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| 3.93
| 57,564
| 1955
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liked it
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The Most Un-Wyndham of His Books - A Sensitive Tale of Young Telepaths Growing Up in An Intolerant Religious Community Violently Opposed to Mutants Thi The Most Un-Wyndham of His Books - A Sensitive Tale of Young Telepaths Growing Up in An Intolerant Religious Community Violently Opposed to Mutants This was a well written book with carefully crafted characters and post-apocalyptic world. Written by someone else, it would have been a perfectly decent novel. However, it is so completely unlike Wyndham's more famous middle-class British "cosy catastrophes" The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos as to be completely unrecognizable as his work. I'm willing to bet in a blind reading nobody would know this was a Wyndham novel. Instead, with its sensitive portrayal of alienation, intolerance, and telepathic powers, it far more resembles Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human and The Dreaming Jewels. So it's not a bad book by any measure, but just not as distinctive as his other better know classics, which I enjoy as much for their middle-class British sensibilities as the stories themselves. ...more |
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| B00ILGUJEM
| 4.15
| 12,296
| 1964
| Feb 21, 2014
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really liked it
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The Invicible: Early classic encounter with a swarm intelligence Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of th The Invicible: Early classic encounter with a swarm intelligence Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Stanislaw Lem was a Polish SF author, one of the most famous and successful writers outside the English language world, selling over 45 million copies in 40+ languages over five decades from the 1950s, but mainly in Eastern European communist bloc countries such as Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union. However, despite his success he had a rocky relationship with the United States SF community, having a fairly low opinion of American SF fiction writers other than Philip K Dick’s works, and having his honorary membership with the SFWA taken away when he became eligible to become a regular member, which may have been intended as a slight and which he took as one. He refused to join. Lem even translated PDK’s UBIK into Polish in 1972, but as PDK was already pretty eccentric as he neared his own personal 1974 religious experience, he wrote to the FBI saying that Stanislaw Lem was a name used as a cover for the Communist Party to influence Western public opinion (just a wee paranoid, I’d say). Basically he felt he got stiffed for payment for the translation and blamed Lem for this. So there was a lot of misunderstanding with Lem and the Western SF world. However, as time has passed there have been many more English translations of his works, including a number of retranslations and audiobook versions, which has brought his work to the attention of newer readers again. His most famous book is Solaris written in 1961 in Polish (see my review of the book as well as the 1972 Tarkovsky film and 2002 Soderbergh film versions), which was not translated into English until 1970 (from the French edition, rather than the original Polish). It finally received a direct Polish-to-English translation from Bill Johnston and an audiobook version in 2011. Similarly, The Invincible was first published in Polish in 1964, then translated to German in 1967, but only received an English translation of the German version in 1973. Finally it received a proper Polish-to-English translation by Bill Johnston in 2015, so we have him to thank for bringing Lem’s works more skillfully and faithfully to English language readers. The audiobook has just become available from Tantor Audio, narrated by Peter Berkrot and based on the Bill Johnston translation, so it was a perfect opportunity to rediscover a classic Lem story. Turning to The Invincible itself, it is a classic take of alien contact and rumination on the nature of human and non-human (in this case non-organic) intelligence, and the possible futility of trying to communicate with a truly alien intelligence at all. Rather than the simplistic and anthropomorphic aliens popularized by American SF pulps and films and TV shows like the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, Lem’s thoughts on alien consciousness or machine intelligence was way ahead of its time. He was a pioneer when he wrote about encountering a sentient ocean in Solaris in 1961, and an artificial machine-based micro-bot swarm intelligence in The Invincible in 1964, almost a half century ago. One wonders how much more influence he might have had on the Western SF scene if his works had been translated more quickly and accurately than they were. In any case, The Invincible is the story of an heavily-armed exploration ship that sets out to discover what happened to The Condor, a similar ship that landed on the uninhabited and desolate planet Regis III before losing contact without warning. The first half of the book focuses on the crew’s efforts to discover what happened to The Condor and its crew, and they soon discover a mysterious artificial city, which seems to have been abandoned long ago. They then discover The Condor, still intact and largely undamaged, hundreds of kilometers from the city. Then they have their first encounter with an ominous and metallic cloud that emits a strong electromagnetic field and interferes with their communications. Things quickly spiral downward as they realize they are dealing with an artificial machine intelligence that does not possess higher consciousness, but is perfectly capable of destroying human technology and mental functions, and even the mighty anti-matter weaponry of the Invincible. There are various arguments among the crew, particularly the captain and the first navigator, Rohan, who is the main character in the story, about how to confront this implacable alien swarm intelligence, one that hardly seems aware of the pitiful human presence on the planet. However, unlike Kris Kelvin in Solaris, we really don’t get to know the human characters in The Invincible, as they seem largely lost in the face of an impossible situation. Ostensibly they are there to discover the crew of The Condor, but their whole mission comes into question, and by extension the whole justification for human exploration of strange and hostile worlds is also put under the microscope. Do humans really have a moral imperative to explore and conquer, and when they encounter an inorganic swarm intelligence that is perfectly adapted to its environment, but also perfectly uninterested in organic life, what possible gain can be had by trying to “communicate?” Like many SF novels of the 1960s and 1970s, the ideas in Lem’s books take precedence over excessive characterization and plotting, which accounts for their welcome brevity (under 200 pages vs. the doorstoppers produced by Peter F. Hamilton or Alastair Reynolds), but Lem is very much a modern philosopher, ruthlessly stripping away the pretensions of the Western idea that humanity has a Manifest Destiny to explore and conquer the universe. The themes he prefers to explore are what intelligence and consciousness are, and what their role is in a large and uncaring universe. It is often a chilling vision, and may well have been influenced by his long exposure to the Soviet Union’s dominance over the communist bloc countries, including his homeland of Poland. Rather than the naive optimism of American SF, he painted an often bleak canvas of the limitations of human ambition. Given that perspective, it is quite fascinating how popular his works became. I’ve only touched the surface of his books, and look forward to reading some with a more satirical slant, such as the stories of "Ijon Tichy: Space Pilot" (The Star Diaries, The Futurological Congress), along with his fable-like short stories exploring artificial intelligence (The Cyberiad, Mortal Engines). There is a depth of intellectual rigor and refusal to provide escapism in his books that appeals to me, and I hope he will find more readers thanks to the new translations and audiobook versions. ...more |
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Mar 04, 2018
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Mar 10, 2018
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Feb 28, 2018
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| 0307268861
| 9780307268860
| 0307268861
| 4.10
| 13,644
| Jun 01, 2008
| Sep 02, 2008
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really liked it
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The Gone-Away World: Relentlessly ironic, digressive, and clever Originally posted at Fantasy Literature The Gone-Away World (2008) is a post-apocalypti The Gone-Away World: Relentlessly ironic, digressive, and clever Originally posted at Fantasy Literature The Gone-Away World (2008) is a post-apocalyptic comedy/tragedy about our world before and after the Gone-Away Bombs have wiped up out much of humanity and the world we know. It is about Gonzo Lubitsch and his nameless best friend, who work for a special crew that is assigned to put of a fire along the Jorgmond pipeline, which produced the special material “Fox” that can eliminate the Stuff, the matter that is left over after gone-away bombs have removed the information from matter so that it no longer can form coherent form and structure. Stuff takes on the shape of the thoughts of people near it — nightmarish monsters, ill-formed creatures, and “new people.” Nightmares become real, and the world itself is a nightmare of sorts. And very soon after the story begins, we are wrenched back into Gonzo and his friend’s upbringing and bizarre early years learning kung-fu from Master Wu. The Gone-Away World is a long story that absolutely revels in its digressions and manic humor that relentlessly attacks the insanity of the military weapons mentality and the soul-destroying nature of corporations and conformity. It devotes a lot of time to ninjas and martial arts and military training, the cruel absurdity of war zones and civilian casualties, weird desert nomad tribes, and then the surreal post-apocalyptic communities of Mad Max-like survivors and predators clinging to a precarious survival. It is also about friendships and identity, as the characters fall into and out of different roles and situations, constantly shifting. Everything is maniacally sarcastic, filled with tragic irony and withering contempt for corporate rapacious greed. There are so many digressions that even the digressions have digressions. The story veers from one situation and tone to another, and then two-thirds of the way in, a shocking turn of the plot turns the entire story on its head and changes our understanding of everything that came before, and the final third of the book is truly different from what came before. The story flies through some powerful and grim examinations of war, destruction, greed, and societal collapse, and yet retains a dogged insistence on making an ironic and ultra-clever quotable comment on the whole glorious mess. It is self-indulgent and digressive and deeply morally-insistent all at the same time. The relationship of the narrator and Gonzo is a fascinating thing, and changes dramatically and suddenly mid-way through. The book could have used a much tougher editor — it’s like listening to your brilliant friend talking a mile a minute, both exhilarating and exhausting. It reminded me somewhat of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, with its larger-than-life characters, lengthy descriptions and elaborate language and humor. If you are in the mood for a completely different and bizarre literary SF satire on our world, this may be worth a try. The audiobook is expertly by Kirby Heyborne. ...more |
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Mar 30, 2018
not set
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Apr 20, 2018
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Feb 19, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1416556966
| 9781416556961
| 1416556966
| 4.12
| 76,987
| May 1971
| Apr 15, 2008
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it was amazing
