Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg

Bear with me a moment. I'm going to throw up a couple of covers for this book, in addition to the one that graced the copy that I read:

All right. Take a look. I read an article on the whole Sad Puppies affair that included a complaint by the guy behind it that was pretty much precisely "you can't judge a book by its cover anymore." The idea being that when you look at strong men on the cover, you might actually be getting suckered into reading a book about gender, or sexuality, or politics, with the insinuation that this would never have happened in the past.

As almost always happens, this type of claim is accompanied by a vast historical myopia. The Golden Age that you remember is almost always more complex. Well, more complex than anyone tends to think. I'm a historian, I get to say things like that, because they're true.

While science fiction is not something I'm a particular historian of (my own expertise lies in masculinity in the 19th century), I read a lot of old science fiction. So when I read this book around the same time I read that article, I knew I had to connect the two.

Look at the covers above. They may not tell you everything about the book, but if the Sad Puppies narrative is to be believed, they'll be a straightforward adventure yarn, instead of harbouring something more subversive. You hear that, Silverberg? You guys didn't write anything more complex than that, right?

Wait, what? These books are about the criminalization of left-wing dissent, and the exiling of left-wing would-be revolutionaries to the Pleistocene, on a one-way time travel trip? They're jam-packed full of references to Marxism, Trotskyism, debates over non-violence versus violent revolution, and the tactics and long-term strategies of the revolution?

Huh.

Well, I'm shocked, shocked to hear that old SF might have been a teensy bit more complex than we thought.

Wait, no I'm not.

This book focuses around Barrett, one of the former prime organizers of the resistance against the syndicalist government in a post-democratic America. (Not anarcho-syndicalism, just syndicalism. With a strong touch of dictatorship.) He's spent decades now in the Pleistocene, trying to keep the men who have been exiled with him sane and functional in a world without hope, where they are forever divorced from the world they left.

And entirely without women, which is explained by the ruling government being afraid of any breeding in the past, and the potential creation of a second strain of human that might mess up the timeline. There's supposed to be a women's prison for revolutionaries too, but it's several thousand years away.

Because there are no women, there is a fair amount of homosexuality in the Pleistocene, as that's all the option there is for sexual partners. This is brought up early, although men are warned to keep it out of sight to avoid upsetting others.

The book jumps back and forth from the prison at Hawksbill Station (named after the physicist who made time travel possible), and Barrett's entry into the underground, and subsequent journey through it. The only female character that turns up is his revolutionary girlfriend, and there's some digression into how revolutionary women would be more attractive if they washed more (I sigh, but I do believe that even revolutionaries will continue to think that's the most important thing, given what I know of various protest movements of the 1960s and 70s). It turns into a tragic love story, as she is taken in one of the earliest waves of arrests, and Barrett's inability to find out what has happened to her haunts him.

There are also interesting thoughts about why people join revolutions, what experiences might have brought them to it, and the kinds of ego that might turn someone into an enemy as quickly as they became a friend.

On Hawksbill Station, a new man comes through, but he doesn't act like all the others - no obvious revolutionary dogmas, for one. So, why is he there? What does the future have in store for the past? What happens when you can literally ship dissent off to a pre-human Earth?

Try to get that from the covers.

The Martian by Andy Weir

This was our book club pick for April, and I am very glad it was. (There is no theme to our book club, except a general consensus that we want to avoid most traditional book club fare. Anybody who shows up to meetings can pick a book for some future read. Also, we meet at a pub, because beer and books and good food = a lovely evening out.)

So, what can I say about The Martian? I could spout something about how it was like this book was written just for me, but that would be ignoring how huge this book has been, one of the few self-published books online to be worth reading, then published to huge response and an upcoming movie. So, there's that.

But then there are also all the reasons why I enjoyed this book so thoroughly. For one, I'm a space nut. I may not understand all the science, but I've read what I can get my hands on, nonfiction to go with my steady science fiction diet. I cried like a baby at...well, actually, many things about manned spaceflight make me cry like a baby. It's a thing.

So, from a technical standpoint, of course I was going to like this, provided it wasn't too dry. And it's really not. Weir does an excellent job of both being very procedural, while making those procedures urgent and interesting.

