Archive for the ‘literature’ Category

« Older Entries

Rapid Fire Book Reviews

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I have a few book reviews on the back burner, but I realized that I don’t really feel like posting a full article on each of them. So I’m going to roll them into a single post like I did once before. I’m posting these book reviews here for several reasons:

  1. I love to read, and this blog is basically about thins I love so it would be silly not to include it
  2. I’m always looking for good book recommendations, and every time I post a book review I get “if you liked this, you should check out that” type of responses in the comments which makes me happy
  3. I know some of you folks don’t read fiction on a principle, but I keep hoping that if I expose you to these good (or bad) SF titles you might be tempted to pick one up at some point

So yeah. Those are my reasons. Now, on to the reviews.

Reality Dysfunction Part 2: Expansion

If you have been following this blog for some time, you might remember my rather positive review of the first part of the book. It was not the greatest piece of literature I have read, but it was somewhat original and interesting. Alphast warned me that it does not get any better than that, and he was right. Hamilton has some good ideas and opens up some very interesting plot lines but he often fails to capitalize on them. It almost seems that his universe would actually be more interesting without the possessed who are overpowered to the point of being boring.

For example, I really enjoyed the idea of a colonist group on a maiden world being subverted from within by a former cultist serving his “jail” term as a forced laborer. Quinn Dexter was over the top evil, but the idea was quite good – this clash between group of idealist searching for a better life and cynical, hardened criminals who were nevertheless ensnared by charismatic demagogue. Of course shit hits the fan, possessed appear and the planet becomes some kind of dream-like realm full of phantasmagorical beasts, buildings that don’t exist and armies of mounted bulletproof knights who can shoot energy beams out of their eyes.

Joshua Calvert graduates from an endearing underdog to a walking paragon of perfection. It is really hard to root for a guy who can’t do no wrong, gets the girl every time and is exceedingly cocky about it too. Most of the characters are flat, one dimensional and stereotypical like that. Calvert couldn’t be more awesome if he tried, while Dexter is so fucked up and evil, that even the souls of legendary psychopathic murderers, villains and baby killers of previous centuries are scared and repulsed by him. The plot develops at a glacial pace. Which is actually quite an accomplishment considering Hamiltons fast paced narrative. I noticed for example that he very much likes to go on tangents and introduce new characters which he will then follow for for 20 or so pages, describing their experiences in painstaking detail only to have them die or be possessed at the end never to be heard from again. Then he turns around and glosses over crucial plot points – such as a visit to the alien village. What should have been a major development becomes just one of the few stops during a crazy escape sequence, with hordes of angry enemies chasing the heroes.

There are two more books left in this series, but I actually didn’t even bother picking any of them up.

Divine Invasion

Divine Invasion is technically the second book in the theologically themed trilogy of Philip K Dick, that starts with VALIS. It is not a sequel or continuation however. It does not even take place in the same universe for that matter. It is by far the most Science Fiction themed of the three books. Unlike the other two it includes space travel, powerful AI, paranoid totalitarian nation states and etc. Of course it also contains Yah – a god (or the God, depending on how you look at it) who was banished from Earth, but tries to reclaim it by being born as a human child. Sadly, the child suffers severe brain damage, and forgets his true nature until he meets a mysterious girl that helps him to remember. Of course all of this might actually be a bad hallucination experienced by a guy who is sleeping in a cryogenic fugue waiting for a spleen replacement. Dick dives into mystical gnosticism, muses about the nature of divinity and faith itself and never really bothers telling readers what is real and what is imagined or hallucinated. It’s trippy, thought provoking and awesome. You should read it.

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

This is the third book in the series started by VALIS but just like the previous two it stands alone, sharing no characters or plot elements with the other two. In fact, the book is not even Science Ficton. If you go to a book store, you will of course find it in the SF section among other Philip K. Dick books but it is not really where it belongs, because it contains exactly zero fictional elements. It is a story about life, death, coping with loss and about irrationality in face of a tragedy. It follows Angel Archer, a young woman who is a friend to a popular, Episcopalian bishop, and a wife to his son. When her husband commits suicide it puts both the bishop and his mistress on a downward spiral that eventually leads to their deaths. A fate that Angel sees coming but is powerless to stop. It’s a story about guilt, religious zeal, faith, fate and insanity. It is the examination of the thin line that divides rationality from pathological irrationality, and how easy it is to cross it.

It is the most coherent, down to earth and possibly the best written out of the three books. The plot unravels slowly, and the story is contemplative and philosophical. It will not blow your mind the way VALIS and Divine Invasion did. It does not feature shocking plot twists or crazy revelations. It’s just a damn good book.

