst. Disturbing to discover I had become so parched. Makes me think. Where did all the Wonder go? Is it age? A factor, yes, but prosaic. What else? Many contributors, many thieves. But I’m thinking… social media, internet. It can entertain, educate, enlighten even. But can it inspire? Can it draw forth Wonder? I posit no, it cannot. Content, a problem. Mostly low effort, low density of quality per consumption. Like candy. Easy to consume, minimal nutrition. Sometimes even negative nutrition. But more than that, a flaw inherent in the medium, in delivery of content. Tiny visual screens, weak audio drivers, no smell, no touch, no taste, flat prioriception. Delivery of information without experience of information. Like a prisoner looking out his barred window. Prison negative connotations but prison feels safe. Prison cell a controlled environment. But Wonder comes from being surrounded by frightening novelty: standing on the Moon, not looking at it through an eyepiece. Such is provenance and pursuit of skilled story-telling. Tricks your brain, displaces the senses. Simulation constructed of and perceived through linguistic interface, transports you to a new time, new place, into new minds. S.A. Corey, that two-headed beast, is a skilled story-teller. Drama, yes. Suspense, yes. Conflict, yes. But those are easy, cheap, and therefore common. Wonder is rare and priceless and, at the summit of our vertiginous being, it is everything. ...more |
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Jun 21, 2022
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Jun 21, 2022
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Hardcover
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4.28
| 96,240
| May 07, 2019
| May 07, 2019
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it was amazing
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Story-for-story, Ted Chiang is the most award-winning sci-fi writer of all time. No one else even comes close. Part of it is due to his simple, yet el Story-for-story, Ted Chiang is the most award-winning sci-fi writer of all time. No one else even comes close. Part of it is due to his simple, yet elegant writing style. Another part is due to his ability to take complex ideas and reframe them in a way that makes them easier to enjoy and understand. But I think his most important trait is that he doesn’t moralize. He has no interest in telling the reader WHAT conclusion to draw. Rather, his stories are arenas of thought, in which you are invited to challenge your thinking and draw your own conclusions. Like a good magician, Chiang provides the wonder but not the explanation. What follows are meant for post-reading ponderance. The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate One part Arabian Nights, another part Canterbury Tales, a third part Back to The Future made for such a delightful cocktail. Time travel stories that concern themselves with the actual logic and causality of time travel invariably arrive at the same conclusion: Maintaining coherence in the face of backwards time travel requires the past to be immutable and destiny to be fixed. Such is the case here in Merchant and Alchemist’s Gate. As the Alchemist says, “Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.” But Chiang (via the Merchant) makes the interesting point that even if you cannot alter the past, you can nevertheless alter your understanding of it. We have a tendency to learn from experience but to then place that experience in stasis in our memory. Yet, days or decades hence, we might revisit our memories and experiences and revise our understanding of them. Indeed, failure to do so is to risk ossification. I am reminded of perhaps the most important lesson I ever learned from literature, from Anne Rice’s Interview of a Vampire: How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value.To become fixated upon the past, to never revise your understanding of it but to instead worship at the Janusian altar of nostalgia and regret, is to voluntarily incarcerate yourself into such a madhouse. Exhalation One day I was bored, so I invented Erik's Law, connecting people running cars in parking lots to Fermi's Paradox. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is such an ugly name for what is, basically, the core flow of the universe: order goes to chaos. You can create local pockets of order, but you can only do so by stealing from another reservoir of order. In our case, that reservoir is mostly the sun. Eventually, though, there will be no more reservoirs and the Universe will know Heat Death. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize it’s a mistake to limit the 2nd Law to only large-scale non-intelligent systems. It can provide great insight into human affairs. The daily struggle to maintain a sense of peace, the cycle of fallen civilizations, climate change, Fermi’s paradox - it’s all related to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Unfortunately, the 2nd Law is wrapped up in all these technical terms - entropy, free energy, heat - that can make it hard to understand. That’s the genius of Exhalation: by reframing the 2nd Law in terms of air and air pressure, with a universe trapped in an air-tight dome, populated by robots whose brains are powered by air, Chiang grants novelty and clarity to the idea. The story ends on an optimistic note, as our robot-scientist narrator makes peace with the doom of his civilization. It’s a feeling that we are all going to become increasingly familiar with, as climate change continues to ramp up in the face of our ineffectual response. Many of us will liken it to the acceptance of our own individual deaths - we all know our time here is limited. This is just that, on the civilization level. The religious will, of course, embrace their doomsday prophecies and find comfort in those self-deceptions. Others will rage against the dying of the light, finding value and purpose in the struggle, even if it is futile. There is so much more to Exhalation, of course. The scientist dissecting his own brain to discover the secrets of the universe is a fun metaphor. And the realization that our “self” is not the brain or the body but rather a transient electro-chemical pattern contained within. And that line equating the Big Bang to a great initial Exhalation. Wonderful, wonderful. What's Expected of Us This very short story asks the question, “Is a belief in free will necessary for the functioning of society?” It’s not a philosophical question but rather a psychological one. Chiang answers this question with a massive YES. In the story, people are demonstrated the non-existence of free will with a simple device: a button that lights up BEFORE you press it. And try as they might, there’s no way around it. People can never fool it. Over-time this degrades everyone’s sense of responsibility and agency, such that large swathes of the population enter an apathetic malaise. The story’s solution - which comes in the form of a message from the future - is simply “pretend.” That’s where the story falls apart for me. It’s so Western-centric, embracing a strongly individualistic worldview in which every person is an island, ultimately isolated in the universe/ocean. But there is another solution, encoded in the famous Zen koan "What is the sound of a one-handed clap?": stop thinking of yourself as entirely separate from the world and universe around you. A button that lights up before I press it would prove no problem for me because I don’t consider that button as entirely separate from me. Yes, of course, I have a body distinguishable from that button - but it’s not so sharply different in terms of things like free will, determinism, electric and magnetic fields, flows of knowledge and entropy, the weft and weave of the Universe. So my view wouldn't simply be that I am pushing a button; rather, by doing so, I am freely participating in the pre-pushing powering of the light. That I am unable to push the button without also participating in the pre-pushing powering of the light represents no more a loss of my free will than does the fact that I cannot randomly decide to ignore gravity and leap into space. If you’re interested, I write in much greater depth about this view of free will in the bottom third of my Echopraxia review. Lifecycle of Software Objects In one of sci-fi’s most famous memes, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy involves a super AI whose answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is the number “42.” But we might substitute that “42” with something like “to be happy” with minimal loss of vagueness. Douglas Adams didn’t do that because it’s too subtly absurd - too many people wouldn’t get the joke. I bring this up because I’m pretty sure our interactions with future AI will be similar: “Dear Oracle Super AI, how do we save the world from climate change?” CALCULATING… BEEP BOOP BEEP. ANSWER: “Stop using fossil fuels.” Oh, right. We already knew that. In fact, we already know the answers to most societal ills. It’s not the knowledge we lack. It’s the collective will and/or flexibility and/or selflessness to actually put that knowledge into practice. In a way, that’s what the Lifecycle of Software Objects is all about: how to create the holy grail of AI: a generalized human-esque intelligence. But as this story gets into… we don’t actually want that, do we? We want a generalized intelligence that is NOT human-esque, so we don’t have to give it human rights. We want one we can put to work in factories and banks and so on, without having to treat it as a human employee. We want intelligent slaves who won't object to their slavery. And if we did want a human-esque generalized AI? Well, why? We already have a human-esque generalized intelligence... humans, lol. If this more subtle, realistic approach to AI is new to you, you'll probably like this story more than I did. Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny Don’t take this story literally. That’s true of every Ted Chiang story, which are rich in allegory and metaphor, so I don’t know why I was so dead-set on reading this one literally. But I did, and I missed the point. In this story, a Victorian semi-mad scientist creates a mechanical automaton to serve as his child’s nanny. Years later, the son ends up doing something similar. But the story isn’t meant as a machine-version of Tarzan. Rather, it’s exploring the idea that the environment in which children are raised tends to become their preference. That’s where that old joke that people tend to marry their mother/father comes from. Or, less humorously, why so many children raised by abusive parents can end up with abusive partners too. More particularly to this topic, it asks us to consider the fact that today’s children are, at least in part, being raised by the “machines” of screens and social media. What will that mean for their future? Even before the pandemic, face-to-face interaction was already dwindling. I had a long running joke with my girlfriend that every time we went out to eat, you could always find a family or a set of friends who basically never interacted but instead looked at their phones for the entire meal. I only see this becoming increasingly common and emphasized. Lament it, if you will, but I’ve always believed in turning my face to the future and not the past. You can find cause for optimism in this change, if you want to. Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling This is one of my favorite stories in the collection, probably because it explores the role language and writing play in our human experience. And writing is a serious hobby of mine. Not just with these book reviews; I’ve also written two novels, probably about 30 short stories, countless essays. I even had a “writing apprentice,” who is now getting her masters in writing and working on her first book. So, yeah, big fan. I love that writing allows the writer to condense a lot of work and thought into an extremely rich piece of language. Like a precious gem. Or a depleted uranium round. There’s an impressive contrast between the time to create and the time to consume. A poem that might’ve taken 30 hours to construct can take less than a minute to read. Which is different than other uses of language, like conversation. For me, spoken conversation can be a pleasurable social activity but I tend to find it intellectually dissatisfying. But getting to the story: Truth-truth is a split narrative, one of which follows a native from a tribe with a strong oral tradition as he learns his letters from a Christian missionary… and how this learning changes him. That’s the part centered on language. The other (main) narrative is set in a future in which most people video-blog every moment of their lives. A journalist, who is a tech skeptic, decides to review a new update that allows easy instantaneous searching and access of this live-blogged history. “Siri, show me my 9th birthday.” Bam, done. Taken on its own, the main narrative is banal - the journalist discovers just how subjective and unreliable his memories are. Old news. I hope. But, combined, the two narratives provide sharp insight into our perception and usage of modern technology. Personally, I can be dismissive of those people who feel the need to post their every thought and experience on social media. Especially when they’re not even honest about it - when they edit those experiences to make them seem better than they are. This whole phenomenon has created a social media castle-in-the-sky that so very few of us will ever actually inhabit. That said, this story made me realize that, really, it’s old news too. Social media may have accelerated the trend, but written language itself often functions similarly. Cause written language is also a technology - we don’t always think of it as one but it certainly is. And it, too, alters our relationship with reality. Take this book review, for example. It’s highly edited. See in that second paragraph where I put, “So, yeah, big fan.” Wasn’t there in the first draft. I often edit in conversational beats like that in order to make my reviews more approachable. Couldn’t have done that if it were spoken language. And I think I’ll end the review here. Run out of steam, I’m afraid, so thoughts on the last three will simply have to remain a mystery. But I hope I’ve given anyone reading this some extra food for thought. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 31, 2020
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Nov 17, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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0765377101
| 9780765377104
| 0765377101
| 4.42
| 129,720
| Nov 2010
| Sep 20, 2016
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it was amazing
