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| 1857983416
| 9781857983418
| 1857983416
| 3.91
| 42,163
| Feb 1974
| Nov 08, 2001
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liked it
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All who have tasted the bitter juice of madness know that reality is ultimately a fragile creature. It is a pale insect, a lightning gnat in a vitreou
All who have tasted the bitter juice of madness know that reality is ultimately a fragile creature. It is a pale insect, a lightning gnat in a vitreous lantern, that each of us brandishes at the dark unknown. Our tepid light pushes back this tenebrous sea only just enough to reveal a shadowy landscape, a hazy glimpse of truth. The worst of us see this and declare all is known. The best of us admit doubt. Either way, what we think we know is little more than an Escherian architecture of heuristic and bias, a cognitive illusion necessitated by the limitations of our brains. This difficulty is in turn compounded by a constant bombardment of alternative realities. Our little insect in its little jar is besieged. Politicians tell us comforting bedtime stories in which, e.g., vast quantities of poisonous gas can be emptied in the atmosphere without consequence. Armed with both pen and sword, religious adherents slaughter each other wholesale in their struggle for mythological dominance. Advertising execs peddle glamorous fairy tales, as much selling a way of life as a product in their pursuit of our coin. Nevertheless, the mutability and instability of reality isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Truth is, I happen to *like* the notion that every person’s reality is niche and that the universe chose not to shackle us with any monolithic inescapable meaning. I happen to think the phrase, “I don’t know” is sexy. I mean, really, we could choose to summarize every relationship as an intersection of constructively or destructively interfering realities. Each person yearns to be perceived in a certain way, while others try to maintain the integrity of their own realities. I would go so far as to say that you could measure love by the degree to which you subordinate your reality to another person’s. To love completely is to surrender completely, to actually take up another’s lantern in emphatic union. Put another way, love has no room for ego. But what happens when the surrendering of reality isn’t voluntary? What happens when our firebug flickers, sickens, or is extinguished by insidious external or internal forces? That was the question that galvanized Philip K. Dick to write. In his 1978 essay/speech How To Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, he wrote, “The two basic topics which fascinate me are ‘What is reality?’ and ‘What constitutes the authentic human being?’ Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?” Flow My Tears is no exception. It tells the story of mega-famous celebrity singer and TV host Jason Taverner who one day wakes up in a seedy hotel and discovers that no one knows who he is. Since he lives in a police-state (populated in usual PKD fashion with empaths, flying cars, and experimental drugs), his non-identity puts him in danger of being rounded up and sent to a forced labor camp. In short, the highest falls to the lowest – and he doesn’t even know why. Thus begins his and the reader’s quest to discover how the subversion of his reality came about. Along the way we meet such characters as Kathy, the probably insane police informant / counterfeiter; the titular police general Felix who is in love with his wild, sexual, drug-abusing sister; and a fearful middle-aged spinster, maker of beautiful retail pottery that, as the final words of the book’s epilogue tells us, is probably loved. In some ways, Flow My Tears is one of PKD’s most human books. Entire scenes are dedicated not to any plot movement but to two characters – often strangers – sharing their burdens with each other. I particularly appreciated a conversation Jason has with a woman on the nature of grief, which the woman claims is a good emotion. She says: “Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it—grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love lost. It’s the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. That’s what death is, the great loneliness.” Yet, despite this humanity, Flow My Tears fails in much the same way that Philip K. Dick ultimately failed in his quest to explore reality. While PKD’s eminently readable style provides real joy during the journey, Flow My Tears is essentially a kind of ontological puzzle. What keeps us reading is a desire to understand the HOW and WHY of our protag’s mysterious loss of identity. To be blunt, the puzzle’s solution is garbage. It is complete and utter tripe. It is an obvious afterthought. It fails on every conceivable level. It is not hard science. It is not metaphorical allusion. It’s not like a guessable culprit in a mystery novel. There is no satisfaction whatsoever, neither the ‘ahhh!’ of illumination, the ‘oooh!’ of spectacle, nor the ‘hmmm’ of introspection. Instead, the book’s ontological denouement retroactively cheapens the journey readers took to get there. Hell, the character who hears the explanation does himself say, WTF are you talking about? The real tragedy is how this disappointing conclusion reflects the end of the author’s life arc. See, Flow My Tears is the last book PKD wrote (besides A Scanner Darkly maybe?) before his great “revelation” in which he began to experience visions of a supposedly religious nature. Earlier I quoted from a speech, written in 1978, four years after his revelation. Here’ s the speech and here’s a summary. If you read both, what you’ll find interesting is that the summary contains only quotes from the first half. Probably because the first half is awesome. It’s everything we love about PKD. Perceptive, philosophical, honest, even optimistic in the face of darkness. I liken this first half to the bulk of PKD’s bibliography, and to the bulk of Flow My Tears. But the second half is tragic. He speaks in great detail about Flow My Tears and claims that some Spirit guided his hand as he wrote it. He notes parallels between events in the book and events that later happened in his life, and suggests a cosmic importance. He even draws a connection between a scene in the book (in which police general Felix has an emotional moment with a stranger at a gas station) and a scene in Acts (in which Paul meets a stranger on a road), claiming that it was “an obvious retelling” of that Biblical story. Well, I read both. It isn’t. No more than the daily horoscope – “Aspects of your life that you've neglected lately might haunt you on a day like today, Virgo” – is an obvious prophecy of my day. Nevertheless, based on this deluded confirmation bias, PKD goes on to claim that our reality is a sort of hologram overlaying a TRUE Biblical reality, in particular the time period of around 50 AD when Acts was written. Contrary to how PKD saw it, this revelation doesn’t grant extra significance to his work. To invoke an invisible, sectarian spirit retroactively cheapens the real, universal humanity. So. That much for reality. But what about the other question PKD obsessed over, the question of, “What is an authentic human being?” I’ll let him speak for himself: “The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.” PKD phrases the authenticity of humanity in terms of resistance to external threats, but I would suggest the greatest threats to reality come from within. It is our own venal, desperate, confused selves we must watch and resist. Alas, PKD’s resistance was not enough. For reasons too complex for any of us to know, he transformed from a man who was seeking reality to a man who believed he had found it. The ultimate dead end. Flow My Tears is not about that, but if you pay close attention, you can see the first intimations of his transformation. It is, after all, an emotional book about a famous man seeking to understand the mystery of his reality, with an answer that makes no sense and explains nothing. A vision, if you will, of the first cracks in PKD's reality lantern and a prophecy of an imminent shattering and the final escape of one man’s bright reality. ...more |
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| 0316003395
| 9780316003391
| B001Q3M6UW
| 3.90
| 2,657
| Dec 07, 2006
| Nov 21, 2007
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it was ok
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So, at one point early in this book, there's about 5 pages in which a character reinvents sewing and describes that in great detail. Okay. Alright. A b So, at one point early in this book, there's about 5 pages in which a character reinvents sewing and describes that in great detail. Okay. Alright. A bit obnoxious, yes. But not hugely egregious right? I mean, in Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson spent 10+ pages on a character discussing his fetish for stockings and how his wife can only have an orgasm when having sex on antique furniture. And I gave that book 5 stars and have never removed it from my beloved (literal) top-shelf, which only has room for about twenty books. But then again, that's a rather strange and idiosyncratic topic and does serve some function within the plot - and is, anyway, not indicative of the way the plot is otherwise handled. NOT SO IN EVIL FOR EVIL. Take that 5 pages of describing what is essentially a CHORE and then expand it for the entire novel. The plot premise - a vengeance story involving love - is itself interesting but is unfortunately largely ignored. Whole chapters exist in which very little happens. I kept asking myself, "Why was that even in there?" And when interesting things do happen - like ooooo! a barbarian princess and a forced political marriage - KJ Parker inexplicably decides to make the princess incredibly boring. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? Why would you PURPOSEFULLY choose to make your characters boring? That is her actual characterization. But honestly, really, all the characters suck. Even Ziani Vaatzes, the engineer, who I liked in the first book. He's just too static. And the love story between a Duke and Duchess (of a different kingdom) which is SO ESSENTIAL to the plot is completely passionless. Honestly, I've seen more passion between a fat man and a french fry. Euuuugh. Honestly, how do you manage to make a forbidden love boring? But yep. For most of the book, the characters don't do anything about it. Even though one of them is essentially a dictator of his duchy and could do anything he wanted really. Nope. They just whine. Their relationship is so poorly built. Just meh. That's my actual rating of this book: meh. Everything is meh. The plotting is meh. The characters are meh. The prose is meh. The ideas contained within are meh. The world-building is meh. Nothing stands out. Now, to be fair, if this weren't a trilogy of three 500+ page books, I wouldn't be so harsh. But considering its length, there's just no way I can recommend it to anyone. Who wants to spend 1500+ pages of their reading time on meh? (PS - if you couldn't tell, I will NOT be continuing onto the third book) ...more |
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Apr 07, 2016
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| 1841492760
| 9781841492766
| 1841492760
| 3.73
| 4,640
| Apr 07, 2005
| Jan 2006
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liked it
