This is a pretty excellent example of how great illustration is not the same thing as great comics. Tocchini's art is *beautiful*, almost every panel This is a pretty excellent example of how great illustration is not the same thing as great comics. Tocchini's art is *beautiful*, almost every panel its own exquisite gesture of light lines and deep color, but... a fair number of those panels barely make any visual sense, and some make none at all. Tocchini also seems totally uninterested in facial expressions, which, in a tale about families torn apart and the world ending, you'd think would be kind of a requirement. He's basically just got the whole European fantasy comic vibe going on: an endless series of half-naked women, who are naked for pretty much no reason for 90% of the story and (along with the more clothed men) have the emotional range of an end table.
All of which is kind of a shame, because this is actually a pretty fun, simple adventure story that could work well if it could convince you the characters were actually people. Despite the exploitative art, women drive a lot of the plot, and I actually kind of want to know what that probe found. I just don't want to know enough to endure more of the artwork....more
This is a premise in search of a plot, but it's a good enough premise to warrant a read. The constant, explicit foreshadowing was extremely annoying (This is a premise in search of a plot, but it's a good enough premise to warrant a read. The constant, explicit foreshadowing was extremely annoying (e.g. "'[...] things are likely to get worse before they get better–if they get better.' How prophetic those words have come to seem." p. 208), as were the aphasic passages by Bart. Yes, it made me feel how disconcerting it would be to talk with someone suffering from aphasia, but it also made me feel like one chapter of such gibberish would have conveyed that point sufficiently.
I think what I enjoyed the most was not so much the idea that offloading memory into machines has all these cultural and linguistic risks, but that the extension of our culture's propensity to view things as property to be monetized is even riskier, and how technology infringes upon the commons. No one should be able to own words and charge you to use them. I think the same is true of genes, but our courts apparently disagree, and maybe our society does too, or at least they don't care or understand enough to raise a stink about it.
I also enjoyed how the book approaches (but doesn't quite set foot in) a post-literate world, where people are physically unable to use language of any kind without permission from (and payment to) a central authority, and that that world kind of looks like our world. I don't think we're headed that way (I'm of the opinion that we live in a golden age of writing, even if we may be devolving into a stone age of thinking), but sometimes the most effective dystopian fiction makes you struggle to realize why it's dystopian instead of how struggling to understand how such a messed-up world relates to the present era.
The nerd in me (and in all honesty there's not much else in there) had some issues with the technology, though. I know, it's not really about the tech, but the feasibility of the tech is what could make this really scary. The mechanism of word flu is that (view spoiler)[personal computers get to a point where they start being partially embedded DNA computers that somehow interface with traditional silicon computers and can thus translate digital information into molecular information, so a computer virus could literally become a physical virus and make you sick. Which is kind of genius, in a horrible way, and... sort of imaginable, if you blackbox a lot of stuff, like the digital-to-molecular translation, and the fact that today's DNA computers are far too simple to imagine functionality like this (they're like the digital computers of the 40s and 50s: they take input, make output, and then they're done). But whatever, I'm ignorant enough about DNA computation to sort of suspend disbelief there. What I don't understand is why users of strictly digital devices also succumbed to word flu. Apparently some digital devices had "an overreactive propensity to send its user onto the Exchange" where the user would get BS words and definitions provided by the corporation, thus polluting the user's diction (assuming the user actually remembered the words and definitions) and making them present a "benign" aphasia, but that seems like it would only manifest in a small minority of words. (hide spoiler)] The confusion about this kind of stuff got in the way of my reading.
Overall, good Minskyan "everything else" scifi surrounded by general fiction marketing. If you like characters and plot and such, though, look elsewhere.
WORDS
My misgivings aside, it was nice to read a book with a slew of new words, and also the fun of deciding which words are real words you don't know and which words are made-up word flu words.
