A worthy conclusion to an amazing trilogy. After the heroic struggle for survival in Red Mars, and the covert war of Green Mars, KSR settles down to tA worthy conclusion to an amazing trilogy. After the heroic struggle for survival in Red Mars, and the covert war of Green Mars, KSR settles down to the messy business of governing a growing planet. A lot of reviews have criticized this book as a 600 page epilogue, but I thought that the story was all very present, all very live issues. KSR has a better gift for imagining future social and political conflicts than he does the vagaries of ground-to-orbit warfare and civil disobedience (or at least his fictional politics haven't been obsolesced as brutally as the revolutionary stuff). The water-rich, terraformed (seas, canals, Mediterranean villages, storms!) Mars is a delight to visit. The aging cast feel appropriately melancholy, and the new arrivals to the setting are a lot more relatable than the strange Zygotes of Green Mars.
The Mars Trilogy is a massive, ambitious, modern classic of SF.
***UPDATE from December 19, 2012, for HUGO REREAD PROJECT***
If Red Mars was about finding Mars, Green Mars about becoming Martian, Blue Mars is about living with the consequences. Mars is now independent and mostly terraformed, the Martians trying to make their fragile government work, while hoping that a massively overpopulated Earth doesn't take them down with them. The characters are again the First Hundred, now pushing into their second century, and dealing with the consequences of such an unnatural life: memory that no longer works, habits of thought becoming psychological canyons, the ancient feud between 'Green' terraformer Sax Russell and 'Red' aerophile Ann Clayborn and its resolution. This isn't so much a novel as a linked anthology, and many of the stories feel like repeats--same characters, same plots, similar points on ecological responsibility and co-op economics.
The first half of the book is a slog through constitution-writing and a trip to Earth that goes nowhere. Only halfway through does Blue Mars find its pace, with Nirgal catching up with a band of feral hunter-gatherers, who wander the land hunting with thrown weapons and harvesting orchards before brief spurts of shopping and drinking in town. The story then follows the only new character, Zo, daughter of the power-hungry Jackie Boone and a diplomatic enforcer for Mars First trying to unite the scattered minor worlds into an alliance against Earth, and then returns to the aging First Hundred, living relics wondering at the world that they made and their place in it.
The sheer mass and momentum of the Mars Trilogy is impressive, but in the end I feel like it's too didactic, to in love with landscapes and ideas rather than people. KSR ends on the thought that it is better to think that you left your children a new Golden Age, rather than having squandered their birthright (ouch. very ouch), but I was left unsatisfied by both the retrospective and re-creative aspects of this concluding volume. ...more
Do you love Archer? Of course you do, because if you're reading this, you're my friend, and all my friends have excellent taste in everything. How to Do you love Archer? Of course you do, because if you're reading this, you're my friend, and all my friends have excellent taste in everything. How to Archer is pretty much what it says on the tin: a perfectly in-character guidebook from Archer himself where he talks about how awesome he is. Don't expect useful advice (well, except maybe the cocktails) or more insight into the world of Archer. On the other hand, if you can do a decent H. Jon Benjamin impression in your head, it's fairly hilarious and worth the $2 I paid for my copy....more
Microscope describes itself as "a fractal role-playing game of epic histories." This is a big claim, perhaps insanely ambitious, but Microscope might Microscope describes itself as "a fractal role-playing game of epic histories." This is a big claim, perhaps insanely ambitious, but Microscope might just be able to pull it off. I haven't had a chance to play Microscope, so this based just on reading the text, but that said:
I've theorized roleplaying games as about Structured Negotiation. In that regard, Microscope gives you a very powerful and elegant way to narratively generate histories. The nested structure of Period-Event-Scene intuitively let players control the scale of the game. Scenes, the core roleplaying bits, are cleverly framed by use of a Question which must be decided. The rules themselves give a lot of power to each player in turn, demanding contributions from everybody in the hotseat, and discouraging collaboration and play by consensus. Your epic history is supposed to be a spiky mess.
Where I am less sure about Microscope is it's ability to resolve impasses, when players disagree or have no good idea. The game is a little shaky on how long (in real time) everything is supposed to take. Like most story games, tMicroscope needs a high trust, imaginative groups.