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>>load ThreeBodProbTxtAdv.brv Loading… 25%… 50%… 75%… 100% Seen from the bridge of your ship, the star mall glows like a miniature star. The light from >>load ThreeBodProbTxtAdv.brv Loading… 25%… 50%… 75%… 100% Seen from the bridge of your ship, the star mall glows like a miniature star. The light from its many neon adverts pierces the black void with a kaleidoscope of color. The largest sign is a red-limned silhouette of Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker, wearing a viking helm. The strangest is a skeleton in heels gyrating its bony hips and offering lascivious winks. >>dock star mall You follow the instructions of a bored traffic controller speaking heavily Chinese-accented English. After a few moments, you’re in the mall’s docks. They’re empty except for large cargo containers, though the dim light obscures their markings. A bright light illuminates an elevator at the end of the docking spindle. >>move elevator You ride the elevator down to the main concourse, and the doors open onto a long, narrow lane crowded with shops on either side. The shaded lights and lack of people suggest the mall is currently in its night cycle. >>look shops On the left, you see a mechanic’s shop; a fuel/gas exchange; and three dried food-stuffs vendors, each with a sign written in a different language. On the right, you see again the sexy skeleton in heels, advertising a VR arcade; a tea shop whose name is written in old Norse Runes; a local Prospector office; and a blaster shop featuring several prominent models. >>move tea shop Upon entering the tea shop, a man forged from threadbare light appears before you. He has a serious, yet youthful face. The hologram does not surprise you. A star mall this far from Jupiter could not afford the wages of flesh labor. The man speaks, “Welcome to the Philosophozerker Viking tea shop. You look like a customer who appreciates only the very best teas. Is that so? Of course it is.” He beckons. “Come this way.” As the hologram man leads you into the depths of the teashop, he flickers in and out of existence each time a light projector in the ceiling clicks off and another one clicks on. The shop itself is full to bursting with tall cabinets divided into innumerable small wooden boxes labeled with teas of all type and flavor: an aged Arrakis pu er; several of the Thorn-Cha cultivar; the famed Ubikuro, of the PKD plantation; and a modified-carbon tea, to name just a few. Their herbaceous, smoky scents leak out to form an aromatic gestalt, and for the briefest of moments, you have the wildest idea that each individual scent is like a single neuron of some larger, grander cosmic tea monster. After passing several aisles, the hologram man comes to a halt before a small display shelf featuring three tins. “These,” he says, “are our three latest teas, exported from the Chinese station by Liu & Martinsen shipping company. We call them the diqiu wangshi cha: Memories of Earth Tea, in celebration of our ancestral home.” He gestures to the first tin, labelled san ti cha, the three body tea. “Have you had a Chinese tea?” he asks. “Not many have, in this sector. The flavor profile differs from those produced here in the Western Jovial plantations. Some tasters struggle to acclimate, but to them, I would say, To close one’s heart to novelty is to keep a flower in the shade.” His semi-transparent grin is not dissimilar to that of the Cheshire cat. He continues, “Like many Chinese teas, this award winning tea does not concern itself with the individual character. It does not focus on any one characteristic, not the beauty of its leaves nor its infused soup, not the aroma, nor the taste, nor the body. Rather it is concerned with the holistic experience, what some call the communal cha. Thus, to drink of this tea is to drink of Chinese culture itself.” “Would you care to try some?” he asks. >>speak “no” You say, “No.” “A shame,” says the hologram. “But could be you have already sampled it? Then perhaps I can interest you in the second tea of this set?” He gestures to the second tin. “We call it the senglin de hongcha, red tea of the forest.” He chuckles as if he has made a joke. “Take a sniff, if you will.” >>smell second tin You lean in and inhale the aroma. Its rich earthy tones bloom into a more complex bittersweetness, that of dark chocolate mixed with apricot. “Distinctive, no?” says the hologram. “For this tea, the growers attempted to correct the criticisms of their first tea by giving it a stronger, more distinctive character. In addition, each bud was hand-picked by blind monks of the Wallfacer Sect. It is said that their blindness has granted them a gentleness and sensitivity that allow them to harvest only the best buds while causing the least damage in the process.” “That said,” he continues, “this is my least favorite of the three. The taste has a strong, complex finish, fulfilling the promise of its rich aromatics. But it has a very bland opening. Perhaps this honesty makes me a bad salesman.” He shrugs unapologetically. “But that is only because I am so enamoured of this third tea!” He snaps his fingers. After a minute pause, a little box-shaped robot rolls up the aisle. It holds a small tray on which rests a bowl of liquid. The hologram gestures to it. “Have a taste.” >>look robot The robot’s tray holds a beautiful bowl; its glazed enameling is mostly white, peppered by black star-bursts, an effect like that of a color-inverted field of stars. The tea infusion is a golden-green reminiscent of the sun reflected over a mossy garden pool. >>drink tea You reach to the robot, grasp the bowl, and take a sip-- ...moment the Ring entered three-dimensional space, the universe seemed to be cut in half. The cut surface glowed with a blinding light, as though a star had been pulled into a line in an instant. From the spaceship it was impossible to see the end points, but it was if God had held a T-square against the plan for the universe and sketched a line straight across from left to... The hologram’s eyes light up. “Aha, I can see it in your face! There is a depth to this tea, is there not? We call it the singular umami. Compared to the limitation of our language in describing the tea, the scope is infinite. The experience transcends description.” He waits for you to finish drinking the sample. When the bowl is empty, the little robot raises its tray. >>set bowl robot You return the empty tea bowl to the robot, which attempts to execute a three point turn in the narrow lane between shelves. However, whether because of the narrowness or its aging hardware, the robot’s three point turn ends up being a fifty point turn. You watch, bemused, for the several minutes it takes to finally complete the turn and return back into the bowels of the tea shop. The hologram clears his throat. “My apologies. I would have helped but…” He raises his hands in a helpless gesture, revealing their transparent, incorporeal nature. “But back to the tea. Are you aware of their legend? No? Then I shall enlighten you.” He takes up a pose like that of a professor lecturing his students, or a pastor delivering a sermon, and begins, “All three teas are made from the Cixin Liu cultivar, a well-respected variant amongst Chinese growers and tea drinkers. Indeed, legend tells how the first Cixin Liu plant arose: during the Three Kingdom Warring Era, a nameless monk travelled the land, going from village to village, on a quest to ease the suffering of the people. Yet wherever he went, he found that his goodness was but a drop in a deluge of evil. Survivors of rape and massacre trod from one ruined village to another; warlords fought each other, killing wantonly and seemingly without gain or purpose; scholars and clergy far removed from society debated increasingly esoteric theory; all while merchants peddled rice at extravagant prices, deaf to the cries of the starving. At one such market, at the base of the Huang Shan mountain, the monk demanded the merchant feed the famished peasants around him. The merchant laughed and had his guards strike the monk down for daring to demand anything. This cruel act was too great even for the starving peasants to stomach, and they swarmed the merchant and his guards, killing them and taking the rice for themselves. Soon after, the first Cixin Liu tea plants sprouted from where the monk’s blood had soaked into the ground. It is said that this is the source of the cultivar’s bitterness: it is the monk’s bitterness towards humanity.” The hologram pauses after finishing his story, and his gaze takes on a faraway quality, as if he is seeing beyond the material veil. Abruptly, his gaze returns to yours. “Ah, a sad story, yes? But there is some light in it, for it suggests new life can arise even from the blackest darkness. Indeed this tea demonstrates that very idea.” “The bitterness cannot be denied,” he says. “From the first sip to the last echoes of the aftertaste, the tea expresses bitterness. It is much as the legend says: this tea knows a bitterness towards humanity. When you sip of this tea, you are reminded of the many foibles of humanity. Humanity is delusional, easily persuaded by others and itself. It is concerned, first and foremost, with its comfort, both material and mental. And humanity is powerless against its own nature. Even knowing its own psychology, even for its own benefit and longevity, it rarely manages to evade its own biases. So, yes, this tea knows bitterness.” “And yet!” he grins and raises a fist. “And yet! the sample was not overwhelmingly bitter, was it? That raw character is balanced by the spice of wonder. These three teas may all be of the same cultivar, yet it is only this last one that achieves the apotheosis of its potential. This is because its growers used the very latest techniques and technology to bring out new depths.” He opens his arms to the world around him. “I am but a three dimensional creature, and you are but four. These are the bars of our prison. But we would be quite foolish to equate our prison with the universe. Other ideas, other lands, even other dimensions exist outside our limited perspective. So it is with this tea. Its roots have undergone a technique known as inflationary-dimensional-expansion. While you possess only three extended dimensions of space and one extended dimension of time, the plant used to make this tea possesses four extended dimensions of space and two extended dimensions of time. This second temporal dimension, in particular, allows the growers incredible powers of chronohorticulture. They are able to rotate the direction of the plant’s entropy, so that the plant’s first time dimension coordinates - that is, our temporal dimension - can be locked at the most perfect moment, to maintain a freshness as if it were harvested and processed mere moments ago." Unfamiliar with chronohorticulture, you are not entirely sure what the hologram is talking about, but his excitement is nonetheless infectious as he continues, almost breathless, “That is not all chronohorticulture allows either! You are aware of the God-Photon hypothesis? No? Then I shall explain: Because photons travel at the speed of light, relativity’s time dilation and length contraction tell us photons must therefore possess zero dimensions of both space and time. But there’s a catch: it’s zero of OUR dimensions of space and time. There are some who believe that photons do possess PARALLEL dimensions of space and time. Indeed, these folk believe that photons represent the gaze and touch of an Eternal God, who exists beyond our space and time, and for whom our universe is but a simulated dream.” He leans in close, conspiratorial-like,“Well I have heard whispers that, when the chronohorticulturists begin rotating the plant’s temporal coordinates, strange ghosts of light appear around the plants. As if indeed photons do possess a reality wound up in an alternative temporal dimension! The farming angels, these ghosts are called, on account of how they interact with the plants, as if they’re tending them. That is why this third tea is called yongsheng shencha, the eternal life God tea, for it is touched by God himself.” He leans back, arms folded, clearly satisfied with his sales pitch. “Now how much would you like to purchase?” ---- >>load PatternTxtAdv.brv ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 03, 2019
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Apr 2019
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Mar 28, 2019
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Hardcover
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0345490177
| 9780345490179
| 0345490177
| 4.02
| 2,287
| 1967
| Oct 31, 2006
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really liked it
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This collection of related stories was way more awesome than I had expected. I essentially started reading it on a whim, as I had stol– ahem, borrowed
This collection of related stories was way more awesome than I had expected. I essentially started reading it on a whim, as I had stol– ahem, borrowed the full Robert Howard series from my father’s bookshelves but had promptly forgotten about them once they were on mine. But the other day I was bored and noticed them and said Hey, I love the Conan films (the snake palace / harem scene, my god! So well done! Not the battle itself but the stealth infiltration / build up to it. It was like a fantasy version of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western duel - the anticipation was everything). Now typically I don’t like short stories. For a year or two, I did a whole regimen of writing & reading them, even getting subscriptions to Asimov’s and Analog and SF&F. But a whole slew of rejections and a lot of unread stories later, I finally had to admit I’m just not that interested in the medium. Short stories are just too, well, too short. I like the long plot and character arcs, the slowly accumulating lore and world detail, the sense of falling into the deeper rabbit hole of a novel’s fictional universe. But Kull? Loved it. These stories are pure pulpy fantasy deliciousness. And because they all focus on Kull, and his trials and tribulations as King of Valusia (his ascension to kingship is literally a single paragraph at the end of the first story), they can maintain a longer sense of character arc and world building. And some of the stories are themselves longer, multi-parters, while a few are shorter. To my surprise, these shorter ones turned out to be some of my favorites. Special standout: The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune. It begins: “There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester’s bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky, and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.” The story becomes this fascinating philosophical meditation in which a wizard and mirrors act as metaphors for depression / ennui. Kull sees himself in the wizard’s mirrors and says, “Nay, by Valka, am I the man or is he? Which of us is the ghost of the other? Mayhap these mirrors are but windows through which we look into another world. Does he think the same of me? Am I no more than a shadow, a reflection of himself--to him, as he to me? And if I am the ghost, what sort of world lives upon the other side of this mirror? What armies ride there and what kings rule? This world is all I know. Knowing naught of any other, how can I judge? Surely there are green hills there and booming seas and wide plains where men ride to battle. Tell me, wizard who is wiser than most men, tell me are there worlds beyond our worlds?” Even these small excerpts reveal the sense of grandeur that permeates the writing. For sure, Kull and his stories harken from a different era, one in which men could be unashamedly masculine and warriors need not apologize for their blood-letting. At risk of turning political what ought to be a simple review, I’ve only grown more sympathetic to the cause of the Sad Puppy movement (not the Rabid Puppies - they were all wankers). This collection demonstrates the power of simple story-telling, one in which any political agenda is incidental. That said, contrary to the popular narrative regarding golden age sci-fi & fantasy, Kull and his stories are by no means misogynistic and regressive. In fact, Kull is constantly striving against conservative tradition. A noble and his slave wish to marry each other? Kull would make it so - but it is against the Old Laws of Valusia. And Kull himself is explicitly asexual. He simply isn’t interested. Thank Valka for that. The idea that in olden times masculinity was synonymous with a sort of predatory promiscuity is just… eugh. Frat boy values do not equal masculinity. Anyway, Kull was my first Robert Howard reading experience and a genuine delight. If you’re at all a fan of fantasy, it’s worth reading at least one of these collections. *One downside is the absolutely egregious usage of adverbs on said. 'said Kull dazedly' 'said the other cryptically' 'answered the other tranquilly'. Yikes! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 28, 2018
