In the Ocean of Night

In the Ocean of Night was written by Gregory Benford in 1972.  Gregory is a professor of physics; as you may imagine, the science fiction he writes is of the hard variety.  So In the Ocean of Night, whats the deal with that?

The story opens in space. It is the nearish future. The earth is threatened by an approaching hunk of rock.  Only NASA can stop global devastation.  But the space rock turns out to be a spaceship.

Ocean of Night starts strong.  It has a fairly compelling main character in Nigel Walmsley: astronaut, dreamer, renegade.  The book launches right into it with its initial high stakes scenario. Unfortunately, the rest of the story never quite reaches the heights of the first section.

There are three main sections to Ocean of Night.  The first involves the confirmation that intelligent extraterrestrial life exist.  Nigels main nemesis in the section is a high level bureaucrat.

The next and longest section involves first contact.  It mainly takes place on earth.  Benford takes the time to flesh out a mildly interesting future, a future of widespread poverty, pollution, looser sexual mores. Nigel is fleshed out quite well, although for me, he never quite became likable.  Nigel is a curmudgeonly Mary Sue (a Mary Sue is an always correct character) bold unflappability is cool, but grating.  This is where the reader discovers political maneuvering the meat of the book.  Which is... OK. Its fine. The main villain turns out to be a high level bureaucrat.

Pictured: The Moon.

The last section deals with ancient alien visitors.  It ultimately comes down to Nigel confronting a high level bureaucrat... on the moon. Also Bigfoots are 'involved' in the most haphazard "why the fuck not?" way. This last quarter the book wore on me to be honest.  The tension at this point had dwindled to basically nothing.  Data entry on the moon is pretty boring it turns out. I can forgive the hoary old trope of ancient aliens meddling with humanity.  But throwing in Bigfoot... it renders almost everything in the book retroactively cheesy and silly.

In summary, In the Ocean of Night is three quarters of an alright book.  Its written in solid style, with solid characters and conflicts.  But it never hits any true highs. Even the science fiction of it can be said to be solid without the soaring heights that the discerning sci-fi reader lives for. My verdict: you can read In the Ocean of Night and derive some enjoyment from it.  But it can easily be given a miss.

1 out of 2 space committees.

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, is, in fact, more romance novel than science fiction book.  It's title is quite literal: the book is about a woman married to a time traveler.  I haven't read this kind of marriage of sci-fi creativity and Literature with a capital "L" before, and overall found the book refreshing.  This uniqueness makes it fairly hard to describe The Time Traveler's Wife in a single sentence, so we'll skip straight to the meat of the review.

The eponymous Time Traveler is afflicted by practically the same thing as Billy Pilgrim of Slaughterhouse-Five. Basically, Henry (for that is his name) uncontrollably time travels to semi-random times and places. After spending anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days in the past (or future) he then returns to roughly around the same time and place he left. To delve too much into the details of this would be to spoil some of the best parts of the book. I will say this: Niffenegger's focus on characters and their personal struggles gives her perspective of time travel I hadn't seen before.  She obviously put a lot of thought into what it would mean for a person to pop up randomly in a different time, rather than glossing over the inherent life challenges this sort of thing would pose. We are used to seeing time travel used as a jumping off point for adventure or mind-bending explorations of the nature of reality.  In The Time Traveler's Wife being "unstuck in time" is used more as an affliction than anything else.  Indeed, in the weaker second half of the book, one could substitute time travel for epileptic seizures or some other chronic disease and it would essentially be the same story.

Which is kind of my problem with The Time Traveler's Wife.  It takes an interesting but ultimately narrow view of time travel.  By the second half of the book the author has basically said everything she wanted to about it.  From around that halfway point the focus of the story is really on domestic drama (meeting the parents, planning the wedding, moving into a new house, trying to make a baby, etc.).  The philosophical implications of time loops and destiny are basically forgotten about.  The clever twistyness of temporal clones is generally ignored.

The strength of the writing remains consistent throughout.  But there is a heavy handedness to all the characters that you notice more once the science part of the fiction begins to drop away.  The biography of the romance and life of Claire (the wife) and Henry is solid, but... not much happens?  Artificial conflict is sometimes generated, but for the most part the two of them have a fairly normal life together. Just two intellectual hipsters in Chicago, doing the best they can.  I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed.  The uptick in time shenanigans towards the end reignited my interest. And also proves that the narrative isn't strong enough without its central conceit.

At it's best, The Time Traveler's Wife manages to combine modern Lit and science fiction into a compelling package. But sometimes the mixture doesn't quite hold together.  The end result is, technically, a mediocre book.  But it's a mediocre book that does things I've never seen done before, which makes me feel more generous towards The Time Traveler's Wife.  I recommend it, with the caveat that the mundanity of central romance may not be what Sci-fi readers are looking for.  3 out of 4 temporal clones created!