dulcarnon (n, though used as adj): supposedly deriving from Arabic for "having two horns," often used to describe the Pythagorean Theorem, but in this case it means to be in a dilemma. (p. 35)
synchronic (adj): referring to a specific moment in time without consideration of the past, specifically in the case of linguistics. (p. 83)
diachronic (adj): referring to changes in a system, particularly a linguistic one. (p. 84)
shakshouka (n): a Tunisian dish of eggs poached in a tomato sauce (p. 125)
stive (v): to pack in tightly according to some online sources. (p. 208)
prodrome (n): an early symptom. (p. 235)
cimicine (adj): having the odor of insects in the order Hemiptera, according to some online sources, though it casts some doubt on the usage here (a "cimicine basement" seems... really specific). (p. 292)
gargarism (n): according to Wordnik apparently it's something to gargle with. (p. 316)
And now I think I'll re-read David Foster Wallace's "Authority and American Usage," which apparently inspired this book....more
This was one of a number of audiobooks on a recent road trip. I don't usually listen to audiobooks, so it's hard to distinguish my unfamiliarity with This was one of a number of audiobooks on a recent road trip. I don't usually listen to audiobooks, so it's hard to distinguish my unfamiliarity with the format from my dissatisfaction with this book. I had no objection to the reader (as I often do when overhearing my partner's audiobooks), more that this book promises us a quest, but provides... digression, a character with no personality and no arc, and a story that goes nowhere. I suspect if I'd been reading it I would have enjoyed the little B-mor vignettes a bit more, but while barreling down the interstate I just wanted him to get back to Fan and see where she'd go next. Sadly, where she'd go next was pretty much the only thing keeping me interested, like literally where, because she herself undergoes no change at all during the book. The where, the world, was interesting and all, but not interesting enough to make up for the books other deficiencies. A bit of lyrical prose wrapped around not very much at all....more
Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is nonfree movement, because all the fundamental significance of the dance lies precisely in its aesthe
Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is nonfree movement, because all the fundamental significance of the dance lies precisely in its aesthetic subjection, its ideal nonfreedom. And if it is true that our ancestors gave themselves over to dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysterious, military parades), that can mean only one thing: that from time immemorial the instinct of nonfreedom has been an organic part of man [...]
I think I picked this up along with The Slynx after listening to an episode of Imaginary Worlds about Russian scifi. As kind of a foundational industrial dystopia, We has pretty much all the basic elements: absolute state control, revolutionaries, protagonist who goes from conformist to dissident to conformist. Certainly more tongue-in-cheek than 1984, also less brutal and more Buck Rogers (the characters zoom into space in a rocket and seem to experience no effects of acceleration or, like, the lack of air).
(view spoiler)[Having not read any criticism and not remembering 1984 and Brave New World very well, I found one of the weirdest part of this book was how D-503 always ends up back in his room. Like no matter what crazy thing happens, that night he's back at home writing in his diary, as if nothing, even the dissolution of his worldview, can get in the way of a good night's rest. The secret police don't bother him all that much, either. The threat of violence is there, but D-503's almost total lack of concern robs it of its power. The trope in this genre is that the revolution is controlled by the state, and when you and the protagonist realize this you're supposed to be crushed by how total the totalitarianism of a technologically advanced autocracy can be. But in We, the rebels are actually revolutionaries. Things don't all go to plan, but they seem to pose a real threat to the state. Plus, there are people *beyond* the state that seem to be relishing freedom and extensive body hair. The hopefulness of the situation seemed trite to me, reading after this genre has been flogged for about a century. (hide spoiler)]...more
Blade Runner + Heironymus Bosch + Where's Waldo pretty much equals Hard Boiled. This book may ostensibly have a plot, and Frank Miller may ostensibly Blade Runner + Heironymus Bosch + Where's Waldo pretty much equals Hard Boiled. This book may ostensibly have a plot, and Frank Miller may ostensibly have written the many onomatopoetic monosyllables induced by stab wounds and tractor trailer collisions, but the only reason to flip through these pages is to marvel at Geoff Darrow's unspeakably intricate and profane linework. Every single panel contains at least thousands, if not tens of thousands, of tiny little objects, most of them wrappers, needles, porn, armaments, and bits of recently combusted mechanical devices. If there are people (and there are often hundreds of them), they are inevitably eating, having sex, getting high, or committing heinous acts of violence, usually in combination. It's revolting. It's baroque. It's awesome. Darrow wouldn't just draw, say, a glass of water. He'd draw some circuit-encrusted styrofoam chalice with multiple buttons labeled "sugar," "caffeine," "cocaine," and "orgasm."
