It has been well established that I am a big fan of the Peter Grant series. Huge. So take that into consideration when I found this particular book in the series not quite as much fun as the first two. Still fun, still worth a read, but somehow, a little lacking.
My husband found the same thing (and he's a fan too), or else I would start to suspect this was because I read Whispers Underground in a very unusual way. That is to say, all at once. I haven't done that in years, ever since I realized that when I read a book all in one day, it fades much more quickly in my memory than one I read over several days. I read very quickly, so I arbitrarily started to put limits on how much of a book I would read in a day. (As a general rule, not much more than 100 pages.) This meant the number of books I was reading simultaneously started to balloon. But I have been remembering more. Reading over more than one day allows characters and plot and prose to seep into my long-term memory, to be built upon the next day by the next installment.
All that is to say, I was proctoring an exam this week, brought this book along, and before the evening was over, had almost plowed through the whole thing. So I'm not entirely sure if the way this book is slipping away from me more quickly says something about the book, or about how fast I read it.
At any rate, this was still a fun entry. I liked many things about it! But somehow, it wasn't quite as engrossing. And weirdly, the back cover blurb promised a conflict that was in no way present in the book. From an earlier draft, perhaps? But it's weird when you're expecting evangelical Christian dislike of Peter, and it never ever shows up. I didn't really want it, wasn't disappointed to not have it, but when I was all steeled for it, it was a little weird.
I was glad Leslie was back! Not enough Dr. Walid, though. Or Toby, really. And was it just me, or was Zach pretty much just a slightly less reputable Ash? I liked the new cops, and Abigail.
In this one, a young art student is found dead on the tracks of a subway tunnel. Stabbed, repeatedly. And the murder weapon has a distinctly magical aura about it. So Peter gets called in, along with Leslie, to see what they can find. I quite enjoyed the straightforward mystery in this one. Turns out the student is the son of an American state senator, so a lone FBI agent is sent over to poke her nose in where it isn't wanted. She becomes distinctly suspicious of Peter, although without the promised Christian prejudice, this is a little out of left field. But in the end, I liked her.
At the same time, Nightingale and Peter and Leslie are all trying to track down the Faceless Man, starting with whoever may have trained him. I won't give away how that progresses in this novel, but it was interesting. And the new magical beings introduced in this one are an intriguing addition.
So, in the end, I still liked this entry into the series quite a lot, but not quite as much as the first two. I am looking forward to the third, though!
Wednesday, 4 June 2014
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
I want very desperately to see what others have seen in this book. I
reread it this month to find out if I had just missed things on first
readings, if my frustrations and disappointments and distance would fade
away on a second visit.
But no. I remain disappointed. I continue to think that this book tries valiantly at something very difficult and amazing, and fails. I am not grabbed by the characters. Goodness knows I want to be. I loved The Dispossessed. Why don't I love this?
It's a very lonely feeling, to sit out feeling mediocre about a book that has generated such raves and such love from other people. I want in on the party!
So, why do I have problems with it? The issues are twofold:
1) I think she fails at portraying genderlessness. It's a very difficult thing, I fully admit that! It might have been miraculous had she succeeded. But to me, she never did. Instead, this book constantly read (both times) to me, as a book about a planet full of men who occasionally had babies. That would be interesting, if that was what she was going for. But I don't think it was.
For every time she added Genly saying something about how the person he was talking to was somehow a bit like a woman, there are dozens and dozens of male pronouns. And despite Genly's assertion that "he" is a gender neutral term, I call bullshit. It isn't. It has never been. The gendered assumptions packed up in such a tiny word may be unacknowledged, but they exist. If "she" is a bearer of meaning that includes gendered expectations, so is "he."
Every time someone has tried to come up with a gender neutral pronoun, the results have tended to be inelegant and strained. But I think that might be what she needed here. She could have made up a Gethenian pronoun and used it, and that would have brought the gender issue to the fore, instead of hiding it behind the male.