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Dec 28, 2018
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Paperback
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0345539842
| 9780345539847
| 0345539842
| 4.52
| 246,429
| Feb 09, 2016
| Feb 09, 2016
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it was amazing
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After writing my reviews for Red Rising & Golden Son, I struggled to write this one for Morning Star. Did I have anything left to add besides “So, uh,
After writing my reviews for Red Rising & Golden Son, I struggled to write this one for Morning Star. Did I have anything left to add besides “So, uh, yeah it’s a great ending to a great trilogy”? Months later, I decided, yes, I did: the weakness of wealth. Here’s four quotes to start us off, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald One of the most interesting themes of the Red Rising trilogy is this notion that wealth has an atrophying effect: wealth makes the wealthy complacent and jaded. That, indeed, this complacency has, historically, lead to social revolution and the upending of civilization (e.g. Fall of Rome, French Revolution, and now, with globalization, America/”the West”). Such thinking was, in Red Rising, the explicitly stated motivation for the existence of The Institute. The violent ‘game’ was meant to remind the elite Peerless Scarred of the necessary brutality needed to enforce the social order. And throughout all three books, Darrow references his own impoverished upbringing as the source of his greater strength: How can these Golds – who have experienced a life of luxury and comfort – hope to compete with him, a Red, a Helldiver, whose own iron will was forged in misery? And we see this theme, too, in those Golds (Virginia, Sevro, Sevro’s father, Victra, to name a few) who choose to side with Darrow. Each of them has their own tragic past, which is what motivates them to make a change to the system. It is not their wealth, but their poverty (of joy, peace, morality, etc) which defines them. I’m fascinated by this topic, as understanding it is important to my profession. I’m a teacher, and it so happens that most of my students belong to the upper class, i.e. I teach Golds. As a teacher, I'm tasked with the rather difficult task of understanding my students' minds (and lives), so I can help them overcome any obstacles to their education. Now, at least for these students, the root cause of most academic struggles is not actually academic in nature. It’s, first and foremost, a matter of excess time burdens. In particular, excess homework and over-scheduling of extracurricular activities results in a less-than-zero-sum game because sleep deprivation is ruinous to long term retention, if not mental health in general. Honestly, I can't stress this enough. Sleep deprivation in (upper class American) students is so pervasive and so harmful, it's become an epidemic. But all that was a bit off-topic. Getting back to this theme of the Weakness of Wealth, I bring up the second cause of academic struggle: a lack of motivation, or more precisely, the devaluation of education. Basically, many of students ask, “Well what is the point of any of this?" Which is a completely fair question to ask. However, I've fielded this question hundreds and hundreds of times, and I've answered it in practically every conceivable way. I've cited specific applications (e.g. I talked about how I used trigonometry to program collision detection in a game, or how matrices/linear algebra is essential to machine learning, or how scientific understanding helps me make sense of mental illness); I've answered it by analogy (e.g. reading books is like taking a vacation to another world); I've attempted pathos (e.g. learning to understand language helps you understand other people and improves your humanity); I've invoked grand philosophies (e.g. I compare math and science to 'the language of God' and talk about how living in the universe without understanding them would be like living in France without understanding French); etc, etc. In answering to this fair question, however, I've learned is it isn't a real question. For the vast majority of students, the question "What is the point of any of this?" is actually a statement: "I have decided there is no point to any of this and nothing you say will change my mind." And why should they think otherwise? They were born and raised in wealth and don't know any different. It's THEIR wealth, THEIR socioeconomic status. Just as it is with MOST of the Golds in the Red Rising trilogy, the notion that wealth and status must be earned and maintained is, at best, an abstract idea. So why value education? For example, I once tutored a student whose final grade in Latin class was a 7. Yes, a 7 out of a 100. Up to that point, I’d never seen a single digit course grade and couldn’t even understand how it was possible. But then I learned more about him. This was a kid whose first car was a $50,000 BMW and who expected to go to an Ivy League school, as his parents had done, via Legacy admissions or as a DevA (this is a classification for college applicants who are ‘A’ ranked in ‘development’, aka there’s the expectation of future donations of large amounts of money). I tried to explain to his parents that such a low score can’t be understood as a matter of academic weakness, nor could it be fixed with academic remedies. Until their son was motivated to learn, I told them, there was no point in trying to teach him. I suggested that maybe it was unwise to simply give him an expensive car, as human beings tend to value only those possessions they worked to obtain. Further, I suggested that telling him that they’d simply get him into an Ivy League school using their connections and wealth was robbing him of his motivation to excel at academics. Naturally, their response to these words was to hire someone else. In a non-fiction book I recently read, Factfulness, the author tells a story about how, as a Swiss medical student, he did a stint in a medical school in India. In one of his first classes there, the teacher put up an MRI and asked for a diagnosis. The author immediately recognized it as a form of lung cancer, but he didn’t want to “show off” his superior education in front of the native Indian students. So he kept silent. The other students began answering, however, and not only did they recognize it, they listed off treatment options, further tests needed to be run, and other knowledge that was far beyond what the author knew. ‘Oh,’ he thought, ‘I must’ve been put in the wrong class, with actual doctors.’ So, after the class, he went up to one of his fellow students and said as much. “No, no,” said that student. “You’re in the right class.” Turns out, most of them read the textbook religiously, cover-to-cover, because none of them took it for granted that they could “be whatever they wanted to be.” Rather, to them, education was a privilege that had to be earned. The conclusion of the author because of this (and many other factors) was that the economic center of the world was very swiftly moving from Europe/The Americas to Asia. Returning now to Morning Star, that’s basically the plot: a shifting of power from the Golds, back to everyone else. Whereas Golden Son was primarily focused on Gold political dynamics and Darrow’s struggles to decide WHAT to do and WHY, Morning Star is about the actual execution of his revolution. In the pursuit of this, the book shows us more about the other Colors. This is especially the case with Obsidians, the recruitment of which is a major plot arc. Morning Star is great. I loved it as much as I loved the first two books. It’s got space battles, twists, political machinations... everything to make a story fun to read. But, as I’ve tried to show with this review, it's not without its depths either. It gives you plenty to think about too. And what this book has made me ponder, more than anything, is this: those of us born to wealth (i.e. most of the people reading this) need to realize that, globally speaking, we’re Golds. The rest of the world wants the wealth we have (they want their children not to die from basic preventable diseases, for starters), and each of us needs to decide – in our choice of career, our voting habits, our efforts at conservation, what we teach our children, etc – whether we’re going to be a good Gold or a bad one. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 20, 2018
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May 20, 2018
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Hardcover
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4.27
| 493,090
| Jan 28, 2014
| Jan 28, 2014
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it was amazing
|
As with any new (& popular) book, Red Rising gets compared to other popular books, the most common of which is Hunger Games. Of the blurbs/praise on t
As with any new (& popular) book, Red Rising gets compared to other popular books, the most common of which is Hunger Games. Of the blurbs/praise on the inside cover, over half reference Katniss or Hunger Games. Half! Which I can’t deny is an apt comparison, as Red Rising’s primary setting is the Mars Institute, a brutal medieval training ground, where young people have been isolated from civilization and literally told to enslave and/or maim each other, until only one faction remains. So I get the comparison. But I don’t like it, and, in fact, I think it’s actually a rather poor one. See, I didn’t particularly care for Hunger Games. You could say I found it a little bland. Yes, bland. Its style and voice were too… practical. I felt it sacrificed too much on the altar of pacing and thrill. Anything that didn’t keep the pages turning, the heart brimming with fevered expectation was excised. But I *like* the quiet moments, those little oases where the characters can reveal their humanity. That’s why I believe an action movie’s quality is determined more by the power of its still moments than by the frenzy of its kinetic moments. I’d even go so far as to claim the entire purpose of those kinematic moments is to lend power to the quiet moments by way of contrast. What would Matrix be like, without Neo’s conversation with the Oracle? Aliens without Ripley’s interactions with Newt? Gladiator without Maximus’s many recollections of his family? Now I’m not saying Hunger Games doesn’t have its quiet moments, it’s just that, to me, they felt empty of humanity. Because when it comes right down to it, what is Hunger Games really about? Why was it written? When Suzanne Collins sat down to write her trilogy, what motivated her? What message did she really want to portray? How did she want her readers to be transformed by the reading of her book? I struggle to find a satisfying answer to these. You can talk about the Districts as an analogy for third world exploitation and you can talk about the Games themselves as an analogy for the cannibalistic nature of celebrity, but there’s really not much in the actual text to chew on. Rather, I suspect Suzanne Collins set out to write a good story, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just, well, to quote from Red Rising’s sequel: “Anything that believes only in itself cannot go happily into the night.” Ask me, Hunger Games is about Hunger Games. But the best stories are about more than themselves and their characters. The best stories, no matter how fantastical their settings and heroes, somehow become about us, our world, our lives, our struggles. So in terms of Red Rising’s readability, Hunger Games is a good comparison. Red Rising and its sequels are eminently enjoyable to read. I finished the whole trilogy in about nine reading sessions. But in terms of what Red Rising is actually about, this book and Hunger Games could not be more different. Hunger Games is thrill. The end. But Red Rising’s thrill is a tool to explore deeper themes. So let me suggest an alternative comparison: The Count of Monte Cristo. In the Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes, naïve and powerless, is wronged in such a way that leaves no ambiguity about the evilness of what has been done to him. Through a bit of luck, he gains the power to get revenge upon those who abused him so cruelly. Basically, he becomes Batman. But – and this is what makes The Count so much more than a simple revenge tale – as the story progresses, it begins to focus less on the revenge and more on Edmond’s internal struggle to maintain his goodness. The worst wrong done to Dantes isn’t that his beloved fiancé is stolen, his father killed by means of destitution, and over a decade of his youth lost in prison, it’s that all this evil has threatened to transform his own good heart into one of wrath and vengeance. The Count himself recognizes this when he says, “Fool that I am, that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself.” And that’s one of the great struggles of life, isn’t it? I daresay most people start out as fundamentally decent human beings, but how do we maintain our decency in the face of the corruption, greed, waste, thoughtlessness, and selfishness that we daily witness? To quote Raymond Chandler: “The tragedy of life is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean.” This is exactly how Red Rising plays out. The protagonist Darrow is a Red, the lowest Color (read: caste) in an extremely stratified hierarchical society. He’s a miner of Mars, a so-called Helldiver, and he loves his young wife Eo more than anything. But then because of the most minute of infractions, he loses all. Yet, as with Edmond Dantes, a bit of fortune allows him the means to revenge himself. Darrow is transformed from the lowest Color, a Red, into the highest color, a Gold. And with such power, he begins his quest for revenge, the first step of which is to graduate from the Institute as a Peerless Scarred, the elite of the Gold. But Darrow will discover that not ALL Golds are evil, and he will struggle to balance his hatred with his humanity… Humanity is a good word for this book because Red Rising and its sequels are just so BURSTING with it, far beyond most of the other books it’s compared to. I’d even go so far as to liken Red Rising’s sense of humanity to that of a Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) film. Take Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke), for instance. That film is my favorite: I’ve watched it every year since I first saw it when I was thirteen years old because every time I rewatch it, I feel refreshed by its subtle beauty, its true and yet uplifting depiction of humanity. Mononoke Hime has no villains in it. There are people who do selfish, greedy, evil things, yes. But they’re always portrayed sympathetically. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW PEOPLE ARE. It is just as Sirius Black tells Harry: “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.” And so it is with Red Rising. It contains intense amounts of violence, cruelty, darkness. But always the author (and Darrow, especially in the later books) is trying to find the love, the kindness, the light as well. Consider this speech from the man that Darrow hates almost above all (this is from book two): “I do not truly fight because I want to be king or Emperor or whatever word you slap above my name in the history texts. The universe does not notice us, Darrow. There is no supreme being waiting to end existence when the last man breathes his final breath. Man will end. That is the fact accepted, but never discussed. And the universe to continue without care. Does that sound like a villain’s speech to you? That’s why I adore Red Rising so and wholly recommend it. Like many of the books with which it is compared, it’s not always easy to read because it takes such an unflinching look at the dark side of humanity. But unlike so many of these others, it manages the marvelous feat of never losing its core of hope, optimism, and friendship. And that’s a wonderful thing. **** [P.S.: I picked up Red Rising and read it and only AFTER I finished did I learn that it is considered “Young Adult.” HAHAHAHAHA. Red Rising may not be Ulysses, but it is not YA. I know what I'm talking about, here. The first book I wrote was YA. For a year, I read nothing except YA. Red Rising is not YA. It is marketed as YA because putting a book in the YA section is gonna sell you a ton of copies. But Red Rising is no more YA than Dune is. A young protagonist does not a YA book make. In fact, after my year of YA reading, I got where I loathed 99% of it because so much of it is thematically identical, the same old coming-of-age, bildungsroman, ‘Oh I’m a special snowflake but actually I’m not,” “I want to fit in but I want to be own person too!” and, of course, the love triangle bullshit. Darrow starts out the book MARRIED and WORKING FULL TIME AS A MINER. There is no special snowflake bullshit. There is no “omgosh I just want to fit in.” There is no love triangle. Red Rising and its sequels are adult science fiction with a protagonist who is biologically a young adult but otherwise not at all a young adult. In the Red mining society in which he grows up, he is practically middle aged at the start of the book. And that is how he behaves 90% of the time. So let the marketers say what they wish, but here, we readers, amongst ourselves, let us call the thing for what it is, and not call it for what it isn't.] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 08, 2018
