Another Foray into the Agora, Hayden's, Blood Sports, Corporate Intrigue, Classic Scalzi This is another story set in the near-future world of Lock-In,Another Foray into the Agora, Hayden's, Blood Sports, Corporate Intrigue, Classic Scalzi This is another story set in the near-future world of Lock-In, this time focused on a highly commercial blood sport called Hilketa too violent for normal humans to play, but just right for Hayden's Syndrome people to play virtually. It's got all the snappy/snarky/clever dialogue that is Scalzi's trademark style, and he remains really good at it. It's a fast-paced murder mystery, and also explores plenty of serious territory about disabilities - those with them and how they live in a society that may not understand or appreciate their difficulties and special abilities. It's got plenty of VR themes, all explored without any slowdown in narrative momentum. And of course this audiobook could not be narrated by anyone other than THE Wil Wheaton, the dynamic duo in action. It's practically guaranteed a John Scalzi book will entertain and enlighten, which is quite an impressive feat, and this one did not disappoint....more
Alex + Ada: A romantic fable exploring AI sentience and the human condition I gave this a try as the clean and understated artwork caught my eye and thAlex + Ada: A romantic fable exploring AI sentience and the human condition I gave this a try as the clean and understated artwork caught my eye and the first two volumes were available on Comixology Unlimited. Much like Her, Ex Machina, Westworld, and of course Blade Runner, the story explores what it means to be sentient in the context of a human/AI romance. Alex is given an X5 humanoid female robot by his grandmother who senses his loneliness and unhappiness. His friends are creeped out by the idea of him having a robot companion, as this is often a substitute for human relationships, but Alex is not keen to simply have a glorified sex toy. Rather, he wants her to be more human-like and have agency and the ability to have opinions and make decisions for herself. As the near-future they live in is very distrustful of this, this sets of a series of crises with his friends and the authorities.
I thought the first two-thirds of the story was really well conceived and the issues were explored with humor, pathos, and some very thoughtful discussions of what humans really want from AIs, and what AIs might think of human social rules. However, the third and final volume really drops the ball in terms of dramatic tension as it comes to an abrupt climax in the early going and then skips forward in time to a very understated ending that I found unsatisfying. The story is good in its ideas and characters, but the future society didn't quite right true for him. It seemed far too comfortable and plentiful for a near future world, with no real hint as to how so many of the world's problems had been resolved enough to reach this level of advanced robotics and yet still live in suburban communities and have parties much like today.
All in all, though, I did enjoy its approach to AI romance that refused to trivialize it and presented all the problems that would likely arise. ...more
The Android’s Dream: More like The Fifth Element than Bladerunner Originally published at Fantasy Literature
The Android’s Dream (2006) is one of John SThe Android’s Dream: More like The Fifth Element than Bladerunner Originally published at Fantasy Literature
The Android’s Dream (2006) is one of John Scalzi’s earlier books, and a stand-alone rather than part of a series, so I couldn’t resist given the obvious Philip K. Dick reference in the title. I decided to go into this one without knowing anything about the plot or reading any reviews at all. I know Scalzi’s humor and style from the OLD MAN’S WAR series, Redshirts and Lock In, and I love the audio narration of Wil Wheaton, so I figured I’d give it a try. I was also surprised that this hadn’t already been reviewed on FanLit, which has covered pretty much all of Scalzi’s prolific output.
Initially I was a bit nonplussed by the opening sequence, essentially the most elaborate “fart joke” in a tense human-alien diplomatic meeting in the history of the genre (tiny niche, I know). It suggests we’re in for something more along the lines of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy or The Fifth Element than the profound and melancholic ruminations on what separates humans from replicants in PDK’s classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep that I had expected from the title. But the story certainly throws out enough ideas, computer hackers, AIs, mercenaries, phony religious cults, secret government agencies, intense action sequences, and humorous quips sprinkled throughout, to provide the entertainment that Scalzi has become famous and very successful for delivering.