Darrow is probably best known for creating much of the conceptual artwork behind the Matrix movies, and you can definitely see how his sense of grime and detail fed into the look of those films. Interestingly, he also delights in capturing high speed action in media res, particularly multiple car crashes in which all the drivers are simultaneously smashing through their windshields and the contents of trucks (usually candy and/or livestock) are suspended in midair. Made me think of bullet time....more
**spoiler alert** Ok. That was an intense week. This series is like a non-stop roller coaster ride of death from the first page to the very last. Did **spoiler alert** Ok. That was an intense week. This series is like a non-stop roller coaster ride of death from the first page to the very last. Did I mention the death? Because there is a whole lot of it. I've heard there have been mixed reviews of this final book, and I'm going to guess they mostly have to do with the ending, so before I read those reviews, here's what I thought about the finale.
It's almost impossible to end a dystopian story in a satisfying way. One of the main reasons to tell this kind of tale is to level a critique upon the present day (usually a scathing one), either to make the reader see how the fictional horrors reflect upon our own world, or warn us about the horrors today's decisions could entail. Ending a dystopia without crushing all remaining hope for humanity's redemption undermines these goals, to some extent, because Hell isn't quite as effective a deterrent if there's some hope of escape. 1984 is pretty much the quintessential example.
However, who wants to read about heros who fight for nothing? And perhaps more importantly, why should we heed a dystopia's warnings when Hell seems inevitable (which it should if the author did a good job)? So maybe it can be appropriate to top off the suffering with a dollop of hope, a la the very, very end of The Road. The trick is to do it in a way that doesn't insult the reader's intelligence by suggesting that evil has been conquered and utopia is finally within reach.
That, if you ask me, is exactly the trick Collins pulled off in this book. Having Coin order the bombing of the children before the mansion and not Snow was an Orwellian, hopeless twist (with a squeeze of Truman/Nagasaki/Hiroshima). That realization removed what, for me, had been a frustrating simplification up until that point, namely that Snow was the Big Bad, the all-powerful antagonist whose defeat would surely end the war and restore peace and love to the galaxy. If Coin killed the kids, though, then she was just another Snow, and if there were 2, then there were many, many more to follow. While depressing, that is a much more satisfying reflection on reality to me: evil is an integral component of humanity, and we will never be free of it. I read Katniss's approval of a final retributional Hunger Games for the children of the Capitol as another statement of this idea. "Nothing will ever change," she thinks in despair.
Of course, the notion of unending evil doesn't necessarily imply that fighting it is futile, only that it too will be without end. I read Katniss killing Coin as Collins' way of saying something like this, and I view the rather hopeful final chapter and epilogue as reminders that the fight is not for nothing.
Speaking of which, I thought those last scenes were beautiful, from Buttercup and Katniss's cross-species catharsis to Katniss's final realization of who she is and why she can't be that person without Peeta. While I admit that I'm kind of a sap and I might need these things in a story, I didn't think they were Spielbergian sugar coatings. As a reader, I also needed to howl in grief (at least vicariously), and I felt those final scenes provided a vague but satisfying answer the question of who Katniss really is, a question that cannot really be answered in a way that isn't vague.
The very final line also resolves one of the more interesting and currently relevant themes of the book: the real, and the lengths we will go to in order to pervert or escape it. Even though the unreality engine Collins chose to excoriate was television and not something a little more current like social media, I think she did an excellent job demonstrating the dangers of inauthenticity. Katniss is powerless as a rebel symbol when she tries to perform, or when others try to spin her. Her true and very real symbolic potency emerges when she is actually enraged over an attack on a hospital, actually sympathetic for an Avox who wants to hear a song. Peeta's ultimate torture was the theft of reality. Without confidence in what was real, he reverted to mindless savagery. I don't think Collins went anywhere new with this in the final book, but I was happy to see that it remained a vital part of the story. Real or not real?
I don't actually have many complaints. I guess it went on a little long, and there were some parts that definitely made the suspension of disbelief sag: Katniss's unbelievable hunting skill, uneducated miner's children knowing about DNA, the largely conventional nature of warfare and the absence of terrorism. The constant violence definitely wore me down a bit as well, and it would seriously make me hesitate to recommend this to kids under 15 or so. But really, on the whole, it was exciting, poignant, meaningful, and even interesting. Highly recommended to everyone. I'm teetering on the edge of 5 stars.