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KJ Parker describes his series like so: Basically, it’s a love story; which is why tens of thousands die, cities are torched, nations overthrown andKJ Parker describes his series like so: Basically, it’s a love story; which is why tens of thousands die, cities are torched, nations overthrown and everybody betrays everybody else at least once. It’s also a story about a very ordinary man who’s forced, through no real fault of his own, to do extraordinary things in order to achieve a very simple, everyday objective. Furthermore, it’s an exploration of the nature of manufacture, artifice and fabrication – the things we make, the reasons we make them, the ambivalence of everything we create, and the consequences of what we make on other people. Ambitious, or what? Holy crap! Soooo like Count of Monte Cristo except with an international scope and some engineering spices thrown in? Alright, I am so on board! But which do I focus on in my review – love or violence? Ahahaha who am I kidding. Like he said, love stories all require violence. Spiritual, emotional, physical violence, sometimes between the lovers, usually against those who stand in the way. Without that, there’s no story. Love is BORING without conflict. So yeah let’s talk violence. So the other day, I challenged a student to respond to the prompt: violence only causes more violence. In the ensuing discussion, I said: “Violence doesn’t cause more violence. BAD violence does.” “Isn’t all violence bad?” she asked. “Sorry,” I replied, “By bad, I meant improperly executed. Properly executed violence so devastates the opponent so as to render them incapable of retaliation. It ends the cycle.” She seemed surprised to hear this opinion from a teacher, but even more surprised when I followed it up by claiming to be a pacifist. She couldn’t see the connection. Or, as is more likely, she was used to hearing moronic warhawk punks utter bellicose statements without any real understanding that violence is a tool, and a particularly limited one at that. Which is to say I’m a pacifist not because of morality, but because of efficacy. Or as those in industrious nation Mezentia – from which protagonist engineer Ziani Vaatzes was exiled for disobeying proper design Specifications by a couple millimeters – might say: “War is an admission of failure.” Restoring to violence is an admission of failure. A failure of what? Every other non-violent method. The problem with violence as a tool is that it always has a high possibility of escalation. If I'm at a bar and arguing with someone over whether Darth Vader or the Emperor is more powerful, that's a pretty minor disagreement. But if I decide the best tool to defend my world-view is by throwing a punch, then my opponent now has a much bigger reason to hurt me: I've attempted physical violence. He might feel justified, therefore, to break a bottle and try to stab me with it - even though he wouldn't have felt justified to do so merely from the fact of our Emperor vs. Darth Vader argument. I would, then, have a strong justification with also resorting to potentially fatal violence. So that's the big problem of violence as a tool. Using it means you must always prepared for the conflict to escalate into the realm of fatal violence. Even if YOU don't want it to go there, your opponent might be willing. Thus, any time you decide to use violence, you have to be cognizant of the high possibility of it ending up in the fatal domain. In other words, if it’s worth hurting someone over, it’s also gotta be worth killing em. And if it's worth killing em, you should probably just start with that and therefore guarantee victory. (And since almost nothing is worth KILLING a person over, ANY amount of physical violence is almost always unjustified) The same is true on the societal level too. That is, if it’s worth going to war over, then it’s worth absolutely crushing the enemy – removing their ability to retaliate for the foreseeable future. If it’s not worth doing that, then you’d better stay at home because you’re probably going to lose anyway. Which is what happened to the British during the American Revolutionary War. And the Americans in Vietnam and more recently, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Protagonist Vaatzes has the exact same mindset. Violence and war are tools he wields with precision to achieve the simple objective of returning home to his wife and child. He doesn’t romanticize it either. He fully admits it’s outrageous, but what does he care? He even thinks of himself as a mere cog in the machine, forced into his brutal design because of the madness of others. He’s an great character with moral ambiguity and an authentic voice. I’m not a practicing engineer, but I studied it and I have the mindset and this nails it. Did you know, for example, engineers study how to assign value to a human life? Because that’s a real consideration in design. It has to be because if we assigned infinite (or excessively high) value to a human life, then every car, rocket, building, etc. would cost a gazillion dollars because we'd have to put in so many safety features. This isn't at all nefarious, it's just how it is. Here's an example: Suppose I said a human life was valued at $1 billion each (an excess figure). Suppose, then, I was looking at the safety feature of 'tank armor' on my SUV, the Panzer Jeep. I do some studies and conclude that including tank armor on my Panzer Jeep increases the likelihood of the occupants surviving a crash by 5%. I also predict, based on past figures, that there will be 5,000 Panzer Jeep crashes per year, with an average of 0.1 people killed per crash of a non-armored Panzer Jeep, so 500 people total. Including tank armor would save 5% of those people - or 25 people. So that's worth $25 billion. On the other end, I expect to manufacture & sell 50,000 Panzer Jeeps a year, and I calculate that including tank armor will cost an extra $100,000, increasing the price from $25,000 to $125,000. That extra cost amounts to $5 billion. Since my 'human life' value total is higher than my 'material' costs, I'd be justified in including tank armor on my Panzer Jeep SUV. Now obviously that's a simplified example, but it's an interesting perspective that many people haven't encountered, this idea that placing a a non-infinite value on human life is a valid and even moral decision. That's the type of viewpoint you're going to get with Vaatzes and his chapters are a high point of the book. On the down side, most everyone else’s perspective is mediocre. We get the perspective of two dukes, a love interest for both of them, one of the duke’s advisors, a bureaucrat from Mezentia, and a few others. A soldier’s perspective is fun. But the two dukes, the woman, and the advisor are, for lack of a better description, childish and stupid. Every time I was reading their chapters, I kept thinking how Game of Thrones’ characters would mop them up and eat them as a light snack BEFORE breakfast. And they’re often boring too. This book has an ENORMOUSLY soggy middle. Like a bridge built by North Koreans. The opening – in which Vaatzes gets exiled and then taken in by an incompetent Duke whose army was just massacred by the Mezentines – is pretty sweet. And the ending is great. But the middle is incredibly long and tensionless. I mean, there’s some nice mysteries and occasional twists n turns, but it's not enough to liven up long passages filled with hunting and bureaucratic maneuvering and lists of machining parts. So yeah, three stars, enough to push me on to the second book. We’ll see how it goes. [Edit note: I didn't finish the second book and stopped the series there. Second book suffers even worse from poor pacing] ...more |
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Apr 01, 2016
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0765380722
| 9780765380722
| 0765380722
| 4.05
| 22,308
| Sep 15, 2015
| Sep 15, 2015
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liked it
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So I have three book review pet peeves: [1] Pictures in reviews of books not written by Eric Carle. I like words. They’re beautiful, particularly in the So I have three book review pet peeves: [1] Pictures in reviews of books not written by Eric Carle. I like words. They’re beautiful, particularly in their inclusivity. A wonderful sentence invites us into its world. I – my consciousness – am in the same room as the sentence. The opposite is true of wonderful pictures. I feel like I’m standing at a window, looking out at the picture. There’s a distance there, and I don’t like that. But just yesterday I assigned a book to a student and he said to me, as deadpan as a zombie de Buyer, “That’s lame. Why don’t they just make every book into a movie?” As you might reasonably expect, I immediately submerged his hand in a jar of acid. Sometimes knowledge hurts. Sadly, this is not a rare position. We are entering (or continuing, at any rate) an era in which the ability to understand another human being’s words is not a particularly lauded talent (Republican Presidential debates DOT DOT DOT). [2] Dry plot summaries. Appreciate yourself more, my fellow book reviewers! I’m not reading your review because I’m too lazy to read the back of the dust jacket. I’m reading your review because I want to know your feelings. I want your gloriously subjective opinion. I want to know how this book made you HANGRY even though you just ate some home-made macaroni & cheese (& I want the recipe) because (A) the book sucked but (B) it had the most glorious food descriptions this side of the Rhine. [3] Referencing style (as good or bad) without an explanation. OH MY GOD. THIS ONE. It’s the ink equivalent of celluloid’s “Oh I liked the cinematography.” Oh, did you? You liked how Star Wars effectively used low angle shots in order to establish Darth Vader’s dominance? You appreciated how Gordon Willis utilized this over-the-shoulder framing to create a paternal, intimate connection between the two characters here? You found that PoV shot in the original Halloween an absolute mastery of horror – by FORCING the reader into the shoes of the killer, the film-makers created a sense of helplessness, heightening the dread by making it so very personal? Oh. Wait. No. You just meant you liked the pretty pictures. A majority of the people who say “I liked the cinematography” don’t actually know anything about it. They couldn’t tell a whip pan from a tracking shot, much less what tone or texture these techniques imbue to a film. I mean, I also don’t know anything about it, but that’s why I don’t praise a film for its cinematography. Well it’s the same thing with “style” or “prose” in book reviews, and I actually do know something about it, so this is where I segue into an actual review. There are those who write that this book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, has an amazing “style.” To misquote Moonrise Kingdom: I love you and I respect your opinion, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. This book’s style is discordant with its PoV character, and let’s talk about why: The vast majority of modern writing is written in either first person or third person limited. This means - aside from the revelation that modern entertainment consumers are voyeurs seeking vicarious thrills – the writing corresponds to a given character’s perspective and therefore the style ought to match with that character’s personality. A fine example of this is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, whose spare style is a perfect match for the numb desperation of the characters in their bleak setting. Which is probably why it won a Pultizer. In Baru Cormorant, we also have an incredibly spare (if not quite to the degree found in The Road) style. For example, consider the following “establishing shot” of Treatymont, the most important town in the book and the setting for at least 100 pages: They came to the quay. Baru caught a ladder and lifted herself up before the sailors had even roped the skiff. The waiting party looked at her in surprise as she clambered up like a common sailor, purse and sword banging awkwardly beneath her. Baru then rides through this city Treatymont – without bothering to take note of her new home – and we get this bit of description at her destination: The Governer’s House stood not a quarter mile from harborside, an edict in iron and granite, gates guarded by Masquerade marines in red tabards and steel masks and gauntlets sleeved like a surgeon’s sterile garb. The stone of the compound wall had been acid-etched clean. I swear to you that is, with few exceptions, the entirety of description of Treatymont. And every other description – character, setting, or otherwise – is equally anemic. I mean, if description were money, Seth Dickinson would make our old friend Ebenezer Scrooge look like Andrew Carnegie. Now, there’s not really such a thing as a universally “good” or “bad” style. A spare style can work… if it makes sense within the character’s PoV. But does it? Baru Cormorant begins this story as an eighteen year old girl who was (essentially) stolen from her native family and put through (essentially) a missionary school for like FIVE YEARS and is chomping at the bit to get out and see the world. She is depicted as being particularly curious – about the stars in the heavens, and the birds in the sky, and the meaning of words. Even beyond these specifics, Baru is supposedly a highly intelligent “savant” and curiosity & intelligence are more or less joined at the hip. This curiosity is further coupled with an incisive perception, a character strength essential to the plot. Okay, and so what happens? Baru passes her civil service exam and is assigned to the post of Imperial Accountant in Aurdwynn, a northern land filled with plains, waterfalls, forests, and rivers oh my. It is divided into many different duchys, each ruled by a different duke or duchess. Does it make SENSE for our PoV to have a spare style? Would such a character be stinting in her perception, exploration, and curiosity of this new land? In my humble opinion, no. To call that “good style” is to suggest it’s “good style” to hire a chainsaw juggling telepathic spider wearing a human clown suit to provide entertainment for my four year old nephew’s birthday party. I mean yes *I* might appreciate this situation, but that’s only because I derive an excess amount of joy from Falcon Punch!