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The Lathe of Heaven: An early 1970s classic of reality-altering dreams with Taoist undercurrents Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I love Ursula K The Lathe of Heaven: An early 1970s classic of reality-altering dreams with Taoist undercurrents Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I love Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels from the late 1960s and early 70s. She just couldn’t go wrong during this period. Although The Lathe of Heaven may not be the first book that comes to mind as one of her masterpieces (that honor would likely go to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or the EARTHSEA TRILOGY), it was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and won the Locus Award in 1972. It’s what I consider one of her smaller books, but still one of her best. What makes The Lathe of Heaven great is that it can tackle some of the biggest issues of the time — overpopulation, environmental destruction, war, racism, the lost soul of the modern world, exploration of the dreaming mind, alternate realities, and the urge to shape society for the better — all in under 200 pages. I really feel that is a lost art in this day of massive doorstoppers, multi-book mega-series, and self-indulgent info-dumps. The story is also simple in concept, with a very small cast of characters, so it could easily be a stage play and has been made into a film twice, once as a PBS production in 1980 and later as an A&E Network film in 2002. It centers on George Orr, an unremarkable man who happens to have “effective” dreams which alter reality. Horrified by this, he tries to suppress his dreams with drugs, but runs afoul of the law and is given the choice between therapy or a mental asylum. He chooses therapy, and is assigned Dr. William Haber. The early parts of the story detail the therapy sessions of George and Dr. Haber. George is a very passive, almost timid man. He doesn’t want to be in this situation, and certainly doesn’t want to be altering reality with his unconscious dreams. Dr. Haber is the polar opposite, a confident, brash, and aggressive man who quickly recognizes the potential to harness George’s dreams to shape reality in the ways he wants. Although he makes repeated and valid arguments as to why he should utilize this unique ability to do good and improve society and the world, each time he inserts suggestions to George such as “let’s imagine a world without overpopulation, war, pollution, racism, etc.,” the outcomes invariably are not what he expected and include some serious unforeseen side-effects. Notably, with each new iteration, Dr. Haber’s status and career seem to also improve. The middle portion of The Lathe of Heaven then explores a serious of alternate realities dreamed up by George’s unconscious with prompting from Dr. Haber. The ways in which things go wrong are quite ingenious, and it’s clear that Le Guin does not subscribe to the power fantasy that someone with the means has the right to shape society and reality to their liking without consultation, even with the best of intentions. As the worlds get stranger and more distorted, Dr. Haber hatches an idea that if he can replicate the process on himself, he can cut the reluctant George out of the equation and dream the world himself exactly to his specifications. This forms the climactic final events of the story. What adds interest to The Lathe of Heaven and places it firmly in the late 60s & early 70s is not just the political issues of the time, but also the underlying elements of Eastern philosophy, specifically the Taoist quotes at the beginnings of chapters from Chuang Tzu, as well as Tao Te Ching, The Book of the Way and Its Virtue by Lao Tzu, along with western philosophers such as H.G. Wells, Victor Hugo, and even Lafcadio Hearn. You can see how well-read Le Guin is and how much Eastern philosophy was gaining prominence and popularity in the West as an alternative to traditional Western philosophy, especially on college campuses and in intellectual circles. This is similar to the profound influence of the I Ching, The Book of Changes, in Philip K. Dick’s dystopian masterpiece of alternate reality, The Man in the High Castle. Taoist thinking can be found in the character of George. From many perspectives, this protagonist is very frustrating due to his passivity, reluctance to take any action to change the world around him, and instinctual distrust of authoritarian behavior. Whereas some people might seek to harness their powers to shape reality through dreams, George is repelled by this. Taoism is one of those slippery, non-dogmatic philosophies that espouses the pursuit of The Way though natural, uncontrived living. Disciples seek to discard the ills of civilization and material desires and pursue the simple, unadorned joys of a basic agrarian existence. One key concept is called Wu Wei, which is defined as “effortless action,” “non-action,” much as the planets orbit the sun without any effort, just following the natural rhythms of the universe. So while from a Western perspective George is a spineless man, afraid and reluctant to do anything with his powers of dreaming, from a Taoist perspective he might be a very dedicated individual trying to avoid doing harm to the natural order of the world around him. Of course this becomes an interesting point of debate in the story — if Taoists look to the ancient past of a simple existence as the ideal, does this principle still apply in the dystopian future society of George and Dr. Haber, living in massive towers packed with millions of people living on minimal rations due to overpopulation, a deteriorating environment, wars throughout Europe and the Middle East, and a general spiritual malaise? Faced with such conditions, is it wrong for Dr. Haber to want to change that? And is it right for George to resist any such manipulations? As always, it is the questions that Le Guin raises that are more important than the answers. The Lathe of Heaven is a concise, though-provoking journey into multiple realities and the dreaming unconscious, but is in no way an escape from reality. ...more |
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1
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Feb 24, 2017
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Mar 06, 2017
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Feb 24, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0765377101
| 9780765377104
| 0765377101
| 4.42
| 129,705
| Nov 2010
| Sep 20, 2016
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it was amazing
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Death’s End: Truly epic finale to the THREE-BODY trilogy NEW INTERVIEW WITH TRANSLATOR KEN LIU: GIVEAWAY OF THREE-BODY TRILOGY AUDIO CD SET! Listening Death’s End: Truly epic finale to the THREE-BODY trilogy NEW INTERVIEW WITH TRANSLATOR KEN LIU: GIVEAWAY OF THREE-BODY TRILOGY AUDIO CD SET! Listening to Cixin Liu’s THREE-BODY trilogy reminds me of those graphics on cosmology that illustrate our relative scale in the universe. It starts with the microscopic world of individual atoms and molecules (or even subatomic particles like quarks and neutrinos), expands outward to individual cells, organisms, and larger creatures, then jumps out further to continents and the planet Earth, zooming back to encompass our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and then pulling out further to an endless sea of galaxies that make up our universe. But Liu doesn’t stop there. He’s just gotten started, really. After all, there are more universes out there, and we’ve only mentioned three dimensions so far. The first book, The Three-Body Problem, focused mainly on the Earth and communications with the first alien race encountered by humanity, the Trisolarans. This book featured ‘sophons,’ protons unfolded into two dimensions and then etched with circuitry via mesons, creating super-powerful computers that occupy almost no space in three dimensions, allowing them to spy on human activities and interfere with scientific development. The second book, The Dark Forest, introduced a new phase in Earth-Trisolaran relations, the Crisis Era, in which humanity had 400 years to prepare for an invasion by the Trisolarans after being coldly told “You’re bugs.” Humanity reacted in various ways, with some treating the Trisolarans as vengeful gods or saviors of mankind, or descending into hedonism and despair, but the most important project is the Wallfacer Project, in which the Planetary Defense Council selects four important individuals with the power to formulate different strategies to handle the impending invasion. The catch is that the Trisolarans can monitor every move of humanity, so the only way to defeat them is to use subterfuge, trickery, and misdirection. It’s a very unusual take on the alien invasion theme, and the concept of a Wallfacer is one more familiar to Chinese readers, who recognize it from classic Chinese literature. The final part of the book has a climactic encounter between the human and Trisolaran fleets, and the brilliant stratagem that Luo Ji uses to prevent humanity’s annihilation by the enemy. The third book, Death’s End, begins by detailing the birth of the Staircase project, another response to the Tri-Solaran Crisis. It introduces the main character of the book, Cheng Xin, a highly intelligent young female aerospace engineer. Despite her lack of experience, her innovative ideas about creating propulsion systems that approach light speed gain the attention of her superiors. When the project head demands lighter payloads to launch an individual human envoy toward the approaching Trisolaran fleet, she comes up with an innovation that will require the ultimate sacrifice, and finds the perfect person for the mission. Thanks to Luo Ji’s genius, humanity and the Trisolarans have entered a stalemate known as the Deterrence Era. Luo Ji is the Swordbearer, ready to push a button that will almost certainly lead to the destruction of both Earth and Trisolaris at the hands of unseen but powerful aliens by revealing the locations of Earth and Trisolaris to the galaxy. This is an extension of the Dark Forest concept, which likens the universe to a dark forest filled with different species. Nobody knows if the others are hostile, but if they naively assume they are friendly they will likely be destroyed first, so the only logical response from a game-theory perspective is to strike first and destroy your opponent, whether they appear friendly or hostile. It is an interesting metaphor for the Cold War on a galactic scale, and a pessimistic solution to Fermi’s Paradox. Eventually, when Luo Ji gets too old to remain the Swordbearer, it is decided that Cheng Xin will take over his duties. To reveal the following events would constitute major spoilers, but suffice to say that the Deterrence Era rapidly transitions to the Broadcast Era and then the Bunker Era due to a series of dramatic double-crosses, brinksmanship, and momentous decisions. This portion of Death’s End is very exciting and fast-paced, fulfilling the build-up of the first third of the book. The Bunker Era makes up the bulk of the remaining half of Death’s End. Humanity remains under constant threat of destruction at the hands of unseen, more advanced species, the proverbial “Dark Forest Strike.” So they take refuge behind the larger planets of the solar system, in case a strike targeting the sun destroys it and the surrounding planets. But there are other factions that would prefer a different approach, such as the “Black Domain” strategy of using black holes to slow down the speed of light in the solar system, thereby blocking external strikes but isolating humanity from the rest of the galaxy. There is also the “Curvature-Propulsion” strategy, which seeks to create light-speed capable ships by manipulating the curvature of space. However, those that wish to avoid the attention of other alien species are concerned that light-speed ships will invite a “Dark Forest Strike.” So once again humanity struggles with itself, facing choices that may determine the survival of the species. The final portion of Death’s End has so many mind-boggling set-pieces and events that describing them will certainly ruin your enjoyment of the book. Liu’s descriptions of multi-dimensional space and massive galactic events are incredible and even beautiful at times, as is the translation job done by Ken Liu. Kudos also go to the audiobook narrator P.J. Ochlan, who gives the characters the requisite attention amid the events that threaten to engulf them. The Dark Forest concept takes front and center in the closing movements, as we finally see humanity from the perspective of aliens so advanced that we indeed seem little more than bugs. What those aliens have in store for humanity is stunning, humbling, and deeply tragic. Which brings us to the Galactic Era, as the remnants of humanity learn exactly where they stand in the galactic pecking order (hint: pretty far down, in case you didn’t guess already). The characters theorize what the most advanced alien races are like, and what their plans for the universe are, including multi-dimensional warfare, trying to outlive the heat-death of the universe, creating mini-universes outside of time, and the Big Crunch that awaits all sentient life at the end. It’s mind-expanding and terrifying in its implications. In my interview with Cixin Liu after the publishing of The Dark Forest, he indicated that his favorite SF authors include Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Jules Verne, and their influence can be clearly seen, especially Clarke. He is also deeply influenced by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the dark tone of much of the THREE-BODY trilogy is certainly dystopian, in a galactic sense, though there are elements of hope in the ending of Death’s End and the story centers on the heroes that valiantly strive to save humanity. The overwhelming impression is not of a cold, uncaring universe, but rather an actively-hostile one in which humanity are indeed bugs scurrying across the floor, hoping to avoid getting stomped on. ...more |