Catching Fire

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, is the sequel to The Hunger Games.  You maybe have heard of the Hunger Games. You know, the mega-popular Young Adult book. There is a movie and everything.  Honestly, have you not heard of The Hunger Games?  If so, how did your five year posting to space go?

Let's get the preliminary issues with this review out of the way first.  First off, yes, The Hunger Games and its sequels are Young Adult books.  But there are a lot of good books that fall under the that heading. Heck, I reviewed The Giver, and that's definitely YA.  I don't see any particular problem with adults reading YA books. Secondly, hey, wasn't The Hunger Games compared to Twilight at one point?  It definitely was, but I'm guessing the comparisons between the two were made either by the ignorant or as a marketing ploy.  There is not much to connect the two series.

 Given The Hunger Games' overwhelming popularity, there seemed little reason to review it for this blog.  But Catching Fire is much less omnipresent, and I figure that means there might be some room for a critique of it on the internet. So how does the sequel stack up to it's celebrated predecessor?

Fairly well, I'd say.  Catching Fire is lighter fare than The Hunger Games, but it has the same energy and verve of the original.  The main thing holding Catching Fire back is that it lacks the powerful core survival theme of the first book. The fact is, The Hunger Games didn't particularly demand a follow up. To me, any standalone book continuing its story feels kind of superfluous, no matter how well written; a problem that usually afflicts movies more than books.  Think about the movie Rocky.  Rocky is a perfectly self contained story.  It tells the gritty tale of a low life aspiring to greatness, and tells it well. Get in, get out, over and done.  But because of Rocky's runaway success, there needed to be a sequel. The problem was the core of what makes Rocky great couldn't be reused.  Rocky had won, he was a celebrity, he was cool.  So the elements that made the original movie a success (the grit, the struggle against overwhelming odds) were out. The core hook was missing, and Rocky 2 was destined to be less than its progenitor.  And so it goes with Catching Fire.

Catching Fire picks up right where the last book left off. Katniss is a big celebrity now. She and her family have a nice house and plenty of food. The central conflict of the book, then, is no longer about survival. It's about trying to maintain a facade of ditzyness.  Which for a smart, impulsive young woman, is tantamount to torture. The first half of the book revolves around this and other internal conflicts.  As Katniss is coming apart at the seams mentally, the greater nation of Panem is caught in the throws of rebellion.  This is all handled fairly well- the boilerplate prose does these long action-less sequences little good, but the filling in of so many little details and facets of the world is appreciated. Unfortunately, the down time also means that the love triangle sub-theme of the first book gets a lot more time and attention.  Really the only part of  Catching Fire I felt uncomfortable reading was the teen-girl-pandering 'which studly guy will Katniss choose?' stuff.  There isn't too much of it- the book doesn't turn into Twilight or anything- but it screams to the adult reader, "You are reading a book for teenage girls!"

Luckily the book picks up in its second half, where, spoilers I suppose, Katniss must again compete in the Hunger Games.  With the original book having already established all the basic rules and rhythms of the Games, Catching Fire has the freedom to go wild with the death-match arena concept.  Instead of focusing on Katniss's moment-to-moment solo struggles as the first book did, Catching Fire is about the larger overall strategy of the Games and group dynamics.  The Hunger Games had the problem of having largely faceless opponents, but Catching Fire is filled with colorful characters.  So yes, easily just as, if not more, exciting than the original.

Meanwhile, in Neo Nippon...

Ultimately what it comes down to is this: if you liked The Hunger Games, than you'll enjoy Catching Fire.  But it is by no means required reading. Entertaining but not essential.  Which isn't bad for any book to achieve. Catching Fire wins 9 out of 13 districts.

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

*IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE MY IN-LAWS, YOUR BOOK REVIEW IS BELOW THIS*

The title of Lydia Millet's Oh Pure and Radiant Heart should tip prospective readers off. There is a pat lyricism to the title while at the same time it mocks the atomic explosion gracing the cover. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart purports itself to be a quiet contemplative beauty while in content it more resembles a bitter 80-year old woman, screaming at the kids to get off her lawn. The sad fact is, there are many problems with Oh Pure and Radiant Heart and not much to recommend to it. So lets get into it, shall we?

The story follows Ann, a depressed hollow-eyed librarian. Ann, like the author, hates life and shambles through her existence like a zombie. Three of the leading physicists from the Manhattan Project turn up one day for no reason. These three are easily the best part of the book: each is an interesting and well rounded character. They (after endless scenes of eating out) decide that they will use their apparent second existence to press for nuclear disarmament, a noble, if fairly irrelevant goal.* Ann, like all members of the undead, crave life and latch on to the only exciting people in the entirety of Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (OPRH). They race around in increasingly boring and disjointed fashion until a flat ending.