-ing every clown I come across. But normal people know better. Normal people know that peanut butter and chocolate makes a far better mixture than peanut butter and hydrochloric acid. Now those who disagree with me would suggest that this spare style DOES make sense. That it reflects Baru’s necessarily secretive nature, given that she trusts no one. Or that it reflects Baru’s attempts to stay disengaged, providing in fact a broad, subtle foreshadowing. They would say that the style actually heightens the story’s tragic qualities because it suggests a dampening of her natural curiosity, something she has repressed in order to focus on her quest for vengeance. They would say this is the TRUE horror of Empire, how it reshapes and remolds not just a person’s external behaviors but her very internal narrative. The very way she perceives the world. … Shit. I have no counter to anything I just wrote. I just destroyed my own argument in a hundred words. Le sigh. This is why intelligence and open-mindedness are over-rated. The nine homunculi that make up my mind are constantly kicking the snot out of each other. I constantly prove MYSELF wrong. EUUUGH. And now what do I do? Do I go back up and delete this review and rewrite it? But it’s so awesome! C’mon ‘deadpan’ = zombie de Buyer. That’s pretty obscure. How many people will know off-hand what de Buyer is? Here I am, writing a review on a public website (i.e. for OTHER people), and then I purposefully make obscure allusions to French cookware. Why would I do that? That’s some Inception level irony. But can I really keep going now that I'm writing about the writing of the review while writing the review? Who the hell do I think I am, Charlie Kaufman? But yeah a banana nut muffin… or maybe some good mac ‘n cheese. BUT THEN AGAIN, what’s stopping me from pretending like I didn’t experience this moment of existential reviewer’s crisis and simply continue on as is? Nothing. That’s what’s stopping me. And if it works for Deadpool, why can’t it work for me? Right. AHEM. … AS I WAS SAYING, there are those who would offer a defense of this style & PoV combination. If it worked for them, well and good. But, for me, the dissonance between style & PoV made me feel disconnected from the setting, the characters, and the action. Everything occurs at a remote distance – the battles, the romances, even the conversations. I felt less like I had walked through the cupboard into another land and more that I was staring through its keyhole. Yes the prose is clean and the story is well-paced and entertaining, but I didn’t feel engaged as a fellow human being. I felt like I was a marionette manipulated by the strings of plot and tension. THAT was why I felt hollow as I read this book, not because of its high tragedy, wonderful as the ending may have been. EVEN SO, this would be a kinder 3 star review if there weren’t other problems, the foremost is that Baru’s characterization sometimes reads like Mary Sue fan fiction. One of the key descriptions of Baru is intelligent. If I had a nickel every time she is described as a “savant” I would have enough nickels to buy SEVERAL three musketeer candy bars (which, by the way, I eat in the PROPER Incrastic fashion of consuming three sides of chocolate shell before devouring the gooey interior wholesale). But I wasn’t hugely convinced of her smartness. For example, in one instance that I can only imagine is some sort of plotting fault, she is surprised that this priestess is actually a secret agent… EVEN THOUGH THE PRIESTESS REVEALED THAT SHE WAS A SECRET AGENT WHEN BARU FIRST MET HER. That’s not even a plot spoiler! Because within a few pages of her introduction, the priestess is like, “Oh hey yeah let me make an allusion to our secret society.” And then Baru gives her utmost secret to this person? UHHHHH GEE. THAT’S SOME SAVAGE SAVANTNESS THERE. “Hey Gestapo agent, guess what? I love Israel!” (Stop. Take a moment. Ponder.) Which isn’t to say Baru doesn’t have her moments, but I kept getting the sense that it’s not so much she’s intelligent as that everyone around her is pretty stupid. That’s the trap you fall into when you write your characters as intelligent. That’s why Sherlock Holmes *NEEDS* his Moriarty. For example, Baru has this huge plan to screw over the Dukes with inflation. Which, OKAY, economic warfare: super cool. And hyperinflation is a real thing. But the way this stratagem is deployed hinges on the dukes being idiotic. Basically, Baru explains that it’s going to work because they’ve never heard of inflation!!! WTF? You mean to tell me these these nobles – who are managing huge economies and come from families who have done so for hundreds of years – are unaware of basic supply and demand or have not bothered to think about or discuss the ramifications of fiat paper currency? And then, seriously, I kid you not, Baru later dictates battle and war strategy. A girl in her early twenties who has never fought a battle in her entire life. Is dictating strategy to battle-hardened veterans. This, in a moderately Patriarchal society. Alright. If you say so. And it gets even worse. This grimdark tale makes a brief foray into YA romance territory where suddenly EVERY MALE LOVES Baru and wants to marry her!! Why? *whisper: Because Baru loves women, that’s why. And the author needs to TRANSPARENT-MESSAGE our faces* It’s just not believable. Baru represents a symbol – like Katniss in Hunger Games – but that somehow transitions into Baru being the ACTUAL leader. It’s so unrealistic. It’d be like if Sansa Stark suddenly became general of Westeros. Baru has no personal power whatsoever. She has no army, no money, no anything. If they forced her into being a figurehead, there’s absolutely nothing she could do about it. Yet for ~magical~ plot reasons, they’re all just like, “Yeah okay let’s let this YOUNG FOREIGN GIRL be our leader.” Because people love it when foreigners come in and take over. That’s why America’s invasions of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were so successful. Oh. Wait. ~~~~~~ Yet, despite my roast, I am still giving this 3 stars, and that’s a strange sort of feat. Economic warfare is cool. An accountant as a main character is cool. Even if the actual descriptions leave much to be desired, the Platonic reality behind these shadows FELT deep and interesting. And there’s no denying this book’s high tragedy. I admit to looking forward to the sequel: The Monster Baru Cormorant, and if you were to ask me if I would recommend this, I wouldn’t say no. Course, I wouldn’t say yes either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ...more |
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Feb 17, 2016
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| 0804179034
| 9780804179034
| 0804179034
| 4.03
| 243,923
| May 19, 2015
| May 19, 2015
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liked it
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Science Officer, Erik Brain: CAPTAIN, WE’RE COMING UP ON TROPE CITY FAST. HIT THE BREAKS. Navigation Officer, Erik Heart: But iz sooo shiny, iz just li Science Officer, Erik Brain: CAPTAIN, WE’RE COMING UP ON TROPE CITY FAST. HIT THE BREAKS. Navigation Officer, Erik Heart: But iz sooo shiny, iz just like home, all warm and fuzzy and familiar. Take us in! Erik Brain: THE HELL! DON’T TAKE US IN! WE’VE SEEN IT ALL BEFORE – WE’RE GONNA CRASH. Erik Heart: Warm and fuzzy and magical and - Erik’s Brain: PULL UP, MAN! PULL – *CRASH* ~~~ Captain’s Log, Star-date 2016, Uprooted City, Day 1 Officers Erik Brain, Erik Heart, Erik Arm, Erik Eye, and myself have disembarked into the city, weapons armed and set to BRAIN IMPLODE. The urban landscape is strangely familiar. I am reminded of the cities I visited when I was a junior officer - the same forest of crystalline spires reaching up into the sky, collecting and refracting the sun’s rays. The same rainbow fog of light. The height of magic and majesty I once thought. I find, now, in my elder age, that perhaps my youthful memories were colored by novelty and naiveté. I realize how similar these cities all were, as if the divine authors were insecure in their power and so hewed too closely to a boilerplate of architecture. Still, Erik Heart is enjoying himself, as he often does, even while Erik Brain and I experience this nauseating déjà vu. The mayor herself came out to greet us, undeterred by the baleful red light of our blasters’ targeting reticles. We were stunned to discover we had met her before, so many times. Who is cloning these creatures and why? TROPE: The Farmboy/girl with a Destiny. So the protagonist of Uprooted is Agniezska, a simple farmer’s girl with a penchant for making a mess. But wait! She’s also a special snowflake with a unique magic that defies understanding and classification! ~~~ Captain’s Log, Star-date 2016, Uprooted City, Day 2 The city is not as peaceful as it first appeared. The Mayor has told us of the Wood, a villainous forest lurking just outside the city. It kidnaps the residents, lures them in with trickery or by force, and then TWISTS and CORRUPTS them. Her tales sent shivers down my spine. Truly, this Wood is terrifying. Weapons officer Erik Arm offered to take the ship up and raze this weird weald to the ground, but the Mayor declined. We could not leave, she said. Not yet. Why not? I said, my hand inching toward my blaster. Because, she said, your navigation officer Erik Heart has gone missing. And so he had. Gah, what a bum. Wastrel. Slacker. It was just like him, abandoning us to go on some lark, leaving us to do all the real work, to make sense of this strange city. Even the Mayor defies easy classification. She claims femininity – the other residents refer to her as Lady Mayor – yet she does not strike me as womanly. Various crystalline statues around the city demonstrate the high regard in which she is held, yet I have seen such worship before. I wonder if it as false as that I’d seen in other cities… TROPE: The Man with a Vagina Character. Okay so I invented this trope, but it’s one that I find particularly interesting (and infuriating). Basically this involves writing a character whose biological gender is female but who embodies none of the psychological/sociological/behavioral traits of femininity. Indeed this character embodies masculine traits and often dislikes femininity. She feels scorn for fashion & make-up. She lacks good inter-personal skills. She doesn’t know how to make small talk. She’s stubborn and intransigent. She isn’t a nurturer. She can’t cook. She has no aesthetic sense. Usually, she’s a good fighter, though. Katniss Everdeen is the most obvious example of this trope. ~~~ Captain’s Log, Star-date 2016, Uprooted City, Day 3 Erik Heart remains missing. Has he been abducted