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Sep 10, 2016
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Sep 26, 2016
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Sep 10, 2016
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| 0156340402
| 9780156340403
| 0156340402
| 4.18
| 13,392
| 1971
| Oct 28, 1985
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Jul 22, 2016
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| 0671833367
| 9780671833367
| 0671833367
| 3.63
| 432
| 1979
| May 01, 1980
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May 12, 2016
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Paperback
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| 1563894459
| 9781563894459
| 1563894459
| 4.21
| 45,948
| Jan 1998
| Feb 01, 1998
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Apr 04, 2016
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Paperback
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| 0446601977
| 9780446601979
| 0446601977
| 4.21
| 182,790
| Oct 1993
| Feb 01, 1995
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liked it
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Parable of the Sower: A new religion born from societal collapse Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Parable of the Sower (1993) is the first book i Parable of the Sower: A new religion born from societal collapse Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Parable of the Sower (1993) is the first book in Octavia Butler’s PARABLE (EARTHSEED) series. It is one of her most well-regarded novels, along with Kindred (1979) and Wild Seed (1980), and depicts a near-future United States that has collapsed due to environmental catastrophe into roving bands of thieves, drug addicts, rapists, murderers, scavengers, corporate towns that impose wage slavery, and gated communities protected by armed guards that strive to survive amidst the chaos. It is an unforgiving world in which the strong, violent, and ruthless dominate the weak and powerless. The story centers around Lauren Olamina, a 17-year old girl born to a Black Baptist preacher and Hispanic mother. Due to drugs her mother was taking when pregnant, Lauren has ‘hyperempathy,’ which makes her feel the pleasure or pain of those around her. In a world of violent social collapse and anarchy, she is subjected almost entirely to the latter. This story has all the familiar dystopian themes of post-apocalyptic stories, and it reflects in its relentlessly grim tone Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The first two thirds of Parable of the Sower depicts a steadily-escalating series of violent incidents that show us JUST HOW BADLY people behave when the only rule is that of power and violence. As frequently happens in Butler’s novels, it is the women and children that are frequently victims of men who have become predators. Her young protagonist, Lauren, is definitely a tough survivor, but when a new drug called ‘pyro’ grants pleasure greater than sex to those who set fire to things, society truly begins to disintegrate. And Lauren’s small gated community outside Los Angeles, which has survived repeated attacks by thieves and roving thugs, finally succumbs to a raving band of psychotic addicts who slaughter almost everyone. Lauren writes down in her notebook a stark description: When apparent stability disintegrates. As it must — God is Change — People tend to give in to fear and depression, to need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people they divide. They struggle, one against one, group against group, for survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, they create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill, until they are exhausted and destroyed, until they are conquered by outside forces. Or until one of them becomes a leader most will follow, or a tyrant most fear. Lauren and two others survive the carnage through foresight and luck, but are then forced to go on the road and head north in the hopes of finding some vestiges of civilization in Oregon, Washington, or even Canada. They join a steady stream of refugees shuffling along the highway, fighting off human scavengers that prey on the refugees. Lauren, however, has been quietly assembling thoughts in a notebook that she calls Earthseed: The Books of the Living. They begin as her observations of the world around her, and the central belief is “God is Change.” Once she shares her teaching with other refugees, it takes on the shape of a religion, one suited to the grim new conditions of a collapsed civilization. Here are the main tenets of Earthseed: We do not worship God. We perceive and attend God. We learn from God. With forethought and work, We shape God. In the end, we yield to God. We adapt and endure, For we are Earthseed, And God is Change. In this new and brutally anarchic world, Lauren has reconciled the evils around her by discarding her Baptist father’s belief in a just God, who looks after his creations, rewarding good behavior and punishing bad. She rejects the idea of a God that responds to prayer or faith. Instead, she embraces Change, for that is what surrounds her, and it is those who can shape Change, i.e. those that can adapt to even the most brutal conditions and survive. It is a stripped-down philosophy, in which only those who help themselves can continue to prosper and live. It would be easy to say this is not a religion at all, measured against the existing religions of the world, but supposedly it brings her and her followers some measure of succor. In essence, Earthseed suggests that people stop expecting God to come to their aid in a careless world — they need to take care of themselves. Given the relentless brutality with which Butler pummels the reader and her characters throughout the book, perhaps this is what is needed for survival, but it strikes me as hardly any different from atheism — i.e., we are on our own. Nonetheless, Parable of the Sower ends on a note of hope, as Lauren and her followers find a place to found a new community, where “The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” The story of Lauren and Earthseed continues in Parable of the Talents, which won the 1999 Nebula Award for Best SF Novel, and Butler planned to write a third installment, called Parable of the Trickster, but struggled to finish this and wrote Fledgling instead. Sadly, that was Butler’s final novel, as she passed away far too early at age 58. So we can only judge her EARTHSEED series based on the first two books, well before the series could “take root among the stars.” There are many admirers of Parable of the Sower, but I struggled to derive much reading satisfaction from it. While the community and family relationships in the first third of the book are depicted with care, we know that it is just a matter of time before this small bubble of peace and stability will be shattered by the violence and chaos of the outside world. Witnessing the inevitable tide of anarchy engulf Lauren’s world is emotionally draining, and Lauren often seems resigned to the death and misery that surround her despite her ‘hyperempathy.’ Perhaps Butler wanted to show that Lauren’s strength of spirit could survive even the depths of hopelessness, but I began to feel numb as the atrocities mounted. The small victories towards the end, particularly Lauren’s gathering of followers, did not provide any inspiration. If we could see more of Butler’s vision of taking Earthseed to the stars, perhaps this would have been more rewarding, but as things stand, I don’t really feel any enthusiasm for reading Parable of the Talents. The audiobook is narrated by Lynne Thigpen, an American actress. She does a good job as Lauren, showing both her resilience amid horrific circumstances and growing belief in Earthseed. However, the story itself is so grim that there’s no way for her to inject any levity or variation in emotional tone without betraying the source text, which I blame on the story itself. ...more |
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Apr 12, 2016
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Apr 18, 2016
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Jan 28, 2016
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0385352875
| 9780385352871
| 0385352875
| 3.85
| 26,505
| May 26, 2015
| May 26, 2015
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Jan 19, 2016
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Hardcover
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| B00BG7FJFC
| 4.01
| 271,665
| Apr 22, 2003
| Mar 30, 2004
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it was amazing
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A scathing condemnation of the world we are creating Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Ma A scathing condemnation of the world we are creating Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Margaret Atwood, so you can expect the deft characterizations, innovative narrative structure, effortless writing, and social criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful emotional impact it had, and the thoughts it generated. In essence, Atwood asks a simple question: “What type of world are we creating, and does it deserve to exist? Moreover, do we deserve to exist if we stay on the path we are heedlessly pursuing?” This is not a new question. Plenty of dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels have asked it in a variety of forms. But for my money, Oryx and Crake is one of the most eloquent and harsh condemnations of the world we have created, whether intentionally or not, that I’ve read in the last few years. It has elements of Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and I imagine some overlap with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (which I plan to read soon), but it is a distinctive work with an unmistakable message. The story is about Snowman, the last human survival of a global biotech-induced plague that has wiped out humanity, the Crakers, a group of genetically modified herbivorous childlike-humans that have been designed to survive in this new world, Crake, the brilliant geneticist who has passed judgment on humanity and found it unworthy, and Oryx, a young Asian former child-prostitute who is involved with both Snowman and Crake. It is about a near future dominated by corporations that maintain carefully-guarded communities for their sheltered employees, and the rest of the population that live in pleeblands. Governments, armies, universities, security – everything has been privatized, as so many free-market proponents tell us would benefit us all. I wonder how many of those intellectuals, economists, professors, and social innovators live as the have-nots of