The plot involves a major diplomatic incident between the UNE (United Nations of Earth) and the Nidu, a more powerful alien race that is the ostensible ally of humanity, a new junior member of the Consolidated Confederation of Worlds, in which the Earth is sitting at the “loser’s table in high school”, as Scalzi puts it so succinctly. So it is up to ex-military State Department “Xenosapient Facilitator” Harry Creek to track down an a rare species of blue sheep called Android’s Dream that holds the key to a major power struggle for succession on the Nidu homeworld. What follows is a madcap, zany, action-packed, whirlwind adventure, from shopping mall shootouts to some pretty cool computer hacking by AIs, and leading up to a grand finale on the Nidu homeworld at the coronation ceremony, with the fate of the Earth and intergalactic war hanging in the balance.
As typical for Scalzi, The Android’s Dream produces dozens of eminently quotable quips about this future society, our own human foibles, etc. However, as the story frequently veers from snarky humor to intense action sequences, sometimes I felt like Scalzi was not quite in control of the tone of the story. It’s much like a Luc Besson movie, with frenetic action, slapstick humor, and then random moments of seriousness. I also think the author was still finding his voice, though his debut novel Old Man’s War was a near-perfect pastiche of Heinlein that updated and improved on Starship Troopers. So I don’t think it really hung together in the end, despite being filled with promising elements. Still, if you are a fan of zany SF thrillers, you probably won’t be disappointed....more
Lock In: Great concept, good extrapolation, and fast-paced story Lock-In has an excellent concept, the outbreak of Haden's Syndrome, as described in thLock In: Great concept, good extrapolation, and fast-paced story Lock-In has an excellent concept, the outbreak of Haden's Syndrome, as described in the GR blurb above. In classic John Scalzi fashion, he then explores the concept in fairly rigorous detail, with his breezy style and snarky (sorry, I know the word is overused, but it works) characters. Much like Peter Clines or Michael Crichton, his stories are fast-paced, well-crafted, and very enjoyable. He puts a lot of effort into really imagining the implications of Haden's Syndrome, which is clearly illustrated by the novella at the end, Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome, which in the audiobook version is performed by a host of well-known narrators. I suspect Scalzi may have created that as part of creating the background of the story, but it certainly adds some verisimilitude to the backstory. Of course the main story is narrated by Scalzi's friend and SF community favorite Wil Wheaton, who does an excellent job as always. They are on the same wavelength and deliver a consummate and engrossing 10 hours of SF entertainment....more
This book has all the right elements to be popular - A fast-paced SF mystery thriller with supernatural elements and an engaging narrator named Mike EThis book has all the right elements to be popular - A fast-paced SF mystery thriller with supernatural elements and an engaging narrator named Mike Erikson with a unique ability, an eidetic (photographic) memory that allows him to recall all the minutest details of any event or moment in his life. He lives his life as an unremarkable high-school teacher, hiding his incredible ability and rejecting repeated invitations from his friend Reggie working for DARPA to use his abilities for the government. Mike has his reasons for avoiding using his skills, which are revealed over time.
However, he is finally lured into helping out by a top-secret government project in CA to develop a portal to allow instantaneous transportation from one point to another via an portal called the Albuquerque Door by folding space. Although the project scientists claim to have succeeded using the portal hundreds of time, they refuse to disclose the details until the project is ready for unveiling to the public, so Reggie suspects something is fishy, and when Mike arrives, he can immediately tell that the scientists are hiding something as they continue to assure him "nothing is wrong."
This type of mystery-thriller is build around the big reveal, and I find that such stories are often more interesting before we find out the big twist than afterward. The story written so efficiently and filled with clever pop-references and a host of lightly-sketched characters that are there to forward the plot that Peter Cline's background as a screenwriter comes as no surprise.
I can sometimes enjoy writers like Michael Crichton, Robert J. Sawyer, or John Scalzi that are adept at taking an intriguing concept, creating an exciting page-turning thriller, and making things so cinematic that it must be a breeze to adapt it to the big screen. However, in the same process they give up the biggest advantage that books have over films - in-depth world-building and more opportunity to create and get to know in-depth three-dimensional characters. Films have the advantage of visual artistry and kinetic action, but books can have greater depth of story. That's why I always come away from SF thrillers feeling like I was at the movies for a couple hours watching a fun spectacle and eating popcorn but come away a bit empty.