by the Wood, twisted into some unfathomable monster that we will have to burn out? The Wood itself appears to be steeling itself for a march on the city. I witnessed a giant preying mantis scythe a tree in half with one gargantuan claw! And there have been tree creatures, stick-like treant creatures, patrolling the edge. I admit to terror. And yet I prefer the Woods. I am by turns bored and disturbed by the residents of the city. The Mayor's best friend Kasia seemed promising at first, with a complex relationship of mutual jealousy, but alas she turned out to be quite wooden. I witnessed Prince Charming attempt to rape the Mayor, who bludgeoned him across the head. And the Mayor’s paramour, a sort of wizard, is an anachronistic a-hole. What does she see in him? He’s dressed like he came straight out of some 19th century novel written by Jane Austen… TROPE: The Mr. Darcy Effect. In this trope, the main love interest is a man who acts like a dick. Apparently this is attractive??? Well in Uprooted, the Mr. Not-Actually-A-Dragon is more or less a fantasy stand-in for Mr. Darcy. Instead of a wealthy estate and money, he’s got a magical tower and lots of potions. Likewise, he’s dismissive of others, controlling, and short-tempered. ~~~ Captain’s Log, Star-date 2016, Uprooted City, Day 4 The Wood attacked and many residents were slain. We were sorely pressed in the middle, but our missing comrade, Erik Heart, arrived at a pivotal moment. He lead the counterattack, his blaster pistol sizzling with heat, and won us the day. Vainglorious bastard, but I love him anyway. He is Crew and that makes him like family. Now that we’ve secured the borders, the Nobles of the City have called us to court, to ask for our advice in dealing with the Wood. I dread it. One day I’ll encounter a nobility who aren’t selfish, evil, and short-sighted, but considering this city is so similar to those I’ve seen in the past, I have little hopes that this will be that day… TROPE: The Royal Court is Full of Bullshit. I don’t know what the actual name of the trope, but I’m sure you already know where I’m going with this. Basically, the royal court is full of flatterers and manipulators looking for an edge. The nobility operates with a complex series of alliances, except in actuality they just attend endless parties. Everyone wants to get to know the main character cause she’s a SUPER SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE and they want to use her super special snowflake status for their own ends. They don’t care about her as a person at all. None of them put the least bit of effort into getting to know her. Naturally, too, the noble girls all wear super awesome fashion stuff and know their manners perfectly and ofc Agnieszka doesn’t know how to deal with any of that and looks like a fool. ~~~ Captain’s Log, Star-date 2016, The Inkverse, Day 11072 We have done all there was to do and seen all there was to see in Uprooted City, and have left it in our rear view mirror (figuratively, of course. Inkboats have no rear-view mirrors). Erik Heart and Erik Brain remain bitterly contested about the city. Erik Heart enjoyed his time there, but Erik Brain claims boredom and disappointment. Why must these Divine Authors cast their cities in the same mold over and over, he asks. Erik Heart has no answer for him, but I suspect Erik Brain could answer the question himself if he really wanted to… Regardless, the Officer’s Mess has become a place of recrimination and vociferous debate. I don’t care to visit just now. But then I am usually too busy to do so. I must charter the course of our continued exploration. From the captain’s chair, I look to the inky horizon as we continue our quest for something new and wondrous. So infinite, so full of possibility. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 05, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 0765385244
| 9780765385246
| 0765385244
| 3.54
| 3,885
| Sep 01, 2015
| Sep 01, 2015
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it was ok
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DSKL@()*$SJDL#NRK#JNFLKNGSN@KMNCJNKS#(*$&FJNSRKJWR ARGH!! Okay. Vexation voided, frustration exfoliated. So I’m gonna lay into this mafa. I gonna take a DSKL@()*$SJDL#NRK#JNFLKNGSN@KMNCJNKS#(*$&FJNSRKJWR ARGH!! Okay. Vexation voided, frustration exfoliated. So I’m gonna lay into this mafa. I gonna take a machete upside this beyotch, gonna show you guts, some shock-of-white-bone, a little bit o critique hoodoo. But before I do, allow me to expound on why I must needs wage this figurative war. I believe in the ‘Challenging’ book [exhibits A, B, & C]. A disparaging of the easy pleasure read being not my intent, I nevertheless offer the following thesis: the most worthwhile and memorable reading experiences usually involve a level of difficulty. These books, by the hammer and chisel of structure, language, and character, reshape our preconceived notions on race, gender, culture, history, epistemology, or even basic story-telling. The shattering of long-held beliefs is a beautiful cataclysm, and I might state with no qualification that human experience contains no greater sublimity than the upward transformation of a mind. And yet the same key which unlocks heaven can also unlock hell. It’s often difficult to distinguish between literature whose challenge is a function of its complexity and literature whose challenge is a function of obscurity or bad writing. These latter, lesser quality doppelgangers can be quite the malediction. I would posit that, indeed, they can weigh the entire readership down. They can lead to anti-elitism, nihilism, and ennui. I have witnessed first-hand their effect on young readers especially, who get turned off literature as a result of assignments by undiscriminating English teachers. As such, I’m a regular assassin of the pseudo challenging [exhibits A, B, & C], a class of literature which, alas, contains The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. Which I regret real hard. This bro Kai Ashante Wilson got some srz writing chops. Bones ‘n cojones a-plenty this g-thug gangsta masta flash blaster gots. He can chalk a wicked storm… when he wanna. Slash the first hunnered-fitty pages and you got a mad killer story here. Stone cold quality, and ain’t that a shame? Because, the obvious talent of the author and my enjoyment of the final 50 pages notwithstanding, the first hundred fifty are a bore and a chore and I shall lay before thee, on the altar of your consideration, my ruminations on why. The first failing: an incongruous interweaving of two disparate dictions. On one hand, the unknown narrator writes in a sophisticated and antiquated style that I have, herein, attempted to replicate. This, juxtaposed with dialogue replete with urban slang, the type of whipsong back n’ forth you might encounter in a rap battle between two gangs in the hood. There IS a deeper literary purpose for this, in that it approximates the dual nature of the book’s protagonist Demane, who is a demi-god, containing both mortal fallibilities (i.e. the ‘lower’ diction of the dialogue) and divine powers (i.e. the ‘higher’ diction of the narration). You could even argue it serves as a sort of implicit societal commentary, a check against racial preconceptions – after all, why am I calling this diction ‘lower?’ What makes it ‘lower’ exactly? Unfortunately, this duality of diction is one of those conceits that doesn’t quite work in application. In actuality, the checkerboard language constantly pulls the reader out of the story, reminding us over and over of the artificiality of the work in our hands. It’s like a kung-fu movie where the wires are obvious on the actors’ backs. Does it MATTER how beautiful their choreography, how magnificent their palikinesis*, given it’s so obviously manufactured? *This book also contains the style gimmickry of footnotes. Here's mine: I invented the word palikinesis because I have long sought a word to mean ‘the motion of a warrior’ and found none. So palikinesis – ‘the motion of battle.’ Problemo numero duo: This bae be one big oozy blob o structureless guano. Just cuz, ima use my bro Orson Scott Card’s structures. He throw down quatro categoricals: Milieu – in this story, some regular negro enter a cray-cray land and be all, what up with this cray cray land? Sorcerer Demane ain’t no regular negro – he FROM the cray cray land. So it ain’t no exploration of the cray cray. Character – in this story, some negro get all fed up with his shit and be like, eff the po-po, imma change my life. Sorcerer Demane ain’t like that, he chill as a caravan guard. He ain’t gon’ change a dayum thang, and dun wanna anyway. Idea – in this story, there be some wild n crazy mystery. some hollah mystery, like who dun killed this bro or like in 2001: Space Odyssey, what up wit dat black stone and dem monkeys? Ain’t no mystery here, tho. Mebs wat this lion-creature wizard ‘jukiere’ doin killin’ folk on the Road the caravan gotta traverse, but it ain’t much. Event – in this story, some crazy shit be going down in the fabric of the universe, like dat cray mafa Sauron be knockin some tall-ass pointy eared crackas left n right or that white bruh Emperor Palapatine be unbalancing the force like crackas always doin. But ain’t no imbalance in this story. And dems the quatro. In other words, the Sorcerer of the Wildeeps appears blind to story-telling structure. Plot remains elusive throughout the first three-fourths of the book, which find not their home in the Wildeeps but in a waystation called the Station. In fact, the events of the first 150 pages are completely inconsequential to the events of the last 50. This MAY have been interesting had there been any stakes in this section, but there aren’t. What does Demane want? The human heart of The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is a love story between protagonist Demane & his fellow demi-god, the Captain. Demane yearns to couple with the Captain, physically & emotionally. But he does. Nothing stands in their way. Social stigma, maybe, but this is anemic in the supreme. Such stigma is implied rather than explicit. The book lazily assumes that today’s societal standards apply to this [non-contemporary, fantasy setting]. What does the Captain want? Dunno. What’s stopping them from getting what they want? Dunno. Why are these characters even part of the Caravan? Dunno. When I was halfway through The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, I had the opportunity to expound upon it to an acquaintance over supper. I mentioned how its epidermis of beautiful language exacerbates its lack of plot or stakes. I analogized in the following manner: an unscrupulous automobile merchant sells you a classic 1967 mustang, gorgeous, except it lacks an engine. Fie you conniving merchant and your Machiavellian chicanery! You’d rather have been sold an ugly car with no engine because then at least you’d have had reasonable expectations. At least your cynicism would have been increased to only the (N-1)th degree. At least you wouldn’t have been so vulnerable to the merchant’s dastardly deception. When I made this comparison, I thought I was just being clever. But it was, in fact, prophetic. Cuz this bitch gets real. After hunnered fitty, this homeboy gets itself an engine and it freakin moves. It soars. My bruhs, D and the Captain, actually get to the Wildeeps and they got a real hanker for some killin’ vengeance and dat cray lion-beast ‘jukiere’ dun wanna let em have it and it real sexy. I mean, it helped that the distracting language shifts between dialogue & description were eliminated, but primarily it was the addition of an internal structure over which the well-written coating could be hung. You know, a plot. The powerful description made SENSE when Demane and the Captain traversed the Wildeeps, moving from planet to planet throughout the cosmos in a haphazard maze of space/time discontinuities. The sense of wonder was palpable. I found myself rapidly churning through the ink-scape, engaged in frenzied, fevered page-turning, actually interested in what occurs next. That’s the power of having character stakes. So…. GAH. Frustrating. I didn’t really want to lay into this. I take minimal joy in it. I like its fresh perspective, its more intimate scope. And the author's talent at wordcraft is undisputed. But that doesn’t change the reality of the reader's time being wasted for 150 pages. If only the author had taken a machete to his story, I wouldn’t have needed to. If only he had hacked off that structureless blob in the front and provided the salient points in sharp staccato within the journey & hunt, then he’d have had a fantastic novelette. That’s not what we got though. We got a confusing, bipolar, dramatically unbalanced novella. Basically, we got bad juju, and that’s the truth, bruh. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 27, 2015