But even worse is the part where, even when perfectly good gender-neutral words existed in English, LeGuin chose not to use them, using instead the specifically male forms. Gethenians are not parents, they are fathers. Their children are not children, they are sons. Siblings are not siblings, they are brothers. Parents, children, siblings. Why not those words?
Males who occasionally get pregnant.
I will omit the part where every time someone first interacts with a non-Gethenian person, whether as an image or the reality, the example always starts with someone finding the female form strange and offputting. It's going to be a bit repetitive, given what I've already stated.
If LeGuin had just set this on a world that, instead of genderless, was gendered entirely male, I wouldn't be having these difficulties. It wouldn't have mattered if their masculinity was far different from the ones I know. Masculinities are rarely constant and never universal. I hoped beyond hope that I'd be swept up in the story this time, that her use of pronouns and nouns would bother me quite so much. It never happened.
2) Once the above started to get under my skin, there wasn't enough emotional attachment to the characters or the story to override it, and allow me to get immersed. It was too restrained, too cerebral, and I never really cared very much about what was going on.
The Dispossessed captured and held me. The Left Hand of Darkness left me cold. I wanted to care about Genly, about Estraven, about their world and their struggles. But whether it was my brain getting stuck on pronouns and refusing to budge, or that there wasn't enough there for me to grasp on to, I was adrift.
I didn't mind reading it. I think it is a magnificent attempt at something incredibly difficult. But for me, it never succeeded at its most basic premise, and there wasn't enough else to become enraptured by.
Booklinks:
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
But no. I remain disappointed. I continue to think that this book tries valiantly at something very difficult and amazing, and fails. I am not grabbed by the characters. Goodness knows I want to be. I loved The Dispossessed. Why don't I love this?
It's a very lonely feeling, to sit out feeling mediocre about a book that has generated such raves and such love from other people. I want in on the party!
So, why do I have problems with it? The issues are twofold:
1) I think she fails at portraying genderlessness. It's a very difficult thing, I fully admit that! It might have been miraculous had she succeeded. But to me, she never did. Instead, this book constantly read (both times) to me, as a book about a planet full of men who occasionally had babies. That would be interesting, if that was what she was going for. But I don't think it was.
For every time she added Genly saying something about how the person he was talking to was somehow a bit like a woman, there are dozens and dozens of male pronouns. And despite Genly's assertion that "he" is a gender neutral term, I call bullshit. It isn't. It has never been. The gendered assumptions packed up in such a tiny word may be unacknowledged, but they exist. If "she" is a bearer of meaning that includes gendered expectations, so is "he."
Every time someone has tried to come up with a gender neutral pronoun, the results have tended to be inelegant and strained. But I think that might be what she needed here. She could have made up a Gethenian pronoun and used it, and that would have brought the gender issue to the fore, instead of hiding it behind the male.
But even worse is the part where, even when perfectly good gender-neutral words existed in English, LeGuin chose not to use them, using instead the specifically male forms. Gethenians are not parents, they are fathers. Their children are not children, they are sons. Siblings are not siblings, they are brothers. Parents, children, siblings. Why not those words?
Males who occasionally get pregnant.
I will omit the part where every time someone first interacts with a non-Gethenian person, whether as an image or the reality, the example always starts with someone finding the female form strange and offputting. It's going to be a bit repetitive, given what I've already stated.
If LeGuin had just set this on a world that, instead of genderless, was gendered entirely male, I wouldn't be having these difficulties. It wouldn't have mattered if their masculinity was far different from the ones I know. Masculinities are rarely constant and never universal. I hoped beyond hope that I'd be swept up in the story this time, that her use of pronouns and nouns would bother me quite so much. It never happened.
2) Once the above started to get under my skin, there wasn't enough emotional attachment to the characters or the story to override it, and allow me to get immersed. It was too restrained, too cerebral, and I never really cared very much about what was going on.
The Dispossessed captured and held me. The Left Hand of Darkness left me cold. I wanted to care about Genly, about Estraven, about their world and their struggles. But whether it was my brain getting stuck on pronouns and refusing to budge, or that there wasn't enough there for me to grasp on to, I was adrift.