Titan

I picked up Titan by John Varley along side Reality Dysfunction and Startide Rising because it was in the same batch of reviews I have read. It starts of as hard SF but quickly devolves into almost a Fantasy story as the group of astronauts explores gigantic alien made habitat that is orbiting Jupiter. This artificial satellite turns out to be inhabited by many intelligent races such as friendly centaurs and aggressive winged “angels” that seem to be at war with each other for reasons neither side seems to understand. Neither of these races seems to posses the technology required to build the structure or even maintain it – though most seem to worship or at least venerate some sort of mysterious god-like entity that seems to at the hub of the station. Since the astronauts crash landed on the station losing their ship, contacting this entity or at least reaching the control center of the station may be the only hope for their rescue.

It is a decent read, with some pretty good ideas. Varley is pretty good at describing his wacky alien world an its inhabitants, though the friendly singing centaurs with two sets of genitals were a bit jarring. The ending is a bit underwhelming too. The author spends a lot of time building up to this final reveal, which turns out to be a classic wizard of Oz scenario. Then everyone sits down, drinks some tea and listens to plot exposition that explains how the habitat really works.

Titan is for the most part a decent SF/Fantasy adventure novel. It is not ground breaking or mind shattering in any way. But it is a decent read. I think I enjoyed it a bit more than Reality Dysfunction sequel. Unlike Hamilton, Varley does try to give his character some psychological depth and make them quirky, conflicted and interesting. Supposedly the saga gets better in the later books, as he describes even weirder sections of the alien habitat and its effects on the newly arrived human inhabitants. I might pick up the next volume at some point just to see if he goes anywhere with the ideas he established in the first one.

As usual, book recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Tags: , ,
Posted in literature, review | 5 Comments »

Only Revolutions

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I bought Danielewski’s new book because I loved House of Leaves. It was a weird, scary and visually interesting novel. It’s unique presentation and original storytelling tricks were very compelling. It is no surprise then that I sought out other work by the same author. Online reviews of Danielweski’s other quirky book Only Revolutions, promised the readers an experience just as strange and original. They did not lie.

The book is definitely something else. It really an amazing piece of work with respect to all the work that went into layout, editing, typesetting and binding. Most writers do not concern themselves with the presentation of their book – they leave that up to the publisher. Danielewski however treats these elements as devices that can help him to convey the story. Just like in House of Leaves it features pages with notes on the margins, differently sized fonts, use of color to emphasize key words or letters and masterful use of white space.

What is more interesting is that the book has front or back. You can start reading it from either side. Each page is divided in half and has text printed both right side up and upside down. It effectively tells two stories – each from the perspective of a different character. They start from opposite ends of the book and converge in the middle. The author recommends alternating between these stories 8 pages at a time for best effect. The copy I have includes two color coded bookmark ribbons that allow you to mark your place when you are flipping the book around. It’s visually stunning.

But…

Yes, there is a “but”. As much as I am impressed by the way the book looks, I just… I… I just don’t get it.

I tried to read it. I tried really hard. I really did. I sat there for hours, flipping the book upside down and right side up, reading page after page only to realize I had no clue what the hell was going on. And no, it was not the eerie WTF feeling that you experience while reading House of Leaves. I was not confused about mysterious elements of the plot, or strange storytelling twists. I was just hopelessly confused as to what I actually read. Reading Only Revolutions was like reading some of those auto generated spam messages that are designed to look like English sentences in order too fool the filters, but ultimately make no sense. I was reading words, which were masterfully strung together with alternating rhymes, clusters of colorful alterations and an impeccable rhythm, but they made no sense. The sentences just seemed random, scattered and incoherent. Let me show you:

Translate into English Please

This is not just a funky first page. The whole book is exactly like that.

Danielewski’s prose reads like poetry. Hell, it is poetry. It is a long, immaculately edited poem that represents raw stream of consciousness. It is a long monologue full of abstract messages, allusions and imagery. It does not tell a story but skirts around it and very indirectly hints at what may or may not be going on. I can really appreciate amount of work that the author put into this work, and I tell you that it is quite brilliant. But I just couldn’t get through it. I was around 20 pages in on both sides of the story when I realized that I still couldn’t tell what is going on. Each page was like a puzzle, and it almost felt like I maybe needed to rearrange the words in some way for it to make sense. There was no story, and no plot that I could identify – no chapters, no paragraphs, no dialogs. Just an endless stream of feelings, ideas, exclamations and cryptic word plays.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but I just could not wrap my head around what Danielewski was trying to say. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not a native English speaker and so I am not picking up certain linguistic nuances. I never really read much poetry and when I do I usually appreciate it for all the wrong reasons. I look at the way the artists strings it together, I admire his colorful vocabulary, the way he keeps it all together and manages to still maintain coherence and meaning. But what does it mean? Hell if I know. Not enough data. Maybe that is my problem. I’m too analytical – I think with the left side of my brain and the book requires you to read it with the right side. I just don’t know.