Regardless, I'm very excited to get a chance to play Microscope and see how it works....more
This book has to be history, because nobody could make up something so bizarre.
Scion of a wealthy Pasadena family, Parsons was one of the founding fatThis book has to be history, because nobody could make up something so bizarre.
Scion of a wealthy Pasadena family, Parsons was one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry (JATO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, castable fuels), despite a lack of formal training or credentials. At the same time as he was turning rocketry from a pursuit for cranks into a pillar of the Military-Industrial Complex, Parsons was deeply involved in black magic, and was the high priest of the a Crowleyite Satanic lodge, where wife-swapping and sex magic were performed with an every changing crew of Hollywood types, leftist radicals, and science-fiction freaks, including L. Ron Hubbard (yes, that L. Ron Hubbard).
Pendle charts Parsons' rise through the mirrored worlds of rocketry and magic, and then his tragic and sudden decline as his bizarre lifestyle proved incompatible with top secret research in the paranoid political climate of the late 40s, and a series of bad decisions (most involving L. Ron Hubbard) shattered his social circles and finances. Parsons' death in a mysterious explosive accident seems the only fitting end for this forgotten figure of spaceflight, and the 'occult Che Guevara'. ...more
Green Mars is still a good book, but it suffers a little but from a sophmore slump, as the conflicts and challenges are nowhere near as interesting asGreen Mars is still a good book, but it suffers a little but from a sophmore slump, as the conflicts and challenges are nowhere near as interesting as those in Red Mars. It doesn't help that many of the most interesting characters die during the last book. A bigger problem is that KSR seems too be losing touch with the scope and scale of what he's attempting. The best way that I can describe it is that in the book, people are fleeing an overcrowded Earth to move to Mars to live in tiny apartments and rovers where they teleoperate giant ice mining robots to create a world circling sea. The setting can't decide if it's pre-apocalyptic, post-scarcity, totally pulpy, or any other description. Maybe this is a strength, but in a very hard scifi book, I find this floppiness annoying.
(first read December 11, 2012, updated for Hugo reread below)
***********************
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is a masterpiece in science fiction, a dreamy, imaginative, yet rigorously technical account of building a new ecology and new society on Mars. The First Hundred are a compelling cast of geniuses and contradictions, world-class experts stable enough to pass a barrage of tests to go to Mars, yet monomaniacal enough to cast aside all their ties to Earth. Red Mars, the story of landing, division in the new colony, the growth of Mars into a world, and then the spasm of violence that is the abortive revolt of 2061, is one of the best books ever written: lyrical in its depictions of the Martian landscape, smart in its politics and science, and using its multiple narrators to best effect in showing the fragmentation of the unique men and women who first landed on Mars.
Green Mars continues the story, focusing on the native Martians and their nascent political community, but with a heavier touch and less interesting characters than the first book. The story opens with Nirgal, a third generation Martian and member of the underground society, growing up in a small town named Zygote under the South Polar Ice Cap, with the surviving First Hundred under the direct car of the enigmatic Hiroki, the farm ecologist who disappeared in the earliest days of the settlement. It's a profoundly strange upbringing, the smallest of small towns with a dozen or so other kids and the legends of the first days. It's like a town with a one-room school house where the teachers are all Nobel prize winning scientists, the Founding Fathers of your nascent nation, and a literal priestess-goddess. Nirgal grows up, wanders around Mars with the legendary traveler Coyote (who stowed away on the initial journey), and then goes off to coordinate all the diverse groups of the underground and demimonde community in political awareness of the their status as Martians.
The story then follows Sax Russell, another of the First Hundred, as he emerges from hiding to take back up the cause of terraforming. Sax wanders through alpine meadows and glaciers on Mars, forming a liaison with the only one of the First Hundred to stay loyal to Earth, and then getting captured and rescued by his friends, suffering a stroke in the process. The thread then switches between Nadia, Maya, and Art, respectively two of the First Hundred, Russian construction engineer and diplomat, and a spy sent from the profoundly strange super-corporation Praxis, which is trying to form an alliance with Mars as a test for new ecologically sustainable economics needed on Earth. Together, all the characters create a kind of constitutional convention at a settlement, where the diverse groups (space communists, Sufi mystics, Polynesian matriarchies, anarchist geologists) agree to recognize human rights and the diversity of communities in a generalized document. The biggest split is between Reds, who prefer to keep Mars as it is, and Greens, who want to follow a terraforming program leading to humans walking under an open sky. Years pass, tensions mount, and then the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf on Earth, Mars declares independence, use non-violent means to kick the last few cops off planet, and then evacuate a city threatened by flooding in an orderly and triumph walk with nothing but simple carbon dioxide filter masks.
