Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a fun book. It is not, however, filling. Ready Player One is the sci-fi equivalent of popcorn. And you know what? That's fine.

The book is set in the not too distance dystopic future. This dystopia isn't as garish or grim as most though. The world of tomorrow in RPO (Ready Player One, natch) is faded and rundown. The energy crisis never gets solved and so all of humanity is slowly being strangled by the lack of cheap energy. To escape this grey reality most people in RPO spend their time online playing a virtual reality Massive Multiplayer game. This all sounds like some pretty heavy stuff for a lite fare book but we the reader also spend most of our time online in the Virtual Reality universe of OASIS.

The story is incredibly straight forward. Wade Watts is a teenager with nothing to lose. He and thousands of others are hunting for the inheritance of the mutli-billionaire who created OASIS for years. This eccentric genius, James Halliday, was a huge geek who was particularly obsessed with the 1980s. Dying without an heir Halliday reveals there is series of riddles and tests hidden in OASIS. The first to complete these hidden tasks becomes the master of OASIS. All the riddles and games are related to various geek pop culture. Young Wade races his fellow hunters and an unintentionally hilarious evil corporation to win the game and the (VR) world. It is literally that simple and (spoilers!) there are no twists or turns at all. Everything is as it seems; which is kind of shocking for a tale taking place in that bastion of lies and illusions, the internet.

See this banner? You love this movie and now by association you love this blog.

Ernest Cline really pushes the 80s nostalgia in Ready Player One. It isn't really a detriment to the enjoyment of the book. But it didn't seem to add anything either. There is more to nostalgia than just dumping as many titles and catchphrases as possible into a movie/show/novel. And that's all there really is in RPO. A writer should captured the actual feelings and atmosphere of those halcyon days. I ended the book with a slightly dirty feeling actually. Cline's love of the 80s appears authentic. But the way he markets RPO is transparently base pandering. It all but shouts, from the cover to the back, "Love my book nerds because I reference things you liked/like!" Ugh.

So should you read RPO? Depends really what you are looking for and your interests. RPO is simple: simple prose, simple plot, simple delights. It is almost a Young Adult book I'd say. But it's simplicity makes it easy to digest. If you are looking for some low calorie fun and have some geeky interests you could do a lot worse than Ready Player One. Final score: 6 out of 9 hidden stars found.

Fallen Dragon

Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton is a depressing read but I'm not sure it was intended to be depressing. Which makes the whole read just a little bit more disturbing. This is a book with a philosophy behind it and I'm not sure I personally support it. Still, I strive to be as unbiased as possible- a review loaded with individual preferences and opinions isn't much use to anyone after all.

Fallen Dragon follows a fairly simple structure in which chapters alternate between the present and flashbacks. The main plot follows career soldier Lawrence Newton on his latest adventure- yet another invasion of a colony world. The book doesn't waste time filling in his tragic past. In fact it deflates the action of the main plot completely as a large chunk of the first third of the book is devoted to Lawrence's childhood and teenage romance. There isn't much to recommend to these flashbacks- they are overly long and lack drama for the most part. It is all in the service of world building of course, the problem is the world being built isn't very compelling. For the most part it seems to be life as usual. Apparently alien worlds are mostly filled with hotels and ski resorts. The rest of the flashbacks I found interesting, so don't despair.

The future in Fallen Dragon is a grim one. Corporations based on earth have all the military power and use that power to raid the far flung colonies of man. Since Lawrence is one of the corporate foot soldiers and also a big believer in the benevolence of corporations towards the end of the book we are put in the awkward  position of kind of rooting for these monstrous pirates. The age of human expansion is ending as there is no money in creating more colonies. All opponents of the oppressive corporate mono-culture are dismissed by our hero as fanatics and idiotic idealists. As for the reason human progress is grinding to a halt, spoilers, its poor people. The mindset and cynicism behind the book I found a too ugly to get much enjoyment out of the book.

The book has it's good points though. Lawrence is an interesting character: he is jaded, a dreamer, and a nihilist in equal turns. Some of the technology in the book is pretty cool although descriptions of fictional spaceplanes and whatnot sometimes border on fetishistic. While grim, the plot at least is fairly engaging. And perhaps the best thing going for Fallen Dragon is that it IS disturbing and ethically challenging. The world of the future is going to be as morally horrifying to our modern day eyes as our culture would be to someone from the 1800s. If anything Fallen Dragon could have gone even further.

