A Big Let-down to End the Series I have to admit there has been a 3 year gap between me reading the first 6 volumes and this final one. In fact, I esseA Big Let-down to End the Series I have to admit there has been a 3 year gap between me reading the first 6 volumes and this final one. In fact, I essentially forgot about the series as I had moved onto so many other books and audiobooks, and only realized there was a new (and final) volume by accident. I was (and remain) a massive fan of Brian K Vaughan's SAGA series, absolutely brilliant, which is why I gave this series a try. I certainly enjoyed the early volumes, though the story was very disorienting, thanks to the characters and the artwork in particular. But the more complicated the time-travel permutations became, the more I wondered 1) how this storyline can wrap up properly without a deus ex-machina, or 2) would this end with the dreaded "it was all a dream" reveal that has ruined many a book and drama series and pissed off so many fans (I'm looking straight at you LOST).
Now to be fair I personally think time travel and altering the past/present/future is so patently absurd and impossible that I have to just suspend my disbelief to begin with. Having said that, there are many time-travel stories I've enjoyed, such as Time and Again by Jack Finney, Replay by Ken Grimwood, Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, and The Door to Summer by Robert Heinlein, but those are all books where time-travel is on a very limited scale or even one-way basis. Once an author decides that characters (and storylines) can travel between multiple time-lines and dimensions, altering this, that, and the other in an endless succession of causal loops and paradoxes, the basic absurdity of the concept gets exposed, and the more they try to explain it rationally, the more ridiculous it seems.
That's exactly what this volume felt like. A very earnest effort to have it all make sense, and then the worst cop-out of all at the end. Both left me deeply disappointed....more
Paper Girls (Vol 5): Story gaining momentum and richness This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really staPaper Girls (Vol 5): Story gaining momentum and richness This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really starting to take shape. The early volumes were quite elliptical and disorienting, so it’s great to be able to understand the various storylines and the larger world-building that is revealed, and get to know and like the four main protagonists even more as they are thrown into a series of tense adventures across time.
Finally we get to delve into the far-future world inhabited by the old-timers, with the sleek and beautifully-colored futuristic cityscapes that were just hinted at in previous volumes. The girls find themselves in a far future city that is surprisingly close to home, on a mission to seek out answers and help as they are being pursued by multiple factions, since for some reason the outcome of this time-traveling battle apparently rests on their fates.
The story addresses the familiar time-travel contradictions of how the past and future can be altered when it should already have happened, taking a fresh tack by denying the common quantum explanation for multiple time-lines. It’s an interesting approach, and central to the entire story structure, so it’s good to see that Vaughan is thinking through his story carefully.
We learn much more about the back-stories of Wari and Grandfather, with some surprising reveals, and once again Vaughan refuses to use the simplistic dichotomy of “good” and “bad” for his characters. They each have their own motives to pursue the girls for different ends, and both seem to believe in the justness of their actions. This level of moral complexity is something that distinguishes the entire series. While the reasons for why the old-timers are after the girls is unveiled, its still unclear whether they or their rebellious younger rivals are right or wrong.
The narrative weaves between different groups, times, and adds color to some of the events of the past volumes. Things are certainly easier to follow now, and the plot is really gaining urgency. What is more, the interactions between the girls and their older selves are both funny and moving at times. The artwork by Cliff Chiang remains precise, clean and skillful, and the coloring by Matt Wilson and letter by Jared K. Fletcher are also distinctive and add to the visual feast. It’s a pleasure to read and the full-page panels are always used as dramatic reveals.
Much like Vol 4, I found this volume to be a lot of fun to read and am now eagerly awaiting the next installment....more
Paper Girls Vol 4: Finally revealing the bigger picture This is the fourth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and we are finally given enough Paper Girls Vol 4: Finally revealing the bigger picture This is the fourth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and we are finally given enough glimpses of the larger plot to make sense of what’s happened until this point.
After being thrown into the distant past and battling cavemen and befriending fierce natives, the girls once again in their future (and our past), namely during Y2K before the millenium. There are all kinds of strange things happening, not least of which are giant robots duking it out like Transformers in the streets of quiet Stony Stream, but for some reason only one of the girls can see them.
We also get far more details on who the old-timers and young ones are, and why they are fighting a war across multiple timelines. What made little sense and was totally disorienting in the earlier volumes now becomes more clear in hindsight, and Vaughn is having fun peeling back the curtains a bit but also implying that the larger tapestry is vast and complex indeed, enough to justify a long and fascinating run. So that early teasing is finally starting to pay off.
We also get more encounters betweens the girls and their older selves, which is always a fun opportunity for introspective and surprise/dismay at how things turned out. There are also some interesting developments in the relationships among the girls, but the less said the better.
Finally, I found the action sequences involving the old-timers and young ones to be quite intense and dramatic. Vaughan has been careful to not reveal which sides are “good” or “bad”, as they both have their own agendas and rationales for fighting this multi-timeline conflict. The girls of course are caught in the middle and sometimes have to follow their gut instincts in who to believe and side with, which changes as the story progresses.
The artwork by Ted Chiang remains precise, clean and skillful, and the coloring by Matt Wilson and letter by Jared K. Fletcher are also distinctive and add to enjoyment of this story. It’s a pleasure to read and the full-page panels are always used as dramatic reveals.
I found this volume to be the most satisfying of the series so far, and feel like things are starting to pay off finally....more
Paper Girls, Vol. 3: Story Shifts to A New Direction Entirely Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
This is the third volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PapPaper Girls, Vol. 3: Story Shifts to A New Direction Entirely Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
This is the third volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and if you thought you were starting to get a handle on where the story was headed, think again…
[SPOILER TERRITORY AHEAD – DON’T READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ VOLUMES ONE AND TWO]
The four paper girls are reunited in a completely new place somewhere far off in the future or past, and run into a savage young women who looks vaguely native American except for the technojunk strung around her neck. She is a fierce warrior, but despite her youth is carrying a baby on her back, and thanks to an interpreting device the girls brought with them, they can communicate. In all three volumes, characters from different time periods speak unintelligible languages, enhanced by the creative lettering, and the future oldsters use an evolved form of English as you would imagine would happen over the centuries.
Then a new character from the future named Doctor Quanta Braunstein shows up in a fancy suit and cool hairstyle, while Tiffany and Erin start to bond with the primitive girl Wari and her baby Jahpo. It turns out that three men are after Wari for her baby, and somehow they all claim fatherhood. They look a bit like Uruk-Hai covered with mud, and they too have some technological flotsam to go with their stone axes. Anachronisms abound is this volume, as the theme of crossed time streams comes to the fore. These three cave-men run into and capture Doctor Braunstein, while the girls try to come up with a plan to get back to 1988.
Meanwhile, KJ and Mac spend some time having typical tween chats…in the distant prehistoric past. But when they encounter a weird futuristic construct and KJ touches it…she sees some disturbing things. Once again, Vaughn is very good at using varying panel sizes to build anticipation and delivery of the big reveals, just like in Saga.