This is not a fast book, or an action packed book, or one with strong characters, but then that's not what KSR is about as an author. The thing is that even on a reread, this feels like a 50 page political pamphlet wrapped in 500 pages about alpine meadows, scientific conferences, and left wing rallies. I really like Robinson, he's a gentleman and a scholar, and I even agree with his politics/economics. The world would be a lot better if more people saw it like he did. But this book is about as didactic as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and way more mellow. The little communities on Mars, scholar-farmers living in cliffside apartments and tented valleys as their gigantic robots go through the centuries long work of making seas and skies and fields, are just so... dull.
The first book really shined in the animosities and visions of three characters: Arkady Bogdanov and his utopian quest to break off entirely from an Earth-bound past, John Boone and his innate charisma and love of newness of Mars, and Frank Chambers and his aggressive pragmatism and anger at anyone who stood before him. All these characters are dead at the start of Green Mars, and and viewpoints that replace them are cloudier, smaller, more hectoring in their insistence that we the reader, as early 21st century humans, are at fault for not living in the world KSR imagines....more
This is the complete history of the Red Eagles, a squadron of American pilots that flew MiGs to train other pilots how to fight the Russians and theirThis is the complete history of the Red Eagles, a squadron of American pilots that flew MiGs to train other pilots how to fight the Russians and their clients. Davies apparently interviewed almost everyone associated with the Red Eagles, and left no stone unturned. On the downside, this means lots of boring details about changes in command. But buried in the mass of the book are real nuggets of military history gold: black bureaucracy, fighter pilot hijinks, the difficulties of maintaining Russian aircraft without the benefit of spares or manuals, and of course, the stone-cold badassery of the pilots who went up in these airplanes day after day, and mostly brought them back home through the worst conditions. I won't spoil the good bits in this review, but the MiG-23 is just not a good airplane, and it is amazing that it only killed one American....more
I'd put off the Red Mars trilogy for years, for some various bad reasons, but finally got around to it, and well--God. Damn. This is an amazing book!
KI'd put off the Red Mars trilogy for years, for some various bad reasons, but finally got around to it, and well--God. Damn. This is an amazing book!
KSM explores the consequences of colonizing Mars in the best traditions of hard science-fiction, blending both imaginative and plausible technology with the realistic tensions of ideology, power, and politics that arise when ambitious people reach a frontier. The 'areology' of Mars is beautifully realized, the stark, cold, dusty planet is very much a character in it's brutal transition to life. Sure, this book is perhaps a little longer than it needs to be, too many similar reveries about isolation and freedom and change from characters who are little too much alike. But the magisterial vision of space colonization and its problems makes up for all that....more
This book is a detailed legislative history surrounding the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabiliation Act of 1973, and its implementing regulations.This book is a detailed legislative history surrounding the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabiliation Act of 1973, and its implementing regulations. Scotch raises an interesting point that Section 504, which mandated an end to discrimination on the basis of disabilities, was passed without comment, by outsiders largely unfamiliar with the main disability/rehabilitation discourse. Because implementation was given to civil rights lawyers rather than rehabilitation social workers, the law became an instrument for creating social wide change, abet on a more symbolic than pragmatic level.
As a guide to current affairs, this book is somewhat outdated, given the passage of the ADA in 1990. But it still a fascinating look at a very important symbolic law....more
Forgive me for going on a tangent here, but in grad school, which is ostensibly about producing a dissertation as part of becoming a scholar, we rarelForgive me for going on a tangent here, but in grad school, which is ostensibly about producing a dissertation as part of becoming a scholar, we rarely are assigned to read other dissertations. I think this might be the first dissertation I've read.