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Mar 08, 2018
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Mar 07, 2018
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Hardcover
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006105481X
| 9780061054815
| 006105481X
| 4.06
| 11,215
| Apr 1994
| Oct 01, 1995
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it was amazing
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How do you define 'science fiction'? From a quote from an interview with sci-fi author Ted Chiang: How do you define 'science fiction'? From a quote from an interview with sci-fi author Ted Chiang:
Here’s one from an interview with Ray Bradbury:
Using these as my definition of science fiction, I can say without qualification that Greg Egan is the greatest science fiction author I’ve ever read. I consider that an objective assessment. The ideas about which he writes are outstandingly imaginative, yet never seem impossible. That differential is why I consider him objectively the greatest. Because, sure, I've read science fiction with more outlandish ideas, and I've read science fiction that did a better job of convincing me of the possibility of its plot and setting. But I've never read (and I doubt such exists) science fiction with SUCH outlandish ideas that nevertheless still seemed possible. I'm tempted to say, "It's pure magic." But, well, it's not magic. It's science fiction. Alas, as I wrote in Diaspora, Greg Egan is not for everyone. To truly appreciate what he’s accomplished in his writing, you need to be familiar with some physics and metaphysics. This is because Egan's books look at some theory or idea in physics and ask, "What does it mean?" His books attempt to pull back the Wizard's curtain and see what's there. Here’s an example from classical physics: Newton’s law of gravitation is expressed with the equation F = G*m1*m2 / r^2 while Coulomb’s law (of electrostatics) is F = k*c1*c2 / r^2. Two fundamental forces (gravity and electromagnetism) that are otherwise quite different have such similar equations! When I encountered this in my first physics class, it blew my mind. Surely such a coincidence suggests some underlying unity to the universe? If we think of physics as “the music of the celestial spheres” then such commonalities suggest there’s some invisible celestial composer, God or otherwise, giving it order. This explains in part why physicists are so hell-bent on creating a ‘unified theory of everything.’ Unity *feels* like truth. However, the most interesting ideas – the ones that Greg Egan explores – arise from more modern physics, such as quantum mechanics and relativity. So let's talk about a theory that assuredly influenced Egan's writing of Permutation City: Quantum Electrodynamic's 'Sum-over-possibilities' approach. [image] Suppose I want to know whether some particle which starts at A will end up at point B and what path it will take. In classical physics, I can say yes or no depending on some relatively simple maths. But in quantum mechanics, at best I can tell you the probability of it happening. One of the ways I can calculate this probability is to look at ALL the possible ways A can get from B. There are infinite ways to do so, yeah? Mr. Electron can go straight from A to B. Or he can take make a pit-stop at the ice-cream-photon stand at point C to eat some mint chocolate chip photon-cream. Or he can take a little vacation 2.5 million light years away in Andromeda before going to point B. Now obviously that latter one is VERY out of the way, so it’s very unlikely so it doesn’t contribute much to my answer. BUT I DO NEED IT. Now with calculus (the math of infinities), we can do this calculation. Since particles (and even larger molecules) behave as waves, these various possible paths interfere with each other and parts of them cancel out. What remains is the actual path the particle ends up taking. Which is just, wow, kinda awesome, yeah? Paths the particle COULD have taken – but didn’t – interfere with other such paths not-taken to arrive at the actual path??? WTF? For reals? Apparently. When you realize this, when you realize these bizarre mathematical abstractions end up accurately predicting real world physical phenomenon, it doesn’t seem so outlandish to say, well, maybe there really are INFINITE other physical universes for all these other paths, including the one where our particle Mr. Electron really does travel to Andromeda, and maybe all these infinite universes influence each other in some way. Could there then be some meta-universe or at least some metaphysical rules that must be obeyed in these inter-universe interactions? What might this meta-universe be like then? What might those metaphysical rules be? This is what Greg Egan does. He takes these metaphysical ideas and asks, “Okay suppose this were true. Suppose there really were infinite universes. How would people discover the truth? And what effect would that discovery have on them? And how do I write this so it sounds actually plausible?” That is a Greg Egan novel, in a nutshell. And I can give you Permutation City in a nutshell too: it’s primarily about a man named Paul, who traps a Copy of himself in the virtual world in order to undertake some consciousness experiments. It asks the question, "Suppose every possible logically coherent permutation of reality actually did exist. How would someone find this out? And, finding it out, what would they do with this knowledge?" What follows is a compelling exploration of consciousness, religion, posthumanism, immortality, and, yes, the science and math behind some of these ideas. That’s where we encounter a second problem in reading Greg Egan. The first problem, to summarize, is that if you don't know any higher-level physics or mathematics, you probably haven't done any of these metaphysical thought experiments yourself, so you're not gonna geek out as much that someone actually bothered to turn them into a story. The second is this: Greg Egan writes hard science fiction. This isn't without reason. To people like myself and Egan, ideas aren’t compelling if they don’t have some basis in reality. Without such a basis, he might as well just write, “Yeah okay inside every electron, there’s a micro-universe in which talking unicorns poop rainbows at each other in an epic battle to reign as the supreme unicorn of the micro-universe, but it turns out these rainbows are actually the origin of conscious thought inside our brains. So really consciousness is the result of unicorns defecating rainbows.” Not really satisfying, huh? The math and science Greg Egan invokes in his writing are necessary language to communicate his ideas in a compelling manner. They are as necessary as the rules of English. If I write, “ef9uafojfk appleapple app le;;;; BANANA!” I’m not really communicating anything worthwhile am I? But, again, that’s the genius of Greg Egan. He communicates ideas that could easily seem as outlandish and stupid and nonsensical as “appleapple app le;;;; BANANA!” but by bothering to give them a foundation in science & mathematics, he grants them an elegant verisimilitude. His stories seem real. And that which is real is usually more beautiful than that which is not. All of this is not to suggest that Egan’s books are totally impenetrable without a PhD in Quantum Physics. While Egan is certainly unapologetic in his invocation of hard science & math, he ultimately keeps his focus on the humanity of his ideas. For example, in the world in Permutation City, there exist virtual ‘copies’ of sometimes dead (and sometimes still living) human beings. He shows the legal issues involved. Does a Copy have the same rights as an organic human being? There's several poignant interactions between one of the main characters and her mother, who is resistant to the idea of becoming an immortal Copy even when faced with her death. So, the humanity isn't lost in a swarm of technical details, as sometimes happens with science fiction. In conclusion, if it isn’t clear, I think EVERY serious book-reader, especially every sci-fi reader, should at least attempt an Egan novel. If it turns out you can’t handle the hard science aspects, fine. Either go educate yourself on them (as I did when required in both Permutation City & Diaspora) or don’t and at least say you give it a fair shake. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Oct 13, 2017
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Oct 27, 2017
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Mass Market Paperback
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0575079797
| 9780575079793
| 0575079797
| 4.21
| 259,722
| May 04, 2006
| Mar 08, 2007
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really liked it
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I like to read science fiction and I like to read Literature (with a capital L) and in that pursuit, I encounter all sorts of strangeness, all sorts o
I like to read science fiction and I like to read Literature (with a capital L) and in that pursuit, I encounter all sorts of strangeness, all sorts of experimentation in form and character and language and idea. In Radiance, for example, I encountered Walden-esque chapters that were just shipping manifests. Or in Money: A Suicide Note, I encountered such mundanely unpleasant characters, such banal evil, that I concluded the narrative’s sole purpose was to provide a vehicle for the peddling of human misery meant to advance some pseudo-edgy nihilism in order to, I don’t know, impress some jaded book critics. Or I come across the likes of the Ancillary series, which wears its leftist ideology on its sleeve, clearly interested in pushing a social justice perspective, regardless of the truth and complexity of reality (and being rewarded for it). I mean, don’t get me wrong. I obviously don’t like those particular books, but I like variety, I like a good evolution of style, I like ideas and characters and situations that expand the mind, I like to get political, to reaffirm that the words and stories we tell each other, they matter, not just a little, but a lot. The things you say and write make a difference. Certainly that’s what I tell myself. But then I come across a book whose focus is different. It’s not interested in torturing story structure in pursuit of novelty; it’s not interested in advancing a political or moral ideology; it’s not interested in making guesses about the future state of mankind. Nope. It’s interested in telling a story, plain and simple, with characters who act like people and talk like people and think like people, with language whose role is not to draw attention to itself but to describe those people and the world they inhabit, with a structure that proceeds as we proceed in the world, linear in time, with expectations, with aspirations, with emotions all tangled up. And confronted with such a book, I am revealed as a liar, a self-deceiver. I may appreciate experimentation and change, ideas that challenge and sharpen the intellect, but in my heart of my hearts, what I really want is a good story. I want to sit around a fire and hear some shaman tell me something grand, something that cuts through the bullshit and engages not with my intellect but with the best part of myself: my empathy. For me, story is king. No verbiage, no twisted perspective, no variety, no experimentation, no anything can compare to the power of story. The Blade Itself is such a book. Indeed, I have already finished the second book of the series and am on the third, and I can say, every book in The First Law series is such a book. They’re interested in story. They’re interested in character. They don’t tell you what to think, or who to like or dislike, or obfuscate the happenings in excess prose, or pander to human misery to score points with the Literati. They tell a story. Bam. Full stop. And surprise, surprise, it’s pure pleasure to read. In particular, the characters are great, which is quite a feat given that two of the three protagonists are – on the surface anyway – very unlikeable characters. First, we have Colonel Glokta, once a dashing hero but, after years of torture in an enemy prison, reduced to a cripple. Now he’s a member of the King’s Inquisition. That is, he's a torturer. He may not himself be an evil individual, but he is certainly a tool being wielded to evil ends. He feels nothing when he tortures false confessions out of innocent men. Reading his sections, with their incessant descriptions of his bodily pains, it’s easy to think he’s some 80 year old curmudgeon, who has become jaded and apathetic, instead of the crippled 30 year old he is. And yet… he’s strangely likeable, in the much the same way the racist, misogynist, homophobic heroes of 1950s noir novels are. He’s competent, he tolerates no sham, and whenever he’s offered a chance to do the right thing, he takes it. Alas, that such chances are so very rare. You feel less that Colonel Glokta is evil than that the times or society is evil. As indeed it is, for the land where most of the story takes place – The Union – is led by a feeble-minded king and a corrupt, ineffective nobility. The second main character, Captain Jezal dan Luthar, is a member of that nobility and typifies all that’s wrong with it. He’s entitled, superficial, lazy, and gives almost no thought to anyone but himself. I won’t lie, I didn’t care for him. To quote from that old fellow in that one Firefly episode: "I simply cannot abide useless people (or characters)." Unlike Colonel Glokta, Jezal has almost no redeeming features. But at the same time, he’s not evil. It’s just that he’s never been tested. Most of my (wealthy) students are like this: there’s nothing [i]wrong[/i] with them per se. In fact, there's plenty right. It’s just that their life of ease has never offered them the opportunity to develop some of the more admirable character traits that arise from facing adversity. Without fire, no blade can be forged. As such, Jezal dan Luthar is an investment. We do get the first glimpses of a deeper character when his relationship with a commoner woman – the sister of one of his friends Major West (who is a PoV character in book two) – forces him to take