The four girls finally reunite in the forest, and inevitably they encounter the three cave-men and the future woman being held prisoner. Lots more happens, and we learn a little about what is happening in the grander scheme of things, but it’s just tidbits of story breadcrumbs that Vaughan is doling out to keep us going. The story is interesting enough that I don’t mind, but this could potentially be a very long and involved series indeed.
In the final chapter of volume three, Doctor Braunstein and the girls discuss the merits of meddling with the ancient past, but then the three cave-men show up and force the issue. The episode ends with some climactic events likely to have major repercussions, and the girls are thrown into yet another time period with another unexpected and dramatic final image…TO BE CONTINUED....more
Paper Girls: If you thought things were weird before… Originally posted at Fantasy Literature This is the second volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper GirlPaper Girls: If you thought things were weird before… Originally posted at Fantasy Literature This is the second volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls, and takes up the story right where it left off in volume one. The four paper girls from 1988 have found themselves in 2016, but still in the sleepy suburb of Stony Stream. And they are about encounter more weirdness and sinister characters that the first volume…
Paper Girls has been likened to a female version of Stranger Things, and while they both center on a group of suburban kids growing up in the 1980s who start to encounter strange and occult happenings in their town and have to take things into their own hands, with copious 80s pop references, Paper Girls is a lot edgier and intense, which is just what you’d expect from the creator of Saga.
Once again, Vaughan spins off new plot elements and characters without letting either the reader or the characters know who are the good guys or the bad guys, so it makes you wonder if he really can pull it all together over time eventually, or if he’s just winging it along the way. Considering that there are folds to other dimensions and time travel in the story, pretty much anything can happen and he can back-engineer things to make some kind of sense. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, Volume Two focuses on Erin meeting her future self in 2016, which presents lots of fun moments for the girls to marvel over the advances in technology since 1988, and for 12-year old Erin to meet her older self and vice-versa. It isn’t all happy times – young Erin probably didn’t see herself as a small-town journalist, and older Erin is torn between feeling responsible for these young girls in her charge, and seeing their youth and enthusiasm that she has since lost. The whole situation is pretty stressful for the older Erin.
Still, as KJ has disappeared along with the mysterious cloaked time-travelers from the previous volume, the girls convince older Eric to help them track her down, using the mysterious device with the apple symbol. It directs them to the “First Folding” at the old Stony Gate Mall.
Meanwhile, a mysterious new character in a futuristic red suit shows up in a parking lot, and when they remove their helmet things get even more disorienting. It’s quite a WTF moment, and I happen to like those quite a lot, which is why I enjoy Vaughan’s stories so much. With hardly a pause to catch our breath, a giant creature shows up in the parking lot, which looks very alien but is actually of terrestrial origin and if you’ve watched the new version of Cosmos hosted by Neil De Grasse Tyson, you will recognize it. The new character is also heading for Stony Gate Mall, so we know they will all cross paths soon. Once again, we’re kept in the dark as to whether they are good or bad, though they claim to be on the girls’ side.
The new character saves Mac and Tiffany from a nasty creature, while the old and new Erin have some bittersweet conversations about life, before they discover a mysterious field hockey stick dangling from a patch of nothing with a cryptic note. Then the interloper (see, I’m trying extra hard not to spoil too much) starts to reveal a bunch of info to the girls and older Eric, but if anything its just enough to create more questions in their minds (and the readers’). When the interloper offers to take them all to a future sanctuary and gives them a glimpse, its very tempting indeed. Our protagonists make a gutsy decision on who to trust…
Then things get even more bizarre, as the Oldsters start to get involved with a giant airship, some pteradactyls, and even more crazy stuff that clearly belongs in the future. Older Eric calls in unexpected help, and more exciting mayhem ensues. There are some great larger panels here, and the artwork by Cliff Chiang and coloring by Matt Wilson are truly excellent.
Despite all the new plot details and fleshing out of the world Vaughan has created, you’ll likely feel like your head is spinning from all the possibilities, but if you are comfortable being kept in suspense, then this series remains intriguing and unexpected....more
Paper Girls: Four 80s Teens get Entangled in Serious Weirdness Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
If you are a fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s amazing SaPaper Girls: Four 80s Teens get Entangled in Serious Weirdness Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
If you are a fan of Brian K. Vaughan’s amazing Saga comic series, you are likely to want to check out some of his other series as well. In addition to writing many stories for Marvel and DC comics’s well-known franchises, he has also written a number of original series, including Y: The Last Man, Ex Machine, Runaways, and Paper Girls. For Paper Girls, I rally liked the cover artwork by Cliff Chiang, coloring by Matt Wilson, and lettering by Jared Fletcher.
Paper Girls has been likened to a female version of Stranger Things, and while there is some superficial resemblance as they both center around a group of suburban kids growing up in the 1980s who start to encounter strange and occult happenings in their town and have to take things into their own hands, with copious 80s pop references, Paper Girls goes into far weirder and most outlandish territory, and while things start out out on a small scale about four 12-year old girls doing a paper route in Cleveland, Ohio, things don’t stay that way for long.
During her early-morning paper delivery route, Erin Tieng is accosted by some bullying teen boys who are chased off by three other female paper girls, Mac, Tiffany, and KJ. Mac is a tough-talking, cigarette-smoking tomboy who doesn’t back down from anyone while Tiffany and KJ are a bit more typical kids. Erin is the new girl, but gets thrust into their group when they get jumped by some mysterious cloaked individuals and have their walkie-talkie stolen.
The early morning pre-dawn blue colors and artwork are done really well, as are the 80s period details of clothing, hairstyles, manner of speech, and pop-culture references. However, these girls are a bit more street-saavy than their male Stranger Things counterparts, and when they discover a mysterious device in an under-construction house, you know things are going to get weird. If you’d rather discover the rest for yourself, stop reading and get yourself a copy right now!
Anyway, the girls get transported to a different version of their sleepy suburb of Stony Streams, and run into the mysterious cloaked figures, who speak a mystery language depicted with alien-looking lettering. They acquire a tiny device with an apple symbol on it, try to figure out what is going on, and very soon we’ve got winged pteradactyls with futuristic armored riders with power lances, weird light formations in the sky, and then things get very chaotic.
The girls end up with the mysterious hooded characters, people get injured, and they end up on the run from some very bizarre alien constructs, and get conflicting details and snippets of information just enough to confuse and tantalize us. Again, it’s not clear what’s going on and where the story is going, but compared to all the stories out there that are painfully predictable, I found this refreshing.
Vaughan throws in a steady flood of new plot elements and characters without letting either the reader or the characters know who are the good guys or the bad guys, so if you like your stories crystal-clear from the outset you may find it frustrating. I myself enjoy the disorientation of a new stories where nothing is yet clear, so I don’t mind. If you trust the creators of the story, you’ll be willing to go along for the ride. Much like in Saga, he likes to have smaller panels lead to larger reveal panels that build anticipation in the story. It’s a good visual technique and gets you trained to look ahead to the next one, very Pavlovian!