I didn't mind reading it. I think it is a magnificent attempt at something incredibly difficult. But for me, it never succeeded at its most basic premise, and there wasn't enough else to become enraptured by.
Booklinks:
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
"The Brigands of the Moon" by Ray Cummings
Hey guys! Did you realize that the Gutenberg Project has old science
fiction? It does! (I don't know why this surprised me, but it did.) So,
hey, why not read some of them and review them? Not to poke fun at the
old science fiction, although there might be a little of that. No, I'm
more interested in looking at what this old science fiction tells us
about the worlds that were being imagined at the time. What did they
think about science? Gender? Race? The eventual fate of the world?
Magazine: Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930
This was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Only a bit, but that's enough. The first story I read by this author was eye-rolling in its use of purple prose. This one is quite a bit more restrained, and it's not a bad science fiction story. Not a great one, either. I'll take the improvement.
Whereas the first story was a thinly disguised fantasy story masquerading as science fiction, courtesy of a machine that vibrated the protagonists into a medieval fantasy world, this is straight-up science fiction. It's on a cruiser to Mars and back, but this particular cruiser has a secret. On the way past the Moon, they picked up a transmission from a government scientist there, saying he'd found treasures on the moon. I think maybe gold, but I started this story a while ago and have forgotten. Let's just call it MacGuffintonium.
The Space Marine-equivalents on board the cruiser were waiting for this message, and must shepherd it back to Earth. That's not going to be easy though, as a group of revolutionary Martians and sympathizers from Earth are plotting to seize it, through any means necessary. Our stalwart young military man must fend them off, while suffering a personal and not entirely convincing lost, many wrong turns, until finally, the conspirators strike and take over the ship. The story ends just as the main character is mostly isolated and about to go all Die Hard on the ship.
It will be continued in the next issue!
It's not deep. At all. In any form. And there is some truly wince-worthy stuff here, mostly around gender. But it's not that bad. At this point, I'll take that.
Except when it comes to gender and race. Oh lord, except when it comes to gender and race. Two things. First: there is literally a part where an interesting but very, very white and thin and frail woman bemoans her lack of options in her life, and the main character, who has fallen in insta-love with her tells her:
“You have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince,” I said impulsively.
“Yes? What are they?” She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of coquetry.
My heart was pounding. “The wonders of the next generation. A little son, cast in your own gentle image––”
And of course, this is so romantic that she instantly falls in love back with him! As opposed to kneeing him in the nuts. And that gives rise to the main character constantly romantically musing over the son she will give him.
Then mourning, because she dies, because her apparent plot purpose is to make the main character mad and swear revenge. Great. (Or does she? Dun Dun Dun!)
She is juxtaposed with the other woman I'm becoming quite used to in these stories. If she's the pale white virgin, oh, do we ever have the vaguely racialized, aggressively sexual, physically large woman who lusts after the main character, who always regards her with contempt. She's Martian, which is the "other" in this story, and the terms in which Martians are described make it not too hard to read this as an analogue for race. And not in flattering or good ways. (The previous story I read by this author, you may recall, had the none-too-subtle virgin/whore dichotomy with characters named, I shit you not, Blanca and Sensua.)
The Martian woman falls for the protagonist, hard. And thus prevents her brutish Martian brother from killing him, after he'd already tried to seduce/rape the virginal woman and killed her in the process. (See? Does this make you think of any tropes of brutish black rapists? Can I sigh heavily now and perhaps start weeping?)
So yes, gender and race, they are issues. As is the entire thing where the Martians are revolutionaries working for a free Mars, but painted as all crazy lunatics. Because who would want to revolt against government interference from across the sea of space? Ooh, hitting a little home?
I'm picking on this part perhaps unfairly because I'm running a Drama System game right now using Emily Care Boss's awesome Colony Wars setting, and am having a whee of a time sending hardballs at my players about the brewing rebellion on Mars, the role of government, when rebellions go too far, and the importance of autonomy. My mind is often on a revolutionary Mars at the moment, as I try to think of even more difficult situations to put them in. My amazing players are giving me a far more nuanced view of what an incipient revolution might look like. So I reserve my right to nitpick this story.
