Halo Cryptum

Halo Cryptum is one of those books I read because it was the only book around at the time. While I have played several of the Halo games, I disdain cash-grabby book tie ins to popular franchises. One thing that interested me about Cryptum is that it is written by Greg Bear, a distinguished award winning science fiction writer. What would/could an author of proven quality do with the anemic and juvenile "world" of Halo?

First: a little background into the actual Halo series of video games. The Halo games are Hollywood action movie blockbusters. They are not intended to provide compelling characters (the main character is basically mute and faceless). And the setting is aimed at having the broadest possible appeal. Therefore, instead of creating new and unique aliens, Halo casually repurposed the aliens from the popular computer game Starcraft. Given that Halo is about a space marine running around gunning down evil aliens all this is fine. But nothing about Halo is particularly deep or interesting (to me anyways).

Bear sidesteps a lot of the problems of writing a Halo book by setting Cryptum tens of thousands of years in the past. Because of course Halo has that old hoary trope of ancient god-like aliens who left ruins filled with a secret, dangerous power. Cryptum is something of a novel premise then: it is set at the height of the galaxy-wide hegemony that left its moldering mark upon the universe of Halo. It's actually something that I have never seen attempted before. For a good reason I think. The big draw of the cliche is the mystery- the feeling that the full story of the bizarre alien artifacts and the mighty power that made them can never truly be known. Part of the allure is the power of the civilization that made devices so incredible that they have endured both the passage of time and their own creators. Setting a story in a civilization so advanced and powerful is problematic. Likewise, coming up with a believable apocalypse is tricky. Then there is the problem of scale, how can a character get ringside seats to the end of days and still get across the size of the event. Finally, the main character and his people are doomed, totally doomed. The reader knows that no matter the heroics of the characters they will fail.

Not appearing in this book!

Greg Bear handles these challenges with a varying degree of success. The Forerunner's (such a name for a doomed race!) culture is intriguing but its hard to get a handle on their exact capabilities and day to day life. Rather than spend the book world building, the plot races from location to location providing the information necessary for conflict; but leaving the setting weirdly sterile and blurry. I suppose it was too much to ask for a sociological breakdown of super aliens in a franchise tie in book though.

The story is (in what I think is a pretty bold choice) a coming of age story. It follows the journey of a young adventurous Forerunner as he... gets swept up in a giant crisis? Because of that damn hazy setting its hard to really feel the full force of the threat of the disasters menacing the Forerunners. The reader isn't invested in the Forerunner civilization- how could we be invested in something we know so little about. And where are the humans? Humanity is basically window dressing in this story. And where is the Halo franchise in all this? Well there is powerful robo-armor and blue lady AIs that live in the armor. ...just like Halo! The two evil aliens from Halo make a cameo appearance. Beyond that Cryptum is practically its own beast.

If all this kind of sounds like a mess that's because Cryptum is a mess. It can be an interesting read at times. Enjoyable even. But ultimately its just too muddled for me to really recommend. I guess if you are a huge Halo fan you could read it. Halo Cryptum receives only 5 of the original 12 Halo rings.

Spin State

Today's book is Slip State or Spin Gate... possibly Star Slip. Spin State's forgettable title heralds an equally forgettable book. Spin State (by Chris Moriarty) isn't necessarily bad... but it is a far cry from a good sci-fi book. Let us examine it's sins below.

The book is set firmly in the cyberpunk genre (for those of you just tuning in cyberpunk marries the atomsphere and story beats of Noir with high flying sci-fi). I'm on the record as being a big fan of cyberpunk but Spin State did not sit well with me. The main character is Catherine Li, a tough, jaded soldier with a dark secret past. Which is standard for the genre. Why then did I find her so unlikable? To me, she seemed less  "hard ass" and more "high strung." And rather than existing in a state of moral ambiguity, Li just seems confused.

The setting had the same problem. Spin State's universe is a place of dirty deals and corruption. Of slums and harsh lives. Once again, standard for a Noir setting. But I found atmosphere annoying rather than cool. The author goes out of his way, clumsily, to hammer home the cynical nature of the world.

Spin State is kind of like this except that it's bad.

The plot itself is about a murder investigation that quickly gets tangled up. Everyone has an ulterior motive, and mysterious clues pile up quickly. This is pretty standard for detective stories. It's one of the reasons I like Noir. But in Slip State it simply makes the story feel muddled and bloated.

What it all comes down to is that Slip State just isn't written very well. There are all sorts of little things in it that nag me. Like when Li yells at an idealistic rich kid for trying to help poor miners. Or everytime Li is verbally or physically attacked by a cop technically under her control and does nothing to reprimand him. Li's  ambivalence towards people who try and kill her in general. So while I'd like to recommend Spin State I really can't. It receives 4 stars out of 10.