Because the events of Volume 1 are still so preliminary and confusing, I read the first three volumes before even attempting to write a review, but I can honestly say that while I’ve got a more detailed view of the larger plot and more details, I remain in the dark about where this story is going, but it remains very entertaining....more
Kindred: A complex exploration of the slave/slaver relationship Originally published at Fantasy Literature Kindred (1979) is Octavia Butler’s earliest sKindred: A complex exploration of the slave/slaver relationship Originally published at Fantasy Literature Kindred (1979) is Octavia Butler’s earliest stand-alone novel, and though it features time travel, it’s not really SF or fantasy. It’s an exploration of American slavery and its painful legacy from the eyes of a contemporary (well, circa 1976) young black woman named Dana. So don’t expect to learn why she keeps being pulled back in time to a pre-Civil war slave plantation in Maryland every time her ancestor, a white slave owner named Rufus Weylin, finds his life in danger. It’s a plot device that allows the reader to experience all the horrors of being a powerless black female slave in 1815, while retaining a modern perspective. So this book is firmly in the tradition of Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), and more recently the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave (2013) in describing the impact of slavery and poverty that still leaves its marks on the American psyche today.
As the first prominent black woman SF author to emerge in the late 1970s, it’s not surprising that Butler would want to write a story concerned with the position of black women in both contemporary society and the past, and give it a SF framing device. The story of Kindred is deceptively simple, but Butler does not take the expected route of merely showing us the evils of slavery. Instead, she tackles a much more difficult subject, the strange and twisted relationship between white slave owners and their black slaves, one in which cruelty, oppression, and dehumanization are mixed with paternalism, religious condescension, and White Man’s Burden. The question she asks is straight-forward: what would a contemporary young black woman do when forced into a position of subjugation under an ignorant and vicious white slave owner and his young son, if that young man was her own distant ancestor?
Dana is a young black woman in Los Angeles, working low-paid temp jobs via an employment agency that she and others joking refer to as economic slavery. She aspires to be a writer, but has never found a way to make this dream a reality. At one of her jobs she meets another aspiring writer, Kevin, an older white man who she becomes friends with. Neither are living the American dream. Their families are not approving of their inter-racial relationship, and life is not easy, but they find comfort in each other and their common interests and eventually get married.
One day, on her 26th birthday, she feels dizzy and loses her senses. When she comes to, she sees a young white boy struggling to avoid drowning in a river. She wades in to save him, but is soon after confronted with an angry white woman, his mother, who assumes she is hurting him, and then confronted by a shotgun-wielding man, his father, who points his gun at her. At that point she is transported back to her LA apartment with Kevin. Neither understand what happened to her, and Kevin initially struggles to believe her, but he quickly adjusts to the situation after she is repeatedly transported back in time, always to a time when Rufus is in danger, though each time she goes back he is a little older, and the relatively short time spend in the past is much longer in the present. Knowing that it can happen without warning, Dana and Kevin prepare supplies to help her survive in the past. Interestingly, they make no attempt to describe the situation to anyone else, assuming they will be considered insane.
With this pattern established, the bulk of the story details Dana’s increasingly longer stays in antebellum Maryland. While Rufus’s father Tom is a vicious and ignorant man, regularly beating and intimidating his slaves to ‘keep them in their place’, young Rufus is initially just another little boy learning from his environment. He accepts the world around him – white men are at the top of the hierarchy, followed by white women, and then black men and women are essentially subhuman property (slaves) that are there to serve white people and should be beaten down at the slightest hint of resistance. Each time we meet Rufus, he is a little older and a little more like his father, yet retains some signs of decency in his strange relationship with Dana. Because Dana is clearly educated, despite being a black woman, both Rufus and his father Tom are unsure how to categorize her. Her intelligence and knowledge are intimidating, but when she talks back to them they react violently, either beating her or using psychological violence to suppress her.
Butler forces us to experience Dana’s situation, trapped as a slave but with full knowledge of the future, and shows unflinchingly just how deep-rooted the slave and slaver mentality is ingrained in whites and blacks alike. It’s a telling detail that religious ministers also find convenient passages in the Bible to justify the relationship of slave and master, something we also see in the film 12 Years a Slave. The other slaves on the plantation resent Dana, since she talks like an educated white person, and gets special treatment as Rufus’ tutor. Notably, Rufus is attracted to a strong-willed slave named Alice, whom he initially approaches peacefully, but when she rejects him he rapes her instead, blaming her for being difficult.
Over time, Rufus fathers several children with Alice, all against her will. Throughout this process, he continues to want Alice to like him and is continually frustrated by her refusal to accept his overtures. Rufus demands that Dana intercede on his behalf, but she is torn. She knows that one of their children will become her ancestor, so she cannot prevent her own future existence. Even when she desperately wants to kill Rufus for his casual cruelty to her and Alice, she always hesitates for that reason.
I’ll leave further plot details for readers to discover on their own, but the relationship between Alice, Rufus, Dana, and Kevin becomes every more complex, until events come to a violent and cathartic head. The entire story is emotionally-wrenching, since it is impossible not to imagine ourselves in Dana’s position, and yet that is truly unimaginable for any modern person. Or is it? Dana’s early life in LA, while not subject to arbitrary beatings, is little different from economic slavery. The disapproval of her relationship with Kevin by their families shows the persistent nature of racism even in the world of 1976.
But the central question, one that really bothered me throughout the story was why both Dana and Kevin slipped so quickly into the mindset of slavery in those dark times. Why does Dana continue to give Rufus the benefit of the doubt, always hoping he will be more kind and compassionate than his cruel father, only to be disappointed again and again? And why doesn’t Dana resist her slavery more aggressively, perhaps trying to arrange an underground railroad to free slaves like Harriet Tubman (something that Kevin alludes to). Instead, the powerlessness of her situation, the psychological oppression and fear of beatings wears down her will to fight, and she has the benefit of a modern upbringing. How much harder would it be for slaves raised from birth to question or fight back against oppression. There are many cases of blacks running away in the story, but they are constantly hunted down, brutally beaten, and sold off farther South. One of the cruelest methods the Weylins use to keep their slaves cowed is by deliberately selling off their children, whether fathered by Tom or Rufus or the black male slaves, just the way you’d sell livestock. By casually severing the bonds of parent and child, they crush all will to resistance. This was truly the most sickening aspect of slavery in the book, as if the beatings, rapes, and hardship were not enough.
Initially I found it difficult to accept the possibility that any contemporary woman could eventually fall into an uneasy relationship with a white slaver owner, even given the unique (and artificial) plot constraint of him being Dana’s distant ancestor. I’m sure we would all think we’d rather slit Rufus’ throat, run away, or even take our own lives rather than ‘sleep with the enemy’. But Butler doesn’t let us off the hook so easily. We could never know the real answer unless we were actually thrown back in time like Dana as a powerless black woman at the mercies of cruel and ignorant white masters. And yet Butler also depicts these men with fairness – they have moments of compassion once in a while, but they continually revert to the slaver mindset when pushed, and this is not hard to believe since that was the standard of the times.