So while I did like the unique nature of the main character, the surrounding cast was very forgettable and the action that ensued once the true nature of the portal was revealed actually went in a fairly predictable direction and the fast-paced action of the final third didn't hold my attention. The ending in particular was a disappointment, especially the blatant signal that this could become a series. Even the pop-references were not nearly as much fun as those in Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, which was really just an 80s gamer/geek nostalgia trip, but was also a pretty exciting story and fairly original as well, though his follow up Armada was pretty terrible and revealed you can't plumb the same materials twice and hope for similar results.
In any case, while The Fold is a fun "summer read", I consider that a back-handed compliment. Why do we prefer our summer or beach reading to be lacking in depth? Just so we don't have to think too deeply? And who really reads a book at the beach in the hot sun anyway? I do like looking over the beach or poolside if I have a nice shady spot in a comfy chair in Waikiki for example. But I will reserve greater praise for books that explore their characters, ideas, or themes in greater depth....more
The Lathe of Heaven: An early 1970s classic of reality-altering dreams with Taoist undercurrents Originally posted at Fantasy Literature I love Ursula KThe 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
The Terminal Experiment: A Substandard Crichton-style thriller Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Robert J. Sawyer is a very popular Canadian SF auThe Terminal Experiment: A Substandard Crichton-style thriller Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Robert J. Sawyer is a very popular Canadian SF author, with many novels under his belt and several major awards, including the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and 2006 John W. Campbell Award for Mindscan. I hadn’t read anything of his so I decided to give The Terminal Experiment a try. It’s about an engineer who creates three artificial copies of his consciousness, and one of them becomes a killer. It is narrated by the very competent Paul Hecht, and is an easy listen. But how well does it hold up as an award winner?
I’ll freely admit I am not a big fan of “techno-thrillers” in SF. Generally I find this a flimsy plot device to move a mediocre story forward quickly. Usually a shadowy and sinister organization or super-villain is up to no good, and the intrepid hero and his clever sidekick and/or love interest race against time to defeat the badguy(s) and prevent a terrible calamity. The heroes are usually are scientists, engineers, detectives, private investigators, or scholars. Sometimes they produce massive runaway best-sellers that explore the secret history of Christianity and became Hollywood blockbusters starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou, flitting from one gorgeous European location to the next, usually with a trail of dead bodies left behind.
Well, The Terminal Experiment isn’t quite that bad, but it hardly breaks any new ground or provide insight into the nature of AIs and human consciousness. I recently read Greg Egan’s Permutation City, and that book dives into those ideas in such depth and complexity it was almost overwhelming. In contrast, The Terminal Experiment goes down way too easily, following a by-the-numbers thriller plot. Dr. Peter Hobson is the biomedical engineer who invents a machine that can detect brain patterns as they leave the body after death, which many interpret as proof of a human soul.
After creating much hoopla in the media and religious circles, he decides with the help of his friend Sardar Muhammed, an AI programming expert (very convenient, don’t you think?) to create three AI simulations of Peter’s consciousness, in order to test some theories about the afterlife and soul. So three simulations are created: 1) Spirit, a version of Peter in which all physical desires and urges are removed, allowing for a pure intellect unburdened by worldly concerns; 2) Ambrotos, who has all fears of aging and death removed to simulate the conditions of an immortal being; and 3) a control version of Peter, with no special modifications.
Initially all three simulations take to their existence positively, exploring the Internet of 1995 with enthusiasm and curiosity. The book really betrays its age with some very dated descriptions of “cutting-edge” technology of the nascent web, and there are numerous laughable details about information technology, etc. Over time the simulations get frustrated with their limited virtual environs and break out into the larger global IT network. They also start to develop some aggressive behavior, seemingly triggered by Peter’s subconscious feelings.
What ensures is a thoroughly unexciting thriller as they try to outsmart the simulations and prevent them from getting out of control. This idea has been done to death many times before. I found it hard to care about either the characters, plot, or even the philosophical questions the book raised, not because they questions themselves are not important (they are), but due to the amateur way in which they are presented to the reader. The writing is pedestrian but unthreatening - exactly what you would expect from a “mainstream thriller”.