Bonus Mini-Review: The Giver

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is read by tens of thousands of middle schoolers each year. It is by no means obscure, and thanks to it being on the reading list of many an English classes, there has probably been more words written about The Giver than there are plankton in the sea. What I want to focus on is the language of The Giver.

In The Giver, humanity has solved all the problems. All of them. But not without a heavy cost. A perfect tranquil existence has been obtained only by draining people of their history, of their passions, and of their freedom. The whole world has been reshaped to reflect this uniform, sterile society. This is not to say everyone is an identical zombie. People superficially feel emotions and they have all sorts of different jobs based on their personalities.

The book is written by a young teen, Jonah, who is a regular member of this utopia. The way he thinks, the conversations he has, all reflect the pleasant flatness of his community. Usually, flat dialogue is something to be avoided, but in The Giver the text is chilling. People talk like a careful ten year old laid out each of their words . Even the wisest person on the planet, the man burdened with the collective history of mankind, talks in the same polite complete sentences. And not by accident. Precision in language is drilled into all members of the community at an early age. More than any exposition in the book, the way the story is written gives us the most detail about the setting.

In a way, the language of The Giver is similar to Newspeak in 1984. Newspeak is a recent invention in 1984 created as a sort of linguistic thought control. It is a dumbing down of language so that eventually people will no longer be able to express complex ideas. Newspeak is in it's infancy in 1984 and not very effective- after all the main characters seem to have no trouble expressing philosophical principles. The Giver gives us view into a world that has been using Newspeak forever. In The Giver no one needs ever have a conversation about vague topics such as politics or ethics. Their language is one of perfect clarity where wishy-washy concepts are difficult to express. Because everyone is taught to use unambiguous language they end up thinking unambiguous, uncomplicated thoughts.

Love is impossible to precisely define. So love does not exist in the world of The Giver.

Riddley Walker

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban, is not a book to pick up casually and read in an afternoon. It is very much an "advanced reading" novel. The entire thing is written in a made up language: a hodge-podge corrupt version of English. Riddley Walker isn't Ulysses but that doesn't mean it is the easiest book to parse out. From the first chapter, "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar..." The whole book is written in this fashion. Words are often meant to be sounded out. So you have been warned. There will be times when reading Riddley Walker that you will be confused as to what's actually being said.  But I found that I quickly picked up the 'language' of the book. It is intimidating but by no means impossible for anyone to read Riddley Walker.

Understanding the story is a little harder though. This is one of those rare books where I'm honestly not sure if I 'got it.' For a tale set among the pathetic dirty inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic England, Riddley Walker is surprisingly philosophical. But then part of what makes the book so interesting to read is that it keeps changing. The beginning of the story seems totally disconnected from science fiction. Later psychic mutants show up though, so there is that. Also humorously corrupt 'Punch and Judy' shows. And running throughout- woven into the stream of though telling of events- are trippy quasi-religious visions. Because the narrator (the eponymous Riddley) is simply relating things and thoughts that have occurred to him it becomes hard to parse out reality and radiation borne madness.

Riddley Walker is just as interested in hashing out ideas about government and god as he is adventuring through shelled out Cambridge. But a devolved cockney language simply isn't good enough to make out the entirety of these long discussions. So a cloud of ambiguity hangs over everything in the book. This is intentional. One of the most important phrases in the book revels in this haziness, namely, "The hart/heart of the would/wood." The rambling tone and weird way time seems to work in the book make the whole experience feel hallucinatory. This could be a positive or negative depending on how you feel about balls out weirdness in your stories, story structures, and content.

If you are looking for a challenge, a book that boldly bucks convention and defies expectations then Riddley Walker is the book for you. I honestly enjoyed it. But it most definitely is not for everyone. Sometimes though... the struggle is part of the fun.

Riddley Walker gets 1 littl 1 of the 1 Big 1.

Neuromancer

Neuromancer by William Gibson is an interesting book. It transposes the grittiness of film noir with a technicolor vision of a future populated by space resorts, clones, cybernetics. This co-mingling turns out to be incredibly compelling, enough to cement "cyberpunk" as a legitimate sub-genre of sci fi.

The book is dated. It's setting is a brutal, dirty future of endless cities, ruled by faceless corporations. It was made before anything we would view as the internet existed. Instead there is Cyberspace. Rather than give a quick definition of it I'll let Gibson's description speak for itself:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. (Gibson 69.)