It would take a truly strong willpower to resist all the accepted beliefs of the time to fight against slavery, and yet somehow that was accomplished when slavery was abolished after the Civil War. Sadly, though the institution officially disappeared, as in stories like The Color Purple, black poverty has continued to persist long after the Civil War ended. Even in Dana’s contemporary world, economic slavery remains, though it is not restricted to blacks. So although Kindred is not particularly uplifting, it does make the reader confront the slave/slaver relationship in all its complexities, and perhaps to understand it better in the end.
The audiobook was narrated by Kim Staunton, who has an extensive theatre, television and film-acting career, and graduated from the Julliard School. She has narrated a number of audiobooks that focus on the stories of African Americans, and does an excellent job on Kindred. It’s a delicate balancing act to handle the Southern accents of uneducated whites and blacks back in pre-Civil War Maryland without straying into stereotype territory, but I thought she was convincing. She also alternated this with the modern voices of Dana and Kevin, and I was really impressed with what she did with Kevin, as he started with a modern voice but after many years trapped in the past, his voice started to take on the speech patterns of the period. Very well done....more
Up the Line: Fornicating in ancient Byzantium – shameless time travel porn Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Robert Silverberg was clearly a big fUp the Line: Fornicating in ancient Byzantium – shameless time travel porn Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Robert Silverberg was clearly a big fan of sex back in the late 1960s, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. But in Up the Line, he absolutely revels in it. He doesn’t miss a chance for his (all male) characters to fornicate with women at every possible opportunity both in the future and the past, in dozens of exotic time periods in Byzantium, Constantinople, Rome, etc. The act may be as old as time, but that doesn’t stop Time Courier Judd Elliot from trying to bed his great-great-great grandmother Pulcharia with a lusty enthusiasm and complete disregard for all social taboos that have existed for millenia. Sure, it’s generally a serious no-no in society to screw your ancestors, but when she is as saucy a sex-kitten as Pulcharia, well who can blame Judd? At least that is the irreverent tone this book tries to achieve, billing its main character as the “Tom Jones of Time Travel”.
The plot of the story is quite intricate and promising. Time travel is discovered in the early 21st century, and quickly develops into a thriving tourist industry. Time Couriers take small guided tours to see the most momentous moments in history, including the Crucifixion, Sermon on the Mount, assassinations of JFK, Abraham Lincoln, Julius Cezar, famous ancient wars, etc. There is even an exclusive tour of the Black Death for those perverse types who revel in mass death (don’t worry, they’re inoculated against the plague).
So our intrepid hero Judd Elliot gets recruited into the business and initially goes along with a senior Time Courier to learn the trade. There are of course many rules that need to be followed. 1) Keep interactions with people of that time period to a minimum, to avoid altering history and thus the future. 2) Avoid the numerous other time travel tourists, since major historical scenes are extremely popular. 3) Do not impregnate any women or kill off anyone, since you might alter the flow of history. That includes committing retroactive suicide by knocking off your direct ancestor. 4) Be ultra careful to avoid creating multiple versions of yourself by carefully timing the shunts up and down the line of history.
Well, as you can imagine, every one of those rules gets violated (no pun intended) over and over, and the time paradoxes start to pile up as the story proceeds, with multiple versions of different characters crowding various time periods, sometimes recognizing each other and sometimes not. And one of the biggest problems the Time Service faces is rogue Couriers who decide to profit by stealing various artifacts and coins from the past and selling it to future collectors. Or trying to set yourself up as a Wall Street tycoon by cheating the markets. Or just making your own kingdom in the jungle like Colonel Kurtz.
So the Time Service has another branch of time travel cops called the Time Patrol. Their job is to hunt down rogue time travellers and retroactively fix all the mayhem caused and restore the “real time line” back to its original state. The key conceit in Silverberg’s book is that time lines can be repeatedly edited and “fixed” retroactively, so that you can go back in time and, for instance, kill your great grandfather, but you will not instantly disappear while you are back in the past. You may have erased your future self by altering the time line, but your physical time-traveling self remains. That means that history can be altered, such as going back and killing Hitler in the cradle, but the Time Patrol routinely goes up and down the line to monitor the flow of history, and since they are outside of time they retain memory of the “main time line” and if they find alterations they will relentlessly pursue the offender, go back in time, stop them from their meddling, and punish them in the future (including termination). This keeps the Time Patrol very busy.
I didn’t pretend to understand the ever-increasing number of time paradoxes and conundrums that Up the Line presented. My approach to time travel books is that time travel is impossible, so whatever mechanism the author makes up doesn’t matter as long as the story is convincing and entertaining. Silverberg carefully explains how it is that the Crucifixion can have literally thousands of time tourists attending, disguised in period attire, including the same Time Couriers bringing group after group, without overwhelming the actual people of the time or blowing their cover. It’s pretty implausible, but still a fun idea to imagine. How many of these tourists are in disguise watching the grassy knoll, in the theater with Lincoln, in the Coliseum cheering the gladiators, watching the battle of Gettysburg, etc?
This book could have been a lot of harmless fun if it weren’t for all the incessant sex. I’m not a prude by any means, but there is such a thing as too much! Every couple of pages Judd was getting horny and rarely if ever did he have trouble satisfying himself. The women in this book are eager to rip off their clothes, jump in bed, and pleasure the male characters for hours. Seriously? This goes beyond sexist to just plain ridiculous. I’m sure that Silverberg was having fun trying to push the boundaries of the newly-liberated times, but it feels very dated and embarrassing to read now.
Up the Line reminded me of the books of Piers Anthony back in junior high school (Xanth, Apprentice Adept, Incarnations of Immortality), and Robert Heinlein’s creepy tributes to mother-xxxxxxx, Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I blundered into those books as an innocent teen, and have regretted reading them ever since.
Robert Silverberg is a venerable SF grandmaster and I’ve been enjoying his best works from that period recently. Who would have thought he could deliver schlock like this? In a world where Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj are household names, where sex is just another commodity peddled by popular culture, I still felt disturbed by the shameless raunchiness of Up the Line. There are some passages that have to be exposed to the light of day to be believed, and this book was published in 1969! Here are some dreadful examples (there are worse, actually) which made me cringe:
She didn’t seem like my great-great-grandmother. She was lush, fertile, abundant. It was lust at first sight. I felt a familiar tickling in the scrotum. I longed to rip away her clothing and sink myself deep…
To ease my rage and anguish, I dropped down on my bed and rammed myself into her. She was a little startled, but began to cooperate once she realized what was up. I came in half a minute and left her to finished off by…
But there came a point where Silverberg simply crossed the line and decided that pedophilia is a legitimate subject matter for a humorous sci-fi romp, which made me want to throw up. I will quote it here but keep in mind I do NOT condone it in any way:
Just then, a sleepy and completely naked five-year old girl came out of one of the bedrooms. How sweet, I thought, that saucy little rump, how clean little girls always look when then they are naked, before puberty messes them up.
