A Fire in the Sun by George Effinger

 
I remember thinking that the first book in the series was interesting, but never quite entirely satisfying. Apparently either the second book is a lot better, or I was really cranky when I read the first volume. That's certainly possible. At any rate, I quite enjoyed this second venture into Marid Audran's world.

Life has certainly not gotten any easier for Marid - now on Papa Friedlander Bey's payroll and living in his house, liaison to the police for Bey, and regarded with deep suspicion from those who haven't escaped the Budayeen.  A strange woman has moved in as well, claiming to be Bey's daughter and her son his grandson and heir. Bey gives Marid the job of disposing of them, but Marid hesitates to take drastic action.

Then he gets assigned to look into a rival crime boss/power broker, on an actual police case, which ends up with tragic results. And as in all good noir, when someone kills your partner, you have to do something about it. And Marid does, using his new equipment and some specialized moddies (troubling specialized moddies in a few cases) to do so.

Moddies seem a bit different in this book, more of an overlay of a personality on top of your own that a replacement one that you watch from a distance inside your skull. I think that's actually more interesting.

But where this book really gets interesting is how it's about Marid's fall into power, as much as he tries to resist it, how subtly it occurs, how unfortunately pleasurable it is. Bey is sneaky in how he brings Marid further into his organization, starting with buying Chiriga's bar from her against her will, and giving it to Marid, thus further alienating him from everyone in the Budayeen.

In the meantime, Marid has to figure out the secrets of the Phoenix File, which may have caused the death of his partner. And figure out what the other power broker is really up to.

The troubling moddies that pop up are worth mentioning - one is a whole subset of people who were taped in immense pain or anguish, to sell on the black market. The other is the same thing, only involuntarily made. Makes the whole moddy market much scarier, all of a sudden.

In a web of deceit, the flux of power, and the slow diminishment of personal integrity, Marid flounders, without even seeing that he's doing so. This is pretty much the book of a fall from grace, which makes me very interested to read the third book, to see if that's permanent, or if he can rediscover a sense of personal honour. At the moment, I don't even think he knows he's lost it.

In other words, the second book drew me in in ways the first one didn't. I'm now fully on board heading into the third. I am a sucker for noir, and this is pushing those buttons. But it's Marid's personal journey that's really grabbing me at the moment.

Booklinks:

I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees

"The Alternate Plan" by Gerry Maddren

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: Amazing Science Fiction Stories, September 1958

This is a strange little story, only barely science fiction. You could change one tiny aspect of it, and it wouldn't be science fiction at all, just a morality tale about suicide. Seriously, with very few changes, I could see this in a religious magazine, preaching about the evils of thinking you can or should take your own life.

So, the main character is a psychologist, but it seems one who has mastered a science fiction version of astral projection. (This is why I say it's barely science fiction at all.) He is undergoing surgery to find out if he has cancer of the larynx. He detaches himself from his body during surgery, with the theory that if he discovers he does has cancer, he's not even going to wake up to get the diagnosis, as obviously having cancer would steal his voice, his wife, and all his joy in life.

Apparently, "In my field I've seen a lot of crazy reactions to loss of basic ability," but he's seen absolutely no good adaptations to traumatic news. So, when he thinks he sees the surgeons frown, he decides (probably correctly) that he does have cancer, and tries to break the line connecting him to his body. From there, he travels to an Entirely-Not-Heaven-But-Totally-Heaven, a lush green place that he can't enter because of a forcefield.

A figure approaches him to more or less tell him that this was an act of weakness, and that alone has disqualified him from entering Totally-Not-Heaven. The psychologist says "oh yeah?" The resulting argument ends with Totally-Not-St.-Peter daring the psychologist to go back to his body to prove his mastery of whatever the science fiction version of astral projection is. Actually, it's reverse psychology. He dares the psychologist to try to reenter his body while Totally-Not-St.-Peter tries to stop him

The psychologist does it, even though he knows that it's a trick to make him accept life, and he succeeds and comes back to life, the end.

No seriously, the end. His heart starts beating, we're done.

So...that's it. There's little science, no real science fiction, and a "suicide is weakness" moral. I suppose it filled a few pages, but there's a part of me that wonders why it got accepted in the first place. Maybe the editor wanted to hammer home that message. I don't know.

Minority Report: The only female character is the wife, there to be stoic and stand by her husband. No people of colour that are referenced. Heterosexuals as far as the eye can see.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

When Margaret Atwood is firing on all cylinders, there are few who can touch her. Her sense of language, of character, of prose so sharp it could bite you, it's all astounding. At the same time, when she misses, it's disappointing. So I approach every book of hers in a state of apprehension - is this going to be as amazing as The Robber Bride, or as disappointing as The Blind Assassin?

Alias Grace, as it turns out, is somewhere in the middle. The prose is understandably flattened, given that she's writing from the perspective of two people, neither of whom are gifted with poetic gifts. The characters, though, are extremely interesting. The story is great. The ending disappoints. So really, it's somewhere in the middle.

