I haven’t posted about books in a long time (since Harry Potter 7, I believe). And I’m still working on an internet connection that makes uploading MP3s a bit dicey. So here’s a quick summation of what I’ve been reading. I’m also obviously reading a bunch of other more “serious” stuff, but it’s a lot less fun to talk about those.
Thoughts? Recommendations? Disagreements? Post a comment and let me know.
Strongly recommended
* Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I picked this up in a book store based solely on the little recommendation card taped to the shelf. It said, more or less, that this is what happens when the kids in Harry Potter grow up, start drinking and having sex, and realize that the world is a far darker place than they once thought. It’s a sort of horror/fantasy hybrid, set in contemporary Moscow, with vampires and the like. It’s got an extremely modern texture, despite being about “magic” and stuff. The mythology is fascinating – basically good and evil are manufactured – and it just feels like almost nothing I’ve ever read. I sort of imagine it as a hybrid between Stephen King, Buffy, and Neal Stephenson. Except Russian. There’s four books, though the final one has not yet been translated and made available in English. The first three are all good, and I’m anxiously awaiting the finale.
* Various books by Jack McDevitt. Another one that began with a bookstore recommendation. I’m currently working through his ‘Priscilla Hutchins’ books, which are vaguely a series in the sense that they all happen in the same world and she remains a significant character throughout. However, they each work fine as standalone books. I started with The Engines of God, which has the basic premise that the universe is fundamentally organized to eliminate complex civilizations. I find that extremely satisfying in a depressing way. McDevitt is great at imagining the real difficulties in attempting to do anthropology on extinct alien cultures. His aliens come off as tremendously sophisticated – not caricatures. Which is pretty rare in SF, unfortunately. He also writes some pretty good action sequences – and keeps them firmly tied into real science. He does make allowances for some stuff (FTL drives and antigravity) as a backdrop, but once he establishes the world, there’s no Star Trek-esque insertion of new crazy technologies to fix problems. He forces the characters to deal with realistic problems in difficult situations.
* The Wizard’s Dilemma by Diane Duane. When I last talked SF, I recommended this series. I knew there were four books, but didn’t realize how many more she had written. I picked this one up and was happy to discover (after good but not spectacular efforts in the previous couple ones) an excellent story. It doesn’t quite match the original two, but it’s close. I’ve picked up a few more of the follow-ups to read in the near future.
* The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card. Apart from the first two Ender books, and maybe the early stages of the Alvin series, this is probably my favorite work by Card. The blatant parallels to Foundation are a little much (Capitol is a carbon copy of Trantor), but he takes things in a sufficiently unique direction. And unlike a lot of his other work where the religious stuff overwhelms the story, I think it serves its purpose well enough here. And I have to admit I think Abner Doon is a far more interesting architect of the rebirth of civilization than Hari Seldon.
* Neil Gaiman. That probably goes without saying. But I finally got around to reading Neverwhere recently, and it was quite good. Not as good as American Gods, but maybe my second favorite of his books. It takes a little while to get going. The “I’m very perplexed and no one is explaining anything” feeling of the first 100 pages gets old a bit fast, but once things get going it’s solid. I like that even where some things are pretty predictable (who the Big Bad turns out to be, for example), there’s still a lot of little stuff that gets spun out in ways you wouldn’t guess.
* The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless by John Barrow. Not SF (really, just S), but worth mentioning nonetheless. It’s a fascinating exploration of the concept of infinity, the serious problems it poses for mathematics, physics, and the imagination. Very enjoyable and thought-provoking.
Worth reading, with caveats
* Hyperion by Dan Simmons. This came highly recommended, and it won a Hugo – so there’s no denying it’s a very good book. My caveats are twofold. First, I didn’t realize this was only the first half of the story and I don’t have the sequel available, which makes it hard to really judge it. Second, I found the structure a little difficult to overcome. The story is pushed along in part by a Canterbury Tales style telling of stories, which I wasn’t in love with. Too many different backstories inserted as their own little short stories isn’t really my favorite way to put together a plot – mostly because i don’t like having to re-set my worldview every 20 pages to bring in a whole new set of characters and so on. Basically, I keep feeling interrupted just as I’m getting into things. That’s true even though I always end up enjoying the stories themselves once I got into them (except the poet, who sucks).
Also, I have a general distaste for SF that goes all ga-ga over 17th/18th century poetry. Surprisingly, this is actually a genre.
All that said, some of the background development of the universe is as good as anyone has done. And obviously I enjoy the idea of the robots going all Battlestar Galactica on the human race except for, crucially, actually HAVING a plan. It’s also very well-written in a literary sense (i.e – not just “good for SF” but simply good in general).
* The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers. Imagine Gulliver’s Travels + The Phantom Tollbooth + Douglas Adams. Or something. It’s good, but a little too long. 700 pages that could happily have been condensed down to 450 and it would have been superb. As it is, it plods a bit in places, but is still quite enjoyable. If you’ve got the time, it’s probably worth the investment. But it’s not a quick afternoon read or anything.
Don’t bother
* Twilight by Stephane Meyer. To be fair, it wasn’t horrible. It’s certainly a quick read, which convinced me to finish it instead of giving up 50 or 60 pages in as I was planning. It’s actually pretty standard young-adult sappy romance fare. Except with vampires, which provided some interest. The take on their mythology is occasionally intriguing – though she seriously overhypes the power of vampires to make them seem impressive but which actually just makes them a lot less believable.
The other problem is that the already irritating attitude of “OMG, I like totally love him and am drawn to him and want to be with him FOREVER and I just can’t resist him” is made a lot more preposterous when you factor in the vampire element. Why, exactly, do these immortal beings enjoy perpetually going to high school and hanging out with boring people like the main character?
Also, there are some serious creepy elements here. Like the way that the stalker attitudes of the boy vampire are treated as proof of his undying love – and thus offer a fulfillment for Bella’s otherwise pointless and dreary existence. Instead of being…you know…troubling because he’s behaving like a creepy stalker. I don’t want to read too much into it because it’s not meant to be treated as an allegory or anything, but there’s no denying that there is a lot of troubling gender stuff going on here…
* The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg.
The flaws are many. Where to begin? Well, there’s the ridiculously hackneyed 60s era (filtered through the mind of an SF writer) way of talking about sexuality. For people who could push the imagination so far in some ways you’d think that at least one of them might have pondered some basic questions about gender and sexuality.
Of course, it all fits once you realize that one of the central driving premises is the absolute terror expressed by two main characters (…more DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
The flaws are many. Where to begin? Well, there’s the ridiculously hackneyed 60s era (filtered through the mind of an SF writer) way of talking about sexuality. For people who could push the imagination so far in some ways you’d think that at least one of them might have pondered some basic questions about gender and sexuality.
Of course, it all fits once you realize that one of the central driving premises is the absolute terror expressed by two main characters (and treated as if it’s so obvious that it doesn’t even merit explaining) that their scientific work might…gasp…produce efficient, clean, and safe energy. But, but, but…they fear, that would end the system of money. It would be almost communist!!!111oneone
Finally, Silverberg had apparently never met any actual human beings because he appears to have no understanding of how they speak to one another. I know that’s a standard cliche about SF writers of this era, but this is a particularly overwhelming example, I can assure you.
To summarize: this is a very bad version of Stranger in a Strange Land. And bear in mind that I HATED Stranger in a Strange Land.