What more can you say? This ruined the whole book completely for me, and I returned it to Audible for a refund (promptly granted). Silverberg is a prolific and accomplished writer, but this may be one of his worst moments. Consider yourselves warned!...more
Two Distopias, Gibson Style: Dazzling Ideas, But Readers Have to Do the Heavy Lifting I haven't read any William Gibson since his Sprawl Trilogy (NeuroTwo Distopias, Gibson Style: Dazzling Ideas, But Readers Have to Do the Heavy Lifting I haven't read any William Gibson since his Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) in the 1980s and The Difference Engine (co-authored with Bruce Stirling) in 1990. Since then I've known about his Bridge Trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties) in the 1990s and Blue Ant Trilogy (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History) in the 2000s, but while curious I didn't bite. From others I heard that he was focusing more on the social impact of technology and media on contemporary or near future society, and I wasn't in the mood for that at the time.
A voracious reader friend of mine said I really should give The Peripheral (2014) a try as it's both a near future dystopia in the 2030s set after a series of environmental disasters, wars, and overall deterioration in global societies and economies as an extension of existing trends, and a further future in the 2070s where very little is left of conventional societies, with only very wealthy enclaves and competing corporations, nanotechnology, and quantum tunneling that allows data communication with the past, creating new quantum continuums, named 'stubs" that can be exploited for profit etc.
Frankly, I've always found Gibson's books difficult to enjoy, both the characters and plot-lines, due to his lean, clinical, and cerebral writing style that only provides glimpses and sketches of a much larger, very complex world and storyline. He wants his readers to work to connect the dots on their own, think through the implications of new technologies and trends, and piece things together. It's very much the "throw them off the deep-end" technique, so really isn't suited to casual reading. His characters are often considered difficult to connect with, but I did think the main characters here, Flynn, Burton, Conner, Wilf, Cherise, and Lowbeer, are all well-developed and interesting.
The only problem is that I now only have the time & energy for audiobooks, and trying to keep track of events that was is a lot harder than print books. So it was only after I saw and enjoyed Amazon's drama series of The Peripheral that I decided to give this audiobook another chance. And the plot is still so complex that I had to read the Wiki entry to have any chance of keeping things straight. Is that the sign of a successful book when the reader needs a crib sheet and drama just to get a grip on it? Not sure, but the story and future extrapolation were certainly worthy of the drama treatment, even if many people will admit they could hardly understand what's happening~...more
Bring the Jubilee: A brilliant alternative history where the South prevailed Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Bring the Jubilee is a fairly obscuBring the Jubilee: A brilliant alternative history where the South prevailed Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Bring the Jubilee is a fairly obscure alternate-history story published in 1953 in which the South won the "War for Southron Independence". In this world, Robert E. Lee succeeds Jefferson Davis as the second president of the Confederacy in 1865. The Confederacy steadily expands its empire through Mexico and South America. Its chief rival is the German Union, which splits control of Europe with the Spanish Empire. In response, the Confederacy has allied with Great Britain, creating two opposing empires that straddle the Atlantic.
Strangely enough, slavery was abolished but minorities continue to face persecution, and poverty is rampant in the United States, the former Union states of the North. Other than a rich landowner minority, most people are indentured to their owners, effectively a form or slavery. In addition, the combustible engine, light bulb, and aircraft were never invented, instead they have steam-powered minibiles (the equivalent of cars) and dirigibles, so horses or trains are still regularly used for transportation. The telephone was also not invented, so the telegraph is the main means of communication.
The main character is a directionless youth named Hodge Backmaker who leaves his impoverished life in the countryside of Wappinger Falls, Pennsylvania to move to New York, one of the few cities in the North to still thrive in a North America dominated by the Southron Confederate States. He comes to NY eager to get into a university, only to immediately be robbed of his possessions. Though great luck he manages to find work at a bookshop, reading almost constantly to educate himself. He develops a close relationship with the proprietor, who turns out to be in league with the Grand Army, a subversive organization devoted to restoring the United States to its former greatness.
The story then takes a sudden turn, as Hodges decides to leave NY and join a small progressive intellectual co-op in rural Pennsylvania. He pursues his dream of becoming a historian dedicated to studying the war between the North and South, gets involved in a love triangle, and then encounters a device that could help him very directly in his research, with totally unexpected consequences…
The story is extremely well-written, informed by the initially ignorant but intellectually-hungry mind of Hodge. His desire to pursue pure knowledge for its own sake in a poor, downtrodden North that has been left to decay after losing the war, and where blacks, Asians, Jews and other races are treated cruelly and with contempt, is not what you would expect of an alternate history tale centered around the Civil War.
I wouldn't even have known about this book if it weren't featured in David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels and I'm glad I read it. It presents so many brilliant little details of his alternate world, but the main story revolves around the life and thoughts of the main character, so that I often felt prevented from seeing the bigger picture of his alternate world, and despite the depth of characterization, this book could have been longer and more complex, taking more time to explore his concept, and most likely have made a greater impact in the SF field. If he was writing today, I think it would have been just the first book in a long and successful series. As it is, it's a "minor" classic that few people have read, and I’d like to change that. ...more
Sprawling Story of Everyday English Heroism During WWII, And More Time-Travel Hijinx
I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about Britain’s experieSprawling Story of Everyday English Heroism During WWII, And More Time-Travel Hijinx
I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about Britain’s experience of WWII, from the iconic leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, the heroics of the RAF, the fleet of civilian ships involved in evacuating 338,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo), the Blitz of London by the Luftwaffe, and so forth.
In particular, these three books were excellent reading: The Garden of the Beasts (about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s told by the American diplomat to Berlin) and The Splendid and the Vile (about Winston Churchill’s wartime leadership and the courage of everyday Brits during the London Blitz and WWII) and by Erik Larson, as well as one of Churchill’s best-regarded biographies, Churchill: A Life Part 1 & 2 by Martin Gilbert (there are over 60 in total, about 26 during his lifetime, and another 36+ after his death, so you have to be selective).
I’ve also watched films like The Darkest Hour (where Gary Oldman masterfully plays Churchill), and Netflix drama The Crown (where American John Lithgow does very well I thought). Also, since joining the National Trust in the UK, I’ve been able to visit Churchill’s country manor in Kent, Chartwell, and been to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth (haven’t been to the Churchill War Rooms yet). I also went to Dover Castle (run by English Heritage) and learned more about Operation Dynamo. You could spend a lifetime learning about every aspect of that global conflagration, from every countries’ perspective, but there’s only so much time in life.
So I came in with high expectations for Connie Willis’ deeply researched and massive two-part novel Blackout/All Clear, which clocks in at over 1,100 pages in print and won the 2010 Nebula, 2011 Locus, and 2011 Hugo Awards for best SF novel.