The book that OPRH most closely resembles is The Watch. OPRH is much better written of course, and actually has several interesting characters. But the whole historical-figure-inexplicable-recreated-in-the-modern-day thing is there, and they share the same goal of serving as platforms for their respective authors' facile liberal elitism. I'm a pretty liberal dude, and I have nothing against social commentary, but Millet's grudge against the modern day seems limited to nebulous complaints about people these days being crass, not caring enough about issues, something something, whine whine. The majority of her direct examples of society's breakdown seem to boil down to the fact that poor people are gross, and stuff made for poor people is ugly.

That nastiness is really what is at the core of OPRH, once you've stripped away the flowery words. The author hates people. Poor people, rich people, hippies (which is weird since who cares about hippies anymore?), Evangelicals- Millet hates them all. She hates any location on earth that does not contain breathtaking beauty.  She has turned her back on the world and then writes a book full of ennui.

OPRH is full of poetic images. Longing suffuse the book. But the ugliness of the characters and the setting consistently undermine the prose. There is a larger problem with the style though. It follows a strict formula, and never breaks from it. The effect over time is maddening. Every. single. passage. must end in some poignant pungent statement. IE, Thirty thousand dogs are killed each year.
...
A dog, in the throes of joy, may bite a dick.
...
A dick can just as easily wound as it can be wounded.
...
Don't be a dick.
...
Et cetera, etc.

Nom nom nom

You may have gotten the sense over the course of this review that I did not enjoy Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. You would be correct in that assumption. Um, don't read this book. 0 out of 3 dead physicists awarded.

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Special review for my parents-in-law

Oh Pure and Radiant Heart is a beautiful book, full of deep feeling and powerful thought. Lydia Millet has gazed into the soul (or lack there of!) of modern society and artfully illuminated it's ills. It is a deep book, funny and somber at equal turns. Two thumbs up!


*While the nuclear disarmament of unstable extremist countries is very relevant to the modern day, the disarmament of the US doesn't seem like a priority. There is about a 0% chance the US will ever use the bomb again. Too much bad PR.

The Handmaid's Tale

A crass but honest way of describing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale would be to say it is 1984 for women. While I don't like to think of books being FOR only one specific gender, I cannot ignore my own discomfort when reading The Handmaid's Tale. The fact is there is a certain sub-genre within literature that deals primarily with women's issues; that has a heavy focus on child birth, menstruation, and the inhuman alieness of men.  As a guy, I can read something like The Red Tent and get something out of it (like a bout of depression roflamao), but there is an unshakable sense of being an intruder. Is the feeling a societal construct?  Subconscious misogyny? Interestingly, I experienced no such discomfort while reading Analogue: a Hate Story. Despite the fact that it is very much alike to The Handmaid's Tale and The Red Tent in that its plot revolves around women trapped in a despotic patriarchal system.  Perhaps because A Hate Story saw fit to include multiple male perspectives.  But I digress.

So what is the Handmaid's Tale like?  There is not much to the plot, and virtually no characters beyond the narrator. Like 1984, Handmaid's Tale is most interested in introducing and building up a horrifying near future dystopia. Handmaid's Tale is a sort of alternate present where Evangelical Christians have toppled the US government and instituted a brutal theocracy in the vein of modern Iran. Much of the book is spent exploring attitudes, power structures, and day to day life in a tyrannical imitation of biblical times.

The pacing of the book serves it well. The first third of the story feels out the new surroundings cautiously, laying each new revelation like a brick in an unassailable wall. The narrator is part of a new caste of women- ones whose sole purpose is to bear children. Imperceptibly the pace quickens with each new chapter. This is a book that takes a long time to get any real plot but it is gripping all the same. And as the narrator becomes more accustomed to her new world things start moving faster and faster. The monolithic theocracy begins to show cracks. As in 1984, everyone in Handmaid's Tale seems to hate their system and yet are totally trapped in it. But as The Handmaid's Tale barrels towards its conclusion, the instability of the system is apparent. People can grow used to almost any hardship, and this sense of familiarity, of knowing the rules, can lead to foolhardy boldness.

This probably sounds pretty awesome. But there were times when I just had to stop reading the Tale. It is not an easy read. And the constant focus on child birth becomes a little trying. The Tale can't go a page without some obvious symbolism alluding to ovulation or birth. Atwood manages to portray the main characters feelings of being smothered by an overbearing government a little too well. The claustrophobia one feels when reading the Tale can become overwhelming sometimes. And in a minor quibble, the setting is not well served by having the fall of the US take place in less than a year. The intention no doubt is to shock by contrasting the fact that all the women in the book are modern educated people rapidly devolving to a medieval state. It makes the whole thing seem kind of ridiculous though.