Can I be done now? This story is sort of okay, if you can ignore what it has to say about women, race, and self-governance. Oof.
Magazine: Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930
This was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Only a bit, but that's enough. The first story I read by this author was eye-rolling in its use of purple prose. This one is quite a bit more restrained, and it's not a bad science fiction story. Not a great one, either. I'll take the improvement.
Whereas the first story was a thinly disguised fantasy story masquerading as science fiction, courtesy of a machine that vibrated the protagonists into a medieval fantasy world, this is straight-up science fiction. It's on a cruiser to Mars and back, but this particular cruiser has a secret. On the way past the Moon, they picked up a transmission from a government scientist there, saying he'd found treasures on the moon. I think maybe gold, but I started this story a while ago and have forgotten. Let's just call it MacGuffintonium.
The Space Marine-equivalents on board the cruiser were waiting for this message, and must shepherd it back to Earth. That's not going to be easy though, as a group of revolutionary Martians and sympathizers from Earth are plotting to seize it, through any means necessary. Our stalwart young military man must fend them off, while suffering a personal and not entirely convincing lost, many wrong turns, until finally, the conspirators strike and take over the ship. The story ends just as the main character is mostly isolated and about to go all Die Hard on the ship.
It will be continued in the next issue!
It's not deep. At all. In any form. And there is some truly wince-worthy stuff here, mostly around gender. But it's not that bad. At this point, I'll take that.
Except when it comes to gender and race. Oh lord, except when it comes to gender and race. Two things. First: there is literally a part where an interesting but very, very white and thin and frail woman bemoans her lack of options in her life, and the main character, who has fallen in insta-love with her tells her:
“You have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince,” I said impulsively.
“Yes? What are they?” She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of coquetry.
My heart was pounding. “The wonders of the next generation. A little son, cast in your own gentle image––”
And of course, this is so romantic that she instantly falls in love back with him! As opposed to kneeing him in the nuts. And that gives rise to the main character constantly romantically musing over the son she will give him.
Then mourning, because she dies, because her apparent plot purpose is to make the main character mad and swear revenge. Great. (Or does she? Dun Dun Dun!)
She is juxtaposed with the other woman I'm becoming quite used to in these stories. If she's the pale white virgin, oh, do we ever have the vaguely racialized, aggressively sexual, physically large woman who lusts after the main character, who always regards her with contempt. She's Martian, which is the "other" in this story, and the terms in which Martians are described make it not too hard to read this as an analogue for race. And not in flattering or good ways. (The previous story I read by this author, you may recall, had the none-too-subtle virgin/whore dichotomy with characters named, I shit you not, Blanca and Sensua.)
The Martian woman falls for the protagonist, hard. And thus prevents her brutish Martian brother from killing him, after he'd already tried to seduce/rape the virginal woman and killed her in the process. (See? Does this make you think of any tropes of brutish black rapists? Can I sigh heavily now and perhaps start weeping?)
So yes, gender and race, they are issues. As is the entire thing where the Martians are revolutionaries working for a free Mars, but painted as all crazy lunatics. Because who would want to revolt against government interference from across the sea of space? Ooh, hitting a little home?
I'm picking on this part perhaps unfairly because I'm running a Drama System game right now using Emily Care Boss's awesome Colony Wars setting, and am having a whee of a time sending hardballs at my players about the brewing rebellion on Mars, the role of government, when rebellions go too far, and the importance of autonomy. My mind is often on a revolutionary Mars at the moment, as I try to think of even more difficult situations to put them in. My amazing players are giving me a far more nuanced view of what an incipient revolution might look like. So I reserve my right to nitpick this story.
Can I be done now? This story is sort of okay, if you can ignore what it has to say about women, race, and self-governance. Oof.
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
How do you review books about trauma? I've been thinking about that a
lot the last few days, as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to
say about this book, and also the two I read around the same time. I've said the
universe sometimes throws me books in clumps? Well, this time it was
three about traumatic experiences under authoritarian governments. Two
fiction, one non-fiction.