It’s another installment in Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series, which are stand-alone novels that feature teams of Oxford University temporal historians using time travel to go back and observe major historical events while aiming to prevent creating any incongruities (time paradoxes) by altering events due to their presence or actions. If you’ve read my prior reviews of those two books, you’ll know I took exception to both the narrative plot structures (endless missed phone calls, drop points, missed meetings, coincidental close calls, etc) and her conceit that the space-time continuum itself will actively resist and prevent time travelers from altering events. If you can violate fundamental physical laws by having time travel in the first place, then I don’t buy the idea that the past would “actively resist” alteration. And as it was fundamental to the plot, it really is a deal-breaker if you don’t buy into that.
Also, how could a technology so powerful be dominated by academic institutions (if they even still exist in 2050) rather than the giant multinationals or oligarchs or totalitarian regimes that already dominate today and whose influence continues to grow with each passing year. Having just read William Gibson's The Peripheral before this and Doomsday Book (my what a contrast), that scenario is vastly more plausible, unpalatable as it may be.
In the end, this was another 5-star story dragged down but the sheer weight of exasperating, time-wasting missed connections, fruitless searches, and endless anguished deliberations of why a drop-point could not be accessed etc. Since that is fundamental aspect of all the books in this series, if it rubs you the wrong way you’ll struggle to enjoy the otherwise wonderfully researched depiction of 1940s wartime England. The characters themselves are well developed and earned my emotional engagement early on, absolutely loved their stories, especially the everyday heroism and refusal to be cowed even in the darkest hours of the Blitz.
As Connie Willis has stated, “What are Blackout and All Clear about? They're about Dunkirk and ration books and D-Day and V-1 rockets, about tube shelters and Bletchley Park and gas masks and stirrup pumps and Christmas pantomimes and cows and crossword puzzles and the deception campaign. And mostly the book's about all the people who "did their bit" to save the world from Hitler—Shakespearean actors and ambulance drivers and vicars and landladies and nurses and WRENs and RAF pilots and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Agatha Christie—heroes all.”
In summation, like all the Oxford Time Travel series, I felt that the wonderful historical details and vivid characters were suffocated by Willis’ exasperating plot devices and miscommunications, and I cannot sustain disbelief in the idea that a reality-bending technology like time travel could be solely used by academic institutions. If you can get on board with that, you’ll have a great reading experience. I just wish I could do my own reality-altering time travel and do some extreme editing of all the books to cut out the faff and keep just the core stories, but I’m guessing the space-time continuum would fight back!...more
Sprawling Story of Everyday English Heroism During WWII, And More Time-Travel Hijinx
I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about Britain’s experieSprawling Story of Everyday English Heroism During WWII, And More Time-Travel Hijinx
I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about Britain’s experience of WWII, from the iconic leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, the heroics of the RAF, the fleet of civilian ships involved in evacuating 338,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo), the Blitz of London by the Luftwaffe, and so forth.
In particular, these three books were excellent reading: The Garden of the Beasts (about the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s told by the American diplomat to Berlin) and The Splendid and the Vile (about Winston Churchill’s wartime leadership and the courage of everyday Brits during the London Blitz and WWII) and by Erik Larson, as well as one of Churchill’s best-regarded biographies, Churchill: A Life Part 1 & 2 by Martin Gilbert (there are over 60 in total, about 26 during his lifetime, and another 36+ after his death, so you have to be selective).
I’ve also watched films like The Darkest Hour (where Gary Oldman masterfully plays Churchill), and Netflix drama The Crown (where American John Lithgow does very well I thought). Also, since joining the National Trust in the UK, I’ve been able to visit Churchill’s country manor in Kent, Chartwell, and been to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth (haven’t been to the Churchill War Rooms yet). I also went to Dover Castle (run by English Heritage) and learned more about Operation Dynamo. You could spend a lifetime learning about every aspect of that global conflagration, from every countries’ perspective, but there’s only so much time in life.
So I came in with high expectations for Connie Willis’ deeply researched and massive two-part novel Blackout/All Clear, which clocks in at over 1,100 pages in print and won the 2010 Nebula, 2011 Locus, and 2011 Hugo Awards for best SF novel.
It’s another installment in Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series, which are stand-alone novels that feature teams of Oxford University temporal historians using time travel to go back and observe major historical events while aiming to prevent creating any incongruities (time paradoxes) by altering events due to their presence or actions. If you’ve read my prior reviews of those two books, you’ll know I took exception to both the narrative plot structures (endless missed phone calls, drop points, missed meetings, coincidental close calls, etc) and her conceit that the space-time continuum itself will actively resist and prevent time travelers from altering events. If you can violate fundamental physical laws by having time travel in the first place, then I don’t buy the idea that the past would “actively resist” alteration. And as it was fundamental to the plot, it really is a deal-breaker if you don’t buy into that.
Also, how could a technology so powerful be dominated by academic institutions (if they even still exist in 2050) rather than the giant multinationals or oligarchs or totalitarian regimes that already dominate today and whose influence continues to grow with each passing year. Having just read William Gibson's The Peripheral before this and Doomsday Book (my what a contrast), that scenario is vastly more plausible, unpalatable as it may be. In the end, this was another 5-star story dragged down but the sheer weight of exasperating, time-wasting missed connections, fruitless searches, and endless anguished deliberations of why a drop-point could not be accessed etc. Since that is fundamental aspect of all the books in this series, if it rubs you the wrong way you’ll struggle to enjoy the otherwise wonderfully researched depiction of 1940s wartime England. The characters themselves are well developed and earned my emotional engagement early on, absolutely loved their stories, especially the everyday heroism and refusal to be cowed even in the darkest hours of the Blitz.
As Connie Willis has stated, “What are Blackout and All Clear about? They're about Dunkirk and ration books and D-Day and V-1 rockets, about tube shelters and Bletchley Park and gas masks and stirrup pumps and Christmas pantomimes and cows and crossword puzzles and the deception campaign. And mostly the book's about all the people who "did their bit" to save the world from Hitler—Shakespearean actors and ambulance drivers and vicars and landladies and nurses and WRENs and RAF pilots and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Agatha Christie—heroes all.”
In summation, like all the Oxford Time Travel series, I felt that the wonderful historical details and vivid characters were suffocated by Willis’ exasperating plot devices and miscommunications, and I cannot sustain disbelief in the idea that a reality-bending technology like time travel could be solely used by academic institutions. If you can get on board with that, you’ll have a great reading experience. I just wish I could do my own reality-altering time travel and do some extreme editing of all the books to cut out the faff and keep just the core stories, but I’m guessing the space-time continuum would fight back!...more
11/22/63: Time Travel, Romance, and Suspense in the Camelot Years Stephen King is far more than a horror writer, and this foray into time travel to go 11/22/63: Time Travel, Romance, and Suspense in the Camelot Years Stephen King is far more than a horror writer, and this foray into time travel to go back to 1958 and wait around to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK in Dallas on 11/22/63 is a really great concept, as it gives King a chance to explore the romance and rose-colored glasses that Baby Boomers invariably don when then think back to "what if?" JFK had lived, and whether Vietnam and the race riots would not have happened. If America would have been a better place led by the charismatic JFK. The answer, without giving anything away, is "it's not that simple, of course".