What this book illustrates is the problem with near future techno-thrillers winning major awards like the Nebula or Hugo. While they may seem fairly innovative or cutting edge at the time, it only takes 5-10 years to make them hopelessly outdated or wrong in their predictions. Books about the far future, alternate histories, or fantasies are less likely to age badly.
In 1995 it beat John Barnes Mother of Storms, Nancy Kress’ Beggars and Choosers, Paul Park’s Celestis, Walter Jon Williams’ Metropolitan, and Gene Wolfe’s Calde of the Long Sun, and while I haven't read those books, I find it very hard to believe this was the best SF book of that year. In the end you can never please everyone when choosing the “best” SF or fantasy novel, since taste plays such a major role, but voters should consider how well a given book is likely to stand the test of time, so when someone picks up an award winner from a previous decade they can be confident it’s at least well-written and thought-provoking....more
Camouflage: Species meets The Abyss - not in a good way Originally posted at Fantasy Literature How did Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage beat Susanna Clarke’s Camouflage: Species meets The Abyss - not in a good way Originally posted at Fantasy Literature How did Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage beat Susanna Clarke’s monumental work Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell for the Nebula Award in 2005? Granted, I haven’t read that book, but I have read many glowing reviews from my fellow FanLit reviewers and Goodreads friends. It was also made into a major BBC miniseries and received many accolades. Clarke’s book is incredibly long and filled with dense footnotes that show the depth of research and creative energy, perhaps too much for some readers but showing great effort on the author’s part. It is a major literary work of speculative fiction, and won the Hugo, World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic awards, and was even nominated for the Man Booker Prize and Guardian Award.
In contrast, who remembers Camouflage now? How many people recommend it to friends as a great science-fiction book? I breezed through the audiobook of Camouflage in just 8 hours, and while it was fast-paced and action-packed, it left almost no impression at all. It is the story of two shapeshifting aliens who have lived on the Earth for millennia: one interested in studying humanity, the other a vicious hunter that thrives on human misery and killing. We have two alternating timelines, showing how these shapeshifters have moved throughout human history, often causing legends of resurrection like Jesus Christ to arise, but always adopting new bodies to remain camouflaged, simply mimicking human behaviors to preserve anonymity.
In the future period set in 2019, Dr. Russell Sutton runs a small engineering firm that handles deep undersea projects. One day Admiral Jack Halliburton walks in with an intriguing proposal — recover a military sub that has gone down in the Tonga trench near Samoa, a project that is code-named Poseidon. But Jack’s real aim is a mysterious ultra-dense metal capsule buried even deeper that he has discovered. And before you can say “deadly shapeshifting aliens” and “deep underseas alien artifacts,” we have a typical techno-thriller, exactly what you can pick up at the racks of your nearest airport bookstore.
It’s not that I don’t like fast-paced entertainment — if this was a book by an unknown author that I picked up in the $1 bargain bin and read on vacation near the ocean sipping a cocktail and enjoying the tropical breezes, I wouldn’t have any complaints. It has lots of interesting details about how the two shapeshifters take different approaches to interacting with humanity. The Changeling is the “good” one that is fascinated by human psychology and academic study, and acquires more scientific degrees than Donald Trump has failed real estate ventures. Meanwhile, the Chameleon can’t get enough of human misery, and gravitates to monsters like Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele. We are never really told why the Chameleon is such a one-dimensional sadist — I guess some shapeshifting aliens just are that way.
As the Changeling moves closer to the present timeline it starts to wonder about its own alien origins and SETI projects, etc., so the Poseidon project has an irresistible allure. Meanwhile, the Chameleon cares little for humanity other than to thrive on killing, death, and misery. Probably the most visceral and emotionally intense part of Camouflage relives the Bataan Death March from the eyes of the Changeling. We see the depravity and inhumanity of man against man. We also get plenty of thriller action as the story converges in American Samoa, where scientists have raised the alien artifact and are trying their damnedest to break through the impossibly hard exterior. Why is it that humans just want to break into things they should probably leave alone? Haven’t they seen all those science-fiction movies about messing with alien artifacts?