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Dec 30, 2015
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Dec 27, 2015
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Paperback
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| 0765312727
| 9780765312723
| 0765312727
| 3.57
| 1,046
| Jun 26, 2007
| Jun 26, 2007
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it was ok
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Is there such a thing as a good psychopath? Lizards. I think so. I mean, if you move past the fact that ‘psychopath’ is more or less defined as evil. Bu Is there such a thing as a good psychopath? Lizards. I think so. I mean, if you move past the fact that ‘psychopath’ is more or less defined as evil. But what about a person who lacks any sort of emotional warmth or empathy? Couldn’t this person use his intellect to make the choice of doing the right thing? Couldn’t this person be taught – by himself or others – to mechanically follow a righteous path? Or is it true what Robin Williams says to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting: that you can never substitute the mind for the heart? that you can know everything there is to know about a thing and still not grasp the feel of it? Lizards. Well, the author Warren Hammond is banking that you can accept the notion of a good psychopath. The protag, one Juno Mozambe, certainly fits the bill. He’s a dirty cop, an ex-enforcer, whose best trait is loyalty, backed up by a strong right hook. A good character for this sci-fi noir tale of murder and corruption. I’d call it LA Confidential with sci-fi trappings, but that’d be an insult to both LA Confidential and sci-fi trappings. Lizards. Which isn’t to say that it’s a bad book. It’s as solid as they come. But there’s no spark to it. Raymond Chandler, one of the founding fathers of noir, wrote, “In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.” He continued, “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” And later concludes, “The story is the man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth…” Lizards. Unfortunately, none of this applies to KOP. Juno Mozambe is mean and tarnished and afraid. He searches for no hidden truth. There is no quality of redemption in this story. It becomes quite clear, once mysteries begin getting revealed, that this is the case. It is, in the end, a straight-forward story of two detectives doing the proper legwork and getting their perp. Lizards. A good noir is more that, isn’t it? A good noir is imbued with the qualities of Romance. I don’t mean kiss kiss romance, but Romance of the Tolkien, Shakespearean, Homeric sort. The world is a place of dark chaos and the detective moves through it like a mean ol’ lighthouse. He is a blood-stained knight fighting the good fight against Entropy. A good noir book acknowledges the grime, muck, and corruption of daily life, yet it seeks ever to rise above it. Good noir shows the reader the attitude necessary to live in a dirty world and still do good. Lizards. KOP has none of that. It tells you a whole lot of nothin’ about how to deal with the crap of the world. I never could put my finger on exactly what is wrong with KOP, why it felt so lifeless. But if I were forced to offer some diagnosis, it’d be something like: KOP is a genre boilerplate, through n through, and it’s rife with plot errors and poor focus. Lizards. For example, from the backcover: “The colony world Lagarto boomed when an indigenous plant was discovered to yield a uniquely intoxicating brandy… but when Earth synthesized a copy, Lagarto’s economy crashed.” Okay. Cool. Strange that that’s the first sentence but whatever. And then later on page 54: “Somebody had smuggled a pair of brandy tree saplings offplanet, and soon after all the settled planets began raising their own fruit.” Wait what? Did Earth synthesize a copy or was the sapling just transplanted? A minor detail, surely, and true it is. But it’s characteristic of an inelegance that spreads throughout the book. The protag’s shaky gunhand is mentioned over and over, to the point where I’m thinking okay this is gonna play a major part in a major standoff. Nope! Turns out no one gave a damn about it actually. Juno’s shaky hand caused him to miss ONE shot, but it didn’t matter. Lizards. OKAY. ENOUGH WITH THE F#(*ING LIZARDS. actually, damnit, I give up on this review. Here it is in TEN words: Lizards. Lizards. Lizards. Lizards. Shaking fist. Lizards. Lizards. Offworlders. Lizards. Offworlders. BAM. KOP EXPERIENCE. Honestly, you wanna read some sci-fi noir? Read Altered Carbon. It’s better in every way. Except that it mentions lizards fewer times. So… still better in every way. ...more |
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Dec 20, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 158297103X
| 9781582971032
| 158297103X
| 3.91
| 4,774
| Jul 15, 1990
| Sep 15, 2001
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liked it
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I had this friend, Phoebe, who believed in faeries. In order to receive advice from her fairy godmother, she completed a daily tarot reading and wrote
I had this friend, Phoebe, who believed in faeries. In order to receive advice from her fairy godmother, she completed a daily tarot reading and wrote her analysis into a journal. This was a habit she’d kept up for YEARS. Buncha damn nonsense, I thought. Then I had a tarot reading of my own. On one hand, I was right. It possessed no prophetic power. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. There was no fairy godmother. But on a different hand, I was wrong. It was actually quite useful. In the process of analyzing what was essentially a randomized selection of cards, I was forced to think about my desires and troubles in a new way. The reading derailed my thinking in a positive way. And it provides a fun little exercise in meditating upon your life. I lead with this short anecdote because I believe how-to writing books serve a similar function. None will contain some magical piece of advice that you’ll read and BAM! suddenly you can whip up stories like a boss! Such a magical how-to writing manual doesn’t exist. And if it did, I’m quite sure there’d be some horrible string attached where like you have to sign a pact with the devil and can only write using the blood of people you love, so at night you secretly take blood from your lover. She eventually comes to believe in vampires and festoons garlic around your house, the smell of which drives you mad and makes it harder for you to write and so you must draw more blood from your lover. You tell yourself, just one month of this and then the book will be done and you’ll make a gazillion dollars and you’ll take her somewhere nice, to her dream vacation spot in Rome. You finish the book. And it does make a ton of money. But only a tenth of a gazillion and it’s not enough. I mean, you were KILLING YOUR LOVER for that. It had to be the greatest book in the world. So you begin on your next one and… Uh wait where was I? Oh right, how-to writing books. Point is, any how-to writing book is like my friend Phoebe’s tarot readings. They primarily serve as an external framework on which you can hang and organize your own thoughts about writing. Here are mine, about the various sections in Orson Scott Card’s How To Write SF & Fantasy. Hopefully they will give some good ideas! Part 1. The Infinite Boundary Probably the biggest takeaway in terms of actual writing advice is that readers prefer a balance of novelty and familiarity. Which of course is true of everything, not just writing. If we meet a new person who’s DIFFERENT from those we know, we’re attracted. If we see a store that looks DIFFERENT, our interest is piqued. Failure to be different will result in boredom. On the other hand, if something is TOO different, we feel frightened or alienated. Suppose this new person REALLY likes trampolines. As in unheathily obsessed. As in, he spends 6 hours a day jumping on a trampoline. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. Six hours. Okay, little too weird. Not so attractive after all. Or maybe when we walk into the store, we find they accept neither cash nor credit. They only take pinecones. Uhhhh... 180! Out the store. Bye bye. It harkens back to Richard Bausch’s advice to young writers: “Never be boring & never be muddy.” True. Also useless. It’s more or less equivalent to saying, “Write awesome stuff!” Yeah, well, duh. Part 2. World Creation There’s a lot in here about where ideas come from. I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that if you want to write speculative fiction and have trouble coming up with ideas, you shouldn’t be writing speculative fiction. As Ray Bradbury once said, spec fic is the “fiction of ideas.” Perhaps of greater use is Card’s discussion of the ‘idea net.’ He says that it consists of three questions: “Why?” “How?” and “To What Result?” He doesn’t talk much about the latter two questions (kinda ignores em actually – which I think is best) but he delves deeper into the WHY. He says that the WHY is always two questions, split between first cause and final cause. The first cause is basic plot. It's simple cause & effect. Example: My protagonist hits a car that’s backing out of a parking space. The driver – a huge man – gets out and stalks toward him, enraged. Okay that’s the first cause. It’s a reaction to an event that happened and is easy to write. I'd think of it as the "skeleton" of the plot. But then there’s the final cause, the INTENT, and the exploration of this is what separates mundane writing from good writing. It's the "heart" of the plot - the motive force animating the skeleton. Why is the huge man getting out? Cause he wants to beat the protagonist up. Why does he want to do that? Because his wife is in the hospital with cancer, and she’s dying, and he feels so damn impotent. He suspects she has cancer because they live downstream from the chemical factory where he works. But here, here is a chance to take back control in at least one corner of his life. So he's going to beat my protagonist up. This WHY exploration is analogous to understanding a character’s desire. As Vonnegut stated in his rules: “Every character should want something, even if it’s just a glass of water.” In fact, that’s exactly how I brainstorm characters. For every character in every scene, I’ll jot down what they desire. In particular, it’s a good to have opposing desires. There’s something to be said for three characters in a snowstorm, hungry and cold, trying not to die. There’s something a lot more to be said for those three characters in the same situation and there being exactly ONE sleeping bag. Part 3. Story Construction Probably the best section in the book. The most useful anyway. In his exploration of where a story begins and ends, Card offers four archetypes of stories: Milieu – This is a story in which the setting, culture, or technology is the primary interest. This story begins when a stranger enters the world and ends when the stranger leaves (or decides to stay). Jurassic Park is a milieu story. The characters and their stories are an excuse to see dinosaurs do cool stuff. Like when they talk about the bug in the amber and getting DNA out? Yeah that serves no purpose but to build the setting. Matrix is a milieu story. Indeed, most sci-fi blockbusters are milieus. The characters exist just to show some cool special effects – to explore the fantastical world. Idea – This is the story of a mystery. It begins when a question is asked, e.g. who dunnit? and ends when the question is answered. Obviously mysteries & detective fiction are Idea stories, but so are any in which a GIANT question looms over the story. I’m not a huge fan of these types of stories. The question ends up having to do too much of the heavy lifting – see my review of Speak. Character – This is the story of, well, a character arc. The story begins when a character’s life becomes so unbearable that he/she can no longer deal and begins the process of making a change. It ends when the character either makes that change or fails and returns to how things were. Card makes the interesting point that not all stories must have full characterization. He gives the example of Indiana Jones – does he undergo a dynamic change? Not really. Event – This is the story of order vs. chaos. A better word than ‘event’ might well be ‘epic.’ Basically, something has gone wrong in the universe and is not the way it should be. The lord Sauron has returned. Helen has been abducted by the Trojans. The white walkers are rising beyond the Wall. The Sith have returned and are seeking to undermine the galactic senate. This story begins when the main character gets involved in the disturbance and ends when the world is returned to a new order, to an old order, or falls into chaos. These are interesting categories, to be sure, but how useful are they? Just for the hell of it, I went through six or seven issues of Asimov’s & F&SF keeping the MICE quotient in mind. What I discovered is that the easier a story fit into one of these categories, the less I liked it. Instead every story I loved was a blend. For example, a character is so unhappy with his life that he embarks on a strange and dangerous journey into new realms and comes out changed. In other words, impossible to decide whether it’s milieu or character. This is especially true of novels. Consider Game of Thrones. Yes, this is clearly an event story – the rise of the white walkers. This series will certainly end when order or chaos is established one way or another (or GRRM dies). But it’s milieu too. So many characters are constantly entering new lands. Jon Snow goes to the wall – and then beyond the wall. Tyrion crosses the sea. Even the Starks going down to King’s Landing for the first time is milieu. And every character has a pretty clear arc that deals with being unhappy about their situation in life. Arya hates being a powerless girl so she becomes an assassin. Jon hates being a bastard so he seeks the honor and purpose of being a man of the Night’s Watch. etc. Or how about Harry Potter?! He’s definitely a stranger. One of the great joys in the HP series is discovering all the awesome stuff in the magical world. The story begins with his invitation to Hogwarts. It ends when the school year is over, and he returns to his mundane life. So milieu right? But the precipitating story arises because HP hates his mundane life! He can't stand the Dursleys. He sees Hogwarts as a means to free himself of it. So it’s a character story right? But the greater overall structure is the return of Voldemort! The story begins when Harry receives the Hogwarts invitation which signals his involvement in the epic struggle of good wizards vs. bad wizards. The books end with the destruction of Voldemort. So… event story? See what I mean? I do think MICE is quite useful for making sense of story structure, but I think it very rare that any story clearly hews to one category or the other. In my experience, every successful spec fic story needs to at least contain milieu and character arcs. Part 4. Writing Well This is a rather short section in which Card does a line-by-line analysis of good writing. His analysis is clear and interesting… …but it’s unlikely to help you write well. You can’t micro-manage a story on that level. It’s too stressful. It slows down the flow of ideas to the point that the resulting prose feels cold and lifeless, even if it may be mechanically sound. You just have to read and edit and read and edit until good prose flow is second-hand. With that said, a refresher never hurt anyone. His discussion of metaphor (and how it’s dangerous in speculative fiction) was interesting, as I’d never quite considered the potential pitfalls. Card says that, given the exotic nature of spec fic, writers must be careful with metaphors or else readers might think they are literal. The last section is very dated, though it did have a nice cheerleader vibe to it. Not much to say about it, though, hence why it doesn't have its own section here! Summary In short, will this book make you a better spec-fic writer? Well… The thing about teaching anything, writing included, is that if you teach REALLY well, then what you’re teaching seems retroactively obvious. In fact, it’ll seem so commonsensical that your students will think they haven’t even learned anything at all. This happens to me all the time when I teach. It’s dangerous. It causes the students to fail to mentally encode the lessons. Thus to get the most out of this book (or any writing book or any education at all), you’re going to have to do like my friend Phoebe did with her tarot readings. It’s not about the tarot, but her analysis of it. You gotta spend the time thinking about it and taking notes. So, yes, I concluded that MICE isn’t actually very useful – but the process of making that decision WAS fruitful. If you put in the thinking time, then yes this should make you a better spec-fic writer. Won’t necessarily make you a good one, of course. But better? Yeah. ...more |
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I really wanted to like this series more than I did. After all, I spent 2000 pages or so of my reading time working my way through it! I mean, who wan
I really wanted to like this series more than I did. After all, I spent 2000 pages or so of my reading time working my way through it! I mean, who wants to put in all that effort and time and come out going, “Meh”? I pondered the exhaustive world-building, all the human types and the political factions, pieces which did ostensibly seem to fit in together. No small feat considering just how BIG the human commonwealth is. The interesting bionic & genetic manipulation technology which, while lacking a deep exploration of its effects on an individual’s psychology, painted a believable portrait of future humanity. I enjoyed the mysteries which served as the plot’s real engine: who was Aaron? who created the Void and for what purpose? what does it mean to go post-physical? While the answers to these mysteries were lackluster, I still recognize their effectiveness in creating a thrilling plot. I do recognize the trilogy’s merits, as reflected by the 3 star ratings I gave the books. Nevertheless, I just couldn’t get into it. In a way, this situation reminds me of being in a relationship and finding myself not loving my partner as much as I used to. Why? I ask myself. Is it the simple fading of novelty? Am I that shallow? Is that even shallow? Or perhaps something has changed. Me? Her? The universe? All of us? Sometimes this why question can be answered easily. In my experience, that’s pretty rare. The conscious manifestation of love is just the tiny tip of a giant iceberg of thoughts, chemicals, and societal mechanisms. We see and only understand a minuscule amount of it. Which brings up interesting questions of free will, but that’s beyond what I want to talk about in this review. I explored this question of what it was about this book that held me at a distance, and I eventually placed my blame on the book’s structure, in particular its pacing. Evolutionary Void itself is dramatically back-loaded, which is itself a reflection of the micro structure of the chapters. They tend to start out rather boring. They’re heavily loaded with exposition about, for example, Justine’s mundane explorations of Makkathran, a city we’ve seen a hundred times already. They then always end with something dramatic, sometimes with a little cliffhanger of a mystery. For example, Justine’s mundane explorations of Makkathran end with her looking at a statue of the Lady and going OMG I recognize her! And of course this little spur of mystery reminds me of all the other mysteries I want to find out about and so I keep reading. In some sense this is just how successful books are structured, but this one wasn’t balanced quite right. There were too many unnecessary scenes and the characters themselves didn’t have enough individual investment in the outcome of their storylines. The primary motivation of almost every character is: “Save the universe” (or in Edeard’s case “save the city.”) That’s just too large and abstract a motivation for me to really root for. I would draw a contrast – as I did in my review of the first book – with George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones. Those storylines are individually dramatic with their own arcs, and characters whose desires are character-centric. Arya wants revenge. Jon Snow loves a wildling woman. Cersei wants her children to be safe. And so on. Whereas in The Evolutionary Void, each individual storyline really only serves to contribute to the whole. The combined result of this artificial structure and these plot-gear characters is a story whose imagination is undeniable but whose underlying emotional structure proved to be rather hollow. I find myself thinking that this story could really have had some romance. Which is a strange thought because there IS a lot of romance in it. It’s just that this book’s many ‘romances’ always came down to sex. That really is the best summary I could possibly hope for to describe this trilogy: Sex without romance. Soulless, passionless sex. A certain sort of pleasure, no doubt about it, but ultimately lacking lasting depth or humanity. ...more |
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As with the first book of this trilogy, the second one was, for me, an uneven experience: Again the PoV is constantly shifting. It can be broken down r As with the first book of this trilogy, the second one was, for me, an uneven experience: Again the PoV is constantly shifting. It can be broken down roughly half-and-half into all the PoVs that make up the big sci-fi space opera aspect and the single PoV of Edeard, aka the Waterwalker, which is more fantasy-esque, especially in the bildungsroman style. That is, a farm boy is born with SUPREMELY POWERFUL magic, comes to the big corrupt capital city, and sets about making change despite the protests that “this is just how it is.” You honestly can’t get more cliché than that. The package even comes complete with the Superman syndrome (or the DBZ syndrome: Oh crap this villain has such power!!! But then the protag just goes from Super Saiyan 35 to 36 and bam, he wins) and a very Gary Stu vibe. All the women LOOOOOVEEE Edeard. Nevertheless, Edeard’s sections WERE fun to read. It is enjoyable to see a good person given the power to topple the mighty corrupt. A critic might sneer and call that ‘escapist.’ I prefer to say it reaffirms a fundamental hope: the possibility of good triumphing over evil. Sometimes it’s nice to see the cards stacked in favor of the good. Or to quote Gandalf: “There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.” Escapism, optimism, or otherwise, Edeard’s sections dragged on occasionally. There are huge passages spent just describing his going on a sex retreat with his girl and other such fluff. I understood their purpose. I understood the author was building a mountain so he could push us off. But they got pretty tiresome to read. In fact, the pacing in general was a bit off. With about 200-250 pages to go, I put down my book for a second and thought, “Crap. What has actually even HAPPENED here?” The sci-fi plots advance at a SNAIL’S pace. While the scenes themselves have a nice amount of tension, there’s not much genuine forward movement in them. This because, unfortunately, the author needed to get Edeard’s story to a certain place in order to have it all culminate (I hope) in the final book. The ending was super dramatic, however, and so I will carry on to the final book, with a hope that the uneven nature of this middle book will pay off in the end. ...more |
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Nov 22, 2015