Despite the considerable length of the book (850 pages), I found it compulsively listenable, much moreso than the overrated The Stand, but with much more sympathetic characters than the nasty ones in Under the Dome. The key is the protagonist Jake Epping, an everyman who finds himself with the opportunity to change a pivotal moment in US and world history, an enticing concept that has been explored many times before, but King puts several unique conditions on his time travel conceit, namely that he is transported back to the same moment in 1958, but the most important factor is the blurb on the book "when you try to change the past, the past fights back". That's a new one, and provides a reason why he can't just go back, find Oswald, plug him in the head, and be done with it. In fact, the past kicks up every possible obstacle to prevent significant deviations, which is definitely a clever twist, even though it seems implausible. Perhaps the time stream is resistant to change, but would it actively create obstacles to get in your way of making changes? How would it know or anticipate you trying to change things? Surely it's not sentient?
In any case, the bulk of the middle section of the book involves Jake settling down in the small Texas town of Jodie, and going back to high school teaching English as he did in 2011, and meeting a pretty librarian named Sadie. Their romance was surprisingly sweet, filled with a lot of nostalgia for a less complicated life in small town America, but with its own dark places, such as domestic violence and racism.
Then the story picks back up as Jack arranges to spy on Oswald, watches as he beats his Russian wife regularly, and struggles to reconcile his admiration for Communism for his failure in capitalist America. The ugly side of the American dream is on full display here to counterbalance the nostalgia for a "better" time. And the tension builds steadily over the final few hundred pages as Jake prepares to stop Oswald and be certain he is Lone Gunman, with the hopes that JFK will create a better world.
He does find the answer to this, as will the reader, but I'll leave that for you to discover if you haven't already....more
Moving Historical Story (5 stars) Ruined by Absurd Future Plot (1 star) I knew this book has both its fans and detractors, but as my interest in the BrMoving Historical Story (5 stars) Ruined by Absurd Future Plot (1 star) I knew this book has both its fans and detractors, but as my interest in the British Middle Ages has been rekindled, and it’s a Hugo & Nebula winner by well-loved SF author Connie Willis, I thought it was about time to give it a go. As it turns out, both the fans and detractors are right.
There are two very separate stories that make us this chunky 600-page book, one great and the other pretty awful (spoilers galore ahead, but this book is now 30 years old - you’ve been warned).
This breaks down to about 300 excellent pages covering the moving and tragic story of Oxford historian Kirvan traveling back to 14th England on the eve of the Black Death. She finds herself deeply entwined in the everyday life of a small village caught up in the most cruel of plagues, striking down people of every social standing without distinction. This was a tour-de-force tale told with impeccable period details, characters we come to know and care about, and an impending doom that challenges their deeply-embedded faith in God as a merciful being.
Meanwhile, there is a 200-page parallel story set in mid-21st century Oxford, where the historical dept faculty battle over whether it’s safe or not to send historians further back to the Middle Ages. A modern and highly-virulent influenza breaks out in the midst of this, and scrambles Kivran’s drop coordinates in the past to right on the cusp of the bubonic plague breaking out. Basically time travel machines that can be calibrated fairly precisely have been invented, but for some reason mobile phones have not, and instead they only have fixed-line video phones! That’s right, time-travel but no mobile phones, and this book was published in 1992, when the Motorola MicroTac and Nokia GSM (2G) already existed. Has there even been a more laughable failure of extrapolation in the history of the genre???
I know that Connie Willis has a healthy sense of humor and likes to put her characters in awkward or exasperating situations, but frankly this was so absurd that it makes a mockery of the whole idea of “speculative fiction”. Either Willis just didn’t care about that aspect, or must have had a serious fixation with missed calls, connections, and being tied down waiting for calls in her own life, as the at least 100 pages of this book were utterly wasted on tedious shenanigans involving just that as the fundamental plot device driving the “dramatic tension” of the story as the 21st century historians struggle to get the right coordinates to go back and save Kivran….
Also, the core conceit of time travel as imagined by Willie is that the time-space continuum itself (as some type of natural, immutable law) will prevent any time travel likely to alter it. Just think about that for a second - sure, it conveniently circumvents the usual time paradoxes of going back and altering history (which is usually the fun bit of time travel). But it just stretches the already tenuous plausibility of time-travel beyond the breaking point. The fact that these time machines that can be calibrated (with lots of knobs, dials, and flashing lights no doubt) to very precise drop points and years, but cannot get past the resistance of the time-space continuum, seems ridiculous. If you can violate such natural laws by having time travel in the first place, then I don’t buy the idea that the past resists alteration. And as it was fundamental to the plot, it really kills a lot of my respect for the story.
Here’s my suggestion to make this a 5-star book. Just completely jettison the modern-day plot, other than to send Kivran back in time to the 14th century, and then leave her there, to her own devices, until the tragic denouement. That would have been a perfect story, without any of the silly nonsense of the “missed connections” that drag on interminably in the future segment....more
Whimsical Victorian Comedy of Errors & Time-Travel Story - Just not my Cuppa Here’s a very different follow-up to the very serious tone of Doomsday BooWhimsical Victorian Comedy of Errors & Time-Travel Story - Just not my Cuppa Here’s a very different follow-up to the very serious tone of Doomsday Book, the first book in the loosely-tied Oxford Time Travel series. The former book was dual narrative set in 14th England during the Black Death and 21st century Oxford University. I thought the main narrative set during the 14th century was a brilliant and moving and tragic story, perfectly realized with impeccable period details, but the modern portion was incredibly annoying and repetitive and tedious.
This one’s a completely different kettle of fish. I first tried to listen to it in audiobook about 10 years ago back in Tokyo, but had to give up as it’s gentle comedic play on Victorian foibles mixed with time-travel shenanigans just didn’t work for me.
Then I moved to the UK six years ago, and have since learned so much about British history, culture, literature, and so forth. In fact, I’ve become quite engrossed (obsessed?) with exploring all aspects of early British history (Ancient Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, etc), the Middle Ages, the Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart dynasties, the British Empire, Napoleonic Wars, Industrial Revolution, and its part in WWI and WWII.
So I thought it was high time for me to give it another go, as I was a lot more likely to enjoy it this time round. However, I’m afraid to report that this particular novel’s story and approach just aren’t my cuppa, as they say. I can certainly appreciate why the book may be among many SFF fans top lists (as I can see by the reviews of some of my favourite GR friends), but sometimes things just don’t click. It’s like your friend introduces you to someone who shares so many interests and says you’re guaranteed to get on like a two peas in a pod, and it just falls flat.
I think it comes down to me not being able to accept Willis’ time-travel concept. How could a technology so powerful be dominated by academic institutions (if they even still exist in 2050) rather than the giant multinationals or oligarchs or totalitarian regimes that already dominate today and whose influence continues to grow with each passing year. Having just read William Gibson's The Peripheral before this and Doomsday Book (my what a contrast), that scenario is vastly more plausible, unpalatable as it may be.