I'm also deeply moved by stories where people work together to solve something. That's kind of NASA's stock-in-trade, so of course all the bits where they're trying to figure out how to talk to him, let alone help him, really got to me. Plus the crew that had left him behind. That reaction tickled me pink, and no, I'm not going  to tell you what it is.

What really makes this book, though, is the humour. Without it, this would be too dry, and too dark to enjoy. Watching a man on the ragged edge of sanity wonder about why Aquaman can control whales strikes just the right note.

I'm sure you probably know what this book is about. A man, trapped alone on Mars, trying to survive for as long as possible. That's the bare bones of the story. This one is all about the execution, and it's not a dense book. It's a quick read, it's funny, and man, is it ever tense. I read a review where someone complained about it being just one damned thing going wrong after another, and my reaction was, isn't that pretty much the classic man v. nature plotline? That's sort of the way things happen in stories of survival under adverse circumstances. You wanted an alien trying to kill him somewhere in there?

Whatever. I enjoyed this one thoroughly, and would highly recommend it. It's not deep, but it's very good.

"Slingshot" by Irving W. Lande

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?

From: Astounding Science Fiction, November 1955

I read this story almost a week ago, and what is perhaps most remarkable is how little of it I remember. Dogfights in space, but that's really about it. One unfortunate turn of phrase. Cold war assumptions. Women only present as pictures in cockpits and voices on the telephone.

Let me try to rack my brain (short pause while I check whether it's rack or wrack), to tell you more. Starting with dog fights in space. In a presumed continuation of the Cold War where both sides want the moon, but neither has the firepower to take and hold it, both sides keep the other from doing so by having dogfights between ships in space. Why this doesn't spark WWIII on Earth is not really gotten into.

Most of the story centers around one dogfight, and the difficulties of effectively fighting ship to ship in space, the extreme unlikelihood that you're going to hit anything. While, by the 1950s, most of the stories had gotten away from the 1930s conviction that scientists are out to doom us all, there's a small tinge of it here. Not that scientists are by definition mad scientists, but the idea that those eggheads never come up with anything useful, it's the men manning the ships who really know best. Because, of course, someone comes up with an idea that just might turn the tide of the war. (Or, you know, work once and then the enemy will adopt it too and nothing will change, but you know. Let's not let that get in the way of military tactics.)

This idea to turn the course of the war is to use nuclear bombs in slingshot-like devices.

The unfortunate phrasing that made me giggle was this line: "thinking the turgid thoughts that always came when action was near." And then the battle starts. Or pretty near. There's nothing turgid about what's described, so using that word in this context made me smirk.

Once the dogfight is over and the Reds have been blown up, the pilots return to earth for some R&R. One guy gets on the blower to his gal right away and gets her to round up a girl for his pilot buddy too. That's pretty much all the screentime the women get.

And that's pretty much it. It's a very simple story, and doesn't add a whole lot in terms of ideas or characters. Disappointing.

The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

In this cover, they've chosen to illustrate, well, it kind of looks like a weird hybrid of the two cities in this book. The city part looks like Diaspar, which is hidden solely underground, and although it has parks, would have no open spaces like you see here. That would be Lys, which would not have the skyscrapers.

This is actually a tale of two cities, but I guess that title might not have been available, for some reason. (No French Revolution, though.) They are the last human cities in existence, founded in the wake of a withdrawal from the stars caused by the Invaders, a now almost-legendary alien force that took the stars away from humanity.

At first, all we know is Diaspar. It has existed as a city in almost stasis for thousands and thousands of years. It is self-repairing. It is populated by people who have incredibly long lives, and are born again and again, editing their memories down to a manageable size every thousand years or so, existing only in the memory banks for more time, then born again as young adults. It is a city without children, without substantial change.

Superficial change, yes, in art, in reexperiencing life. But without anyone to kick over the traces. Even the Fool is there to shake things up just enough but never too much. Then Alvin is born. Like 8 (or 12?) others before him, he is entirely new. There has never been an Alvin before. He is able to break the conditioning that the city is all there is, and believe that the sky is something other than fearsome and terrifying. He travels to Lys, the only other human city, which survives with short-lived humans, lots of children and a focus on mental powers instead of technological ones.

In Lys, Alvin learns of the cultural differences, and ends up deciding, of course, that what the cities need is each other. But more than that, and the parts that I'm not going to get into in the review, is that he discovers what really happened out there when the remnants of humanity retreated from the stars.