his training for the Contest, a sort of super-bowl but for dueling, seriously. Without giving too much away, Book Two is where the true fire is applied, and so far, book three is shaping up to be the payoff for all the investment. Suffice to say, I no longer strongly dislike the Captain. Indeed, of all the main characters, his arc is certainly the most dynamic. The last main character is Logen Nine-fingers, and, if you look at reviews, he’s rather universally well-liked – and with good reason. He’s a barbarian war leader who, in the first chapter, gets separated from his small war band, which is ambushed by monsters (which, btw, are very rare. This is fantasy but it takes after Game of Thrones in that magic and non-human monsters are few and far between). He’s down-to-earth, humble, friendly, and stoic beyond belief. His favorite saying: “You have to be realistic about these things.” Also, “You can never have enough knives.” But like the other characters, he’s not without complexity. In particular, he’s known as the Bloody-Nine, a nickname you don’t fully appreciate until the very end of the book. And, yeah, wow, Abercrombie knows how to describe a fight. Of course, good characters aren’t worth much if they aren’t given conflicts worthy of navigation. Actually, I’d say you can’t develop good characters UNLESS they have worthy conflicts (as Ancillary Mercy so amply demonstrated), but that’s beside the point: The Blade Itself has conflict and plot a-plenty. A barbarian warleader, Bethod, rising in the north, threatening the Union. A conspiracy involving merchants and a mysterious bank, for Glokta to uncover. And then, a Wizard, Bayaz, a Gandalf character, who gathers first Logan and then others to set off on a quest that eventually reveals ancient enmities and lore and ultimately serves as the backbone of the series. It’s good stuff. If you like fantasy, especially in the grittier, more realistic vein of Game of Thrones, you absolutely can’t go wrong with this book. *But I am giving it four, not five, stars. I have nothing but praise for this book, but I can conceivably see the argument being made that it’s especially geared towards males. All three PoV characters are unapologetically male. I don’t mean juvenile. I don't mean *stereotypically* male; they certainly don’t act like construction workers catcalling every pretty woman they see. FAR from it. It’s just, this is a masculine book, there’s no denying it. For example, Glokta ponders how he used to be showered with female attention when he was a “hero” and beautiful versus how he is entirely ignored now that he’s ugly and a torturer (but also far more intelligent and mature). This is a masculine conflict. Almost every man LIKES the attention of beautiful women, but how much is that truly worth and are the traits that get us the attention of beautiful women the traits we truly want to cultivate? That’s not to say women don’t also face a similar conflict, just that the specifics are different and the specifics matter. So, I wouldn’t say women cannot enjoy this book; in fact, I think there's much to like for both genders will like it. I just wouldn’t be SURPRISED to discover negative reviews remarking upon this. Furthermore, book two of this series is awesome. In terms of plot – of what’s actually happening – WAY more is going on. So by comparison, the relatively domestic conflicts (such as Jezal training for this ultimately frivolous Contest) feel far less weighty. Furthermore still, this book certainly suffers from a sort of “words are wind” (See Martin’s A Dance with Dragons) repetition issue. Say one thing about Logan Nine-fingers, say that he loves to repeat his little witticisms. Never have enough knives. Have to be realistic. Etc. And Glokta’s chapters are absolutely over-run with descriptions of the pain his leg and his spine give him and the sound of his neck clicking and his hatred of stairs. It is relentless. Every chapter. It’s not unfair and it serves to emphasize just how omnipresent this pain is in Glokta’s consciousness. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get tiring. Finally, this book goes over the top in characterizing the corruptness and incompetence of politicians, nobility, and the like. Aside from the main characters and their closest allies, everybody is either corrupt or incompetent. Maybe that’s a fair characterization (see: United States Government) but where’s the John McCains, the General Kelly's? They exist in The First Law, certainly, but they’re rare enough that I noticed it. So it’s not a flawless book, but, frankly, these are minor flaws. I wouldn’t say any of them detracted from my enjoyment of the book, and so I would maintain my recommendation: for fans of a good story, for fans of fantasy, especially ‘realistic’ fantastic, this is not one to miss. ...more |
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not set
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Sep 05, 2017
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Aug 18, 2017
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3453161815
| 9783453161818
| 3453161815
| 4.11
| 9,917
| Sep 1997
| Feb 2000
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it was amazing
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Diaspora is one of the greatest science fiction books I have ever read. Reading it brought into my mind a sense of wonder and of sheer visceral infini
Diaspora is one of the greatest science fiction books I have ever read. Reading it brought into my mind a sense of wonder and of sheer visceral infinity that I hadn’t felt for years. And yet I would recommend this ambitious hard sci-fi novel to almost no one. How can that be? How does such a strange, lonely situation arise? Cue digression: Have you ever seen a Shakespeare play? I mean an actual play, performed live on stage, in the original early English. The first such play I saw was the Duchess of Malfi, written by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Webster and if you’ve never partaken of something similar, allow me to explain: It is practically impossible to consciously track and interpret every line uttered in a play written in iambic pentameter (or some other poetical meter). On top of being in an early dialect, such lines are written for beauty and lyricism as much as they are for meaning and clarity. E.g.: I know death hath ten thousand several doors This is in STARK contrast to the media we encounter on the golden and silver screens, in which narration and dialogue must be immediately understandable by even persons of rather lackluster intelligence. My thought, as I was watching the Duchess of Malfi, was that most of my students would find it utterly incomprehensible. Their fluency in daily English is passable, I guess, but it is almost purely functional. They get confounded any time I turn my vocab or lyricism up a notch, which I occasionally do out of an incorrigible impishness. These students would hate the play. They’d feel lost. They hadn’t gained the skills (if just because of their youth) necessary to appreciate what was going on there. On the other hand, I absolutely *loved* Duchess of Malfi. The experience transcended my highest expectations. It felt, in many ways, like a boon the Universe was offering me, to reward my diligence in studying language and literature. Because, sure, it’s difficult to swiftly track the meaning of every single line uttered but you don’t have to. The tropes, the conflicts, the characterizations – the big thematic stuff – are not dissimilar to those in contemporary stories. Realizing that I could apply my *modern* sense of humanity to connect with a story written FIVE centuries ago invoked a most delightful sense of empathy with, well, with dead people, a feeling I will call NECROPATHY. My ancestors were not so different than I. Their concerns were my concerns. Their humor, my humor. Their tragedy, my tragedy. Reading Diaspora is similar to watching a Shakespeare play, except the difficulty lies not in the lyricism and age of language but in the book’s mathematical, scientific framing. I don’t just mean technical knowledge of these topics, though that is helpful in interpreting dialogue such as, “This solution [of a wormhole] has positive mass. In fact, if GR [General Relativity] held true at this scale, it would just be a pair of black holes sharing a singularity. Of course, even for the heaviest elementary particles the Schwarzchild radius is far smaller than the Planck-Wheeler length, so quantum uncertainty would disrupt any potential event horizons, and perhaps even smooth away the singularity as well. But I wanted to find a simple, geometrical model underlying the uncertainty.” If you have no familiarity with relativity, if you don’t know a Schwarzchild radius from a trous noir, if you mostly know Heisenberg as that guy that cooks really high-quality meth in that TV show, then yeah that sentence is going to be gobbly-de-gook to you. But even simple interpretation is not enough. It’s more than just a matter of vocabulary, it’s about understanding the deeper importance, why any of this math, science craziness even MATTERS. In fact, I deal with this situation all the time. As a math and science teacher, I constantly must field queries along the line of, “Why do I need to learn this?” or “When will I ever use this in my career?” This question excites me tremendously, primarily because it’s not a real question. Students ask it contemptuously, confident there is no real actual valid answer. Indeed, they aren’t actually interested in hearing the answer. What they’re really doing is materializing an excuse for their apathy (and/or low skill) toward what they’re doing. It’s OK if they don’t give a damn about what they’re doing if what they’re doing is unimportant. UNFORTUNATELY FOR THEM, they did ask the question, and by asking it, they have voluntarily stepped into the ring with THE MATHLOSSUS. [image] FIE! I begin. What are you, some sort of learning mercenary? Do you only ever learn if it makes you money? Oh, how dreary such a life will be. Math and science, I continue, are the language of the universe and, indeed, of divinity. Do you think God would deign to speak in English? Spanish? Latin? Greek? Hebrew? Arabic? How parochial! God, insofar as he exists, would speak in the language of the Universe, the Universal Language, which is the language of nature and reality, which our human-created mathematics and physics most closely approximate. It is for this reason that never should you listen to any person who does not understand math and science speak about God. How arrogant, how brash for one who knows so little of the universe to presume to speak about the nature of it. WELL, Diaspora, while written in English, is a story about the Universe and thus demands one know the language of the Universe. In that sense, the book is a like a physics or engineering thriller, which is far more exciting and interesting than it sounds (provided, that is, you speak the language of the Universe). The prime quest of the novel boils down to the protagonists needing to understand the universe in order to survive. But if that’s ALL it was, I wouldn’t be calling it the ‘one of the greatest sci-fi books I’ve ever read.’ Diaspora also offers the best (in terms of insight and realism) exploration of a post-human milieu that I’ve ever read. It begins in the year 2975 (you don’t even want to know what year it ends), at which point humanity – still in the solar system – has split into three factions: fleshers; gleisners; and ‘virtual’ humans living in polises. Fleshers are biological humans, though with advanced gene technology. Gleisners are humans who have opted for robot bodies. And those in the polis are those who have fully embraced becoming software and existing within virtual scapes – which, by the way, operate at 800 times the speed of meat existence. That is, a citizen of the polis experiences 800 years for every one year a flesher does (and yes the book explores the greater ramifications of such time dilation). The story primarily focuses on the experience of those in the polis and does an incredible job of exploring just what it means to exist purely as software. In fact, the very first chapter involves a newly born software ‘mind-seed’ growing into self-awareness. It is absolutely stunning. It is a tour de force of genius – and the entire rest of the book is just as creative and intelligent. And the scope! The scope of this book is enormous. I’d explain, but I don’t want to spoil, except to say despite being wildly ambitious, it feels authentic throughout. This is a testament to just how skillfully Greg Egan weaves hard sci-fi with more imaginative soft sci-fi. So, whew, yeah. Let me summarize. I think you can enjoy this book even without a math and science background. But if you do have such a background, it is *extremely* rewarding. You absolutely owe it to yourself to read this book. It will make every other sci-fi book seem less like sci-fi and more like fantasy. *** Addendum: If you feel intimidated, I extend the following offer: If you read this book and get stuck in the technical details, you should feel free to send me a message here. I will do my best to explain the science and math stuff – particularly its greater significance – to assist in your reading. ...more |
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Jun 06, 2017
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Jun 16, 2017
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Jun 06, 2017
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Paperback
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140003468X
| 9781400034680
| 140003468X
| 3.94
| 514,897
| Nov 1985
| Oct 05, 2003
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really liked it