But I’ve almost forgotten to mention the gender-bending love story, which I must conclude is the only possible reason that Camouflage also won the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is dedicated to science-fiction works that explore gender, and that year‘s jurors included Ursula K. LeGuin and Cecilia Tan, whose Circlet Press is devoted to erotic science-fiction and fantasy. I would hate to question their judgement, but I thought the treatment of gender in Camouflage was fairly superficial and mainly an excuse for explicit sexual encounters between the Changeling and regular humans.
I guess it’s notable that while the vicious Chameleon remains exclusively male throughout its many incarnations, frequently as a soldier, the Changeling starts as a male but as it learns more of humanity elects to become female. So is Haldeman suggesting that of the two genders women are less aggressive and more thoughtful? If so, he didn’t really go beyond the surface, though he did seem to relish the Changeling taking on different female personae to seduce Dr. Sutton, who we are told is well known to be a pushover for attractive women.
In the end, if Camouflage were a first novel written by an unknown author and not by Joe Haldeman, renowned SFWA Grand Master, Science Fiction Hall of Fame member, and multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, not only would it not have won the Nebula Award, it may well have made the rounds of publisher rejections as so many books do. There are far better books in the science-fiction genre more deserving of the Nebula Award than this....more
Quarantine: Cool quantum mechanics, pedestrian plot Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Greg Egan is an Australian writer of hard science fiction whQuarantine: Cool quantum mechanics, pedestrian plot Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Greg Egan is an Australian writer of hard science fiction who specializes in mathematics, epistemology, quantum theory, posthumanism, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, etc. When you pick up one of his books, you know you will be getting a fairly dense crash course in some pretty outlandish scientific and mathematical ideas, with the plot and characters coming second.
The cover blurb advertises Quarantine as “A Novel of Quantum Catastrophe,” and the back describes “an impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15, 2034” causing riots and chaos. However, the book mainly takes place in Perth and New Hong Kong, which was relocated to Australia after the Chinese took over. So don’t expect too much galaxy-spanning space travel or conventional aliens. This book is about quantum physics, simultaneous ‘eigenstates’ when humans use neural ‘mods’ to ‘smear’ themselves before collapsing back into a single state of existence, erasing those infinite possibilities.
The story centers on private investigator Nick Stavrianos, who is asked by an anonymous client to investigate the disappearance of Linda Andrews, a brain damaged patient at the Hilgemann Institute who, one day, disappeared from her room without a trace. It’s a fairly typical scenario, designed to reveal elements of the plot as his investigation progresses. Surprise, surprise, this is not just a random disappearance, but the tip of a much more elaborate conspiracy by shadowy organizations to exploit the neural ‘mods’ that could blow the lid off our conventional reality quicker than you can say ‘cookie-cutter private-eye story about collapsing wave functions and reality-altering nanotech mods.’
The early part of Quarantine establishes the nanotech-filled world of the 21st century, brimming with technological wonders but also with religious mania and terrorism inspired by the Bubble that surrounds the solar system. It’s not a pleasant world, and technological espionage is commonplace. Once Nick and Linda’s backstories are established, the book delves into its main subject matter, a revolutionary new mod that could allow the user (the ‘observer’ in the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment) to choose from an infinite number of quantum probabilities while ‘smeared’ when the wave function collapses back into a single reality. If this can be controlled, the possibilities are unlimited — pursuing personal profit, improving the lot of society, or perhaps something much more radical.
Nick gets deeply embroiled in the conflicting factions seeking to control this mod, and the mechanism by which his loyalties are controlled is quite fascinating — one of the better ideas in the story. It’s not until things get extremely technical and complicated that we discover the connection between this reality-bending mod and the Bubble that mysteriously appeared at the beginning of the book.