In this book, time travel is being used for the personal obsession of rebuilding Coventry Cathedral (thought I love the name Lady Shrapnell), and all the shenanigans of the two junior temporal historians trying to sort out the mess that a dog (and cat) create in the space-time continuum, and the Victorian love story, just felt a bit too frivolous for me. One of the reviewers noted that you would appreciate this book most if you liked topics such as “Shakespeare to Tennyson, G K Chesterton to P G Wodehouse, Victorian morals and artistic expressions, boating on the Thames or the raid that destroyed the Coventry Cathedral in World War II, Lord Peter Whimsey or Hercule Poirot.” That explains it, as I’ve never read most of those well-known authors, so the only topic of interest to me was the bombing of Coventry in WWII.
Having said that, it’s clear that the next installments of the Oxford Time Travel series, Blackout/All Clear, are much more likely to be in my wheelhouse, so I will forge ahead....more
A philosophical but whimsical time-travel fantasy about a far-future sterile utopia dedicated to the Greek Goddess I don't know very much about all ofA philosophical but whimsical time-travel fantasy about a far-future sterile utopia dedicated to the Greek Goddess I don't know very much about all of Robert Graves more substantial works such as The White Goddess, I Claudius, The Golden Fleece, etc. (other than a quick glance on Wikipedia) or his personal and academic life. I just know he was obsessed with this White Goddess concept. I wouldn't have known about this now obscure book published in 1949 at all either if it weren't featured in David Pringle's Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels: in English Language Selection, 1946-1987. And I only got around to it as I found an audiobook version.
It's a very unusual and somewhat droll story of a British poet who is transported many centuries into the future to a strange utopia on New Crete dedicated to going back to a pre-industrial lifestyle and pre-Christian worship of a White Goddess inspired by the Greeks. It's more of a thought experiment than a plausible bit of extrapolation, and unlike his more serious academic works, it pokes a lot of fun at the sterile and absurd practices of this dull future utopia with its slavish and unquestioning observation of elaborate social rituals, while at the same time highlighting all of the terrible social problems of the present world (from the perspective of a British academic and poet post-WWII of course) and how they have all been solved in the utopia, but at a very high price indeed.
This society has banished evil in all its forms, but also lacks any real intellectual freedoms or passions as well, very much in the classic mold of dystopian tales like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Evgeny Zamyatin's We. So it's his purpose to bring back conflict, iconoclasm, jealousy and passion to this stuffy utopia, apparently at the Goddess' will, though it is she that New Crete is dedicated to. I quite enjoyed all the observations he made, and also though his own very upper-middleclass British snobbery was also exposed to some ridicule, so the book is very meta in that sense. It's not really a story in the conventional sense with a plot or narrative, but it always kept my interest throughout....more
Replay: Imagine reliving your prime years over and over Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Replay is a story that every reader can empathize with. Replay: Imagine reliving your prime years over and over Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Replay is a story that every reader can empathize with. Who wouldn’t want to relive their best years over again, with all their memories intact? Fixing all the mistakes, seizing all the missed opportunities. It’s an irresistible thought, a fantasy of “what ifs”. Replay predates Groundhog Day (1993) by 7 years, and explore the concept in far more depth, taking it to the extreme to examine what gives our lives meaning. It’s a very appealing story, and delivers some powerful moments in the latter half.
Replay is about 43-year old Jeff Winston, who dies of a heart attack and finds himself back as an 18 year old student at Emory University with all his memories intact, reliving this 25 year period over and over. This could easily be simple wish-fulfillment fantasy, and it starts out that way, as Jeff pursues wealth, women, and success using his knowledge of the future. But as the story progresses, Jeff realizes that no matter how he relives his life, making improvements and avoiding past mistakes, he cannot escape that fatal heart attack, and is mercilessly sent back to his past again and again.
The pacing of the story is well-handled, as Jeff goes through numerous iterations of his prime years, each time with his previous memories intact, always taking a different approach and focus to his life. Initially he pursues the most sexually-appealing women his wealth can attract, but later he begins a new family, courts his first wife again, approaches his college sweetheart, and finally he meets a woman named Patricia who is also going through the same replay cycle. Their relationship is explored in great detail, as the only two people who understand what it’s like to live their lives over and over again. They think they have found a way to make this strange existence worthwhile, until they discover that the replay cycles are getting shorter at a accelerating pace…
The choices that Jeff makes are understandable, as he faces the double-edged sword of immortality but continually having to restart from scratch. Sometimes he reacts negatively and descends into hedonism and drugs. In other cases he tries to do good for society. The most chilling episode involves when he and Patricia try to locate other “replayers” and encounter a monster.
I did find the story quite sexist for the first half, as almost all the women are sexual conquests for Jeff, and only Patricia takes on equal status in the latter part of the story. In the early going, Jeff is fairly callow and seeks only to pursue his own pleasure. I didn’t like the suggestion that Grimwood thinks any guy given this opportunity would focus so intently on pursuing women. Perhaps he means that we always seek out companionship in life. In either case, after many iterations Jeff matures, much the way we all gain perspective over time without the benefit of reliving the past. The period details of the conservative early 1960s, tumultuous late 1960s, troubled 1970s, and materialistic 1980s are nicely described. It would be interesting to see how this story might be written now, shifting the start-point to the 1990s and ending today, for instance.
In the end, it’s a thoughtful fable that encourages the reader to imagine how they might behave in Jeff’s position. While the details would obviously differ, I think most would likely progress from from basic wish fulfillment to more meaningful goals. The narrator of the audiobook is veteran William Dufris, who does an excellent job. Replay was Grimwood’s best-known novel, winning the 1988 World Fantasy Award and being chosen for David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels....more
A Sinister, Complex Portrait of Occultism, Architecture, Murder, Rationalism, and the Endless Permutations of Human Behavior Linking Past and Present TA Sinister, Complex Portrait of Occultism, Architecture, Murder, Rationalism, and the Endless Permutations of Human Behavior Linking Past and Present This book is far too challenging, complex, and well-executed for me to butcher with a brief and clumsy review. Rather, I recommend that you pick it and give it a careful read. You will learn a great deal about 18th century London and the building of grand churches by Christopher Wren and his assistant Nicholas Dyer, Satanism and a rich melange of occultism from so many sources as to to make the head spin, the squalor of the city and its denizens, living and dying in the shadows. The struggle between rationalism and irrationality (which parallels the urges to do good vs evil). The story is paralleled with a 20th century detective story of murders of young boys at the same churches designed by Nicholas Dyer after the Great Fire of London by a Nicholas Hawksmoor, though in reality that was the actual name of Christopher Wren's protege. Things get very intertwined in a postmodernist puzzle (though the author eschews this term, preferring to call the combining of past and present narratives as "transitional writing"), with a macabre and pessimistic tone about humanity throughout.
It won't be to all tastes, but the 18th century writing style is perfectly realized, and it will not soon be forgotten....more
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