So, in summary, Fallen Dragon is definitely a book you could read. It isn't a great read but it's certainly not a horrible book. It would rate 4.5/10 on a sci-fi review blog.

That's all for now.

This little experiment has run it's course I feel. Feel free to re-read the reviews or whatever. If you are looking for quality sci-fi books... well there are tons of course but these are some of my favorites:
Neuromaner
Hyperion
Dune
Ender's Game
The Foundation


Nothing to revolutionary but classics are classics for a reason hahaha.

FALL OF HYPERION

Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons,  is the second book of the Hyperion Cantos. It certainly earns it's all Caps treatment in the title.This massive tome of sci fi goodness has taken me the better part of a month to read so I apologize that the updates have been a little scarcer than usual.

Fall of Hyperion can technically be read on it's own but I don't suggest it. There are plenty of recaps for those  picking it up off the shelves without reading Hyperion. Given that this book was fused with it's predecessor in the Cantos I actually found it a little annoying. But the background sketches are likely not enough to make Fall of Hyperion very fun. If you want to jump into this series (and it is a series as there are a set of books set after the Cantos called Endyimion) your going to want to start from the beginning. If for no other reason than Hyperion is the superior book.

Which doesn't mean that the Fall is bad by any means. It is beyond grandiose and does a a good job answering all the questions raised by the first book. It takes the vast foundation of Hyperion and builds a satisfying galaxy spanning conclusion that somehow makes all the disparate pieces work (for the most part). In many ways Fall is a paragon of the conventions of sci-fi. It is optimistic, bombastic, speculative, and towards the end there is a bit about the power of love. For some reason the power of love, along with talking sea mammals, are stalwarts of sci-fi. Not sure why.

The problems with Fall of Hyperion are all tied into the fact that it is so ballsy in its span. I missed the smaller, personal scope of the first books six stories. There are still plenty of nice character moments but they tend to gum up the frantic flow of Fall. For a book with time travel in it Fall follows a fairly linear timeline... but the characters narratives are all chopped to pieces which can be frustrating sometimes. The final flaw, in my personal opinion, comes from the nature of what Fall does. Hyperion was much like sci-fi TV series like Lost and Battlestar Galactica in that all these narratives had all sort of crazy mysteries and unexplained events. When it comes time to tie all of it together... the only explanation big enough to fit is 'God did it.' Which I find rather unsatisfying. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph fall does a good job wrapping things up and providing solid reasons behind a lot of the mysteries (certainly better reasons than Lost). My tolerance for deus ex machina is fairly low so like I said this is really just a minor quibble.

The Shrike: still awesome

In conclusion, if you enjoyed Hyperion you'll enjoy it's conclusion. Fall of Hyperion is a good book that occasionally suffers because of it's scale. It's hard to imagine a more satisfying conclusion to Hyperion though. Go! Read Hyperion! You'll love it, and you'll love it's sequel!

Hyperion

Hyperion by Dan Simmons. This book and its sequel, Fall of Hyperion, are combined in the Hyperion Cantos. Neither book is short so the Cantos is a veritable tome. Given this fact I'm dividing my review into two parts one for each of the books. One other thing to note, I've read both books before. I generally don't reread books but I enjoyed Hyperion the first time and it's been awhile since I've read it. It's one of the better sci-fi books out there so I feel a responsibility to share it with the public.

Dan Simmons does not mess around when he creates a universe to play around in. Hyperion and its sequels feature: teleportation, time travel, the cyberscape, AI, post-humans, and biological starships. As much as I respect the grand old sci-fi tradition of focusing on one or two future technologies I prefer this 'everything and the kitchen sink' approach to sci-fi. You don't get a carefully nuanced, multi-faceted exploration of what each technology means for humanity. For example, time travel plays a large role in Hyperion without really any text wasted on moral and philosphical implications of tampering with the past. But the technologies in this series aren't really what Hyperion is about.* It is, at its core, just interested in telling a complicated enjoyable story. This is a focus that many sci-fi books could stand to share. 

Hyperion is broken into six short stories with an overarching story serving as a framework between the stories. The master plot itself manages to be a compelling story in itself- seven strangers on a haunting trip through an alien world- a world on the brink of apocalypse. Each story details how each of the seven ended up on their doomed pilgrimage. Hyperion lives and dies therefore on the quality of these six stories. And for the most part the six vignettes are successful.