Liachowitz advances the position that disabilities are not physiological or medical per se, but rather the results of public policies that make people disabled by consigning them to institutions, discouraging education and employment, and involvement in the community. This is a worthwhile thesis, and one I agree with, but the specific evidence here is not well mustered. If poor policies are a result of pre-existing prejudice against the disabibled, then prejudice is the object of investigation. If it is outdated legal precedents, then those need to be fully traced from their origins to the present, not simply alluded to. The most interesting scholarship is the most distant, Colonial and Revolutionary era laws concerning care of the handicapped. As the work moves into the Industrial and Progressive eras, the work becomes scattered and unfocused.
This stuff (PhDing) is starting to look disturbingly hard....more
The City and the City is a great page-turning mystery, but ultimately lacking.
Mieville's greatest talent, aside from his monstrous imagination, is hisThe City and the City is a great page-turning mystery, but ultimately lacking.
Mieville's greatest talent, aside from his monstrous imagination, is his impeccable understanding of motive, of "why". The world of Bas Lag is so shocking, not because of how unusual it is, but because in the midst of magic and splendors and hideous beasts, characters still grapple with mundane concerns like wealth and power and class and knowledge and love.
The mystery at the heart of The City and the City, the nature of the breach between Besźel and Ul Qoma, is not satisfactorily explained or resolved. As an allegory on divided cities in our world, or the way that we do not see the poor and powerless, it is surprisingly subtle and effective. As the central driver of a murder mystery, it comes up short. --Nov 26, 2016
****
China Miéville made his name on weird fantasy with a communist and anarchist bent. His world of Bas Lag is full of wonderful and terrible monsters, with humans+capitalism as the king predator of them all, even more so than insane gods, mind-eating months, and trans-dimensions leviathans. The City and The City takes us from Bas Lag to our world, and the twinned and divided cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma, located somewhere Eastern Europe. Inspector Borlu, Extreme Crime Squad, is investigating a murdered girl. This should be an open and shut case of a murdered prostitute, another grimy little tragedy of the night, but the details don't make sense. The victim is an American archaeologist, working on a dig in Ul Qoma, and full of heretical theories about the history of the two cities.
As Borlu investigates, it becomes apparent that the real mystery is the nature of the barrier between Besźel and Ul Qoma, and the force of Breach that maintains it. This isn't Berlin or Jerusalem, cities divided by walls and borders. Both cities exist on top of each other, grosstopologically speaking, and the inhabitants careful learn to un-see and un-hear their neighbors. Miéville teases at the idea that Breach has arcane powers, access to ancient technology, is identical to or is at war with a secret third city, Orciny.
He teases at these things, but when Borlu shoots a suspect across the border and is taken by Breach, the actuality of the world fails to meet expectations. Breach are just men and women, a social convention of sudden violence and intimidation used to enforce a unique set of laws. The case that got the suspect killed is a tangle of corporate espionage and political corruption, not something particularly supernatural.
Miéville obviously has great talents as a writer, and in this case he puts them entirely behind a political position: that we are all complicit in unseeing certain aspects of our own cities: the homeless, the poor, refugees; while being carefully attentive of the fictions of geopolitics and business. He has a keen eye for coolness of liminal spaces and temporary autonomous zones, and the interlinkages of ideology, pragmatic politics, and academic theory. The thing is, I'm fairly sure this isn't a science fiction novel, or even a speculative novel of any stripe (aside from the fictionalized but carefully realized setting). Parts of me likes this better than the alternative. It'd be a disappointment if Breach really was Alien Space Bats, or something similarly sensible. But part of me also wants a novel that engages with the Weird, that grips and sticks, and that doesn't slide so neatly into the gap between cities....more
The last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, a return to form for Douglas Adams, and all told, my favorite volume in the series. Perfect blend of The last book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, a return to form for Douglas Adams, and all told, my favorite volume in the series. Perfect blend of humor, pathos, philosophy, and finishes with a bang....more
The question of "what did Heinlein really think?" is open to debate. Is he a free love hippie, a la Stranger in a Strange Land? The ur-fascist militarThe question of "what did Heinlein really think?" is open to debate. Is he a free love hippie, a la Stranger in a Strange Land? The ur-fascist militarist of Starship Troopers? The staunch survivalist of Time Enough for Love? The creepy racist and incest fan of books which shall not be mentioned?