An America that can give us feminist Ryan Gosling could never fully submit to the Patriarchy.

I recommend The Handmaid's Tale with reservations. It was not the most pleasant read. But it was quite well written. It lacks 1984's creativity and power. But Handmaid's Tale has closer real world analogues in Middle Eastern theocracies. Read it if you feel like being bummed out I guess. 1 out of 2 stillbirths, sigh.

Snow Crash

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, technically falls within the sub-genre of Cyberpunk. It contains the necessary elements: virtual reality hackers, a fascination with Japanese culture, a gritty dystopia. I feel a little uncomfortable putting Snow Crash in that box though. Snow Crash constantly subverts and toys with the rules and conventions of noir. For god's sake, the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist. Like Slaughterhouse Five, Snow Crash is bigger and better than any labels that could be attached to it. It may not be great literature, but it is a great read.

Perhaps the best way to describe Snow Crash is listing what the author prioritizes in writing it. Stephenson's first and foremost concern is humor. Snow Crash isn't quite out and out wacky like a Terry Pratchett novel, but it is basically hilarious. The next most important thing in Snow Crash is being cool. There is just a lot of badass stuff in the book, enough that the characters sometimes actually comment on it. Which leads us into the tertiary goal of Snow Crash: crazy bombastic action. Finally, surprisingly, Snow Crash is about fascinating hard science fiction with a core of thoughtfulness that serves as ballast, keeping the lighter parts of the book from drifting off into the realm of pure fluff.

The story revolves around Hiro Protagonist: hacker, swordmaster, pizza deliveryman. He is drawn into an ever expanding fight against a new drug called Snow Crash. He races through a fun setting where each suburb is its own little country; populated by rad skate punks, the Mafia, and cyborg doggies.  To go into more detail would spoil the enjoyment, so I'll leave it at that. I will note that the book came out in the early '90s and has a sort of undefinable '90s attitude to it. Snow Crash, like many sci-fi books, extrapolates a future out from it's own decade. So the obsessions of the 1991 are all touched on, the malls, the fresh 'tude, the burbs, etc (think the movie Clueless). What can I say, it was an innocent time.

Snow Crash is kinda like this!

If it wasn't clear from the review, I loved Snow Crash. The humor, the action, the science- it all worked for me. This is the part where I always quibble but I've got to say, I'm really scrounging here. Um, the end was kind of abrupt? The characters kind of rely on the reader to sketch in their personalities a bit, maybe? I don't know, it was great, everyone should read it. 14 out of 15 boats destroyed!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick, is a fairly well known book. But that does not mean it is necessarily mean it is widely read.  I'm guessing a good portion of its fame comes from being the inspiration for the classic sci-fi movie Blade Runner.  While the book shares the main plot framework as Blade Runner, they are very different beasts. The movie is a melancholy cyberpunk thriller, the book... well Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DADES) is a violent acid trip bursting with strange ideas.

There is a dream like quality to DADES that caught me off guard. The whole book is like a vivid nightmare. There is an alienness to the post-apocalyptic setting and characters. Conversations veer off in totally unforeseen directions. Time and again the nature of reality is called into question. The facts never seem to quite add up, incongruities abound to trip up careful readers. It is all wholly engaging while simultaneously exhausting.

The story follows a bounty hunter, Deckard, on One Bad Day(TM). His job is to hunt down six advanced killer androids, recent escapees from Mars. These androids are virtually indistinguishable from normal humans- except that they lack empathy. What follows is a bizarre cat and mouse game, complete with a femme fatale, an extra-dimensional psychic entity, and a goat. Dick throws in a lot of  random world building stuff, all of which do relate to the central theme of human empathy. Some of it doesn't work, sometimes element of DADES don't quite mesh. But overall I was quite taken with the messy yet fascinating world of DADES.

Special note must be made of the stars of Do Androids Dream?: the androids themselves. Minor spoilers follow. The androids are basically humans without empathy and we have a word for humans lacking empathy: psychopaths.  The android characters attempt to blend in, but time and again their alienness shines through. It's hard to overstate how well they are written. The androids are at once repellent and terrifying, and simultaneously completely fascinating.  In Blade Runner, androids are noble escaped slaves, full of passion. I much prefer the androids of DADES; the frustrated, brutal, devious killing machines.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a fine book, one that fully deserves it's fame. It also will not work for some people. I can see the fever dream world in which it is set turning people off.  And as noted, DADES's more surreal elements don't always fit nicely. There are part of DADES written tightly as a drum, it draws attention then to certain slack scenes.  Those quibbles aside, this is a great book, one that rewards close attention and further thought.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? scores 9.2/10 on the Voight-Kampf test.