Each of the six stories have their own little sub-genre. The first is a story of religious horror, it is probably the strongest of the bunch. It's been a long time and I could still remember most of it. Other genres of the stories include cyberpunk, military sci-fi, and a sentimental tragedy. Most of these stories I could remember the gist of- they were quality tales. Two of them are a bit weaker (the cyberpunk story didn't do it for me at all) but overall there is something for everyone here. The entire book features quality writing and the characters are all interesting flawed creatures.

Pictured: the Shrike and his tree of thorns

Some mention needs to be made of the Shrike. The Shrike gets built up a lot- he is the God of Pain, Angel of Atonement. The Shrike is the boogeyman, Satan, and the Horseman of Death all rolled into one. That... is a lot to live up to. In my experience when you have this level of build up the actual thing is sure to disappoint. It is a testament to Dan Simmon's writing skill then that the Shrike truly is as horribly awesome as he is meant to be. The Shrike is one of the best literary monsters in my humble opinion. Like Dracula and werewolves the Shrike taps into some pool of elemental human fear. 

So do I recommend Hyperion? Of course I recommend it fool, haven't you been reading the review? It is not a flawless book. There are times when it could delve a little deeper and times when the mysticism of the stories can be obnoxious. But these are truly minor quibbles. This book is what sci-fi is all about. Small personal stories with universe shattering implications set in a wild and weird future.                                        7 out of 8 torchships

*although it should be noted that one particular technology is explored this way: the farcasters. Farcasters are doorways that can open to any other farcaster anywhere in the universe. It is the key peice of technology of the setting and all of society is shaped by the fact that nearly every human world is basically physically linked through these doorways. The farcaster system is a brilliant commentary on our own world where globalization is still transforming all societies and environments.

Lost Fleet: Fearless

Lost Fleet: Fearless by Jack Campbell, is the second in a ongoing Lost Fleet: adjective series. It is a straight up, no nonsense military sci-fi book. I deliberately sought out a military sci-fi book to read after the disappointments of Fledgling and Rollback. They were low action books and particularly in Rollback's case simply too dull for me to really enjoy. I've always maintained that any story can be improved by a bitchin' helicopter or maybe a motorcycle that shoots rockets. I actually set out to find a Warhammer 40K book as 40K is probably the best source for modern military sci-fi. Because a vast range of different writers have worked with the intellectual property I'm sure like most brand books (IE Star Wars Extended Universe) the quality of 40K stories varies quite a bit. But I really liked the one Warhammer 40K book I've read and the 40K universe is a vast and deep setting. But I've begun to ramble, lets circle back to Lost Fleet. Lost Fleet was attractive to me for two reasons- it had an original setting and it had bad cover art (the herald of good sci-fi is shitty art).

From the back of the book: "The Alliance has been fighting the Syndics for a century - and losing badly.  Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory.  Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he had been heroically idealized beyond belief .  Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild.  Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead.  But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.  Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty.  And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war.  But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend."


So there you go. It's kind of Battlestar Galactica-esque in that it's a battle fleet cut off and travelling through enemy territory. The Fearless is written from the perspective of Jack Geary as he deals with mutiny and trying to strike and an enemy stronghold system. That is the plot. I haven't read any other books in the series and I could follow what happened easily enough. There were certain plot points that weren't entirely clear (How exactly did a man out of time qualify to take over as Admiral?) but for the most part you can read this as standalone. Ideally you should read the series in order though. 


Jack Geary is a complicated character made a little too idealized. He sometimes feels like less than a real man and more like a living paean to strong leadership. That said his character and his orbiting cast of friends/lovers/enemies work well together. There is a problem with the first person perspective though. We have virtually no background on Geary. We have no background on the Alliance he loves and serves. We have no details on the enemy Syndics other than the surmise, based on their name, that the Syndicate is a made up of hundreds of dictatorial super-corporations.   Everything is focused on Navy life and even that lacks detail. Because Geary is a high ranking officer he never actually has any conversations with the common sailors. The reader knows they are there but they are rarely seen and never speak. All information about how the sailors feel about various fleet actions are relayed second hand through ship captains. Thus when the big mutiny goes down it's entirely anti-climactic. This lack of backstory is frustrating in a book that is part of a series. Too much world building can be boring and stifling but Lost Fleet's universe is a threadbare thing. A hastily constructed scaffold to be blasted apart.