the world do, on the fringes of our global economy. My guess – none at all. I myself work for a giant securities company that is built on the premise that the efficient use of capital leads to greater economic benefits for all members of society, and the fewer government restrictions, the better. So the irony of this message invariably coming from the privileged class is not lost on me, I can assure you. The story is also about the online world we have created for ourselves, and with just the slightest bit of exaggerations, shows us the childhood of Snowman and Crake, growing up on a steady diet of online public executions, 24/7 webcams, Noodie News, assisted suicide, frog squashing, snuff videos, hard-core porn, and child pornography. It’s all just standard stuff for kids in the future. Looking all the content that the Internet offers without any restrictions to anyone with a smartphone, including kids of all ages, I think any parent out there can share my discomfort and fears about what this unrestricted flow of information can do to young minds not prepared to draw distinctions between what we still attempt to categorize as “good” and “bad”, “moral” and “immoral”, “healthy” and “harmful”. Who is it that decides? Well, nobody unfortunately. Nobody wants the censored internet of China, but what price do we pay, particularly children, for the unfettered freedom of the Kardashians, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. I certainly have found much good in social media and endless information at my fingertips, but that’s because I grew up in the pre-Internet age when I first developed interests and ideas without the ubiquitous influence of social media. How would I and my peers have fared with non-stop free entertainment on the web? Would I have ever bothered to delve into lengthy novels for hours on end, or would I go for the instant gratification of Tweets, YouTube, Google, and the like? It’s such a slippery slope, and the same question applies: “Do guns kill people, or people kill people? Does the internet kill meaningful thought and reflection, or does it depend on the user?” It’s just a tool, after all, say proponents of the Internet. But when I see people’s fingers twitching on their mobile phones the instant they have a free moment, and the sea of bowed heads staring at their little private digital worlds (and my head among them), I have to wonder, is this the world we want for ourselves? It’s not as if going back to a simple agrarian existence is even a remote possibility in our massively-interlinked global society. 99.9% of us would be dead within a week without the global economic infrastructure, and if we did survive it would be about as pleasant the The Walking Dead. So when the brilliant scientist Crake engineers a supervirus to wipe out humanity for its sins, his judgment is cold and harsh. To paraphrase, his view is “The world we have created is evil, and we cannot expect to solve our own problems. Therefore, I will annihilate humanity and create a new, simpler, and more innocent species to carry on in the post-human world.” That’s much the same idea as Vonnegut’s Galapagos, thought that book has a much whimsical tone to mask the harsh message beneath. And so every reader of Oryx and Crake has to ask themselves that question. Atwood doesn’t let us squirm away. Oftentimes post-apocalyptic tales are cautionary in nature, and warn us to step away from the path we are going down in terms of environmental destruction, overpopulation, religious intolerance, overreliance on technology, tinkering with genetics, etc. And certainly Oryx and Crake is about that. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven is a gentle and elegant hymn to the good and beautiful aspects of our world that we take for granted, and that is a valid view as well. But Oryx and Crake is no gentle fable. The future world it depicts has basically nothing worthy of redemption at all. The privileged corporate workers in their guarded compounds live a cynical and willfully ignorant existence, knowing their activities are built upon exploiting the plebes outside. The plebes for their part live a brutish existence lacking in appeal. Snowman is closer to the reader’s perspective as he observes with horror what Crake has planned for humanity. And Oryx is an oddball – a young girl subjected to the worst that developing world poverty can dish out, and yet having a beutific and serene outlook on life that chooses to focus on the good and ignore the ugliness. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Instead, Crake takes it into his own hands to pass judgment and ruthlessly exterminate humanity. He takes action, but what a cruel and final sentence. We, humanity, are not given any chance for redemption or even rebuttal. I hardly think Atwood is suggesting that his act is justified or right, but she also doesn’t shy away from putting our world on trial and letting us think about our own answers. It’s a very intense experience and I can’t imagine any reader who doesn’t finish the book without stopping for a long time, maybe even days later, to think about the implications. Amazing, wonderful, and terrifying all at once. I’m tempted to read it again right now, but I need to move on. I’ll definitely revisit it again someday. I’m fully aware that Oryx and Crake is the first part of the MADDADDAM TRILOGY, but I’m reluctant to proceed to The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. That’s because I’ve read dozens of reviews of both, many from friends whose judgment I trust. And what I’ve gathered is this: The Year of the Flood explores much of the same territory of Oryx and Crake and fills in many details of the world and relationships there. And while some people say this book is just as good as the first one, many said they prefer Oryx and Crake where all the ideas and characters are new, and said the second book is well written but lacks the impact of the original. The reviews of MaddAddam are even more mixed, with a lot of people seriously disappointed in comparison to the first and second books. Because I was so impressed by Oryx and Crake, I don’t want to ruin that feeling, so if anything I’d rather re-read it instead. Or I may read The Year of the Flood someday to learn more, and skip the final book. We’ll see. ...more |
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The Divine Invasion: A dense gnostic allegory about salvation Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Before his death, Philip K. Dick wrote several boo The Divine Invasion: A dense gnostic allegory about salvation Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Before his death, Philip K. Dick wrote several books about suffering, redemption, and the divine in the contexts of Christian Gnosticism, Jewish Kabbalism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, anamnesis, and the dualistic nature of the ultimate divine being. After writing two books that explored his personal religious experiences in 1974, Radio Free Albemuth (written in 1976 but not published until 1985) and VALIS (written in 1978 but published in 1981), he wrote The Divine Invasion (written in 1980 but published in 1981), The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (written in 1981 but published in 1982), and an unfinished novel called The Owl in Daylight. Radio Free Albemuth was the first version of what was rewritten as VALIS, and The Divine Invasion and The Owl in Daylight were intended as a thematic trilogy. However, after PDK’s death in 1982, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was substituted for the unfinished The Owl in Daylight and grouped together as the VALIS TRILOGY. The Divine Invasion is dense religious allegory that begins with some of the familiar SF elements frequently in PDK’s earlier novels but quickly delves into his ideas about gnosis (finding knowledge, enlightenment or salvation by recognizing a higher spiritual realm separate from the material world), anamnesis (the process of “losing forgetfulness” or regaining knowledge), and the dualistic nature of the divine Godhead, which was separated in the Fall into a superior supreme being and a lesser creator god (a “demiurge”) who shaped the material world that humans live in. The plot is very complex, but here goes. Herb Asher lives a solitary life on a planet called CY30-CY30B, where colonists live in isolated domes. Herb is contacted by a local deity named Yah, who contacts him in a vision and demands that he help his neighbor Rybys Rommey, a woman who is sick with multiple scleroisis and also is pregnant with Yah’s baby via immaculate conception. Herb has been a recluse content to listen endlessly to the pop music of star Linda Fox and handling communications for the colony. With the help of a bearded beggar named Elias Tate, who is the immortal incarnation of the prophet Elijah, Herb agrees to serve as husband to Rybys (like Joseph to Mary), and they travel to Earth along with Elias, ostensibly to cure her illness. However, the Earth is ruled by a Christian-Islamic Church and a Scientific Legate who are warned of the arrival of this reincarnation of Yahweh (by an A.I. system humorously named the Big Noodle) and consider this a “Divine Invasion” and threat to their dominion of the planet. But in reality, it is the fallen angel Belial who rules this world and enslaves humanity in the prison of the material world. The authorities pursue Herb and Rybys, seeking to kill the unborn child who will be Yahweh. They escape various attempts but finally are involved in a fatal car accident which puts Herb in a coma and kills Rybys. Herb’s body is placed in cryogenic storage while waiting for a spleen replacement, and the child Emmanuel survives but suffers a head injury that causes amnesia. Meanwhile, Elias Tate manages to save the child and smuggles it to safety. Emmanuel grows up in a special school with another girl named Zina, and she gradually helps him remember his divine origins through the process of anamnesis. It becomes clear through a series of dense philosophical discussions that Emmanuel and Zina are both aspects of the divine Godhead that was split asunder in the Fall, and that it is up to both halves to unite again and heal a sick and corrupt world. Zina reveals to Emmanuel a more idyllic parallel universe in which both Herb and Rybys are still alive. Even more strangely, Belial is nothing but a baby goat in a NY zoo. Feeling bad for it, they innocently free the goat, but Belial seizes the opportunity to regain control of this parallel world. In this world, Herb works at a high-end electronic sound system store, and encounters a beautiful young aspiring singer named Linda Fox, who he knows will become a huge star in the future. He falls in love with her, but is tricked by Belial the goat into confronting her. Eventually, Linda Fox fights and defeats Belial, freeing the world of his evil and saving Herb in the process. Though very dense and confusing at first, The Divine Invasion reveals itself as an allegory of how the two separate aspects of the divine being, in the form of the creator Yahweh (reborn in human form as the child Emmanuel) and the feminine aspect that remained in the material world to look after and protect mankind (represented by the girl Zina Pallas and Linda Fox). The two riven parts of the Godhead must recall via anamnesis that they are one entity, and thus united confront the fallen angel Belial, who controls the material world and keeps mankind subjected to his corrupt vision of reality. The conflict between the divine and Belial also represents the struggle for salvation of individual human beings, who must live in the corrupt material world and choose between the baser pleasures of the material world ruled by Belial and the higher spiritual plane of existence beyond our world of illusions ruled by the ultimate divine being, whose various aspects include Yahweh the Creator, Christ the Savior, the feminine goddess Diana, etc. It’s difficult to view The Divine Invasion as a SF work, because it’s really an attempt to put PKD’s extremely complex and convoluted religious and philosophical beliefs into fictional form. And unlike the more auto biographical Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS, this book takes a much broader and more allegorical approach to his still-evolving Gnostic ideas about suffering and evil in the material world, the dual nature of the divine, and the possibility of salvation through gnosis. If you are interested in these ideas, especially as they relate to PKD’s own religious experiences and life story, then you will be able to appreciate how many of his early stories questioning the morality and reality of our world evolved into his much more convoluted thinking after his religious experiences of 1974. And while he flirted with madness and schizophrenia in Radio Free Albemuth and VALIS, he seems to have found a more coherent philosophical framework for his thoughts in The Divine Invasion. It is still a difficult book to understand, and may be very unsatisfying as a work of fiction, but it remains an essential read if you are a serious PKD student who wants to achieve ‘gnosis’ by diving down his rabbit hole. There are also several biographies of PDK that would shed more light on his life and ideas, and I will have to make time for them someday. These include Lawrence Sutin’s Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (2005) and Emmanuel Carrere’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick (2005), and of course the rambling, obsessive notes of PKD himself, meticulously edited and boiled down by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem in 2001 as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. If you have read all these books, consider yourself a truly dedicated scholar of the most complex, troubled and fascinating personality to have ever been part of the SF genre. ...more |