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| 4.18
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A massive space opera, with a galaxy full of alien species, FTL drives, stealth space ships, a big mystery at the center of the galaxy (the Void), and
A massive space opera, with a galaxy full of alien species, FTL drives, stealth space ships, a big mystery at the center of the galaxy (the Void), and more PoVs than you can shake a stick at. So. A nice space adventure in the truly operatic tradition. Sadly, it didn’t quite scratch my style itch. The prose style is very straightforward. There’s a fair amount of description, but for the most part, the writing exists simply to ferry us along from place to place, conversation to conversation. There’s no sharpness to it, no real wit or joy. I managed all 700 or so pages without ever once stopping and going, “Oh hey that was nice turn of phrase” or “Oh hey, that was an interesting idea – I’ve never thought about that!’ Perhaps because of this dearth of tone, I found myself asking, What is this book's theme? What is really about? What is its heart? Its soul? I am reminded of an interesting argument I saw between two self-published authors. The first argued that successful fiction is entertaining. That is it. It should never be “about” anything. In fact, authors trying to make their stories “about” something are idiots and are unlikely to ever be successful. The second author countered that the truly successful fiction – the stuff you see on best-seller lists – is not just entertaining but also contains a deeper core. There’s some easy examples of the second author’s point. What immediately springs to my mind is Stephen King’s IT. Now that’s a fairly entertaining book, but it’s also pretty clearly ABOUT the nature of childhood. Or George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series, which just about everyone knows. Imagine that story without the thematic core of the wages of war & the necessity of cruelty. Would that even be possible? If so, they would certainly be inferior. Unfortunately, The Dreaming Void lacks this deeper core. There’s no real thematic unity to all the different points of view and to the galaxy-spanning plot. As such, while I was entertained at a superficial level, I was never drawn in at a deeper, more human level. Because I was not as emotionally engaged as I wanted to be, my intellect swooped in and started to question some of the smaller details. Y'know those little irks that an emotionally-driven suspension of disbelief tends to gloss over. For example, many characters exist in a post-physical state as part of a giant computer called ANA. Others are half-man, half-machine – and the half-man part is heavily genetically modified. AND YET, despite this, they think and act exactly like regular ol’ human beings today. Would they really? I recently read a short story called ‘Empty’ which was told from the PoV of a robot – and it had a distinctive voice to it. It really felt like a robot’s mindset. Exotic. Yet still containing enough human elements to generate empathy within me. Not so with these post-physical humans. This book also adopts what I’m going to call a Heinlein-esque Libertarianism, towards sex & female characters. It reminded me very much of Stranger in a Strange Land, though to a much lesser degree (thank goodness). Nevertheless, the majority of female characters, both major and minor, are sexualized and with the exceptions of two characters, come across as mere props to their more interesting and powerful male counterparts. Corrie-Lyn, in particular, depressed me. She begins the story holding a powerful political position, but her consequent behavior is childish in the extreme. She even gets distracted by shopping at a key moment. No, really. So it's not perfect. But I am continuing with book two. It IS an enjoyable adventure. Once I finish it, though, I won’t be in a big hurry to read more Peter Hamilton. [Note: Though reading the previous duology isn't technically required, I found it more or less essential at an emotional level. In particular, the character of the Cat serves as a unifying boogeyman and villain throughout the series... but her villainy is NOT well established in this trilogy. Likewise with many of the other characters - there's definitely a sense of the author relying on already established psychologies. ...Course you're then left with the daunting task of reading FIVE books. And in my opinion you're better off reading 5 other books.] ...more |
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| 3.47
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An interesting mix of stories greater than the sum of its parts. That is, I liked the variety more than I liked the individual stories: A lighter stor
An interesting mix of stories greater than the sum of its parts. That is, I liked the variety more than I liked the individual stories: A lighter story was refreshing. As expected, at least one family drama - wouldn't be Asimov's without that domestic slant. Also as expected, at least one story centered around the consequences of the climate change. To be honest, I've already grown weary of this 'default future' setting. No surprise my favorite story was set in the far future. Biology at the End of the World by Brenda Cooper The protagonist is a sort of DNA detective who assures scientific compliance with genetic purity laws. Basically the story extrapolates the fear of GMOs into a futuristic setting where earth is ringed by orbital stations. I enjoyed the ethical back-n-forth arguments, but the character arc underneath was atrophied. This was a story for the mind and not the heart. Duller's Peace by Jason Sanford A dystopian tale told from the point of view of a conquered peoples (a little girl, to be precise). Nanites float through the air, infiltrating people's meatspace and brainspace. Treacherous thoughts can lead to bad mojo. Basically, it's a dystopia on steroids. Calved by Sam J Miller More or less a family drama involving a father who has failed his life and is attempting to reconnect with his distant son. There was some good writing here, but it takes a lot to make me like a family drama. This one didn't quite pull through. Some issues with consistency in the character's thoughts damaged my connection with the father. As a result, the ending felt forced, as well as being blatantly telegraphed. Furthermore, the sci-fi trappings were superfluous which always lowers my estimation of a sci-fi story. Last Hunt by Vylar Kaftan A piece about an Inuit (I believe) transgender who witnesses the crash of a UFO. It felt like an 'affirmative action' story. I enjoy seeing new cultures and characters, but I like them to actually do something in the story. So I appreciated the authentic-feeling Inuit culture aspects, but there wasn't much actual movement in the plot. Not surprisingly, the ending provided little resolution either. Searching for Commander Parsec by Peter Wood A light tale about a woman and her son who is listening to radio broadcasts that shouldn't be possible. It didn't strictly make sense (why would REAL radio broadcasts sound like a radio program?) but it was nevertheless a light, enjoyable story. Not every story has to be deeeeeep. The Molenstraat Music Festival by Sean Monaghan A story set in the far future about a very gifted young musician who has an accident. The resulting brain damage threatens to end her musical career so her and her mother seek out the protagonist, an old retired musician, to tutor her. Of particular sci-fi note is an exploration of brain implants. Yes they may repair the musician's brain damage - but at what cost? Will doing so 'alter' her in some way? It brings to mind the old conundrum of artists - it is despair and misery and DARKNESS that often motivate us to bring forth LIGHT via art. Would van Gogh have been able to paint with such beauty without the loneliness constantly eating away at him? I personally found this piece so far above and beyond every other story in this issue that it, almost, retroactively made me enjoy them less. The characterization here was just light-years above the others. Perhaps this is simply because it was longer, but in this story I actually felt like something was at stake. The relationships contained a real humanity. ...more |
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Nov 04, 2015
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An uneven issue for me, with one really great story but two that I skipped/didn't finish. We Jump Down Into The Dark by M. Bennardo This story about An uneven issue for me, with one really great story but two that I skipped/didn't finish. We Jump Down Into The Dark by M. Bennardo This story about a jungle on a space station had a great evocation of place, but its plot and characterization were lackluster. What, exactly, was the conflict in this piece? And what did I know about any of the characters? Empty by Robert Reed Told from the perspective of an incorporeal machine species called Data, Empty was superb. After a terrible war between machines and humans (that the machines, of course, won), the machines mount an expedition into the stars, to create a sanctuary that might survive future such wars. Not only was Empty a good read, it was also thought-provoking in its exploration of the mystery of the Fermi Paradox. Also amazingly well-written. I genuinely felt I was getting a glimpse into the mind of a sentient AI. It is NOT easy to depict the exoticism of an alien mindset while also keeping it human enough to be relatable. Robert Reed succeeded superbly. Riding The Waves of Leviathan by Garrett Ashley Stopped reading fairly early on in this one. The clinical way the narrator described the death of his best friend didn't bode well for this character-centric piece. Bidding War by Rich Larson This piece, more or less about a man pining after an ex-girlfriend, had a great voice to it. Outside of that and an appreciably dark ending, I wasn't hugely impressed. I mean, I have a tumblr. 99% of the original work on there involves people pining over unrequited love, and so I'm pretty much over that. The greater sin for me, though, is that the spec-fic details are incidental. This exact same plot could have been told without them. Unless I missed something. Which is entirely possible. Of Apricots and Dying by Amanda Forrest This is a family drama set in Pakistan told from the perspective of the ugly sister. I really went back and forth on this one. First off, I just plain don't like family dramas - and that is the beginning and end of this story. Second off, it fails my 'is the spec fic element integral?' test. In my experience, the best science fiction marries the speculative elements with the plot in a way that improves both. Just as with the previous story though, Apricots could easily have been written as a purely contemporary piece. Yes there are robots and scroll screens and life-extension treatments, but they are just stand-ins for modern tech. Third off, this story has a rather deceptive hook that made me think the story was going to be about something much different than it was. I dislike the bait-n-switch structure that goes: HEY HERE'S A DRAMATIC OPENING. Now lemme give you a whole bunch of exposition and other scenes that have little to do with the hook. With all that said, I liked the story anyway! It was authentic and human and true. Come-From-Aways by Julian Mortimer Smith A rather brief story about a quaint New England town. What makes this town special is the fact that alien artifacts seem to wash up on the shores. I enjoyed it, though the primary action of the story was a bit understated for my tastes. ...more |
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| 3.53
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really liked it
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This issue - one of my favorites - made me realize that I prefer longer fiction. I have trouble getting truly enmeshed in a world or the characters if