I’ve always been interested in quantum mechanics, Multiple Worlds Theory, nanotech, etc., and all the mind-bending possibilities that these ideas entail. Egan spends enough pages explaining quantum ‘smearing’ and ‘collapsing’ that even a complete layman like myself, who loves hard science fiction ideas but hates differential equations and complex calculations, to understand the basics. As Egan explains in a very illustrative article on his blog (Quantum Mechanics and Quarantine), he chose a very unlikely interpretation of quantum mechanics and wave function collapse in order to make an exciting and imaginative science fiction novel. In general, I think he succeeds at this, though at the expense of in-depth characterization. If that appeals to you, by all means give Quarantine a try. Out of all the possible quantum probabilities, this is probably one of the better iterations.
Notes on the Audible Studios version:
When I discovered that you can get many of Egan’s books in Kindle and Audible versions for the COMBINED price of $4.98, I figured that was just too good to pass up. In particular I snapped up Quarantine, Permutation City, and Diaspora as promising titles. Then I noticed the ratings on Audible were surprisingly low (the low 3s), and discovered that most of the audiobook readers liked the books but pilloried the narrator Adam Epstein for being completely inept — boring, bad accents, painfully slow, mispronouncing words. No wonder its so cheap, I thought. Maybe this was a mistake. But I knew I could at least fix one thing, the overly-slow narration speed, by simply selecting 1.5x speed, my normal pace. Perhaps some listeners aren’t aware of that option.
Long story short, they were right that Adam Epstein is NOT a particularly good narrator, especially his atrocious Australian and Chinese accents and mispronouncing of words like Taoist (he read it as “T” rather than “D”) or ASEAN (he read it as “A-Shawn” instead of “As-ee-an”), which suggests he doesn’t listen to financial news at all. Surprisingly, I thought he soldiered through the technical parts fairly well, though they inevitably sounded like a textbook at times. However, I decided to forgive this since I am getting Greg Egan’s audiobooks for just $1.99 each....more
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 MaA 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
Station Eleven: A meditative post-apocalyptic tribute to the present Originally posted at Fantasy Literature It’s hard to review a book that has alreadyStation Eleven: A meditative post-apocalyptic tribute to the present Originally posted at Fantasy Literature It’s hard to review a book that has already been praised to the rafters. There are hundreds of reviews that speak eloquently about Station Eleven, with its focus on the arts, relationships, and all the little moments that make up our lives. Since I respect the opinions of my GR friends, I needed to read the book myself, even if it’s not my usual cup of tea. And yes, they were right. It’s very good indeed.
Station Eleven is that rare book that both mainstream and genre readers can appreciate and enjoy. It’s the antithesis of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I hated, focusing not on the brutal ugliness of survival after society collapses, but rather shows how people in the aftermath look back upon our present wistfully and mourn the loss of what we now take for granted. In that the book succeeds magnificently. With copious flashbacks that are smoothly incorporated to the main narrative of The Traveling Symphony, we are gradually shown how our modern society is an intricate web of human relationships, some positive and others destructive, as love is born, dies, and reborn with new partners. Friendships come and go, evolve, transform. Parents raise children, and children reach adulthood, realizing the influences that their parents have had.
In the vastly depopulated world after the Georgia Flu (not the Peach State, the country in Europe), which wipes out 95% of the global population, we see the remnants of society in scattered pockets. Not just surviving, but in the case of The Travelling Symphony, an itinerant group of actors and musicians go from town and outpost, performing for the locals and preserving the arts. This could come off as very contrived, but Mandel does a good of not making it preachy. These people do this as a matter of course in their lives – it gives them meaning and impetus to go on living in a melancholy and drastically diminished world.
We are introduced to The Museum of Civilization, an impromptu collection of artifacts from our world like iPhones, credit cards, various electronic devices, all the detritus of a material society that is no longer of any practical use in a Brave New World that doesn’t have a name for itself or even for the calamity that destroyed civilization. It’s pretty surprising how much Madel sprinkles very time-specific references, which are topical to today’s reader but will become dated within 5-10 year.