And the non-fiction is probably the hardest to review. When someone is relating their life story about horrific events, as, in this case, the author's story about being arrested in post-revolution Iran, sent to prison, tortured, sentenced to death, having that sentence commuted to life, being pressured into marrying a prison guard to get some semblance of freedom, and so on. It's not an easy story, and I applaud Nemat's ability to get it down on the page.
What about literary value? How do you even assess that in this type of story? In this case, the prose is spare and not particularly descriptive. Maybe that's the only way to get these words on the page - you can relive it, but even for that, there's a limit. So as a literary achievement, it's impossible for me to say good or bad. If it were a novel, I'd critique it more heavily. As a direct expression of trauma, it is a difficult read. And that probably should be the point.
There was some controversy a year or so back, when one of the panelists on "Canada Reads" accused this book of being untruthful, but I just did a google search, and I can't find anything specific about that, no specific accusations or individual claims of untruth. So that judge may have been talking out of her ass, but it raises what is almost always with us with nonfiction these days, particularly memoirs. After James Frey and the Three Cups of Tea controversy, these types of books are under more scrutiny these days, and that has good points and bad points.
But even if there are inaccuracies, which I'm not sure that there are - at least I can't find any records of people picking out specific things - I'm reminded of a story from one of my more theoretical drama classes, "Geographies of Emergency." The prof told us a story about collecting testimonials from Holocaust survivors, and in particular, a story one woman told about Jewish resistance at one of the camps, and her very clear memory of three of the smokestacks blowing up.
Except that we know that only one smokestack blew up at that particular camp. So what do we do with her testimony? It cannot be simply dismissed because, in the middle of trauma, she didn't get every detail exactly right. For one, it is testimony to something that we never think of connected with the horrors of the death camps - active resistance. But yet, obviously, memory is inherently faulty, and those accumulated during trauma even more so.
It's a difficulty I continue to struggle with. But I believe these stories have to be told, and even if some details are wrong (and again, I don't know that any are), that doesn't immediately invalidate a story. Everything has to be assessed for what it is, and with understanding of context and history. I know incredibly little about Iran, and I should know more.
I feel like I've talked less about the book, and more about the thoughts that I had to get out of the way before I could write a review. Somewhere along the way, the two merged. But my final thought is that this is a good book, not a great one. And I think it will have done its job if it causes people to explore more, rather than read one book and stop.
And the non-fiction is probably the hardest to review. When someone is relating their life story about horrific events, as, in this case, the author's story about being arrested in post-revolution Iran, sent to prison, tortured, sentenced to death, having that sentence commuted to life, being pressured into marrying a prison guard to get some semblance of freedom, and so on. It's not an easy story, and I applaud Nemat's ability to get it down on the page.
What about literary value? How do you even assess that in this type of story? In this case, the prose is spare and not particularly descriptive. Maybe that's the only way to get these words on the page - you can relive it, but even for that, there's a limit. So as a literary achievement, it's impossible for me to say good or bad. If it were a novel, I'd critique it more heavily. As a direct expression of trauma, it is a difficult read. And that probably should be the point.
There was some controversy a year or so back, when one of the panelists on "Canada Reads" accused this book of being untruthful, but I just did a google search, and I can't find anything specific about that, no specific accusations or individual claims of untruth. So that judge may have been talking out of her ass, but it raises what is almost always with us with nonfiction these days, particularly memoirs. After James Frey and the Three Cups of Tea controversy, these types of books are under more scrutiny these days, and that has good points and bad points.
But even if there are inaccuracies, which I'm not sure that there are - at least I can't find any records of people picking out specific things - I'm reminded of a story from one of my more theoretical drama classes, "Geographies of Emergency." The prof told us a story about collecting testimonials from Holocaust survivors, and in particular, a story one woman told about Jewish resistance at one of the camps, and her very clear memory of three of the smokestacks blowing up.
Except that we know that only one smokestack blew up at that particular camp. So what do we do with her testimony? It cannot be simply dismissed because, in the middle of trauma, she didn't get every detail exactly right. For one, it is testimony to something that we never think of connected with the horrors of the death camps - active resistance. But yet, obviously, memory is inherently faulty, and those accumulated during trauma even more so.