For all this, The City and the Stars is a fairly slow-paced book. There is a digression into religious mania, and the leftover converts of a long-dead messiah. There is a trip out into space that has little tension, but lots of atmosphere.

Alvin is largely a cipher, and none of the characters really stand out, but that's not often the strong point of Clarke's books. The ideas on the different ways human civilization could endure are interesting, but I am disappointed, yet again, in the idea that longevity could never be a good thing. I'm willing to admit that it would have unintended consequences, and yet, other than Heinlein in his Howard families stories, most science fiction writers jump right to immortality as the worst thing ever. Some more complexity around the issue, please?

At any rate, The City and the Stars is not arresting, but it is entertaining enough. I don't think I'd bother to read it again, though.

The Week in Stories - May 5

The weekend was taken up by working, so only one game to report on this week.

Superhero U

We still need to come up with an actual name for the game, but that's the short form we're going with for now. Last night, we did my night of character creation for my PC and some NPCs for her. It was another short session, as we got to a certain point, had laid down some interesting conflicts, and now want to take them forward into the actual game.

One theme that is emerging is the idea of powers that hurt someone else unintentionally. Last time, we had our happy couple NPCs who are going to develop incompatible powers, most notably, the guy's power, which will drain energy from her the longer they're touching. It's going to be interesting to figure out a couple who are crazy in love but may never be able to be together physically again, and whether or not that can work.

Last night, we came up with a different variation on the theme. My character's powers are linked with her twin sister, but in such a way that really messes up the twin sister's life, and gives her almost no benefits at all. Riffing on an obscure Marvel character, Lila Cheney, my character, Ruth, can teleport, but she can't teleport directly someplace. First, she teleports to wherever her twin sister Ruby is, and then can teleport away anywhere she wants.

That's disruptive enough - Ruth will be popping in and out of Ruby's life at every inopportune moment. But then in play, as her power started to manifest, and Ruth started to feel all odd just before she teleported for the first time, it seemed reasonable that it started with her becoming aware of some kind of sensation from where her sister was before she teleported. It started with sounds. Melissa, playing Ruby, built on that, telling me what sense of touch Ruby was having that Ruth then experienced as well. (Making out with a football player named Chad, in this case.)

We continued to develop this throughout the evening, and now it kind of looks like Ruth can't turn it off, which will be disruptive for her life, getting random sensations from her sister, and disruptive for Ruby's life, as Ruth will keep randomly appearing and Ruby will know she never has real privacy again.

The dynamic between the two of them is good - exasperated, but they still love each other. Poor Ruby really gets the short end of the stick, but it's not that fun for Ruth either, who really doesn't want to be dealing with two sets of sensory impressions (except sight, it appears) all the time.

The other complication is the friend, academic rival, and study buddy of Ruth's, Miriam, who Ruth has a huge crush on, while Miriam is more interested in the other twin. That will be difficult as we go forward!

So, we have some good stuff in play. A large number of characters, and we still have Melissa's week of character and NPC creation to go, but we're expecting some will fall by the wayside and others become unexpectedly important. It also gives us more leeway to have serious repercussions for some of the NPCs. This university may end up having unexpectedly high mortality rates.

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

People will lie to you about this book. They don't realize that they're lying, but they are. I said I was reading this as part of my almost-finished effort to read the BBC Big Read list, and everyone I came across said "Wow, is there ever a lot of sex in that book!"

What they mean is, apparently, there is a lot of sex in the series. There is not a lot of sex in this book. Every hundred pages, I would announce to someone that there had been no Neanderthal sex yet, and feel a little more disappointed. I didn't know if it would be well-written Neanderthal sex, but I was interested to find out. Then the one sex scene in this entire book came, around page 400, and it was ugly and nonconsensual. Thanks, everyone. Way to make that as awkward and upsetting as possible.

So, if you're reading this book? There is no consensual sex in it. People then backtracked to tell me that oh, it's the later books that have all the good sex in them, but that was not in time to make this book anymore fun. You have been warned where I was not.

Outside of the sex? Well, this is okay. There are a lot of assumptions about Neanderthal culture, but I'm sure that would be the case in any book, as we know so very little. I am not entirely convinced by the notion that the Neanderthals were incapable of changing even a little, particularly when it's presented as these dark hairy people who are bettered at every turn by the blonde blue-eyed Ayla.