Lost Fleet: Fearless works well as a military sci-fi story and not much else. If you have that itch to scratch, that desire to see the hellances boiling through durosteel plate as missile drones flit through the void, then Fearless will keep you happy. But its a flimsy thing and when your finished don't be surprised if the whole thing felt a little empty. Lost Fleet: Fearless hits 6 out of 10 stealth mines.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Lost Fleet does have several interesting elements that I would like to do an aside on. The first is space warfare. I feel like space warfare would be a natural extension of the sort of 'push button' war that we imagine WW3 will be. Lost Fleet has an interesting twist on this though. Because the distances in ship to ship combat are so vast the speed of light actually plays an important part in fighting. If you launch attacks from too far away the image of the missiles and their vectors reaches the intended target long before the actual attack. Thus ships actually need to close the distance on one another to land any hits. And even then they are going so fast (fractions of the speed of light) that even with computers aiming is extremely tricky. All of this seems a lot closer to what space combat would be like than most sci-fi ever gets. Generally space combat ignores the laws of physics whenever it can. Which can be entertaining but it's nice to see someone has actually put some serious thought into how it might actually work.

Pictured: Not realistic!!!

The other interesting thing is how many damn solar systems are wrecked. Lost Fleet depicts total warfare on a galactic scale. It isn't about taking and holding territory- it's about destroying the enemies ability to make war. In Syndic system after system the Fleet rolls on in and annihilates every war factory, orbital installation, spaceport, and supply depot. Galactic scale sci-fi often features empires and whatnot recovering from apocalyptic wars from centuries past (everything from the Foundation to Dune really). Rarely do we, the reader, see first hand what such a war would look like. This is it though. I imagine by the time this series ends thousands of human worlds will have been blasted back to the stone age.

rollback

Rollback by Robert Sawyer

Rollback is not 'the winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel' as the cover deceptively implies. That's because it isn't a very impressive novel at all. With all the hype for Robert Sawyer (his author bio is page and a half list of his writing awards) I started reading Rollback with pretty high expectations. It was wholly mediocre.

Rollback was surprisingly hard to judge. I felt that it was doing the right things often as far characterization and world building while disliking the book at the same time.  My conclusion then is that the author knows all sorts of good literary tricks but is, in this case at least, too inept to pull them off properly. For example, the main character makes bad puns and jokes throughout the book showing that he is clever and silly. Except that the jokes are so awkward and bad that the reader never thinks of the main character as really having those attributes. Rollback is a small, human-scale story so it's not exactly action packed. The stakes in this novel are high only if you are invested in the characters. Sci-fi can afford to have flat characters and dull settings if the ideas and action are big enough. It's not ideal of course, but it can at least make for an interesting/fun book.  Small scale stories however really rely on their characters and having a truly compelling setting. Rollback suffers from having rather uninteresting people in a bland suburban setting.*

Donald Hailfax is an eighty year old who lives with his wife of sixty years Sarah. Thirty years ago Sarah, a SETI researcher, decoded an alien message and sent a reply. A response from the aliens arrives and a rich philanthropist offers to 'rollback' the elderly couple, returning them to the age of twenty five. The assumption is that the aliens will want to keep talking with the same person as before thus Sarah is too important to die of old age. They go through with the procedure but it only works on Don. The rest of the book follows Don as he puzzles out what to do with his second life.

This book is interested in several things:
-SETI. At one point the book talks about the movie Contact which is bold since Rollback's plot immediately reminded me of Contact. To be fair there's not many different plots you can have about SETI- it really only does one thing, talk to aliens. Sadly in 2011 SETI is not doing well.

-serve as a soapbox for the author. One can argue that every novel does this. But in Rollback there are sections that are simply Robert Sawyer talking philosophy, aliens, or morality. Sure it's put in the form of two characters talking but these little discussions are blatant editorializing. Then there are the references throughout the book to the Atkins diet. Did you know Robert Sawyer was once fat but now, with daily exercise and avoiding carbs, is at a healthy weight? I knew, and I didn't need to do anything more than read this book!

You can see from his jowls this man was once large

-establishing the characters and setting as realistic by having them talk about Seinfeld and Star Trek. Done well I imagine this tactic could work well. In Rollback these pop culture references feel forced every time.

In summary, Rollback is a bland book. Robert Sawyer tried to write a warm hearted character driven story but he just doesn't quite make it. I agreed with many of the authors opinions and Canada of 2048 will probably be just as this book predicts: much like Canada of today except with better TV. So Rollback is actually something I want to like.  But I can't get over way Sawyer forces his (admittedly good) viewpoint on the reader and the beige setting and plot. Rollback receives no response from the aliens of Draconis (that was the rating).