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really liked it
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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick: 21 stories spanning 3 decades Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I’ve been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick the Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick: 21 stories spanning 3 decades Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I’ve been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick the last two years: 10 novels, 7 audiobooks, and now three short story collections. The more I read, the more I’m drawn to his hard-luck life story and strange religious experiences in the 1970s. In particular, his VALIS trilogy was probably the strangest SF exploration of suffering and salvation I’ve ever read. The only books left to read are two biographies and his 944-page Exegesis of personal writings. I wanted a collection that would capture the whole range of his ideas without spanning multiple volumes and thousands of pages. There are many options, and I settled on Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, 21 stories selected by Jonathan Lethem, one of the two editors of the 8,000 hand-written journal entries winnowed down to The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Who better to select stories from his entire oeuvre spanning three decades? The 21 stories contained in this collection are as follows: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952), “Roog” (1953), “Paycheck” (1953), “Second Variety” (1953), “Imposter” (1953), “The King of the Elves” (1953), “Adjustment Team” (1954), “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), “Upon the Dull Earth” (1954), “Autofac” (1955), “The Minority Report” (1956), “The Days of Perky Pat” (1963), “Precious Artifact” (1964), “A Game of Unchance” (1964), “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” (1966), “Faith of Our Fathers” (1967), “The Electric Ant” (1969), “A Little Something For Us Tempunauts” (1974), “The Exit Door Leads In” (1979), “Rautavaara’s Case” (1980), and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon” (1980). The first 11 stories are from his most prolific period in the early 1950s, and overlap with Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. In fact, four inspired the feature films Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, Paycheck, and Screamers. I consider this period his Golden Age, showcasing his favorite themes: What is reality, what is human, should we create artificial minds, and will we destroy ourselves in a nuclear holocaust? These stories display a subtle black humor and sense of irony, especially the idea that robots may outlive us after we destroy ourselves. PKD loves to throw in a surprise twist that alters the characters’ perception of reality. These stories were all published in the leading SF magazines of the period, and are very entertaining. The next six stories are from the 1960s, which coincides with the shift in the format from short stories in the 1950s to novels in the 1960s. PKD’s themes and writing also gained in depth and complexity. For example, “The Days of Perky Pat” is an early draft of his novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, one of his first books that directly explored hallucinatory religious experiences and shifting realities triggered by drug use. Surprisingly, the short story version does not feature any drug use, altered consciousness, or meeting an alien being that may be a lonely god, but instead focuses on the idea of people escaping into fantasy role-playing in the aftermath of a devastating war. “The Electric Ant” also has a lot of similarities with the reality-bending of Palmer Eldritch. “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” forms the basis for the Arnold Schwartzenegger SF action extravaganza Total Recall (1991). It’s a very intricate story that is only 22 pages long and covers just the opening scenes of the film, but the ideas are fully developed. “Faith of Our Fathers” is a notable story that first appeared in Harlan Ellison’s famous anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), a watershed collection that essentially defined the New Wave Movement and challenged established practitioners to either get with the program or be rendered irrelevant. That collection is amazing for many reasons, not least of which is that many veteran writers did take up the challenge, including Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Fritz Leiber, and Theodore Sturgeon. “Faith of our Fathers” is a story in which the Communists have conquered the world, and features a Communist Vietnam that resembles George Orwell’s 1984. The main character is given a powerful anti-hallucinogen that allows him to see that the TV broadcasts of the Great Leader are actually bizarre views of a powerful and capricious alien being that both loves and hates his creations. It’s a creepy and deliberately provocative story that presages PKD’s later religious musings but predates his strange hallucinatory experiences with the pink laser from VALIS in 1974. The last four stories date from 1974 to 1980, which were PKD’s strangest and most eccentric period, triggered by his 1974 religious hallucinations that inspired the novels Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. I didn’t even know he was writing short stories at this point, but the stories found here show clearly that PKD had completely departed from his pulp SF magazine roots and was now intent on questioning reality with a much darker and more hopeless tone. You won’t find anything uplifting here, as each story has characters trapped in time loops (“A Little Something For Us Tempunauts”), covert government training programs (“The Exit Door Leads In”), dead astronauts resurrected by aliens to test their religious beliefs (“Rautavaara’s Case”), and a man being endlessly cycled through his past memories by a ship’s AI to try to prevent psychosis (“I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”). Overall, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick gives an excellent overview of PKD’s evolution as a SF writer, starting with entertaining but darkly humorous pulp stories that gradually evolved into much more challenging and complex works, while still adhering to a short format with sharply-described characters and reality-bending twists. If you are looking for a single volume covering three decades of his work, this a great place to start. ...more |
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| 1479250503
| 9781479250509
| B0097IXLZ2
| 4.16
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| Sep 05, 2012
| Sep 05, 2012
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really liked it
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The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick: 11 Science Fiction Stories by Philip K Dick Originally posted at Fantasy Literature During his lifetime, Philip The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick: 11 Science Fiction Stories by Philip K Dick Originally posted at Fantasy Literature During his lifetime, Philip K Dick published 44 novels, 121 short stories, and 14 short story collections. If you are interested in getting his short stories, you can find many of his earliest stories available in various combinations on Kindle for $0.99 or $1.99 since they are public domain now. For more dedicated fans, you can get the five-volume series The Collected Short Stories of Philip K Dick, which contains over 100 of his short stories (over 2,000 pages) from throughout his career. But what if you want audio versions? If you search for his short stories on audio, there’s surprisingly little. Considering how cheap some of the e-book collections are, you’d expect much more, but the best overall deal I could find was the $1.99 Collected Works of Philip K. Dick: 11 Science Fiction Stories (narrated by Kevin Killavey), which if you buy on Kindle first, you can then get the Audible version for just $1.99. There is also Minority Report and Other Stories (narrated by Keir Dullea), which contains some of his stories that have become films, including "The Minority Report" (Minority Report), "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" (Total Recall), "Paycheck" (Paycheck), and "Second Variety" (Screamers). If you want to hear some of his most well-known stories from the early 1950s, The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick: 11 Science Fiction Stories is a good solution. All the typical early PKD themes are well represented, humans vs. robots, Cold War tensions between Americans & Russians (or between Terrans and Martians/Centaurans), the recurrent theme of nuclear destruction of civilization, the slippery nature of reality, and the classic ironic twist at the end. Sure, many of the details feel very dated (they’re over 60 years old, after all!), but they remain pretty effective stories. These ideas were frequently also in his early novels in the 1950s, as he frantically churned out a steady flow of stories and novels to pay the bills. But the quality and originality of these stories is quite high. Here are brief descriptions of the 11 stories in this collection: Beyond Lies the Wub (1952): A crew of spacemen on Mars are loading up on food supplies and purchase a Wub, which turns out to be highly intelligent, peaceful, and likes to discuss literature, but Captain Franco seems intent on killing and eating the Wub, since it looks like a delicious pig. This was PKD’s first published story, and contains a clever twist at the end that you might miss if you’re not paying attention. Beyond the Door (1954): A man buys a cuckoo clock and takes it home to his wife, who is closer to her male co-worker. This is not really a SF story, and has more to do with troubled marriages and frustrations. Mr. Spaceship (1953): This was one of better stories, about a spaceship that has an old man’s consciousness embedded in it to be used in a galactic war, but which has ‘a mind of its own’. It’s a surprisingly touching tale of memory and longing. It’s also an early treatment of a spaceship with a human mind built in, and this theme has inspired many variations in the genre, including the AIs of Iain M. Banks’ CULTURE series, as well as Anne Leckie’s IMPERIAL RADCH trilogy. Piper in the Woods (1953): This is a SF story with a fantasy feel, as a doctor on Earth examines soldiers returned from an asteroid that insist they are plants. The doctor visits the asteroid and discovers that the soldiers are claiming an indigenous people of “Pipers” in the woods are responsible for opening their eyes to being plants. The doctor searches for them in vain, but the story takes a surprising turn when he gets back to Earth. I’m not sure exactly how any asteroid could have an atmosphere, let alone a forest, but this story does have PKD’s playful tricks. Second Variety (1953): This is another standout story, a surprisingly tense and chilling story about a