I think that the 'real Heinlein' is on display here, in Space Cadet. Sure, it's one of his juveniles, but it deal with big issues, like what kind of people and institutions can be trusted to police a solar system and control forces which could wipe out all of humanity. The main characters are appealingly competent, well-meaning problem-solvers who through ingenuity, endurance, and diplomacy overcome the hazards of Space Patrol training, the asteroid belt, and the swamps of Venus. The book is solidly hard sci-fi, some hand-waving aside (waste products from nuclear rockets, the short range of radios, swamps on Venus), both in technology and sociology.
Now, the only open question I have is, is this a better book than Have Spacesuit, Will Travel?...more
Definitely the lowest point in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. Not that it's bad, or anything, but the frenetic humor pauses for a bit to explore a quDefinitely the lowest point in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. Not that it's bad, or anything, but the frenetic humor pauses for a bit to explore a question that I don't think anybody was ever interested in: what is Arthur Dent's love life like? The ending, with God's final message to creation, redeems everything, however....more
Videogames have come into their own as an art form when they can generate criticism like Killing is Harmless. Chapter by chapter, Keogh explores Spec Videogames have come into their own as an art form when they can generate criticism like Killing is Harmless. Chapter by chapter, Keogh explores Spec Ops: The Line as a 'high noon' moment, where shooters a genre become aware of themselves, and begin to comment on their tropes. Every inch of the game, and its links to other works (Call of Duty, Apocalypse Now, Bioshock...) are covered in detail. Fortunately, Keogh doesn't pretend to have answers about the causes or consequences of violence in video games, but he is right to note that the game has opened up those questions....more
This is where I think the series begins slowing down. There are some wonderful moments (the opening on the Cricket pitch), and repeated jokes (what PaThis is where I think the series begins slowing down. There are some wonderful moments (the opening on the Cricket pitch), and repeated jokes (what Paul McCartney could buy with a Krikkit folk song), but you know, it lacks that frenetic energy. Still amazing, though....more
If anything, even better and more absurd than the first Hitchhiker's Guide. Dinners that want to be eaten; dead for tax purposes; the Total PerspectivIf anything, even better and more absurd than the first Hitchhiker's Guide. Dinners that want to be eaten; dead for tax purposes; the Total Perspective Vortex; Golgarinch Ark B; and a melancholy ending....more
This is a book that I can't evaluate fairly. When I was a kid, I read my copies till they fell apart. It's loopy, cynical, absurd, solipsistic humor iThis is a book that I can't evaluate fairly. When I was a kid, I read my copies till they fell apart. It's loopy, cynical, absurd, solipsistic humor is at the base in my worldview. But you know what, it still rocks. The sentences are poetry and perfect British humor. The galaxy is wonderfully dysfunctional; Earth's destruction (and construction) hilariously pointless....more
This is one of the core books of the disabilities rights movement, an exhilarating journalistic account of the passage of the Americans with DisabilitThis is one of the core books of the disabilities rights movement, an exhilarating journalistic account of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and several magazine length accounts of the lives of people with disabilities. Shapiro makes it clear again and again that the biggest barrier to people with disabilities living a worthwhile life on their own terms are not their impairments, or even the built environment, but social prejudice and a welfare system that funnels money to expensive institutions rather than community based care. This work is more anecdotal than synoptic, and slightly outdated (particularly in its discussion of technological developments), but it covers the major categories of disabilities (blindness, deafness, quadriplegia and cognitive impairments), and tells the stories of people with disabilities. ...more
My edition was the (purported) Coleridge translation. I'm not enough of a literary scholar to judge this work comprehensively, but I can say that I grMy edition was the (purported) Coleridge translation. I'm not enough of a literary scholar to judge this work comprehensively, but I can say that I great enjoyed the play of language. At the same time, the characters and plots were deeply alien to my sensibilities. A fascinating and foundational work either way....more
A solid academic study of disability. Bookended by Baynton's exhortation that we can see disability everywhere in history once we know where to look, A solid academic study of disability. Bookended by Baynton's exhortation that we can see disability everywhere in history once we know where to look, Scotch's overview of the growth of disability legislation in the 20th century, the meat of this book focuses on the late 19th century, and the way that the individualized, haphazard, and essentially minimal efforts of the Victorian era gave way to the scientific, bureaucratic, and public policy solutions of the Progressive era. The chapters very between individual and institutional analysis, but are of uniformly high quality. ...more
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