This issue - one of my favorites - made me realize that I prefer longer fiction. I have trouble getting truly enmeshed in a world or the characters if the piece is too short. I have similar trouble with comic books - the momentum always seems to get cut off right when it gets going. Like Native Things by Mary Robinette Kowal In this story, humans are able to 'control' animals (including sharks, octopi, and more) with the help of some fancy neural tech. Great spec-fic element exploration for sure. The story wrapping around this idea was also quite good, though I was majorly disappointed in the ending. Very minor scope considering the plot felt much larger. The Great Pan-American Airship Mystery, or, Why I Murdered Robert Benchley by David Gerrold Set in an alternate history in which airships (as opposed to fixed-wing aircraft) were much more popular. Didn't like this one at all. There was no actual plot to speak of. Perhaps if I were more familiar with the people involved, I might have liked it more. As is, I felt like I was at a party where I didn't know anyone and therefore didn't understand any of the inside jokes. Acres of Perhaps by Will Ludwigsen One of my favorite pieces in Asimov's thus far. Acres of Perhaps refers to a twilight zone-esque show and those who wrote for it. Had a great David Lynch / Twin Peaks feel to it. Honestly, it just hit all the right notes. The romantic subplot of the narrator felt a bit artificial, in that it didn't really play any actual role in the plot, but I can see why it was included. Petroglyph Man by Rudy Rucker I wasn't a huge fan of the prosaic plot involving a couple trying to rekindle their romance. But there was some weirdness in the spec-fic elements that I rather enjoyed, though they didn't quite mesh with the overarching plot. I personally prefer stories whose spec-fic elements & plot are so inextricably interwoven that they cannot be separated. Nevertheless, I would give this story a thumbs up. Pollen From A Future Harvest by Derek Künsken This time-travel / space opera / mystery tale is great. Stories like this are the reason I even subscribe / read short fiction. It's time-travel elements are REALISTICALLY plotted (nonsense time travel is a big pet peeve of mine). But more importantly, it's a complex, intelligent story with believable characters and good world building. One of my top 3 Asimov's stories this year. ...more |
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| 3.58
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The longer stories were the strongest in this issue. The Unveiling by Christopher Rowe A pretty straightforward tale of labor and rebellion. Well-wr The longer stories were the strongest in this issue. The Unveiling by Christopher Rowe A pretty straightforward tale of labor and rebellion. Well-written but too tame for my tastes. If I had to choose either polished & safe or rough & risky with my fiction, I would choose the latter. Watergirl by Rudy Rucker & Marc Laidlaw A longer piece with a great surfer vibe and some interesting technology involving computerized surfboards and sentient water. I'm a huge fan of the notion of sentience / free will at the quantum level, so this one hit the spot. Ninety-Five Percent Safe by Caroline M. Yoachim Set on a very overcrowded earth, with a 95% safe portal to a distant utopia, this is a family drama with distinct YA sensibilities. As a fan of neither YA nor family drama, this one didn't do much for me. Candy From Strangers by Jay O’Connell The protagonist is definitely not a nice person here as he pushes people, especially vulnerable women, into suicide. I enjoyed it though not as much as either Watergirl or The Long Wait. Butterflies by Peter Wood A story about, well, giant insects. I liked that spec-fic element and the mental image of giant, dangerous insects caught in nets has stuck with me. However, this didn't work for me as a story with an emotional character arc. It's rather telling that I can't actually remember the plot. Songs in the Key of You by Sarah Pinsker In this story, teenagers wear bracelets that play customized theme songs. Naturally, the richer students have much better songs, leading to a bullying scenario. I always appreciate stories that feature an element of kindness. As with the previous story, 95% Safe, however, it was too YA for my tastes. The Long Wait by Allen Steele A longitudinal piece following the life of a young girl whose parents operate an observatory that stays in contact with a ship sailing off into the stars. I appreciated the large scope of this one and felt it really captured what it means to spend your whole life in pursuit (or centered around) a single idea. ...more |
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| 3.42
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Wasn't a huge fan of this issue - the only story that really satiated my spec fic appetite was Nick Wolven's. No Decent Patrimony by Elizabeth Bear Wasn't a huge fan of this issue - the only story that really satiated my spec fic appetite was Nick Wolven's. No Decent Patrimony by Elizabeth Bear A well-written, polished story set in the'default future' of climate change and radical wealth disparity. Story ultimately didn't jive with me. Too tame. It didn't take any risks or explore any new ideas. Forgiveness by Leah Cypress A story told from a teenage girl's perspective about an abusive boyfriend who is collared with a pacification device. The story could easily have been written without any spec-fic elements, however, which makes it a 'no go' for me. On the Night of the Robo-Bulls and Zombie Dancers by Nick Wolven My favorite of this issue. It had a Homeric feel to it, with the protagonist making a journey across a dystopian town to seek the advice of a stock-market sage. Interesting spec fic elements in that, in the future, most of the big stock-market movements are centered around AI predictions. Course, AI or not, that's basically how our stock market is today. Yes there's a fundamental grounding in actual numbers, but day to day or even month to month movements are mostly psychological and therefore bandwagony (to invent a word) in nature. ...more |
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Some enjoyable stories but nothing that really stood out for me: No Placeholder For You, my Love by Nick Wolven A look at the futuristic dating scen Some enjoyable stories but nothing that really stood out for me: No Placeholder For You, my Love by Nick Wolven A look at the futuristic dating scene. I thought it did well in depicting the jaded, by-the-numbers approach to dating in the Tindr age. Ultimately felt a bit stretched. Too long, given it basically amounted to a standard romance story. Two-year Man by Kelly Robson A tale that explores the dynamic between a husband who wants a child (and holds the 'traditional' view that all women want to be mothers) and a wife who doesn't. An important topic, to be sure. But I'm not a huge fan of stories whose speculative elements feel tacked on. Two Year Man could easily have been written without them. Wild Honey by Paul McAuley Depicts an post-apocalyptic confrontation between a sort of human queen of a colony of giant bees and a gang of bandits run by a psycho midget. The type of strong, Tim O'Brien "war story" style ending that I love. Probably my favorite story in this issue. Caisson by Karl Bunker Initially I wasn't a fan of this historical piece about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But it's down to earth sensibilities eventually won me over. The ending was a major tease, though. The First Step by Kristine Kathryn Rusch To be blunt, one of my least favorite Asimov's stories. It is a time travel tale that did nothing to push the time-travel sub genre. Powered largely by sentimentality. Most bewilderingly, there was no conflict. A Thousand Nights Till Morning by Will McIntosh A long novella about an alien invasion as seen through the eyes of someone suffering from an anxiety disorder. Well-paced. Felt real. I enjoyed it. ...more |
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| 030788743X
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| 4.23
| 1,200,209
| 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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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 |
Notes are private!
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Sep 11, 2015
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Mass Market Paperback
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my rating |
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| 3.91
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liked it
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May 20, 2016
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| 3.90
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it was ok
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Apr 18, 2016
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Apr 07, 2016
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| 3.73
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liked it
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not set
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Apr 01, 2016
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| 4.05
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liked it
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Feb 17, 2016
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| 4.03
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liked it
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not set
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Jan 05, 2016
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| 3.54
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it was ok
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Dec 30, 2015
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Dec 27, 2015
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| 3.57
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it was ok
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not set
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Dec 20, 2015
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| 3.91
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liked it
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not set
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Dec 18, 2015
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| 4.28
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liked it
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not set
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Dec 03, 2015
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| 4.24
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liked it
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Nov 22, 2015
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| 4.18
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liked it
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not set
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Nov 14, 2015
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| 3.47
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liked it
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not set
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Nov 04, 2015
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| 3.57
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liked it
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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| 3.53
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really liked it
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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| 3.58
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liked it
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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| 3.42
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it was ok
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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| 3.42
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liked it
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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| 4.23
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it was amazing
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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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