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Reading Love in the Time of Cholera is like watching flowers bloom. Beautiful, and boring. The book is so boring, in fact, that I could spend no more th Reading Love in the Time of Cholera is like watching flowers bloom. Beautiful, and boring. The book is so boring, in fact, that I could spend no more than thirty minutes at a time traversing its dense narrative of obsessive love. I’d read something brilliant, get all gung-ho, and then face-plant into three pages about the river boat industry. Thus, not being able to read as I normally prefer (that is, Alice in Wonderland style), I instead carried love & cholera with me everywhere, reading it whenever I could wrest a half-hour chunk from time’s jealous grasp. Unbeknownst to me, however, love & cholera is apparently a giant badge declaring membership to the HEY STRANGER TALK TO ME ABOUT THINGS club. See, normally I’m an invisible human being who can sneak in and out of places, conversations, and bank vaults with nary a ripple. Love & Cholera in hand, however, and suddenly I had a spotlight following me. No matter where I went, people wanted to talk to me about their lives. Example: I walk into a wine-store. Lady asks if I need help. Nope. I’ve got one slot open, I say. But as I’m searching, I remember I’ve actually got two. I’d just polished off a bottle of 15 year Macallan and the last of my vodka. Alright. So I get two bottles. Lady behind the counter says, “I thought you only had one slot open.” “There’s always room for one more,” I say. I pause. Look awkward. Then add, “Room for one more wine bottle on a wine rack I mean.” “Uh huh,” she says and then her eyes lit on love & cholera. Oh jeez. Incoming. Lady tells me she’s read love & cholera. Read it for a boy, in fact. Tells me all about it, this teenage romance two decades past. She seems surprised to be telling me this or even remembering it, trails off in her story, and finishes, that’s how you know a book-worm loves you, don't you? When she moves your favorite book right to the top of her massive reading backlog, because she thinks this will help her understand you. Sure, I say. Sure is. Then, not five minutes later, at the sandwich shop, a middle-aged woman asks me how to order a sandwich. I tell her. It’s one of those where you make your own. Choose your own bread, cheese, spices, sauces, meats, etc. She admits intimidation. I admit I choose randomly. And then her eyes land on the love & cholera in my hand. Incoming. She loves the book. Absolute favorite. It’s helped her, she tells me, with her husband. Almost a divorce. But in fact, because of the book, she realized the difficulties have made her love him not less but more. How strange, she told me in so many words, that the ease of their marriage is what gave them so much trouble. The only way they could inject energy into it was with the struggle. An affair, she admitted (to me, a complete stranger!!). But now it’s all right. “That’s good,” I say, “I’m glad things are going well with your husband.” “Thank you,” she says and then boom, back to being strangers. Never see her again. I get my sandwich and sit down and eat it. It’s terrible. Probably because I randomly chose what to put on it. But y’know, I keep doing it, because sometimes it’s glorious. Sometimes I get a combination of flavors I’ve never encountered before. But I never order it again. It’s like the lady said. Familiarity breeds contempt. And what does any of this have to do with an actual review of love & cholera? I suspect love & cholera’s existence as a membership badge for the HEY STRANGER TALK TO ME ABOUT THINGS club is because that’s more or less what the book is. Reading love & cholera really is like listening to a particularly amusing, passionate, long-winded stranger tell you his life story. Except not on an airplane but instead, say, on a dirigible for some extra exoticism & freshness. And make that stranger also self-deprecating because love & cholera is more a comedy than it is a love story. Or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that it’s a real love story, rather than a Hollywood love story, because real love stories always contain an element of absurdity, which is why real love is as confusing as it is grand. Let me give an example of absurdity. The main protagonist Florentino loves Fermina, but she marries someone else (this is not a spoiler). In order to work out his unrequited love, he takes up writing love letters for others… and this happens: His most pleasant memory of that time was of a very timid young girl, almost a child, who trembled as she asked him to write an answer to an irresistible letter that she had just received, and that Florentino Ariza recognized as one he had written on the previous afternoon. He answered it in a different style, one that was in tune with the emotions and the age of the girl, and in a hand that also seemed to be hers, for he knew how to create a handwriting for every occasion, according to the character of each person. He wrote, imagining to himself what Fermina Daza would have said to him if she had loved him as much as that helpless child loved her suitor. Two days later, of course, he had to write the boy’s reply with the same hand, style, and kind of love that he had attributed to him in the first letter, and so it was that he became involved in a feverish correspondence with himself. Before a month had passed, each came to him separately to thank him for what he himself had proposed in the boy’s letter and accepted with devotion in the girl’s response: they were going to marry. Incredible, right? This interweaving of romance, pathos, and absurdity exists from page 1 to the very end. Which is why, even as boring as it is, love & cholera is an incredible book. It’s no more and no less than a fictional person’s life story, complete with all sorts of ridiculousness, dead ends, and random pointless tragedy. And you know what I realized near the end? That I knew these characters – Fermina Daza & Florentino Ariza – better than I knew almost any actual person. In fact, as I pondered further, I realized I know more about fictional characters than I do about actual human beings. I’m not some hermit either, so I don’t think I’m alone in this, and I wonder what it means. But that, I’m afraid, will have to be the topic of some other review, for this one is done. I need to go check on some flowers. Make sure they're still colorful. ...more |
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Mar 17, 2016
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Mar 07, 2016
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Paperback
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030788743X
| 9780307887436
| 030788743X
| 4.23
| 1,200,202
| Aug 16, 2011
| Aug 16, 2011
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it was amazing
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I thought I would hate Ready Player One. The one phrase I kept seeing from reviewers was '80s nostalgia porn.' See, Ready Player One tells the story of I thought I would hate Ready Player One. The one phrase I kept seeing from reviewers was '80s nostalgia porn.' See, Ready Player One tells the story of Wade Owen Watts, a teenage gamer who spends MOST of his time in the giant virtual world OASIS, the monopolistic hub of both entertainment and business in a dystopian future. At the start of the book, the owner of OASIS dies. His will lays out a quest for a magical Egg, the obtainment of which will confer fabulous wealth AND control of OASIS. Since this guy LOVED the 80s, naturally this quest is going to involve a TON of 80s culture. Hence, the ‘80s nostalgia porn.’ Negative reviewers brought this up, asking, ‘Who’s the audience?!’ of this YA-marketed book. Would millennials get or understand the references? Others said that this wasn’t really 80s nostalgia. It was just ‘name-dropping’ that failed to capture the GENUINE culture of the 80s. Positive reviewers, on the other hand, wrote that the 80s nostalgia summoned forth their 'inner geek.' Ready Player One was, to them, a celebration of geek culture. “Great,” I thought when I saw these before reading RP1, “it’s going to be some stupid golden-age nostalgia nonsense. It’s going to be like a cultural-wide inside joke repeated ad nauseam.” Then I read RP1. Ummmmmmm+++mm++mmm, did we read the same book? I was born in 1985. I am a geek, if not an obsessive one. As such I got some of the references but only some. I have seen Wargames and Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail – but I didn’t derive especial pleasure from the parts of the quest that required Wade to literally act out a scene from the movie. Likewise, when references were made to things I didn’t get – Modern Family, for example – I didn’t feel left out either. The thing is, the 80s culture nostalgia, while ostensibly being an integral part of the plot, is ultimately like the cilantro garnish thrown on top of a delicious meal. Like, yeah maybe if you REALLY LOVE cilantro, it’ll be key. Or if you REALLY HATE it, you won’t be able to eat the meal. But the rest of us are focused on the meat and potatoes. In the case of Ready Player One, the heart of the story involves the conflict between real & virtual interaction. It’s about the loneliness of our internet-centric world, about the deceptiveness of our virtual personas, about corporate greed, and about the importance of friendship. Seriously. Importance of friendship. It is also, despite the ostensibly happy ending, extremely bleak. Can we talk about our virtual world for a bit? I have tumblr, twitter, and facebook accounts, and they all disturb me for different reasons. With Facebook, you can, essentially, edit your life. You can post only your best pictures. You mention only your vacations, your good times – or even just your BIG times. It calls to mind a quote from Ann Beattie’s short story Snow: “Every life is interesting if you omit mention of most of it.” In Facebook (and on other social media outlets), most of a person’s life is omitted. Instead we get this deceptive sense of BUSYNESS. Other people’s lives all seem so HAPPENING. And ours, by comparison, seems less so. RP1 explores this idea via avatars. With few exceptions, everyone's OASIS avatar is more beautiful than the person behind it. I mean, obviously, right? Is this dishonest? Does it create a false sense of beauty in the world? Or does it demonstrate that humanity's inner beauty is greater its outer beauty? And what about other issues, like gender or skin color? If you know you're going to be discriminated against for being a woman or a person of color, then how about making your avatar white and male? Is that cowardly? Just in general, is it cowardly to misrepresent yourself online, perhaps as someone better than who you are? Or is projecting a superior version of yourself simply the first step to making it a reality? Tumblr, on the other hand, often strikes me as incredibly lonely. Check out the poetry tag for example. A solid chunk of the poems are lonely cries out into the void, unheard poets casting their sadness like a hook into the ocean of the internet, desperately hoping some giant fish will snap it up and save them from their sorrow. I think, if you asked these people, they’d understand that this isn’t going to happen. But the impulse – the NEED to connect, the NEED to believe your thoughts and opinions have value – is very real. People want to think their loneliness has deeper meaning. RP1 explores this loneliness. The main character Wade (aka Parzival) is an outcast and a loner. No real family, no real friends. His life has consisted of YEARS of studying 80s culture in hopes of finding the mystical Egg. He does this because he has no other purpose in life. The romance of this book – with a fellow egg hunter named Art3mis – is primarily virtual. Does the book dedicate long passages to exploring this real v. virtual? No. Nor did I want it to. This isn’t James Joyce. But it’s there, like a phantom, haunting every chapter, every scene, every character. The last of the social media is twitter, which is BY FAR my least favorite social media outlet. I tried to maintain an account but, since originally writing this review, gave it up. I got into too many situations in which I ALMOST had a really good discussion, but couldn't, because genuine discussion between intelligent, educated individuals cannot be bite-sized. Instead, Twitter is one giant advertising platform. Not just for corporations but for people too. Authors promoting their work. People promoting their ideology. Which, yknow, that’s not a BAD thing necessarily. In concept, it’s good for authors to have the means to promote their work. It’s good to have this open platform for the dispossessed to have a voice. Unfortunately, in execution, it all just amounts to branding. Because of the nature of twitter, there’s little real conversation or deeper engagement. It’s mostly just brand-shots fired back n forth at or with one another. Buy my book, my product, my idea, my existence. It's a conversation among eyeballs, a mad zoo of people desperately trying to find legitimization in the things they do. For its exploration of these and other themes, I consider RP1 to be a depressing book. Without giving any spoilers, consider the fate of all the obsessed egg hunters NOT explicitly mentioned. If the evil corporation – IOI - that opposes Wade and his friends manages to win by cheating, then all of these years of obsessed egg hunting have been for naught. They are wasted. And this one thing that gave them purpose & meaning in life… it’s over. But you know what? Even if Wade or one of his friends wins, the same is also true. Yes, Wade or whoever wins gets all the money and protects OASIS from IOI, but he is just one of THOUSANDS or MILLIONS of egg hunters who had dedicated their lives to finding the egg. Put like that, this whole quest becomes incredibly sadistic. How cruel to put up such a shining hope of wealth and escape, knowing that only ONE person can achieve it. Luckily there is a way out of this interpretation and it lies in friendship. So, yes, regardless of the outcome, there will be thousands who had their life purpose stripped away from them. And yet… they will still have the friendships they’ve formed in pursuit of their quest. They’ll still possess the bonds created by having a common goal. That's the real point of this book, the joy of geekdom in general, and the saving grace of social media. It’s like how, in Watchmen, Ozymandias (& Dr. Manhattan) realize the world NEEDS something to unite it, or else it’ll all fall apart in conflict. Well Geekdom does unify people. The Marvel Universe? The Star Wars reboot? Blizzard's latest game? George RR Martin's That’s what RP1 is, ultimately, all about. It’s not just some pointless ‘nostalgia 80s porn.’ It’s about how Geekdom unifies people in friendship and how it’s that FRIENDSHIP – not the actual geek stuff – that truly matters. In short, despite its obvious flaws, I loved Ready Player One. ...more |
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not set
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not set
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Oct 27, 2015
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Hardcover
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0553380958
| 9780553380958
| 0553380958
| 4.02
| 284,532
| Jun 1992
| Aug 02, 2000
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it was amazing
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Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in near future sci-fi, an adoption of a ‘default future.’ This setting usually involves a weak government and a strong
Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in near future sci-fi, an adoption of a ‘default future.’ This setting usually involves a weak government and a strong corpotocracy. The earth is a hot and dusty potato, with little water to spare and lots of pollution. Insects are everywhere. Except for bees. Bees are usually dead. Unless they’re mutant giants. And the broth of culture has overfloweth its cup. Religion, ideology, language, fashion, and festival have escaped their geographical prisons. What’s interesting about this setting is how often it’s simply assumed. In many of these stories, this setting isn’t hugely integral to the plot. It’s just sorta there. Like, yeah, well, obviously this is how our near future is gonna be. Can we really argue with that? I mean, honestly, we’re already there, aren’t we? In the past 20-30 years, as evidence of global warming has gotten increasingly more concrete, has any major initiative been accomplished? There is still a huge faction within the US government that denies climate change AT ALL, much less that it’s man-made, and much much less that there’s anything we can do about it. The future of our species remains very much in doubt. The evolution of corporations, banks, etc into the new government is just kind of, well, obvious. Compared to the churning vital froth of corporate competition, government is positively antiquated. It’s a dinosaur. I personally have long since given up any hope of seeing my social security taxes returned to me. I just think of them as donations to the elderly now. Meanwhile NASA outsources to SpaceX, corporations fund our politicians’ campaigns, and Google has more or less become the modern Oracle of Delphi. And the culture mish-mash? Hell yes. In any of my social networking feeds, I can find Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, and Hindi. It’s important to note that even twenty years ago that wasn’t even POSSIBLE. Now, because of the internet – what is called the Metaverse in Snow Crash – it’s commonplace. The students in my classroom hail from Korea, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, Singapore, and New Zealand, just to name a few. You might well label Walmart a global marketplace, the phones we use contain parts and ideas from all over the world, Hollywood films are bankrolled by Chinese interests, and the political upheaval in the Middle East constantly spills over into other regions via terrorism. In fact, this ‘default future’ is hardly new at all. The best cyberpunk sci-fi visionaries imagined it many years ago, including Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. Where Snow Crash differs, at least for me, is that I came away feeling optimistic. In comparison to the 'default future' found in the works of Gibson or something along the lines of PnP RPG Shadowrunners (in particular, Harebrained Scheme’s recent games), Snow Crash made me EXCITED for the future and its many challenges. Considering Snow Crash’s satirical bent, this wouldn’t seem to make much sense. The setting certainly contains a heavy dosage of absurdity. In Snow Crash, robot-dogs serve as security; language is a form of mind control; and the Federal government has become toothless and bipolar, mired in bureaucracy yet so obsessed with efficiency that it refuses to supply toilet paper for its own employees and instead organizes a toilet paper ‘pool.’ So why optimistic? Why excited? To explain, let me talk about what I consider the best part of Snow Crash: the first couple of chapters in which the protagonist Hiro Protagonist (har de har) delivers pizza. As far as jobs go, pizza delivery is pretty menial. If I put that on my resume or my online dating profile or what have you, no one’s going to be like, “OH MAN. THAT GUY. I NEED HIM.” Yet, in Snow Crash, its depiction is completely ridiculously awesome. I was so hooked. The Italian mafia, via the boss Uncle Enzo, runs the pizza place. Hiro Protagonist, aka the Deliverator, drives a sleek black sports car with a GPS map projected directly onto the windshield. He has a gun but prefers katanas to intimidate those who would rob him of his cheesy cargo. And a failure to deliver that pizza in 30 minutes? It’s treated like it’s the end of the world. Hiro takes pride in his speedy delivery. He treats it like it matters. And why shouldn’t it? To quote the rapper P. Diddy when he was asked about his early job as a toilet cleaner: “It was a job! But I was the best bathroom cleaner that ever was.” Such a dramatic envisioning of such a mundane task harkens back to medieval times when even a journey of 20-30 miles, something millions of us do now on a daily basis, was a serious undertaking. Bandits, marauding knights, a broken axle on the wagon, a sudden storm – these could spell disaster or even death! So it is with this ‘default future:’ the massive storms spawned by an unbalanced climate, the lessening of resources, the growing power of corporations, the maelstrom and conflict of different cultures clashing together… navigating these challenges while retaining our goodness will demand a higher class of human. They’ll demand the likes of Snow Crash’s other protagonist, a 15 year old girl named Y.T. (Yours Truly), who is competent and confident in her job as courier. Which she does by riding a futuristic skateboard and using a magnetic harpoon to hitch rides on other vehicles. I mean, how cool is that? That’s something that a lot of negative reviewers of Snow Crash don’t seem to grasp. You want to read Snow Crash – and cyberpunk, in general – for the same reason you go to the hippest dance club in your city. You don’t go there to have some deep conversation with your friends about the First Cause of the patriarchy or the sociological ramifications of the decline of religious institutions or whatever. You don’t go there to meet your potential soul-mate. You go there because it’s COOL. Because there’s a vibe and an energy and you soak yourself in it and become recharged. With that said, there IS depth in Snow Crash. In particular, the major conceit of the story is that Sumerian was a primal language much different than language as we understand it now. Sumerian interfaced with the brain in a more direct route than the languages of today. So direct, in fact, that it could be used to literally program a brain. What follows is stuff about Babel, Enki, me, neurolinguistic viruses, and other fun high concepts. I’ve seen a few people take issue with this: ‘what an absurd concept!’ I mean, I guess if you take it literally. If you think that Neal Stephenson was literally suggesting that language could control a person’s mind in some direct fashion, like a remote control changing the channel on a TV. I don’t think so. In fact, science fiction almost never does that. I’m always bemused when reviewers talk about how ‘dated’ science fiction is, as if the point of the book was EVER to prophesize the future. Rather, I’ve found that good spec fiction has a way of suggesting alternate or novel interpretations of mundane phenomenon. In Snow Crash, Stephenson isn’t suggesting that language can LITERALLY mind control people. I mean, yes, in the book it does, but it’s fiction, yo. It’s gotta have a dramatic plot, yo. What I took away from it, however, was that you can think of an idea as a virus. Religion, for example, behaves like one. It rewrites the brain and causes that person to want to share that religion, to spread the idea just like a virus. Whether you want to interpret that positively or negatively, I leave up to you. But would anyone deny that this alternate interpretation is, if not useful for understanding religion, at least interesting and cool? And that’s basically my review for Snow Crash: it’s interesting. It’s cool. Works for me. ...more |
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Oct 07, 2015
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Paperback
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0886778697
| 9780886778699
| 0886778697
| 4.13
| 5,376
| 1978
| Jan 01, 2000
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it was amazing
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Here’s the short review: This book gets five stars because it made me agree with genocide, against a sentient alien species that I found beautiful and
Here’s the short review: This book gets five stars because it made me agree with genocide, against a sentient alien species that I found beautiful and wanted to live. But that alone is not very satisfying, so here’s the long review: One of the most wonderful aspects of science fiction (particularly space opera) is that humanity itself is characterized. Whereas in other genres, there might be foils to the protagonist, in space opera, an alien species serves as a foil to all of humanity. So it is with The Faded Sun Trilogy, which tells the tale of three species: The Regul – giant slug-like creatures (basically, Jaba the Hutt), with eidetic memories and centuries-long lifespans, who hold almost no regard for the life of their genderless ‘younglings.’ They are hardly mobile and not at all when they get their gender and become adults. Instead they ride ‘sleds’ which I pictured as slightly larger Segways. Because of their memories, the Regul write nothing down. Thus each elder is, in fact, an invaluable source of knowledge and history. The death of an Elder is, to them, like the burning of a library. They are smart and logical. They’re merchants and bureaucrats. They are not fighters. The story begins at the end of a long war between the Regul and Humanity, which humanity won. Naturally. Because we’re awesome. The Mri – The Regul did not actually fight in the war between them and humanity. Rather, they hired the Mri. The best way to describe the Mri would be to take Japanese samurai code Bushido, the cold beauty and pride of LOTR-style elves, and the stoicism and ritual of Dune’s Fremen and mix it all together. The Mri are stubborn and arrogant and inflexible, which is why humanity won the war. The Humans – Well you know them. Or do you? In fact, that’s the intellectual heart of this story. I labelled this trilogy a ‘space opera’ but it’s not really. There’s a minimum of fighting. There are, let us say, about 5 explosions throughout the whole trilogy, and they are not described in greater detail than a paragraph or two. Sometimes they’re so minimally described that I had to go back and be like, “Wait… did that really just happen?” There are maybe two blaster battles and just as few sword battles (the Mri favor close, ritualistic combat). Rather, the meta-conflict is one of diplomacy. Don’t think this means it’s boring. The maneuvering and verbal sparring depict a tense exploration of how one species views the other species. For example, the Regul don’t lie because their perfect memories render outright falsehood easily detectable. The Mri don’t lie because it goes against their code of honor. Thus neither trust humans, who do lie. The Regul’s perfect memory and lack of physical movement cause them to consider the other two species to be lesser on an intellectual level. They forget and how sad is that? But of course the Mri and Humanity find the Regul’s immobile forms grotesque. The Mri and Humanity hate each other because they just fought a war against the other. But of course the Mri only fought against Humanity because the Regul ordered them to do so, but then the Mri begin to hate the Regul for other reasons. Meanwhile, the Regul wantonly slaughter their own younglings and don’t understand that Humanity does not. And the Mri, who will often kill each other while playing a game of spinning, whirling, throwing daggers, will never, under any circumstances, kill one of their children. And so on and so forth. If it sounds complex, it is. But it’s satisfying. The Regul and Mri are one of the best depictions of aliens I’ve ever read. They’re never described in a way that’s ‘inferior’ or ‘superior’ to humanity in a general sense. Just different. With a different biology, psychology, and culture. You certainly avoid any of that awful cliché in which humanity (often in the form of a white European man) comes into an exotic culture and goes native and then saves them all. Yet all my talk of species and diplomacy and culture is deceptive. The novel is large, but its focus is small. That is, the Faded Sun may have a galactic backdrop, but it’s otherwise a personal, intimate novel. In particular, it focuses on Niun, a Mri warrior, and Sten Duncan, a Human soldier. We see, too, other specific characters, Regul and Mri and Human, whose thought processes are explored in finely crafted, detached (but not cold) detail. Because of this, it’s hard to ever feel outright antagonism for any of the characters. In a lot of ways, in fact, this book reminded me of a Miyazaki film. What’s absolutely superb about Miyazaki is that he depicts everyone in a sympathetic light. Anti-heroes are fairly common, but Miyazaki creates what I call anti-villains. Consider the characters of my favorite Miyazaki film, Mononoke Hime: Lady Eboshi of Iron-town burned down the forest, turned a noble boar into an evil demon, attempts to kill Princess Mononoke, and takes pride in hunting down the spirit of the forest. Villain, right? Wrong. Her female workforce are women she rescued out of sexual servitude; she willingly goes among lepers and treats them kindly; and she shows immense personal courage. Okay so what about Jigo the monk? He wants to kill the spirit of the forest in order to receive a mountain of the gold from the emperor, and he blackmails Eboshi into helping him do it. Surely such a greedy, underhanded fellow is a villain! Nope. The first time we meet him, he shares food with Ashitaka, the protagonist but to him just a fellow traveler. Jiro’s clearly wise, and he maintains a good sense of humor, even against those who oppose him. So it is with The Faded Sun Trilogy. Even the Regul – who are clearly the ‘bad guys’ – aren’t depicted in a manner that presupposes their villainy. The reasoning for their actions (they want to wipe out the Mri) makes sense. In fact, I even agreed with them – I began to see, in the Mri, some parallels with the likes of ISIS. A refusal to adapt to modern times. A clinging to past traditions. ISIS, to be frank, are evil. Any sympathy I might have had for them was wiped out when I read how they had institutionalized rape. If a genie appeared to me now and offered me a magical button that would completely wipe out ISIS – every man, woman, and child – I would press that button. That isn’t bravado or jingoism. Such massacre is not a good act. It’s an evil act. BUT I WOULD STILL PRESS IT. Maybe you’ll say to me, horrified, how can you do that? Hurting children is always evil. What if I said this: pressing that button would kill 1000 children. But it would ultimately save 2000 other children. Would you still ask me how can I press it? Or would I be asking you how you can afford not to? Thinking thusly, I began to understand the Regul mindset. I began to believe – despite my great sympathy and respect and appreciation of the Mri culture – that their existence in the fictional universe of this book was a blight. That, sure, maybe for a time, they’ll be peaceful, but their ways, their culture, will only lead to bloodshed and instability. And that’s just fabulous. That’s the type of power this book contains. On one hand, it depicted a fictional people and culture with such authenticity and detail that I could feel them in my thoughts, as tactile as a blanket against my skin. I knew their history, their glories, their beauty, their hopes. And on the other hand, I grasped and even sympathized with the mindset that would see those people made extinct. I held these two opposing ideas in my mind simultaneously and because of it, my mind expanded. It became greater. That is the mark of a great book. ...more |
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Sep 11, 2015
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Mass Market Paperback
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0312863942
| 9780312863944
| 0312863942
| 4.05
| 7,892
| 1987
| Nov 15, 1997
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it was amazing
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None
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Jan 18, 2015
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Paperback
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0312890184
| 9780312890186
| 0312890184
| 4.34
| 13,355
| Oct 15, 1994
| Oct 15, 1994
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it was amazing
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None
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1
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Jan 18, 2015
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Paperback
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0312890176
| 9780312890179
| 0312890176
| 4.03
| 20,486
| Oct 15, 1994
| Oct 15, 1994
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it was amazing