The characters that inhabit Mandel’s world are skillfully sketched in a series of flashbacks. Much of what happens in the lives of famous actor Arthur Leander, his first wife Miranda, his best friend Clark, the paparazzi and medic Jeevan, his second wife, the little child actrees Kirsten who grows up to be a tough survivor, and the sinister Prophet who forms a cult of zealots who believe they are the chosen ones spared by God for a purpose (this is a typical post-apocalyptic theme, but isn’t overemphasized). Then there is the mysterious comic book Doctor Eleven that is written by Miranda, but is carefully preserved by Kirsten and also read by the Prophet. It’s a story within a story, a parallel story of survival in space after fleeing an alien invasion. Miranda poured herself into this imaginary world to escape the life of fame she never wanted when she married Arthur. Is this any different from us reading stories like Station Eleven to escape our everyday lives? The metaphor is nicely understated, as the whole book is. There is no clubbing the reader over the head, just gentle reminders that the lives depicted in this tale are not all that different from the lives we lead in the “real” world.
Since I am a voracious reader of speculative fiction, the post-apocalyptic elements are nothing special. Actually I like the fact that Mandel didn’t focus on these aspects at all – she’s not interested in that. It’s the melancholy notes of loss she chooses to emphasize, to great effect. I was reminded of a classic post-apocalyptic novel called Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart, along with my favorite coming-of-age SF novel set in a pastoral post-apocalyptic US that also features musicians, actors, and an oppressive Church, Davy (1964) by Edgar Pangborn. These books also focus on the loss of modern civilization and the quiet rural life of the survivors. However, unlike Station Eleven, they actually suggest that the loss of modern industrial civilization is an opportunity to return to a simpler, more robust way of living, whereas Mandel clearly wants to point out the good in our modern lifestyles. If I had any criticism of the book, it would be that she only focuses on the lives of the well-off members of American society who are well-educated, urbane, intelligent, middle-class or higher. But that is who her story is about, so why complain about something the book is not? It’s a beautifully-written and understated story that makes you stop and think, what would it be like to lose the life you lead and the people you love?...more
Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Roadside Picnic (1972) is a Russian SFRoadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Roadside Picnic (1972) is a Russian SF novel written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. This was back when authors and publishers were subject to government review and censorship. Since it didn’t follow the Communist Party line, it didn’t get published in uncensored book form in Russia until the 1990s despite first appearing in a Russian literary magazine in 1972. So its first book publication was in the US in 1977. Since then Roadside Picnic has been published in dozens of editions and languages over the years, and inspired the 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, which the Strugatsky brothers wrote the screenplay for.
The story is set after the Visitation, when aliens briefly stopped on the Earth and left six Zones where strange alien technology and physical phenomenon exist. Residents of these areas never saw the aliens, but the alien artifacts have mysterious powers that can sometimes be harnessed by humans without understanding the underlying technology. The title refers to the simple analogy of a group of people going for a picnic in the countryside, having a good time, dumping various trash, and heading on. For the forest animals, the actions of these mysterious beings are incomprehensible, as are they objects they leave behind. So we are those helpless forest creatures.
Since the visitation, the Zones have been closed off by the UN and various governments to civilians, but the lure of the alien artifacts creates a robust illegal trade in them by “stalkers” who know how to avoid the numerous strange and frequently deadly traps that would kill the unwary. The protagonist of the story is Redrick “Red” Schuhart, a veteran stalker who has made dozens of successful trips to the Zone and emerged with enough artifacts to support himself and his girlfriend. This existence is quite precarious, so he also takes a job as an assistant in a lab that studies the Zone. However, he frequently finds himself in the local bar, especially when he makes another illegal score.
When Red ventures into the Zone with another stalker named Burbridge, they encounter “witch’s jelly,” a substance that dissolves Burbridge’s legs. Red saves him, but has to evade the authorities upon his return. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Guta gives birth to a girl with a full body of hair (who gains the moniker “Monkey”), since many children born near the Zone or exposed to people like stalkers end up with strange mutations.
After various scrapes with shady artifact buyers, underground organizations, and a stint in prison, Red finds himself at home once again. Sadly, his daughter has lost the ability to speak. Finally, he is lured into “one last job” to retrieve a legendary object called the “Golden Sphere”, which is rumored to grant the wishes of its owner. He enters the Zone with Burbridge’s son, but they must first get past the “Meatgrinder.” The ending of the story is fairly abrupt and ambiguous, so I will leave it to the reader to decipher.