PS- Donate your computer's free time at: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/



*News from 2048: Canada Still Boring

The Fledgling

Fledgling by Octavia Butler is not a science fiction book. My local library's science fiction section is a mess. All sorts of books are thrown in among the truly random assortment of sci-fi. So when I was rushed over to the section with seconds to choose a book I just grabbed the first novel that looked like it was printed recently. A quick scan of the 'Praise for Octavia Bulter' revealed someone mentioned her writing was like cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is like catnip to me, I can't resist. Only upon exiting the library did I realize I was holding a vampire novel set in the modern day. I decided to just roll with it because a little variety can be a good thing.

As mentioned Fledgling is a modern day vampire story. Like many vampire stories written it is not a horror story but rather an exploration of what it means to be predator among humans. I'm a humanist. I tend to root for the humans no matter the narrative. So generally I have trouble reading super sympathetic portrayals of serial murders (or at the very least superhumans who feed off regular folk). I enjoy the ethical tightrope that vamps have to walk but in most writers' hands vampires are totally justified in doing what they do and any messy questions are totally ignored or hand-waved away. I remember one incredibly poorly written book (whose name escapes me) where the cheerful solution to the 'ethical human eater' dilemma was to only kill annoying people. As opposed to only killing criminals. Thankfully, Fledgling is very much concerned with the ethical questions raised by vampires. On the other hand the novel raises whole host of other icky moral situations...

Fledgling is about a young vampiress who has lost both her memory and her family following a brutal attack. The narrative follows the fledgling vampire, Shori, as she pieces together who attacked her family and what it means to be a vampire. A good deal of the book is about uncovering all the various rules of vampire society and the full extent of their powers. But in order to give a proper review of Fledgling I must talk about what these powers are so be warned now. I won't ruin anything but if you want to read this tabula rasa you have been warned.
[Spoilers] Like any mythical creature vampires operate by different rules for each author. Here is a rundown for this book:
-Super strength/speed
-Sleeps during day and burns in daylight
-Hypnosis. Any human bitten by a vampire is rendered completely and totally under that vampires control to the point that if a vampire orders a bitten person to die they will kill themselves. Thus they can wipe out memories and manufacture new ones as well.
-Super sexy. Vampire bites cause intense pleasure and are addictive.
-Nigh invulnerable. First chapter the main character is recovering from being burnt to a cinder and shot in the head twice.
-Totally different species than human. No one 'becomes' a vampire.
[/Spoilers]



So lets talk about positive first. This is a well written book. Butler is a professional author and you can tell. The book clips along at a good pace with crisp prose. It's written in first person perspective and the alieness of Shori's thoughts can be very interesting. She isn't human, and it shows in both how she talks and thinks. She loves her family of humans but it's definitely different than human love. And as a human being myself, I feel this is where the book runs into trouble.

Shori is still a child on the vampire timescale. She is close to full maturity but cannot have children yet. What she can and does have though is a lot of sex. Perhaps this is a good time to mention that Shori looks like a ten year old. So, um, yeah. I... I'm not sure where I stand on this. She's not human, she's not ten but just the idea that this sexually voracious creature looks like ten year old is creeping me the math out*. This of course raises questions: why? Why choose to have your main character look like a ten year old? Why not make her look 16 or 17 years old (young but old enough to consent)?

Then theres the structure of the vampire lifestyle. Each vampire has seven or eight human 'symbionts' which are a vampire's food source/companions. Since vampire bites are super sexytimes they basically count as lovers as well. Symbionts can and do marry other people but must remain close by their vampire. They all live in big houses in rural areas far away from other people. All of which means that they are pretty close to being polygamist Mormons. At one point a character says that being a symbiont is the closest anyone has come to a workable group marriage. The arrangement works particularly well when the Matriarch (or Patriarch) of the family has total verbal control of every member of the family I'm guessing. Once again I'm not sure what exactly Octavia Butler is trying to say here. She could have chosen different rules or societies for vampires. But she went with this. The 'family' awkwardness is actually a minor subplot of the book but it's shown as a totally positive situation. So, yup, polygamy.

Oh yeah, so it turns out daughter vampires can't live with male vampires including their brothers and their fathers because, um, they smell too enticing. Like sexy enticing. So there's that quicky factoid for you.