I have read many books, and encountered many literary works I didn’t particularly enjoy. But this is the first one that my brain was just not capable to process. I’m honestly baffled by it.

I’m putting this book on my shelf for now, because it really looks very nice there. It is definitely an aesthetic piece, a conversation starter and and something to be experienced. I actually don’t regret buying it just for that very reason. I just wish it made some damn sense. I can’t really recommend it because I technically have not read it (not that I wasn’t trying to). But if you do pick it up, please let me know what it was about. In a few years I will try to read it again. Maybe it will make more sense then.

Tags:
Posted in literature, review | No Comments »

Glasshouse by Charles Stross

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

When I picked up Glasshouse I didn’t really expect it to be anything special. The blurb on the back cover hinted that it would be a somewhat interesting futuristic detective type story with a twist. In a distant future war veteran tries to escape his past by going into a bio dome style closed circuit experiment. He and other volunteers agree to live in a historical simulation of 20th century American town. For several years they would have no access to advanced technology, no contact with the outside world, and would have to “role play” inside the simulation. Those who manage to adjust to the new environment and play their part will be rewarded with bonuses paid at the conclusion of the experiment. The only problem is that there seems to be more to the experiment than the volunteers are being told. Something sinister is going on, and the hero sets out to find out what it is.

Glasshouse Cover

What I expected out of the book was a bit of mystery and suspense. What I got however was an incredible vision of the distant future. What the blurb on the back cover does not tell you is that the experiment is but one part of Charles Stross’ imagined universe. One he meticulously crafts and describes via characters inner monologues or flashback sequences. While the main story is quite good by itself, what really makes this book exceptional is the setting.

In fact, I am even reluctant to describe it to you because discovering how Stross’ world works was half the fun. Let me put it this way: most SF authors imagine that human societies of the future will work pretty much the way they work now. People will spread across the galaxy, live on hundreds of different worlds, but there will be no mind boggling paradigm shifts, or cultural changes save for a few lost worlds which population went feral, and few technological utopian or dystopian worlds that are merely an exception to the rule. Stross however imagines a post-singularity, post scarcity universe in which everything has changed. Nanotechnology which can disassemble and reassemble matter on molecular level is ubiquitous replacing traditional methods of manufacture and traditional medicine. Human minds can be fully digitized, backed up and restored at a whim. People swap physical bodies the way we change clothes and they easily edit or manufacture memories at any time whenever they wish to forget, or remember something. Human societies spread across the galaxies with most of the populations living in cylindrical space habitats interconnected via intricate network of wormhole gates which make everything to be in a walking distance. It is visionary, strange, fresh and original.

Such post-singuarity, post-scarcity settings are basically the new frontier of science fiction. The standard space opera framework we have been using for years now is becoming incredibly stale. Similarly the “5 minutes into the future” novels tend to have a tendency to become “alternative history” rather than “science fiction” as time and science rapidly catches up to them. That’s why I’m always thrilled when I find an author that dares to look beyond that. Who crafts his own vision of a world that may exist after we cross over that magical technological acceleration point, and everything will change forever. I suspect we will see more and more such books in the future. For now though, I recommend Glasshouse as one of those very intriguing visions.

The prevalent theme of the book is identity, self determination and their relation to the concept of reality. Stross brings up some very interesting questions that I haven’t seen discussed in quite a while. For example, what defines who you are? Is it your memories? What if they were erased? What if someone tampered with them and falsified them? How can you distinguish which memories were real? In fact, how can you distinguish reality from a perfect virtual simulation? Does reality even exist? How do you know if you are really alive or trapped in some sort of autonomous solipsistic loop. These are the sort of dilemmas that Robin, the main character of the book deals with on a daily basis.

I highly recommend this book. It’s smart, somewhat philosophical but it never turns into a lecture. Stross keeps things interesting, and whenever things are starting to settle down he shakes them up so you can hardly turn pages fast enough. That said, the ending is a bit abrupt, and cut short. I personally think that the author could easily stretch the content he jam-packed into the epilogue into at least two or three more chapters. Still, this minor flaw does not change my opinion of the book.

Get it and read it. Or if you have read it, let me know how you liked it. Also, I’m always open for book recommendations. Do you have anything in your collection that uses similar distant, post singularity setting?

Posted in literature, review | 5 Comments »

« Older Entries