The technology of the Neuromancer doesn't quite match up with our modern world of smartphones and facebook. But the book transcends its lack of foresight. The Neuromancer paints such a vivid picture, such a complete little universe that I can honestly say I was never bothered by whether it was 'realistic' to our future or not.


The language in Neuromancer is compelling, and while the prose can tend to purple at times it all works to the purposes of evoking a strong sense of atmosphere. Atmosphere is a difficult thing to quantify in books but Neuromancer has it in spades. This is a cool book, and special in the way it makes the reader feel cool just by reading it.

All this and I haven't really touched on the plot and characters. The book is centered around Case, a desperate drug addict and ex-hotshot hacker. Case falls in with a shadowy little group being manipulated by person or persons unknown to do a 'run' (heist) on a powerful corporation. More information would spoil the plot. A standard heist plot but the trappings of it are very weird and once the heist begins the weirdness boils over, overwhelming the plot. The characters themselves are icionically cool but not what I would call three dimensional. Even Case, the main character, is at his essence a fairly simple character, despite his tragic background. The straight forwardness of the characters is in fact (without getting too spoilery) a plot point in the book though.


Neuromancer can be an uneven book. The plot doesn't quite flow as smoothly as I like. Rather it jutters and jukes, and occasionally sputters. The climactic run doesn't hold together very coherently although to expand on that sentiment would be to spoil things so I'll leave it be. I found it a satisfying read all the same. Like Dune, the ideas and setting of Neuromancer are more powerful than any quibbles about plot pace. I'll admit I'm a bit biased in this review- I like noir stories of all types but am particularly fond of cyberpunk. Crime fiction critics may not have as much love for this book as I do. I rate Neuromancer a 9 out of 10.

Counting Heads

Counting Heads (by David Marusek) is in some ways a throwback to classic science fiction. It's interested in two things: cool science and  realistic characters. The book has scenes written in the modern cinematic style but the priorities of the book are decidedly old school- hardish science mixed together with some interesting characters thrown in and then see what bubbles up.

The characters are the real gems of Counting Heads. They run a gamut of ages and types, races, creeds, backgrounds, and social status. Each one of the main point of view characters has something compelling about them and each one goes through a full character arc. By the end almost every character has learned something new about themselves and their world. And props need to be given to David Marusek for managing to write convincing first person passages from the point of view of not one, but two children as well as an extremely elderly character.

The plot basically is as follows: a supremely powerful CEO dies in a spaceship crash and her only heir is decapitated but survives due to a safety helmet. This head in a jar is a prize that many people want to kill or protect for a wide variety of reasons. The book follows the lives of men and women who are caught up in the conflict over the severed head of Ellie Starke. Characters that include, Ellie's elderly father, a ten year old boy, clones, robots, AIs, a defrocked Bishop, and a coffee table that transforms into a war-machine.  OK, that last one isn't a main character. While all this is playing out there are several plots running in the background. These include the future of colonizing other planets and the deactivation of the shields surrounding Chicago that keep nano-biological terror weapons out. These subplots never come to any sort of resolution despite a fair amount of time spent on them.

Kind of like this but not really at all.

That all probably sounded like a mess. And Counting Heads is a mess, plot-wise. There is a reason it was not released to grand fanfare and fame. The characters are great. The setting of the book is compelling. But Marusek keeps getting sidetracked. In fact, 'sidetracked' is too generous. The pacing of the plot, such that there is a plot, is a total mess. A main PoV character is rendered mute and irrelevant for the last third of the book. The book opens with a nice short story that is both relevant but also not too relevant to the main plot. Charcters arcs jump and jitter. Plot threads are picked up only to be left dangling. Things like killer coffee tables pop up, are dealt with, and are never explained. Vastly complicated ideas and technologies are introduced and never explored.

Perhaps the most mind boggling example of Counting Head's plot problems is found on the jacket cover. This is the summary of the plot from the jacket: "The year is 2134, and the Information Age has given rise to the Boutique Economy in which mass production and mass consumption are rendered obsolete. Life extension therapies have increased the human lifespan by centuries. Loyal mentars (artificial intelligence) and robots do most of society's work. The Boutique Economy has made redundant ninety-nine percent of the world's fifteen billion human inhabitants. The world would be a much better place if they all simply went away." Absolutely none of that information is ever mentioned or alluded to within the pages of the book. And it sounds pretty damn important to me. Probably the colonization subplot, the poor characters, and the Chicago shield deactivation subplot all tie back into that central premise but without reading the book jacket no one would ever know it.

Despite the abysmal plotting of the book, the characters and the innovative setting make for a good read. While Counting Heads may not convert any new readers to science fiction, fans of the genre will find a solid compelling story. Counting Heads receives seven out of ten severed heads.