It's a difficulty I continue to struggle with. But I believe these stories have to be told, and even if some details are wrong (and again, I don't know that any are), that doesn't immediately invalidate a story. Everything has to be assessed for what it is, and with understanding of context and history. I know incredibly little about Iran, and I should know more.
I feel like I've talked less about the book, and more about the thoughts that I had to get out of the way before I could write a review. Somewhere along the way, the two merged. But my final thought is that this is a good book, not a great one. And I think it will have done its job if it causes people to explore more, rather than read one book and stop.
Monday, 2 June 2014
Learning the World by Ken MacLeod
All right, let's try to write this thing. I'm still feeling sleep-deprived, so it may not be coherent, but here goes:
This was pretty darn good. Not exceptional, not rocking my socks off, but solid, and interesting, and trying new ideas I'd never quite seen before. And the new ideas are subtle. The writing style is serviceable, but won't set the world on fire any time soon. It was never quite a page-turner, but wasn't hard to pick up either.
MacLeod starts from some interesting base assumptions, and then does some interesting things with them. The book starts in the year 14,000 and change. I was perplexed at this, at the start, as his people don't seem that different from people now, or any extrapolations over the next few hundred years. Why go so far in the future? What was the point?
And then the reason for this started to dawn on me, due to one of the core conceits of the book - that humans had been out there in the stars for so long and had never encountered another race. How long would it take for it to become an article of faith that they never would, that they were truly alone in the universe? Hence, I think, the extreme far-future setting.
But then they do, a race of winged bipedal humanoids. The book shifts back and forth between the colonization ship that had been coming to this new system, and the winged people on the planet. Both have their worldviews shaken, both have to start "learning the world" anew. Core concepts are examined, and many of the problems stem from those who don't even realize that the playing board has changed, and try to react as though what they have always known is still true.
On the ship, one young woman, Atomic Discourse Gale, realizes the full extent of the change, and becomes a major force in the debates splitting the ship. On the planet, Darvin and Orro, scientists both, first discover the ship entering the system, and later, with the help of Darvin's squeeze Kwarive, a biologist, discover some of the ways the humans are gathering information on their world.
The world of the winged people is, as far as the people on the ship can perceive, backward in many ways. They live on the brink of an industrial revolution, and keep members of a similar race as slaves. From these facts, the humans act on assumptions based on their own far history. This is a mistake.
First contact stories often depict us being the ones who are right. If we don't intervene, it's from some higher morality that prevents us from imposing our own values on them. This doesn't mean that those values, "our" values, aren't shown to be right, always. The poor deluded saps have to work through their own problems, until they finally grow up enough to be welcomed into our enlightened family.
That is not what we find here, and it's so refreshing. I'd never examined first contact stories (where we're the ones doing the contacting) in that way. Assumptions of a higher morality exist, and are entirely wrong. We all just blundering our way through, and the human way may not even be the best.
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
This was pretty darn good. Not exceptional, not rocking my socks off, but solid, and interesting, and trying new ideas I'd never quite seen before. And the new ideas are subtle. The writing style is serviceable, but won't set the world on fire any time soon. It was never quite a page-turner, but wasn't hard to pick up either.
MacLeod starts from some interesting base assumptions, and then does some interesting things with them. The book starts in the year 14,000 and change. I was perplexed at this, at the start, as his people don't seem that different from people now, or any extrapolations over the next few hundred years. Why go so far in the future? What was the point?
And then the reason for this started to dawn on me, due to one of the core conceits of the book - that humans had been out there in the stars for so long and had never encountered another race. How long would it take for it to become an article of faith that they never would, that they were truly alone in the universe? Hence, I think, the extreme far-future setting.
But then they do, a race of winged bipedal humanoids. The book shifts back and forth between the colonization ship that had been coming to this new system, and the winged people on the planet. Both have their worldviews shaken, both have to start "learning the world" anew. Core concepts are examined, and many of the problems stem from those who don't even realize that the playing board has changed, and try to react as though what they have always known is still true.