So was Roadside Picnic good? I thought the central concept was excellent, but I’d be hard-pressed to say I enjoyed the book. It spent a lot of time with Red drunk in the bar, commiserating with various others in the strange subculture that develops around the Zones, which are generally desolate and sparsely populated. The various shady buyers and their schemes to get artifacts weren’t as interesting as I hoped, and the actual time within the Zones was frequently anticlimactic. His family life with his wife and mutant daughter was more promising, but didn’t really develop enough dramatic depth. And the ending… I had to go back and re-listen twice just to make sure I hadn’t skipped a final chapter by mistake.
The most interesting thing about Roadside Picnic is the parallels it has with Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation (2011), which it predates by about 40 years. That book is about a strange area known as Area X, where bizarre physical phenomena occur and many expeditions have gone in but have never returned. Of course it is not revealed whether Area X was due to aliens or other more occult sources, and the novel is stylistically much closer to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu and the New Weird school of fiction. Vandermeer loves to mix genres, injecting lots of horror and mystery elements, and has some fantastic descriptive writing. But Annihilation and Roadside Picnic do share the same DNA: a refusal to disclose their mysteries to the reader. They show the limitations of human knowledge, and our powerlessness when faced with a superior and mysterious force. The characters of Annihilation are more unreliable narrators than Red, and less easy to relate to. In the end, it wasn’t my favorite book, but it is still worth reading if you are interested in classic Russian SF.
Film Version: Stalker (1979) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Roadside Picnic did inspire a very loosely-based adaptation by Andrei Tarkovsky, who also directed the film version of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris in 1972. He was intrigued by the book and went to a lot of troubles (including having to completely reshoot the entire film after the first film stock was unusable) to achieve “classical Aristotelian unity” and create a very artistic, intellectual, and STUNNINGLY BORING film version. I had already seen Solaris and knew I was facing long, uninterrupted and static shots, minimal dialogue, inscrutable snippets of philosophical debate, and above all ambiguity and a lack of action. Sound like a promising way to spend 2 hours and 40 minutes?
I was shocked to find the film available at my local Japanese video store. What were they thinking? This film is exactly the type of pretentious art-house film that is highly praised, being picked #29 by the British Film Institute of the “50 Greatest Films of All Time” and getting a 100% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while being completely unwatchable. I started the film determined to give it my undivided attention, but it punished me unrelentingly. I dare anyone to watch this film to the end without wanting to stick a fork in their eye.
The story has been changed quite dramatically from the book. The entire backstory about the visitation, black market for alien artifacts, and various organizations’ schemes are mainly left out, leaving us with… I’m not sure what. Instead, we have the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor (much like the 4 main characters of Vandermeer’s Annihilation), the latter two seeking either inspiration or fame by discovering a Room in the Zone that will grant the entrant’s deepest wish.
We are then subjected to over two hours where almost nothing happens at all. My wife and daughter started to ridicule the film and we decided to wait to see if anything happened at all, and burst into laughter at Tarkovsky’s insistence on lovingly filming desolate, abandoned industrial scenes with no events of any kind. There were quite a few completely incomprehensible discussions among the three characters about the meaning of life, ambition, and their true motivations for seeking the room. The ending is almost comically obtuse, as every time there is any possibility of action, the characters elect instead to sit or lie on the dirt floor and mumble about drivel. I have a feeling that Tarkovsky and I would not get along at a cocktail party.
I guess Tarkovsky saw the film as a means of exploring the inner psychology of his characters, and the Zone as merely a framing device for this. I don’t think that was the original intention of the Strugatsky brothers (though they wrote the screenplay), since Roadside Picnic was, for me at least, more about how humans react to a superior and unknowable alien presence. So frankly the intent of Stalker was completely lost on me. There is one telling anecdote I read about. When a government official complained that the film was slow-moving, Tarkovsky supposedly retorted “the film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.” Pretty contemptuous of the viewer, if you ask me. Why bother making the film at all? I would grant this film zero stars — steer clear of it....more
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