future nuclear war which has reduced civilization to rubble, but the war continues thanks to “claws”, which are self-replicating robots that essentially attack any human being and slice them to bits with whirring blades. They were made by the US against the Russians, but they have apparently begun to made newer versions of themselves to be more effective killing machines, including humanoid forms. The entire time I listened to this I was reminded of James Cameron’s TERMINATOR films, since they ‘claws’ ruthlessly try to infiltrate the remnants of humanity hidden in bunkers, and wreak havoc when they get in. The story focuses on several characters who are trying to identify the unknown “second variety” of humanoid robots, and we can see all the classic paranoia over who is human and who is robot, which would later be explored in greater depth in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Bladerunner. This was apparently made into a film called Screamers (1995), but the reviews are universally negative so I don’t plan on watching it. The Crystal Crypt (1954): This is another story about future war, this time between the Earth and Mars. It’s more of an espionage piece, very much a product of the Cold War, as several Earth agents seeks to get off Mars and back to Earth with a very valuable bargaining chip, and attempt to stay ahead of Martian forces that have lie-detecting abilities. The method by which they get this valuable object is so completely far-fetched it borders on ridiculous, so I wasn’t that impressed by this story. The Defenders (1953): This was an excellent story, again about a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR, which has forced all of humanity deep underground. However, the war is carried out by lethal robots built by both sides that can withstand the radiation above ground. Humanity continues to toil away producing more and more advanced weaponry for the robots to carry on the battle. However, after several years some Americans become suspicious about real conditions outside the bunkers, and get a huge surprise when the sneak outside for a peek. This is a classic PKD tale in which the apparent reality is completely untrue, and questions whether robots created for war will continue to do so forever. The Eyes Have It (1953): This is brief and humorous story that basically plays on the literal nature of expressions like “give her a hand”, “doesn’t have a brain in his head”, “his stomach was completely empty”, etc. It’s fun but not particularly substantial. The Gun (1952): This is an effective story about space explorers who find a planet that seems devoid of life, but then their ship is shot down and they crash land. They discover a giant automated gun that seems to be guarding the skies. They manage to destroy it and steal the treasure it protects, but there is a twist at the end I won’t reveal. The Skull (1952): This one was a bit confusing at first, but involves a prisoner and hunter being given the chance at freedom if he agrees to go back in time and kill a man who began a religious movement that ended warfare. It’s ironic that the future society wants to eliminate this, claiming that war is useful for getting rid of worthless people in society. And while they cannot reveal the identity of the target, they give him his skull to help recognize him. He goes back to 1960 and a very paranoid small-town community that is extremely suspicious of strangers, and are quick to think he is a Communist spy. The story is as much about the Red Scare paranoia as time travel, but it has the inevitable twist that I thought was fairly predictable. The Variable Man (1953): This is the longest story in the collection, a novella about a future war between the growing Terran empire and the larger but deteriorating Centauran Empire. Terrans wish to expand beyond the Solar System, but the Centaurans are keeping them contained, so a war erupts as both sides develop an endless series of weapons to counter each other in a frantic arms race. The Terrans discover a technology that allows FTL travel, but because of faults it destroys the object when it comes out of FTL speed. They hope to use this as a bomb to destroy the Centauran star, but need technical help to complete the weapon. So who do they turn to? Well, how about an uneducated fix-up man from 1913 accidentally transported in a time bubble? SAY WHAT? Yes, this made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but this man (yes, the Variable Man of the title) has a natural knack for mechanical things, and apparently can intuitively figure out what is wrong with the FTL bomb and fixes it up by mucking around with the circuitry. WTF???? Well, nobody ever said PKD was a future science expert. Anyway, there is a massive battle between one side allied with the main strategist for the Terran plan, and the Polish scientist who is handling the FTL bomb on the other side, and a good part of the story is occupied with a pretty intense and extended running battle between these forces, with the poor fix-it guy the target of the Terran strategist because the entire strategy rests on the calculation of favorable odds by a super-computer, and the “Variable Man” is screwing up the calculations. So despite his help being the only reason that the Terrans have a chance, one faction is expending bombs, laser beams, and whole squadrons of soldiers trying to kill him. It’s all very absurd but played straight. And in the end there is another surprise revelation about the fix-it guy’s genius. This story felt the most Golden Age pulpy of the collection, and despite being fast-paced it really stretched my credulity many times. ...more |
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| 0870541579
| 9780870541575
| 0870541579
| 3.95
| 160
| Nov 1988
| Jan 01, 1988
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really liked it
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Memories of the Space Age: Autopsy of a lost dream Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Memories of the Space Age (1988) is a limited edition hardcov Memories of the Space Age: Autopsy of a lost dream Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Memories of the Space Age (1988) is a limited edition hardcover published by small press Arkham House, with a gorgeous cover of Max Ernst’s ‘Europe After the Rain’ that captures the hallucinatory, decayed imagery of J.G. Ballard’s collection. It contains eight stories written between 1962 and 1985, thematically linked around rotting launch gantries at Cape Canaveral, the failure of the US space program, dead astronauts eternally orbiting in space, deserted hotels lining the Florida coast, and the lonely, disturbed individuals who linger at the fringes of this lost dream of the Space Age. The stories have so much overlap that some readers will find them very repetitive, and that is undeniable. Yet they do lure the reader into Ballard’s hypnotic world in a way few other writers do. These are the stories: "The Cage of Sand" (1962), "A Question of Re-entry" (1962), "The Dead Astronaut" (1968), "My Dream of Flying to Wake Island" (1974), "News from the Sun" (1981), "Memories of the Space Age" (1982), "Myths of the Near Future" (1982), and "The Man Who Walked on the Moon" (1985). All of the stories have a similar feel, and perhaps the earliest one, “The Cage of Sand,” captures Ballard’s ideas the best. It’s the story of Bridgeman, an architect who was not chosen to design a new colony on Mars, a failed astronaut named Travis, and Louise, the wife of a dead astronaut. They occupy some abandoned hotels near Cape Canaveral among the abandoned launch gantries, with the latter two obsessively watching the revolving satellites that revolve around the Earth, carrying dead astronauts — including Louise’s husband. Bridgeman is there for a different reason, since the site has been covered with Martian sand brought back from Mars to compensate for the lost mass from earlier Earth expeditions. That may make no sense at all, but it’s an irresistible image for Ballard: Earthlings basking in Martian sands on a Florida beach. However, the sands also contain an undetectable virus that attacks Earth’s flora and fauna, wrecking civilization. So Florida is now deserted except for a few eccentrics, and the security forces who decide to erect a fence to contain the site after failing to convince them to leave (hence the title). The atmosphere is drenched in languid images that reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles: At sunset, when the vermilion glow reflected from the dunes along the horizon fitfully illuminated the white faces of the abandoned hotels, Bridgman stepped onto his balcony and looked out over the long stretches of cooling sand as the tides of purple shadow seeped across them. Slowly, extending their slender fingers through the shallow saddles and depressions, the shadows massed together like gigantic combs, a few phosphorescing spurs of obsidian isolated for a moment between the tines, and then finally coalesced and flooded in a solid wave across the half-submerged hotels. Behind the silent facades, in the tilting sand-filled streets which had once glittered with cocktail bars and restaurants, it was already night. Halos of moonlight beaded the lamp standards with silver dew, and draped the shuttered windows and slipping cornices like a frost of frozen gas. I think it’s very telling that “The Cage of Sand” was published in 1962, a year after the first manned space flight by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose in Burbank, CA in 1962, and John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX in 1963. The conflict in Vietnam rapidly escalated in the early 1960s, with the Gulf of Tonkin incident happening in 1964, drawing the US into a drawn out conflict. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated within 2 months of each other in 1968. Finally, in 1969 the Apollo 11 mission allowed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take those historic steps on the Moon. The US and Soviet space programs were engaged in the Cold War and Space Race for supremacy. All of these events were extremely influential on Ballard’s writing, and it’s interesting to observe how his writing may have evolved as events unfolded. Notably, the space shuttle Challenger disaster did not happen until 1986, but Ballard seems to have already predicted the decline and failure of US space ambitions well before that. It makes sense that a thematic collection like Memories of the Space Age would be published in 1988. It’s fascinating how consistently Ballard returned to these ideas over three decades, and his obsession with mankind’s attempts to penetrate space and leave the planet. Unlike the vast majority of Golden Age SF by writers like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, Ballard takes a very negative view of ‘outer space’, and instead seeks to explore ‘inner space.’ His stories explore the psyche of spaceflight, and inevitably his characters encounter failure, insanity, and despair in their attempts to come to grips with it. It’s not clear exactly why Ballard found the idea of spaceflight so repellent, but if I may take a stab at it, I think he viewed it as humanity surrendering to its increasing adulation of technology and conquering of the natural environment. This can certainly be seen in extreme form in his tales of urban existential disaster: Crash, Concrete Island, and High-Rise. It’s safe to say that Ballard has always taken a jaundiced view of modernity — our love of urban lifestyles, technology, and media imagery. I think his main intent in exploring these themes has been to expose the dangerous pathologies that have arisen as a result of our focus on surface comforts at the expense of our ‘inner space’ and emotional lives. And yet I don’t think he has ever explicitly shown us an example of the opposite, his idea of a utopian society. Returning to nature in his stories generally represents a return to barbarism, not the idyllic world of Eden. Yet between barbarism and an emotionally void modern life, what is there to uphold as a model for healthy living? Based on reading four of his novels and over 50 of his short stories, Ballard’s most hopeful stories feature characters that have escaped the grips of time, but this takes the form of crystallization or plunging into the dreams of the distant past. Perhaps Ballard himself sought in vain to discover hope through his writing. And yet he wrote so eloquently of failed ambitions, a desire to escape the constraints of time and entropy, and our persistent modern myths, that his writing occupies a unique place that straddles literary ambitions and speculative fiction, both adopting and subverting the spaceflight and technology tropes of our beloved SF genre. It’s no surprise that J.G. Ballard is not always considered a welcome presence in the SF field, but for me his works represent a refreshing counterpoint to the usual SF themes. ...more |