Update: Ok, I've been reading some reviews. I think Abby makes a good (if brief) case against, and Meredith makes an equally good (if not equally brief) case for. Laura Miller's analysis of modern YA dystopic fiction in the New Yorker is also interesting reading, even if I don't necessarily agree with the argument that this series was morally handicapped by an upbeat ending....more
**spoiler alert** Loved it, though I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I learned they were headed back to the arena. The scene where Katniss speaks to**spoiler alert** Loved it, though I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I learned they were headed back to the arena. The scene where Katniss speaks to the people of District 11 and they silently salute her in the District 12 way was beautiful, and perfectly completed when the Peacekeepers take the leader of the salute and shoot him in the head. Collins, you are sick, and totally awesome. I think I'll save most of my thoughts for the Mockingjay review, though......more
Tight, unrelenting action drama in post-apocalyptic fascist middle America! Plug that into the YA hype machine, and, well, you have my attention, but Tight, unrelenting action drama in post-apocalyptic fascist middle America! Plug that into the YA hype machine, and, well, you have my attention, but also my squinty-eyed, brow-furrowed skepticism, and since squinty and furrowed is my de facto demeanor, I'm talking some serious squint and furrow. Which made it all the more satisfying to realize, many pages in, that this book is pretty damn good. The pace is terrific, slowing when appropriate but never stuck. This has much to do with Collins' minimalism in describing the world and her characters. Much like Katniss and her family, the story survives on little more than the necessities. Collins doesn't linger too long on exposition or painting exquisite backdrops, which in one sense creates an impoverished environment not unlike The Road, but is not so denuded of humanity that it invokes the horror or hopelessness McCarthy might have been looking for. I cared about Katniss, and while I wasn't sure of her fate, I believed she could win out.
That minimalism is also the main flaw of the book. The constant struggle for survival doesn't leave a lot of room for personality. Katniss is a tough-skinned pragmatist with conscience, Peeta is a shy boy in love, Prim and Rue are just innocent little girls, but what are these people really like? If particularities compose a person, these people barely qualify. Katniss can be hot-headed (firing arrows at the Gamemasters), sentimental (flower burial), and righteous (defying the games), but I've yet to see the essential Katniss-ness these actions delineate, or more importantly, I've yet to get the sense that there something there to figure out.
That, however, is a minor qualm in a YA action novel, especially after only one book in a trilogy. There's a lot more to appreciate here as well. As other reviewers have pointed out, Katniss's self-awareness and the reality TV aspects of the Hunger Games are both interesting and well done. The real and the unreal, the ironic and authentic become ever more entangled as Katniss realizes how important performance is to her survival, but, as always, bending the truth costs her in ways she hadn't predicted. Hoping for more of this in the next books, which I just picked up. Looking forward to getting back to Panem.
Re-read in 2011 Loses nothing on a second read (or, I'm guessing, a third, fourth, fifth...). Saw the pics of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss a few days ago and decided I need to re-affirm my own imagery of Katniss and Panem before this movie tries to supplant it. I think Lawrence looks great as Katniss, but I'm a bit concerned about this projected PG-13 rating. There is a lot of very relevant violence in this series. I'm also hoping they shoot most of it in a realist style to contrast with the way the Capitol portrays events. Capitol footage should be like X-Men, everything else like Winter's Bone. Chances of this happening are slim to nil, but I can hope....more
**spoiler alert** Biology, ethics, and speculative fiction, all in one well-written novel? God's wounds, 'twas practically written for me! Ah, the sol**spoiler alert** Biology, ethics, and speculative fiction, all in one well-written novel? God's wounds, 'twas practically written for me! Ah, the solipsism of enjoyable reading.
In rough outline, this is an unremarkable dystopia-leading-to-apocalypse kind of story: in the near future, bioengineering has run wild, people design their kids, eat exclusively manufactured food, and spend most of their lives getting high, having sex, and selling shit. Consumed by our own sins, cautionary tale, yadda yadda. Idiocracy with a higher thread count. BUT there are some odd quirks and a bunch of wonderful little details that make it fun and interesting.
One thing that struck me was the absence of a classical hubris motif. Hurbis is generally the point of tales where technology runs amok, but Atwood doesn't seem particularly interested. If this book was about humanity overextending its reach, the pigoons would have rebelled, or the ChickieNubs would have developed intelligence and become mind-controlling brain parasites. Instead, Atwood's apocalypse isn't an unforeseen consequence of humanity's powers, but the very deliberate application of those powers in the form of a man-made plague.