On the ship, one young woman, Atomic Discourse Gale, realizes the full extent of the change, and becomes a major force in the debates splitting the ship. On the planet, Darvin and Orro, scientists both, first discover the ship entering the system, and later, with the help of Darvin's squeeze Kwarive, a biologist, discover some of the ways the humans are gathering information on their world.
The world of the winged people is, as far as the people on the ship can perceive, backward in many ways. They live on the brink of an industrial revolution, and keep members of a similar race as slaves. From these facts, the humans act on assumptions based on their own far history. This is a mistake.
First contact stories often depict us being the ones who are right. If we don't intervene, it's from some higher morality that prevents us from imposing our own values on them. This doesn't mean that those values, "our" values, aren't shown to be right, always. The poor deluded saps have to work through their own problems, until they finally grow up enough to be welcomed into our enlightened family.
That is not what we find here, and it's so refreshing. I'd never examined first contact stories (where we're the ones doing the contacting) in that way. Assumptions of a higher morality exist, and are entirely wrong. We all just blundering our way through, and the human way may not even be the best.
Booklinks:
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
Sunday, 1 June 2014
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
I've known far too little about Nelson Mandela. I knew who he was, of course, and some of the bare outlines of his life. But I think I'd fallen into knowing little more than what Cornel West, after Mandela's death, called the "Santa-Clausification" of the South African leader. By that, he meant the process of turning Mandela from who he was into a harmless, strangely apolitical grandfatherly figure that could be used as a symbol by left and right alike.
Mandela's autobiography is a welcome corrective to that. Although sometimes the story lags, the arc of his radicalization, the momentum of the ANC, and the developments while he was in prison all fight against an easy depiction of him as a figure in the movement and a person. The continued defense of the movements the ANC's offshoot made towards using violence as a political tool is interesting and challenging.
It is also a very readable account of the various laws that were put in place as the basis of the apartheid system in South Africa, their implications and the ways in which they were carried out, with a parallel story of how the ANC responded to these laws as they were implemented. There are some lovely "gotcha" moments in the government's first ham-handed attempts to suppress dissent and protest, but the story grows more dire as the police and government care less and less about finding reasonable justifications for their actions.
It's a very straightforward narrative, although there are parts where interpersonal conflicts are somewhat glossed over, probably deliberately. It's his prerogative, but it does add distance to the narrative when it comes to the personal. The political, however, is fascinating.
The years in which Mandela was imprisoned take up a huge chunk of the book, and are incisive in their examination of incarceration, the struggles in prison for fair and equal treatment, side excursions into what rights prisoners should have, and how political prisoners in this instance reacted to their circumstances.
At the end, I feel like I know a great deal about the political struggle, and somewhat less about the man. Not that there isn't anything, but there is that reserve and reticence about personal issues. Again, totally his prerogative. Also, his entire life hangs together as a unified arc, and I can't help but wonder if that means that there is some messiness being elided by the smoothing out of his political path into one where his later viewpoints are almost completely harmonized with the ones he held at the beginning of his struggles.
This was an interesting read, although in some areas it raised my curiosity more than it communicated. But as a look at the struggle against apartheid, and a memoir of years spent as a political prisoner, it was fascinating.
Mandela's autobiography is a welcome corrective to that. Although sometimes the story lags, the arc of his radicalization, the momentum of the ANC, and the developments while he was in prison all fight against an easy depiction of him as a figure in the movement and a person. The continued defense of the movements the ANC's offshoot made towards using violence as a political tool is interesting and challenging.
It is also a very readable account of the various laws that were put in place as the basis of the apartheid system in South Africa, their implications and the ways in which they were carried out, with a parallel story of how the ANC responded to these laws as they were implemented. There are some lovely "gotcha" moments in the government's first ham-handed attempts to suppress dissent and protest, but the story grows more dire as the police and government care less and less about finding reasonable justifications for their actions.