----------

Fledgling is a disturbing read and puzzling. I'm really not sure why it was written, what its overall message is. Supposedly this a book about racism. But while racism exists in it Fledgling doesn't actually have much to say about it besides that racism is bad. None of the vampire stuff adds anything to the racism message. So what you are left with is book about sexy sexy ten year olds and joyous polygamy. Not ideal. Fledgling only feeds on 2 of 5 symbionts.

*'math' is how I cuss now.

Rim

Rim by Alexander Besher

I have a confession to make. I chose this book because it looked bad. Specifically it looked like the sort of gimmicky excess that is common in modern sci-fi. Ideally a reviewer should go into a book with clear eyes and zero bias. I started reading this looking to pick a fight. After reading a quality hard sci-fi book from the golden age of sci-fi (Mote!) it seemed like a clever idea to contrast it with the shallow buzzwordy sci-fi I've come to associate modern sci-fi with. As you may have guessed from my tone, Rim is not that infuriating spectre I was prepared to battle. Although don't be mislead: Rim is pretty bad! It's just that Rim is like a dopey dog with a wandering eye, sort of endearing even though it keeps drooling everywhere.

Rim was made in 1994 and goddam if it doesn't show. I got about thirty pages in before I checked the copyright date on it- you can tell pretty quickly this wasn't written recently. For one thing it takes place in exotic 2028 which, sitting here in exotic 2011, does not seem to far away. Certainly not 'space castles and androids' amount of time away. Sigh, in 1994 there was still an actual space program. But I get ahead of myself. The main thing dating Rim is it's unabashed love of Japanese culture. This may not sound like a clear indicator but allow me to explain. The author is extremely gushy about things that are now commonplace like yoga. The book imagines a world where Eastern flavored New Age ideas have turned everyone into awesome psychic spiritualists. I may be  mistaken but I think the mid-90s was when Eastern things like meditation classes and yoga and herbal supplements like ginkgo really caught on among yuppies.* Besher keeps name dropping things like 'otaku' and 'yakuza' like they are these hip newly discovered things. I get the feeling that when Rim was written maybe they were hip new concepts. Perhaps 1994 is when the Japanophile sub-culture was just blossuming. But by the time I got to college in 2004 Japanophiles were friggin' everywhere. I'm not saying the average American knows what an 'otaku' is but... its kind of hard to avoid finding out these days if you have a passing interest in Japan (as I do).

Nothing as cool as this exists in Rim

Enough with the lead in, lets talk about the book. Rim positions itself as a cyberpunk novel: it is about virtual reality and it's a noir piece. Except the book fails pretty miserably at being noir- it's as gritty as a Roomba. And come to think of it fails at being about virtual reality. Because in Rim virtual reality and alternate spiritual realms are one in the same. Rim posits a world where enlightenment and computers are completely entangled. Tibetan monks are programmers, as are Zen masters. Japan (or as it's called in the book New Nippon) has had a virtual reality disaster and now phases in and out of existence due to a virus in its system. It is this virus that retired psychic detective (and part time geomancer!) Frank Gobi has been hired to destroy. But first he must spend the first third of the book having tea and going about his daily life. Then, finally, the action picks up. The middle part of Rim is legitimately fun, if totally ridiculous.  Sexy sex, killer androids, a space station resort with a golf course and 17th century Japanese castle perched on top of it, and increasingly arbitrary characters like cowboys and hearty Englishmen. Also gratuitous space-lesbians. Yes the middle part of the book was still dumb. But at least it was fun dumb. Once the book reaches Japan the fun drains out though. And the end is a complete shambles with every single plot thread tied up brusquely. The main bad guy appears for one page before being defeated 'off screen'.

I know this review seems just about wrapped up. But special mention needs to made about the bizarre and annoying style in which Rim is written. Everything is labelled as being part of this Eastern meditation paradigm. Every. Single. Thing. That bottled water Frank is drinking: it's from Bhutan. That love interest is wearing a Tibetan sweater with Vhituazan thunderbolt designs. The tea is crushed chi-opening herbs from Sri Lanka. I would've killed for someone to just once suck down some Liptons. It gets to the point where Besher is just throwing New Age words in front of regular things. E-mail, no: it's chi-mail. Tantric taxi service. And that's not all. People don't feel fucking tired in Rim: their chi is drained. At one point Frank drinks a herbal tonic that he is told will 'tonify his middle burner'. Upon drinking it not only does he feel his middle burner tonified it also aligns all seven of his conscious states. I like meditation, I believe in it but... fuuuuuuck.