That said, Atwood clearly has a stance regarding the ethical limits of bioengineering, namely that the people of this world have stepped far beyond them. The passage that grossed me out the most was the introduction of the ChickieNob:
What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
"What the hell is it?" said Jimmy.
"Those are chickens," said Crake. "Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They've got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit."
"But there aren't any heads," said Jimmy. He grasped the concept [...:] but this thing was going too far. At least the pigoons of his childhood hadn't lacked heads.
"That's the head in the middle," said the woman. "There's a mouth opening at the top, they dump the nutrients in there. No eyes or bek or anything, they don't need those."
The best part of this sequence is that despite Jimmy's disgust, pretty much the only foods he seems to eat for the rest of the book are pizza and ChickieNobs.
I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile these cautionary elements with the lack of a classical hubristic storyline. One interpretation might be that the semi-divine powers on display aren't intrinsically bad or undeserved (the Crakers seem alright, after all), but that they could be hideously misapplied if used thoughtlessly. Another might simply be that Atwood does consider the reach for this power to be hubristic, and that Crake agrees and decides to take on the retributional role of absent deities.
Another point of confusion for me was how completely unsympathetic Jimmy was as a character. The guy is a pitiful, self-absorbed, sex-crazed loser. Granted, that seems to be Atwood's view of this society at large, which is fine with me, I'm willing to be that cynical for a few hundred pages, but why the protagonist? So that we feel our own potential complicity in the sad state of our potential future? His only redeeming feature seems to be his capacity for guilt, but it's never enough to spur him towards action. Other reviews point out that he's the only fleshed out character in the novel, but winning the Least Likely To Be a Cardboard Cutout Award does not a human make. He never grows up, and it's hard to summon much sympathy for manchildren.
Furthermore, what is up with Oryx? Unlike Jimmy (and Crake, ultimately), she doesn't seem to believe anything. She's morally neutered. She wants and takes things (pizza, Jimmy), but she has no interest in the past, in anger. Without her, Jimmy wouldn't have someone to long for, and Crake might not have been able to goad Jimmy into shooting him, but aside from that, what role is she playing?
I thoroughly enjoyed some of the horrific and satyrical details thrown in. In addition to the ChickieNobs, there was a casual mention of "keeping a for-harvest child or two stashed away in some illegal baby orchard," and the excellent Blood and Roses game, in which you elect to stop an atrocity from happening by trading a human achievement, erase Pol Pot in exchange for habeas corpus, for example. Jimmy takes awesome courses like "Applied Logic" and "Relativistics and Advanced Mischaracterization." Animal snuff shows. Porn of every flavor. Oh so bitter.
Words
Words are a big deal in this book, mostly because Jimmy collects them in a futile attempt to preserve the vestiges of a civilization lost even before everyone died. Strangely, though, I often found Atwood's language a bit off, like a Brit doing a failed Yankee impression. Americans do not say "bum" to refer to any part of human anatomy, for example. Nor do we say "bottom." Unless we are making fun of Brits. We also do not say "What the shit?" Anyway. The words.
norn (n): the Norse equivalent of the Greek Fates. (p. 68)
pibroch (n): genre of Scottish music played in the bagpipes. Example (not sure why they're standing in the bushes). (p. 68)
lubricious (adj): lecherous, or smooth and slippery. One of those words I'm constantly learning and forgetting. (p. 68)
incarnadine (adj): pink, red (p. 85)
helot (n): "a member of the lowest class in ancient Laconia" sayeth dictionary.com. Apparently Laconia was the Greek state that contained Sparta. (p. 248)
leman (n): lover (p. 312)
queynt (n): possible an alternate or mis-spelling of "queynte," which a couple sites out there suggest is an alternate spelling of "cunt" employed by Chaucer in the Miller's Tale. Wikipedia goes on and on about it (surprise), but no mention in the Online Etymology Dictionary. My abbreviated Encylpedic Oxford doesn't have it. (p. 312)...more
**spoiler alert** Another book I read a long time ago, but this one I remember loving. Priests! Deserts! Extra heads! I may have read this after havin**spoiler alert** Another book I read a long time ago, but this one I remember loving. Priests! Deserts! Extra heads! I may have read this after having watched the Babylon 5 episode which borrows from it heavily, but there's much more to enjoy in Canticle, particularly the more depressing viewpoint (we will destroy ourselves, rebuild ourselves, only to destroy ourselves again). Man, I should re-read this....more
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