It's a very straightforward narrative, although there are parts where interpersonal conflicts are somewhat glossed over, probably deliberately. It's his prerogative, but it does add distance to the narrative when it comes to the personal. The political, however, is fascinating.
The years in which Mandela was imprisoned take up a huge chunk of the book, and are incisive in their examination of incarceration, the struggles in prison for fair and equal treatment, side excursions into what rights prisoners should have, and how political prisoners in this instance reacted to their circumstances.
At the end, I feel like I know a great deal about the political struggle, and somewhat less about the man. Not that there isn't anything, but there is that reserve and reticence about personal issues. Again, totally his prerogative. Also, his entire life hangs together as a unified arc, and I can't help but wonder if that means that there is some messiness being elided by the smoothing out of his political path into one where his later viewpoints are almost completely harmonized with the ones he held at the beginning of his struggles.
This was an interesting read, although in some areas it raised my curiosity more than it communicated. But as a look at the struggle against apartheid, and a memoir of years spent as a political prisoner, it was fascinating.
Past Master by R.A. Lafferty
Past Master reads like a lesser The Einstein Intersection,
which was published a mere year earlier. Both are looking at future
societies, and attempting to integrate myth and legend into the stories
they tell. But what Past Master lacks is the lyricism of Samuel
L. Delany. Similar figures, archetypes of myth and Christian legend, are present, but Lafferty tells these stories in much more prosy prose, and
having read and loved The Einstein Intersection earlier, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the story told here.
It's not bad. It's just that if you're looking for a successful integration of myth and science fiction, go with Delany.
In this book, on the golden world of Astrobe, human society has reached its zenith. Or so they thought. But more and more humans are rejecting the life of ease and comfort to live in a hardscrabble settlement, Cathead, just outside of the main city. No one can understand why. Machines live side by side with humans, and can indeed even interbreed with them. Programmed Killers stalk the streets, to take out anyone who interferes with the Astrobe dream.
In the midst of a society that seems perfect, yet is being rejected by increasing numbers, the Circle of Masters decides they need a new candidate for President. One who can be manipulated. But is honest. They pick Sir Thomas More, and pluck him forward in time. Once on Astrobe, Thomas sees the similarities between this new Eden and his own Utopia, which he insists was written as a satire rather than a practical plan. Despite this, and despite the urgings of his own disciples, Evita, the female embodiment of, well, femaleness, and her brother Adam, doomed to die again and again, More falls in love with the Astrobe dream, and vows to save it.
But is his will his own?
But while Past Master was interesting, the writing didn't live up to the promise of the ideas, and it was never a book I was eager to get back to. I didn't mind reading it, mind, but it never really grabbed me. Delany's a far better bet. Too bad for Lafferty his great idea coincided with a much better delivery of the same sort of themes.
Booklinks:
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
It's not bad. It's just that if you're looking for a successful integration of myth and science fiction, go with Delany.
In this book, on the golden world of Astrobe, human society has reached its zenith. Or so they thought. But more and more humans are rejecting the life of ease and comfort to live in a hardscrabble settlement, Cathead, just outside of the main city. No one can understand why. Machines live side by side with humans, and can indeed even interbreed with them. Programmed Killers stalk the streets, to take out anyone who interferes with the Astrobe dream.
In the midst of a society that seems perfect, yet is being rejected by increasing numbers, the Circle of Masters decides they need a new candidate for President. One who can be manipulated. But is honest. They pick Sir Thomas More, and pluck him forward in time. Once on Astrobe, Thomas sees the similarities between this new Eden and his own Utopia, which he insists was written as a satire rather than a practical plan. Despite this, and despite the urgings of his own disciples, Evita, the female embodiment of, well, femaleness, and her brother Adam, doomed to die again and again, More falls in love with the Astrobe dream, and vows to save it.
But is his will his own?
But while Past Master was interesting, the writing didn't live up to the promise of the ideas, and it was never a book I was eager to get back to. I didn't mind reading it, mind, but it never really grabbed me. Delany's a far better bet. Too bad for Lafferty his great idea coincided with a much better delivery of the same sort of themes.
Booklinks:
I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees
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