Rim gets no Yang out of Yin.


*I don't have anything against meditation (or yuppies!). Or if I do now, it's because Rim made them seem so damn aggravating.

The Mote in God's Eye

The Mote in God's Eye was a long book (537 pages) so this review is a day later than it should be. I apologize.

Before I get started let me gush about the title of this book. Soooooo good! (this is a technical term for critics) It was the title that originally attracted me to The Mote. I must have read the title a long time ago- long enough that I no longer remember where or when. The phrase simply stuck with me as such poetic fragments can. Regardless of where I picked it up I was aware of the book, and sought it out based on the strength of the title alone. Something to keep in mind for those in the creativity business. Incidentally, the name of this blog comes from a mashup of Of Mice and Men and another delicious phrase that caught in my brain courtesy of the darkly funny webcomic Achewood. It was vaguely disappointing to discover while reading the book that the title is well explained and entirely logical. 

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is a grand, golden age of sci-fi, space opera. That opening right there may tell you whether you'll like The Mote or not. Myself, I have no problem reading dated science fiction. As long as the prose and premise are strong the old tropes of hard science fiction don't trouble me. And, let me get this out of the way, The Mote is well written. I throughly enjoyed it. But... but it is what it is.

Preoccupation with Cold War: check. (It's not bad in this book though)

Preoccupation with nuclear holocausts: check.

Bland handsome dereing-do hero: check.

Cellphones: absent. Although to be fair there weren't really any moments where I felt that modern technology had rendered the story ridiculous.

The Mote in God's Eye really acquits itself pretty well to a modern reader. It mostly takes place on board  a Naval starship and thus dodges having to describe in detail future everyday society. And it takes place so far in the future that the awkward feudal government of the Second Empire is sort of plausible. 

The plot follows the first contact with an intelligent alien race. It is the Second Empire of mankind and there are hundreds of colonized worlds. One day an alien ship appears in a far flung colony system. The Navy responds quickly but accidentally destroy the craft. Suddenly mankind is no longer alone in the cosmos! A expedition is quickly assembled to travel to the alien crafts point of origin. The fate of humanity could well rest on the outcome of the expedition. A big part of the fun of this book is careful unraveling of the master plot so too much detail could be detrimental here.

The prose recalls Asimov- it is more interested in big ideas than people. The Mote is very clearly written as well. The characters, as mentioned, are a little stiff. But given the epic nature of their undertaking and the fact that many are in the military the stiffness comes off more as flavor than a flaw. The dialogue is stilted and a little cheesy (my fiancée had a laugh at the 'E Gads! and whatnot being thrown about). I can not say it bothered me too much though. I was too wrapped up in the slowly unfolding mystery of the aliens.

Overall I recommend this book to anyone who can deal with sci-fi golden age prose. I throughly enjoyed. It will not redefine you as a person or any of that BS. But it is interesting, fun, and ends up posing an interesting ethical quandary by the end of it. 13 of 17 quasars!

The Howling Stones

I plan on writing a review a week. But I can't stand to see the blog so barren right now. So here is a review of the book I ended up reading instead of The Watch. It's called The Howling Stones by Alan Dean Foster.

Being a writer often does not pay well. So to make full living writing often requires an author to keep publishing a steady stream of books. The daily grind of the regular author has actually been somewhat romanticized in our culture. For example, consider The Beatles 'Paperback Writer' and Kurt Vonnegut's famous character Kilgore Trout. The point is there are some books that someone has obviously pored their heart and soul into. And there are books that were written because a man must eat. The Howling Stones is the latter. It isn't a bad book by any means but it is... workman-like. It is set in Foster's continuous galactic setting of the Humanx Commonwealth. I've never read any Humanx books but this novel is entirely standalone.

The cover is oddly entirely literal. The book is about weird aliens who use glowing green stones to open oval portals to other galaxies. Heck the two main characters are even on the cover in the background about to explore the portal. The jacket blurb actually describes the entire plot basically straight up to the end. It is an incredibly straight forward book. There are primitive aliens on a tropical planet whose world is slowly being allied to one of two galactic empires the Humanx and the AAn. One island group in particular is stalling and being uncommonly stubborn. They aren't interested in awesome space technology. They are fully committed to their complex culture and are avoid anything that could erode their culture like video games. The hilariously named protagonist Pulickel Tomochelor is a low level diplomat sent in to help sway them. It turns out the aliens aren't interested in Humanx culture because they possess stones that, among other things, can open portals to other universes. Pulickel must decide what to do- seizing the stones by force is horrible but they are too powerful to not reverse engineer.