Ayla is a bit of a Mary Sue. I know that's an overused term, and there are lots of reasons to hate it. But she's good at everything. She's the best medicine woman they've ever seen. She's the best sling hunter they've ever seen. She's one of the best toolmakers they've ever seen. She's the only one to ever survive a month-long death curse. She's the only one to hide with her baby and survive, weak from childbirth. She's practically a shaman herself. She puts together the connection between sex and pregnancy all by herself, the first person in human history to do so. They have to declare her an honorary man in order to integrate her into their society. Her arms are better set in her body, her hair is prettier, her brain is bigger, she can talk more easily, she's a freaking Aryan portent of doom for the Neanderthals.

Why is she blonde, anyway? The earliest human the Neanderthals meet, the literal herald of their doom (as the shaman discovers), and she's as blonde and white as blonde and white can be.

I'm perhaps being a bit unfair - The Clan of the Cave Bear is entertaining, and it wasn't a difficult read, although some of the descriptions of the primordial caves and forests could be a bit much. I'm sure the sex gets more fun, at least I hope it does. I'm just getting sick of reading these books that people rave to me about as fun books for women, rife with sex, and then sitting down and getting rape instead. I'm looking at you too, Outlander.

It's not bad. It's just maddening, particularly since most of the book is watching Ayla getting beaten down, over and over, by the one Neanderthal who hates her. I have my own ideas of fun popular fiction. That's not really it.

Read as part of the BBC Big Read

Farthing by Jo Walton

I got off to a rocky start with Jo Walton. Among Others didn't wow me - I liked it, but the pacing felt off, and keen tension lacking. Since then, however, I've read two of her other books that have simply blown my mind. Tooth and Claw - Victorian society with dragons - made it on to my Top 10 list of last year. And I will not be at all surprised if Farthing joins it there next year.

So far in 2015, this is one of the books that has hit me the hardest, and one of the few that has made me evangelical. It's so, so, so freaking good. It's also terrifying. Walton pulls no punches, and our own knowledge of what happened in our world colours what could happen in ways that are unsettling, stark, and, necessary.

Digression.

I went to see Children of Men in the theatre when it first came out, and it also blew my mind. But what struck me the most, other than how good that movie is and how much I carried it around with me for weeks afterwards, was the reaction of one of the people I'd seen it with. Their reaction was "thank goodness that could never happen here." I was agog - what I took from the movie was that that could happen anywhere, under the right circumstances.

That's a little bit like what Jo Walton has done here. In a world where Britain made peace with Germany in 1941, German atrocities continue unabated. What never happened was the wide media coverage of the liberation of the camps, the wholesale outrage of the world as the horrors of the concentration camps were made public as part of the end of the war. And so, they continue. People know, but don't want to know - similar to the lead-up to the war. They're a little uncomfortable with Jews too, and maybe it's all being exaggerated. Homosexuals aren't really any more legal than they are in Germany, the response is just of a different magnitude.

In a world where the Third Reich continues, how long before Britain unleashes its own antisemitism and homophobia?

This book gives a terrifying answer, where a weekend at a country house of the political elite turns into a murder investigation, as one of the most prominent of the "Farthing Set," the conservative politicians who ousted Winston Churchill in this version of history, turns up dead with a Jewish star pinned to his chest.

A little obvious, you might think, and indeed so does Inspector Carmichael. He suspects that this is a frame-up of Daniel Kahn, who married the daughter of those who own the country house, to their dismay and semi-disinheritance. The book flips back and forth in chapters between Carmichael, who is himself gay, and Lucy, the daughter who married Daniel. The trap closes tightly around all of them, as what is at stake is more than just one Jewish man, but indeed, the political fate of the country, and the inexorable slide towards camps of their own. Personalizing that is the question of the integrity of one man, whether or not he can stand by quietly, knowing full well what has happened and what will happen, but all he holds dear is threatened if he speaks up.

This is tense and terrifying, and rejects soundly the belief that it couldn't have happened here, that somehow this was due to a particular fault of the German people. Having spent some time on exchange in Germany, people there have spent decades grappling with the knowledge of what they and their grandparents were capable of. And we have learned very little from the Holocaust if we use it as a way to think of what those people over there were capable of, and distance ourselves.