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The book’s cover offers a blurb from Neil Gaiman: "The best SF novel of the last century." Yeah, okay Neil, I thought to myself. I bet you say that to The book’s cover offers a blurb from Neil Gaiman: "The best SF novel of the last century." Yeah, okay Neil, I thought to myself. I bet you say that to all the pretty books. Then I read the book. And he was right. At least, right if you define "best" as "none better" rather than "better than all." Book of the New Sun belongs in a class of its own. If there's anything to compare it with, I haven't read it. With this quartet, Gene Wolfe did for speculative literature what Raymond Chandler did to detective fiction back in the 50s: He raised it above its humble genre trappings. Chandler opened my eyes to a new type of writing. Prior to cracking open the pages of The Long Goodbye, I perceived literature as a dichotomy: entertaining genre “trash” and high-falutin’ Literary tomes. The former focuses on the ‘what’ while the latter focuses on the ‘how’ but both possess merit. Chandler's fiction blurs that line. His plots are as entertaining as they come, yet much of a reader's delight arises from the sharp style and tremendous wit with which he wrote. So it is with The Book of the New Sun, though Wolfe’s style could not be more different than Chandler’s. While Chandler’s Marlowe narrates with sharp, forceful prose, Wolfe’s Severian - an apprentice torturer - narrates this old earth science fantasy blend with meandering complexity and guile, unreliable even in his claim that he’s a liar. Does he lie? Yes – but not in the manner you might think. He lies not by shape, but by weight, giving you the facts plainly enough but hiding their import. Such subversion exists throughout the quartet. It is entirely readable as a straight-forward hero’s journey of the Campbellian variety. It’s an adventure in the same way Chandler’s novels are mysteries. They entertain at the surface level. But they are also so much more than that. In Chandler’s case, his novels are a how-to manual for dealing with a world (that is, our world) so reliant on manipulation that we take for granted the deception we encounter, and might even feel lost without our daily dosage of bullshit advertising, politicking, journalism, and TV drama. In the Book of the New Sun, the adventure masks an allusive labyrinthe, a riddle of time and meaning, that must be traversed by careful reading. Which, if we’re being honest, is problematic these days. Most people are not careful readers and don’t want to be. That is their prerogative, though as a writer myself, I find it frustrating. The defining trait of modern entertainment is its ease of consumption. Book of the New Sun is not easily consumed. With long, tortured sentences, complex diction, discursive asides, and more than a few instances of elision, even a superficial reading requires work. To attain any sort of depth requires even more. But this work does not go unrewarded. The complexity doesn't exist for the sake of complexity, but rather to ambush the reader with a delightfully refreshing subversion and to present a complete picture of a character's mind and life. I even found the book rewarding on a sentence-by-sentence level. It is peppered throughout with insight and interesting prose. In short, Book of the New Sun is very much like a trek through a hilly country. More difficult than taking a car to be sure, but not all that challenging, and I never knew what new beauty I'd find over the next hill. To be shorter still, I loved this book. I absolutely loved it. It changed me the way a good love affair changes you. It taught me to expect more from my literature. ...more |
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Jan 17, 2015
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Paperback
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0345457692
| 9780345457691
| 0345457692
| 4.04
| 108,427
| Feb 28, 2002
| Feb 28, 2006
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it was amazing
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Altered Carbon, which amazingly enough is Richard Morgan's debut novel, is the best sci-fi noir mix I've ever read. I don't mean to suggest the others
Altered Carbon, which amazingly enough is Richard Morgan's debut novel, is the best sci-fi noir mix I've ever read. I don't mean to suggest the others were bad, but this one possessed a delightful vitality the others couldn't match. It positively hummed with energy and ideas. Granted, the ideas - people's personalities largely exist as data which can then be downloaded into other bodies in a process known as 'sleeving' - are hardly the most original. But if we're going to be honest, do you know how bloody hard it is to come up with a truly original concept? Try it. Try coming up with a BRAND NEW sci-fi idea that stays within the realms of both possibility and applicability. It ain't easy. But then, if we're going to be even MORE frank, it's no different with people. One person is much the same as any other. Small variances sure, and occasionally you get a truly stand-out individual, but realistically? In a given region, people are much the same and even across the world, people are much the same. Does that mean these people are unoriginal and derivative? No! Because people have a fundamental vitality to em. Our strivings and yearnings never grow old. And if they do grow old, then the problem be with the eye and not that which the eye beholds. That's what reading Altered Carbon felt like: getting to know someone new, with all of their own idiosyncratic aspirations and mannerisms. It was a fine friendship, while it lasted. That is, Altered Carbon is a lively, enjoyable read and you'd be hard-pressed to find better hard-boiled sci-fi. ...more |
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Nov 18, 2014
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Mass Market Paperback
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9780088619451
| 4.03
| 100,930
| Jun 02, 1979
| Oct 20, 1982
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it was amazing
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Twenty pages into this book, I hated it. It was post-modern schlock. I found the author indulgent, telling me, in flat prose, unremarkable insights in
Twenty pages into this book, I hated it. It was post-modern schlock. I found the author indulgent, telling me, in flat prose, unremarkable insights into the nature of how I acquired the book from a book-seller. Yes, this book is often addressed to You, the reader. I fully intended to put this book down and never read it again. But I have a bizarre habit. Sometimes I rebel against myself. Sometimes I purposefully engage in activities I dislike or eat foods I loathe or watch movies I dislike. I do this because it's important, because first impressions are garbage, because I am constantly changing (to quote Whitman - "I am large, I contain multitudes"), and because I'm a human, damnit, not a machine. I just so happened to be in one of these mercurial moods when I almost gave up on If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Not only was I going to finish it, I was going to like it by God! Well, I finished it. And I loved it. 5 stars, top-shelf! I don't even know where to start with this. It's a must-read for any author, aspiring or otherwise. It is beautiful, witty, insightful, and funny in the most delightfully absurdist tradition. It follows two hypothetical readers which are you (I mean ME and YOU, yes YOU, I'm talkin' to YOU, not to my screen. But also not YOU and ME, but specific third person characters) as we read incomplete manuscripts and try to find the remainder of them. As such, the book alternates between opening chapters of seven or eight separate novels which end abruptly at the climax point and then chapters following Us Readers or sometimes the Author as we/they/us? try to piece together just why the book is in a fractured state. The answer? Hell if I know. It's not important. What's important is that this an awesome book that celebrates the connection between Reader and Author, a connection all the more wonderful because it is so nebulous, ethereal, and multitudinous, just like each individual reader and each individual author. ...more |
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Oct 19, 2014
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Paperback
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0771068719
| 9780771068713
| 0771068719
| 3.86
| 133,907
| Sep 1992
| Apr 18, 2006
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it was amazing
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Perhaps, had I not read this in an airport and on airplane, trapped in that strange limbo between home and not-home, I would not have loved this so. Al Perhaps, had I not read this in an airport and on airplane, trapped in that strange limbo between home and not-home, I would not have loved this so. Almost certainly, had I not already known that the author Michael Ondaatje was first and foremost a poet, I would not have loved it so. I would not have known how to read it, but being forewarned, I knew to disengage my normally logical, rational thought processes. Attempting to read The English Patient as you might read, say, The Hunger Games is like trying to hold a river in your fingers. No. You must leap into the river and drink deep. The poet is not all that interested in framing a precise image with precise words. The poet's target is far more ambitious than mere description: the poet aims for emotion. And emotion is a wild, reckless thing, hardly logical: love for a grandmother summoned by the aroma of cheap potpourri; some chaotic confluence of squeaks and scratches rendering us paralyzed because it touches some hidden fear; or the feel of sand squishing between our toes unlocking a childhood memory of such potent happiness that we wonder how we could have possibly ever misplaced it. I could say that the English Patient is a story set in pre-, mid-, and post-WWII, about spies and the desert and a young nurse and a Sikh sapper (disarmer of bombs) and the titular man, the mysterious English patient, all holed up in a half-destroyed Italian villa, which is filled with booby traps and a countryside full of unexploded bombs. I could say that, and you might think it sounds exciting, but honestly I'd be leading you astray. The superficial plot is not the point; that only exists to create a framework for the depths of what is, in essence, a novel-length love poem. But not love in the saccharine Disney sense, love in the sense that most of us know it. Love as a hormonal tidal wave that carries us into foolishness and irrationality; love as a choice we make, an affirmation of optimism and hope in the face of a fundamentally pessimistic reality; love waltzing with war; love as the clash between melancholy and hope. Love made real, depicted as a series of concrete images, like water dripping onto an old threadbare sofa; and a girl in a thin dress holding two bomb wires; and a search for a lost oasis; and an old book whose pages have been taped over with poetry. The English Patient is not a book that you can read in snatches, ten pages here, ten pages there, no more than you can turn love on and off like water droplets from a spigot. It is full on thunderstorm or it is nothing. As such, The English Patient is best read in a single sitting, trespassing deep into your own mind, beyond the borders of consciousness and sensibility, into the blurry subconscious realms of Emotion. Not all people have the focus and the time and the desire to undertake such an expedition. And even those who do cannot always manage to combine them together. But if you can, and if you do manage it, the poetry of The English Patient will stick with you always. ...more |
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Apr 21, 2013
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my rating |
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4.17
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it was amazing
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Sep 05, 2022
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Sep 05, 2022
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4.57
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it was amazing
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Jun 21, 2022
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Jun 21, 2022
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4.28
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it was amazing
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Dec 31, 2020
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Nov 17, 2020
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4.42
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it was amazing
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Apr 2019
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Mar 28, 2019
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4.02
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really liked it
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Dec 28, 2018
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Dec 28, 2018
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4.52
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it was amazing
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May 20, 2018
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May 20, 2018
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4.27
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it was amazing
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Mar 08, 2018
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Mar 07, 2018
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4.06
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it was amazing
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Oct 13, 2017
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Oct 27, 2017
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4.21
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really liked it
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Sep 05, 2017
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Aug 18, 2017
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4.11
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it was amazing
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Jun 16, 2017
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Jun 06, 2017
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3.94
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really liked it
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Mar 17, 2016
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Mar 07, 2016
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4.23
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it was amazing
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not set
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Oct 27, 2015
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4.02
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it was amazing
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not set
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Oct 07, 2015
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4.13
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it was amazing
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not set
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Sep 11, 2015
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4.05
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it was amazing
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not set
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Jan 18, 2015
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4.34
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it was amazing
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not set
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Jan 18, 2015
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4.03
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it was amazing
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not set
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Jan 17, 2015
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4.04
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it was amazing
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not set
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Nov 18, 2014
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4.03
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it was amazing
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not set
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Oct 19, 2014
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3.86
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it was amazing
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not set
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Apr 21, 2013
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