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| 4.18
| 1,630
| 1978
| Jul 06, 2001
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liked it
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The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard: A broad spectrum of Ballard’s capabilities Originally published at Fantasy Literature The Best Short Stories of The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard: A broad spectrum of Ballard’s capabilities Originally published at Fantasy Literature The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard (1979) was published in 1977 in the UK and 1978 in the US. It contains a few stories from J.G. Ballard’s earlier, more conventional SF phase in the late 1950s, his most productive and lyrical phase in the early and mid 1960s, and a small sampling of his experimental ‘condensed novel’ phase of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The stories are taken from these collections: The Voices of Time (1962), Billennium (1962), Passport to Eternity (1963), The Terminal Beach (1964), The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), and Vermilion Sands (1971). The stories themselves are: “Concentration City” (1956), “Manhole 69” (1957), “Chronopolis” (1960), “The Voices of Time” (1960), “Deep End” (1960), “The Overloaded Man” (1961), “Billennium” (1961), “The Garden of Time” (1961), “Thirteen for Centaurus” (1961), “The Subliminal Man” (1961), “The Cage of Sand” (1962), “End-Game” (1963), “The Drowned Giant” (1964), “The Terminal Beach” (1963), “The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D” (1966), “The Assassination of JFK Considered as a Downhill Motor Race” (1965), “The Atrocity Exhibition” (1966), “Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy” (1967), and “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” (1968). In The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard, I found his earlier stories to be more conventional than in his later collections, and while still interesting, lacking that distinctive Ballardian lyrical and thematic style: namely, “Concentration City” (1956), “Manhole 69” (1957), “The Overloaded Man” (1961), “Billennium” (1961), “Thirteen for Centaurus” (1961), and “The Subliminal Man” (1961). Interestingly, both “Concentration City” and “Billennium” are about impossibly overpopulated future cities, a direct contrast to Ballard’s later obsession with solitary characters lost in desolate, deserted cities, space launch sites, jungles, etc. The other stories from that period didn’t really leave much of an impression on me. “Chronopolis” (1960), “The Voices of Time” (1960), “The Garden of Time” (1961), and “The Cage of Sand” (1962) were the standout stories that do not overlap with his collection The Terminal Beach and contain the most classic Ballardian themes of entropy, melancholy, time coming to a halt as the past merges with the present and future, lonely couples, obsessed eccentrics, deserted hotels, abandoned launch sites, empty swimming pools, strange and pointless scientific experiments, dead astronauts orbiting space forever, and the moribund US space program. Finally, The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard includes four bizarre ‘condensed novels’ from Ballard’s controversial collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970): “The Assassination of JFK Considered as a Downhill Motor Race” (1965), “The Atrocity Exhibition” (1966), “Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy” (1967), and “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” (1968). From the titles alone, you know they are not your normal subject matter. In fact, the first US edition was destroyed by publisher Nelson Doubleday due to concerns about lawsuits from celebrities mentioned as well as general concerns over obscenity. That, of course, made the few remaining copies extremely valuable, and with most such cases, makes readers even more interested. Eventually, US publisher Grove Press took the plunge and published it in 1972 as Love and Napalm: Export USA. Inspired by William S. Burroughs, these stories are fragmented, bizarre, experimental, and explore the unstable main character’s twisted attempts to come to grips with major public events of that era such as Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, the Cold War and space race between the US and USSR, and most of all the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Honestly, it’s hard to really grasp what Ballard intended with these stories, as they defy any conventional storytelling standards. They certainly explore his patented ‘inner space’, which often shapes the external environment, but there isn’t much pleasure to be derived from reading them now. Basically they’re of historical interest now as experimental writing from that period, but not much more (some fans may disagree, of course). Overall, I think The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard is a good sampling of three distinct phases of Ballard’s writing: his earlier, more conventional SF period, his most lyrical and distinctive middle period, and his later, more experimental period. In that sense, it is a convenient way to trace his development as a writer. However, as I think his best and most enduring short work comes from his middle period, I would recommend The Terminal Beach and Vermilion Sands, which contain the bulk of his best, most memorable stories. Of course, if you are a dedicated completist, then the only way to go is with the massive The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard, which itself has some notable omissions. Finally, it’s worth noting that after the 1984 publication of Ballard’s autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun and the 1987 film version by Steven Spielberg, he suddenly found himself in the limelight and enjoying much more mainstream attention, and went on to a very prolific writing phase which produced a number of notable mainstream novels (none of which I’ve read), such as Running Wild (1988), The Kindness of Women (1991), Rushing to Paradise (1994), Cocaine Nights (1996), Super-Cannes (2000), Millennium People (2003), and Kingdom Come (2006). ...more |
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| 3.61
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| 1977
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it was amazing
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High-Rise: Lord of the Flies in an urban luxury high-rise Originally posted at Fantasy Literature MOVIE UPDATE: I finally got around to watching the 201 High-Rise: Lord of the Flies in an urban luxury high-rise Originally posted at Fantasy Literature MOVIE UPDATE: I finally got around to watching the 2015 film version of High Rise, directly by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Siena Miller, Luke Evans, and Elizabeth Moss. How to assess? Well, it is a valiant attempt to replicate Ballard's bizarre and surrealistic story of social elites battling the lower classes in a fancy new high-rise and willfully descending into barbarism and hedonism. Visually it's very distinctive, a series of disturbing set pieces of depravity set to classical music, often in slow motion without dialogue, and artistically-staged mayhem and decay. Overall I'd say it would be pretty hard to understand the underlying points Ballard was trying to make without the benefit of reading the book, which is generally the case. My wife absolutely hated it - couldn't understand a bit of it. I'm more ambivalent - I respect the effort, but prefer the ruthless social critiques of the novel. MAIN REVIEW: If you had the chance, would you live in a massive, 1,000-unit luxury high-rise, with it’s own supermarket, liquor shop, schools, pools, gyms, etc? Instead of living in some dreary suburb with boring, prosaic neighbors, why not join an elite group of young and successful professionals, like-minded and sophisticated, with immaculate taste and superb social connections? Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to join the elite upper echelons of society? This is the scenario that J.G. Ballard creates, and then proceeds to plunge the reader into a nightmare of barbarity, roving bands of marauding residents, festering piles of garbage and refuse, and a total collapse of social order and morals. It is a deliciously dark fable, one that was spot-on back in 1975, and that remains incredibly relevant today. There are no science-fiction elements to this novel, but it feels as futuristic as the day after tomorrow, and its commentary on the untamed urges that lurk beneath the surface of otherwise civilized, urbane people is a twisted masterpiece of modern social commentary, and one of my favorite J.G. Ballard novels from the 1970s. The collapse of civilization has been done many times before in modern literature. Perhaps the most famous early example is William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies (1954), and who could forget Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962) and its brilliant film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick (1971). In the film realm, the MAD MAX films have captured filmgoers’ imaginations for several decades, most recently in this year’s reboot Mad Max: Fury Road directed by George Miller. Everyone knows that the minute our energy resources disappear, and our global distribution chains collapse, it will be every person for themselves. If you are faced with death or starvation, the rules of society suddenly seem fairly ephemeral. Looting, roving gangs, rape and pillage, these are all familiar tropes of the post-disaster novel and film. What distinguishes J.G. Ballard’s brilliant 1975 novel High-Rise is that society has not collapsed, oil has not dried up, meteors have not pummeled the planet, sea levels have not risen due to global warming. Neither has a mysterious virus escaped and turned people into zombies, or space aliens descended from space to be fought off by Will Smith or the Avengers. Instead, we simply have a luxury high-rise filled with urbane professionals who seek refuge away from the hoi-polloi, the unwashed masses, the gauche proletariat who cannot appreciate sophisticated meals and fine wines. And Ballard gleefully throws all these elites into a massive luxury high-rise block and lets them create their own private hell on earth. The main character is Robert Laing, a young doctor who moves into the 25th floor of the high-rise. He plays squash occasionally with the chief architect of the building, the visionary Anthony Royal. Initially he is drawn to the wide range of yuppie-types that occupy the building, the attractive men and women who join the endless round of parties in the building, idling seeking out affairs. But then small, inconsequential disputes arise among tenants, and like any story of suburban rivalries, groups begin to form. However, the high-rise is an explicit metaphor for the stratification of social classes, as the book describes in meticulous and chilling detail: A new social type was being created by the apartment building – a cool, unemotional personality, impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life. With minimal needs for privacy, who thrived like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere. This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his overpriced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbors to make a mistake. These people were content with their environment, and felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and organizations, and if anything welcoming these intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of 20th century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed. Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later. The more arid and affectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered. By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time, it removed the need to suppress every kind of anti-social behavior and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas where the most important and interesting aspects of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise, like passengers on board an automatically-piloted airliner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly free psychopathology. J.G. Ballard’s deconstruction of the modern, urban professional is amazing – this doesn’t sound like 1975, it sounds like 2015. “That disaffected personality that revels in the rapid turnover of acquaintances and lack of involvement with others” is a perfect description of hundreds of people I have met in the finance industry in Tokyo over the last decade. With their self-contained ex-pat social circles, high incomes, and frequent moves from one country to the next, they can continually insulate themselves in the elite spaces of their daily existences, without having to mingle with anyone outside their spheres. And with the fine foods, luxury apartments, intelligent repartee, and vacations around the world, why would you seek anything else? In the following passages, Ballard describes the new stratified society of the high-rise in detail: What angered Wilder most of all about life in the apartment building was the way in which an apparently homogeneous group of high-income professional people had split into three distinct, hostile camps. The old subdivisions based on power, capital, and self-interest, had reasserted themselves here as anywhere else. In effect, the high-rise had already divided itself into the three classical social groups, the lower, middle, and upper classes. The lower floors housed the proletariat of film technicians, air hostesses and the like, and the middle section formed its middle class, made up of self-centered but basically docile members of the professions, the doctors and lawyers, accountants and tax specialists, who worked not for themselves, but for medical institutions and large corporations. Puritan and self-disciplined, they had all the cohesion of those eager to settle for second-best. Above them was the upper class, the discrete oligarchy of minor tycoons and entrepreneurs, televisions actresses and careerist academics. It was they who set the pace of the building, their complaints which were acted upon first, and it was they who subtly dominated high-rise life. Above all, it was their subtle patronage that kept the middle ranks in line, this constantly dangling carrot of friendship and approval. What a brutally honest and clinical deconstruction of the petty pretentions of our modern bourgeoisie. And the particular genius of Ballard’s urban fable is that all the residents of the building choose to segregate themselves without any prompting from the outside. As conditions steadily worsen, nobody seeks to contact the police or external authorities. Instead, they seem to revel in the new breakdown in civilized veneer, deliberately degenerating into barbaric behavior to fulfill their suppressed obsessions. Many of the cars had not been moved for weeks, windscreens broken by falling bottles, cabins filled with garbage, they sat on flattening tires, surrounded by a sea of rubbish that spread outwards from the building like an enlarging stain. This visible index of the blocks’ decline at the same time measured the extent to which its tenants accepted this process of erosion. At times, Royal suspected that his neighbors unconsciously hoped that things would decline even further. Royal had noticed that the manager’s office was no longer beseiged by indignant residents. Even his top-floor neighbors, who initially had been only too quick to complain, now never criticized anything about the building. Reluctantly, he knew that he despised his fellow residents for the way in which they fit so willingly into their appointed slots in the apartment buildings, for their overdeveloped sense of responsibility and lack of flamboyance. Above all, he looked down on them for their good taste. The building was a monument to good taste, to the well-designed kitchen, to sophisticated utencils and fabrics, to elegant and never ostentatious furnishings. In short, to that whole aesthetic sensibility which these well-educated, professional people had inherited from all the schools of industrial design, all the award-winning schemes of interior decoration institutionalized by the last quarter of the century. Royal detested this orthodoxy of the intelligent. Visiting his neighbors’ apartments, he would find himself physically repelled by the contours of an award-winning coffee pot, but the well-modulated color schemes, by the good taste and intelligence that, Midas-like, had transformed everything in these apartments into an ideal marriage of function and design. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture, and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape. Ballard doesn’t hold back in his withering contempt for the empty aspirations of the elite class. I couldn’t help thinking of how much our modern society idolizes a beautifully-designed modern space with sophisticated decorations, but is less concerned with the spiritual health of the occupants of the house. Speaking only for the Tokyo social elite (though I’m sure the principal is universal), I often feel that people have subsumed their spiritual lives for the sake of external environments, and that modern urbanite identities are largely defined by their jobs, apartments, favorite restaurants, brand-name clothes, and carefully-groomed appearances. As for the story, the final parts are devoted to showing us exactly how far these sophisticates can degenerate into barbarity, entirely of their own volition. It may not seem plausible, but this story is a metaphor of excess, and works very well in that way. Here we see the logical extremes to which the residents could reach in the absence of any inhibitions on behavior. For all the building’s derelict state – almost no water was flowing, the air-conditioning vents were blocked with garbage and excrement, rails ripped off staircase balustrades – the behavior of the residents during the daylight hours remained relatively restrained. Wilder stopped and relieved himself against the steps. During the brawls and running battles of the night, he took a distinct and unguilty pleasure in urinating wherever he cared, defecating in abandoned apartments. The previous night he had enjoyed pushing around a terrified woman who remonstrated him for relieving himself on her bathroom floor. Nonetheless, Wilder welcomed and understood the night – only in the darkness could one become sufficiently obsessive, deliberately play on all one’s repressed instincts. He welcomed this forced conscription of the deviant strains of his character. Happily, this free and degenerate behavior became easier as he moved higher up the building, as if encouraged by the secret logic of the high-rise. So there you have it, a polemic and warning disguised as a slim thriller. I thought it was brilliant and highly recommend it, but it depends on your temperament. Of note, a film version was released at several film festivals this year, starring Tom Hiddleston (who expertly narrated the audiobook) and Jeremy Irons, directed by British directly Ben Wheatley. It may have taken 40 years to make it to film, but I doubt they needed to update the story much at all. I am very much looking forward to seeing Ballard’s dark vision on the big screen. Finally, as an aside, my family and I live in Tokyo, and the vast majority of people here live in condos and apartments of varying size. When we began to entertain the idea of buying a place instead of renting, we visited dozens of properties in different neighborhoods, each with their own magic pricing formulas that factored in proximity to major train lines, average income levels, neighborhood infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc), age of building and reputability of the builder, earthquake-proofing, direction of windows (south-facing is most desirable for sunlight and hanging laundry), corner rooms, higher floors, room layout, homeowners’ associations, number of units, etc. After months of research, the amount of info was overwhelming, and co-workers and friends gave us reams of advice on every possible pro and con. It was endless and exhausting. So one day I suggested we look at detached houses instead, which are harder to come by in ultra-densely populated Tokyo. And yet the thought of being packed into a massive building with over 1,000 other residents, making greetings to a steady stream of people you barely know, being forced to joined the owner’s associations and arguing over the timing of repairs, complaints about noise, trash disposal, parking lots, air-conditions, just made us want to run screaming. So we opted to buy a small, narrow 3-story house with neighbors so near that we can reach out a window on either side and touch their houses. But it is our space, not shared with anyone, and that was the deciding factor. After reading Ballard’s High-Rise, I feel like we made the right choice. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 07, 2022
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Mar 04, 2022
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| 4.15
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Mar 10, 2018
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Feb 28, 2018
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| 4.10
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really liked it
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Apr 20, 2018
not set
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Feb 19, 2018
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| 4.12
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it was amazing
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Mar 06, 2017
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Feb 24, 2017
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it was amazing
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Sep 26, 2016
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Sep 10, 2016
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Jul 22, 2016
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May 12, 2016
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| 4.21
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Apr 04, 2016
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Apr 18, 2016
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Jan 28, 2016
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| 3.85
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Jan 19, 2016
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it was amazing
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Dec 13, 2015
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Dec 21, 2015
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| 3.82
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Nov 13, 2015
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Nov 20, 2015
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Nov 10, 2015
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| 3.62
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Nov 10, 2015
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| 3.61
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Nov 10, 2015
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| 4.26
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Nov 23, 2015
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Nov 06, 2015
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really liked it
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Oct 31, 2015
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Oct 29, 2015
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| 3.95
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really liked it
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Oct 25, 2015
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Oct 25, 2015
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| 4.18
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Oct 22, 2015
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Oct 21, 2015
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| 3.61
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it was amazing
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Oct 13, 2015
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Oct 10, 2015
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