Pulickel is an interesting character and I like that Alan Dean Foster decided to write a type of charcter who has basically never been a sci-fi hero: the mid-level bureaucrat. Pulickel is devoted to his career, officious, and entirely business. He is nicely contrasted by his fellow xeno-biologist on the island Fawn Seaworth. Fawn is a statuesque blonde who is as laid back as Pulickel is by the book. There isn't much chemistry between them but then there isn't much chemistry in anything in this book.

Which is the problem of course. While I'm delighted of the novelty of Pulickel he doesn't exactly jump off the page. Nor does Fawn. Or the aliens. Foster details the alien worlds flore and fauna but personally I just couldn't find them very compelling. The writing isn't bad per se. It simply doesn't excite. Only when hopping madly between universes does the book show real life. The book ends oddly too. It just sort of stops, leaving quite a few questions and basically every plot thread loose.

 The Howling Stones is a pleasant enough read. But don't expect too much from it's solid prose. I'm trying to come up with a fun rating system. Something sci-fi themed like... stars. Brilliant. Why hasn't anyone ever thought of this before?!

3 out of 7 stars!

The Watch

Lets kick this thing off. Each week I read a science fiction book. Then I give my opinion on the work. Simple as that. There is a lot of science fiction out there- my goal here is simply to act as a guide. I like to think that I have fairly solid judgement. But bear in mind that human beings tend to have differences, don't expect my review to mirror your own thoughts. If I write something egregious I'm fine with a lively rebuttal but let us keep it civil, eh?

Which is a good segue into my first review: The Watch by Dennis Danvers. This is a book that I couldn't stand but I'm sure for some they would have no problem with it. The story of The Watch is thus- Peter Kropotkin is dying of old age in 1920 after a successful seventy year career of anarchy. Then he is given a reconstructed body of himself circa age 30 and dropped in 1999 Richmond, Virginia. At which point the book deals with Peter getting a job, finding a place to live, and meeting friendly poor people. At some point the book becomes about Peter slowly unraveling the mysterious timetravelly conspiracy of his manipulative benefactor.

But I didn't get that far.

This is the only book in recent memory that I didn't bother to finish. In fact I only got 85 pages in. The rest I skimmed random pages and the ending. I want to stress that this is not normal for me, nor will it be regular for me to review books with only a portion actually read. But eighty pages in I just couldn't go on. So I write this review as a warning. The Watch has an awesome cover (I know, I know, judging book by cover etc.); it's story sounds like it has potential. But I found this dire enough to drop, something I only do very rarely. So what happened?

The short answer is I didn't like the main character. The long answer is... Peter Kropotkin is Dennis Danvers. In spirit anyways. It is clear that the third person omniscient narrator considers Peter a genius and incredibly wise. All the young punks approve of him. The homeless like the cut of his jib. Sexy not-for-profit administrators think he's remarkable. And Peter's 1920s, anarchy tinted views cut quick the ills and injustices of 1999. Or rather they would if Dennis Danvers had anything even vaguely insightful to say about modern life. In fact, Peter seems to spend more time marveling over how kick-ass airplane vodka and instant coffee are. The biting social commentary is resigned to some one-off facile thought about ravenous capitalism. By the ending Peter and his counter culture friends are supposed to be revolting against the Man or something but none of them seem to have real problems with society. They are supposed to be rebels but mostly they seem to spend their time having lunch.

All of which grew more and more annoying as it went on. The Watch purports itself to be 'a masterful novel of truly audicious conception.'* Well it tries to walk the walk but goddam if it is incapable of talking the talk. There is nothing new here but the prose puts such emphasis on itself as being, well, anarchic. It becomes intolerable to read. It's the Coffee and Cigarettes of books. So busy preening over itself it neglects to have a plot and characters worth having. If there is one thing I cannot abide it is baseless smug pretension.

It's ironic really. Peter is obviously meant to be a stand in for the author. But the constantly smirking, clumsily manipulative, and ultimately self-satisfied time travelling antagonist (Anchee) is a much better fit for the author.


*From the author's bio. Also: Yikes