I'll work through that, piece by piece. The book itself is based on the real-life story from 19th century Ontario of Grace Marks, a young maid who was accused of helping or masterminding the killing of the man she worked for and his housekeeper, with whom her employer was allegedly having an affair. Was she an innocent swept along by an evil man? The devious voice behind the whole thing? Somewhere in the middle? Her sentence was commuted and she spent most of her life in prison.

This book is about a young man trying to make a name for himself in the field of treating madness, hoping to develop new techniques on which to build an asylum which he will then run. Credentials are a much looser thing at this time period. He comes to Kingston. (I'm from Kingston, so I always get a little excited when my city appears in a book.) At the penitentiary, he gets permission to interview Grace Marks, and he hopes to be able to help her recover memories she is alleged to have lost.

The strength of the book is that you're never quite sure how honest Grace is being. She parcels out her story in small chunks, trying to please him and keep him coming back, while carefully guarding herself. This tension is well done, with her thoughts forming much of the book, while the doctor's point of view comes through in letters, and some first-person narrative. I think it was first person - it's been a couple of weeks since I read this.

As I said, having Grace be the narrator for much of the book flattens out Atwood's prose, but it works well for the story that is being told. Of course, she's fascinating, and that sense of not quite knowing how much you can trust her is subtle and well done.

Which is why the end of the book is disappointing. We're given a definitive answer, and it's a medical diagnosis. It's not a medical diagnosis the doctor in the book would have recognized, but it is one that in the late twentieth century, people would be familiar with. That was so frustrating. It takes this character and squishes her into a two-dimensional medicalization. I would have been happier with never getting a definitive answer, leaving her a question mark. And because it's a diagnosis that we would recognize and the doctors then would not, it leaves the book distancing the 19th century as those people who wouldn't recognize something perfectly evident if it jumped up and bit them.

It's a gotcha moment in a book that is not crying out for one.

So, yeah. It's not her best, but it's not her worst. I think there'll be a lot to talk about when this comes up in my book club in a few months!

The Week in Stories - May 19

So, I less have stories of gaming to tell this week than stories of getting ready to game. Over the weekend, we put together character for ApocalypseWorld, yesterday, did our last PC generation session for our Superhero University game.

ApocalypseWorld

I am looking forward to this! I've elected to play a Driver named Gremlin. If you know me, you are perhaps not surprised that I looked first at the special moves (aka sex moves) to see which was the most interesting and implied the most provocative things about the character.

So what you get with the Driver is not just someone who has an awesome car, but someone who has serious trust issues. As I interpret it, that sex move is that you roll after sex, and on a 10, everything's cool, on a 7-9, they gain knowledge about you, but you actually trust them even less, and on a 6 or lower, you do whatever it takes to prove that that person doesn't own you, just in case they were starting to think they did.

Add to that the -1 to History you take to every single player at the table, and you have someone isolated, probably with something unpleasant in their past, and every reason to want to keep on the road and out from under anyone's thumb.

I have to flesh that out a bit for our GM. I don't know if I'm going as dark as that initially suggested to me, but it does imply an ex-lover who screwed Gremlin over pretty darn well. Given the phrasing of proving they don't own you, I'm thinking maybe an NPC equivalent of a hardholder. Someone you thought you could trust, could maybe even settle down with, then whammo! Betrayal.

But paired with a desire to connect, otherwise this isn't any fun. Someone who keeps venturing closer to the fire, but then pulls away just as it gets hot, long before she even gets singed. Complete withdrawal, not fun. Desperate need for connection paired with a just as desperate need for isolation, now we've got drama.

I'm excited. We have also in our group an Operator, played by my husband, a Hocus, played by John, and a Brainer, played by Colin. There's a lot of Weird on our group.

Superhero University

It was Melissa's turn to come up with a character, and for Colin and I to develop her NPCs, and she's playing an upperclassmen to what will become the frosh class when we begin. She's also the leader of the superhero club on campus. Of course, she was dating a supervillain, and they're still hung up on each other, so that should be difficult. (I'm playing the supervillain, a broody philosophy major.)

She also has a couple of friends/former roommates who are fun and supportive, and push her to do stupider things than she would otherwise do. And a prof who is trying to be a mentor.

The character here, Bethany, is interesting, in that she augments other people's powers, which makes her very useful, but also gradually duplicates them over time, making her potentially very powerful. Some people might be suspicious of that.

Then we planned out the dorm rooms, and next time, we'll actually start playing!

It may be a couple of weeks before I have one of these posts again, though. Weddings and academic conferences will be cancelling gaming for a bit.

Let Me Explain You by Annie Liontas

For a first novel, this is a darned good one. And yet, we almost got off on the wrong foot. The first chapter, the email that the father sends to his three daughters and ex-wife, it almost put me off. It seemed a little too much like the introduction to Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, in which it's one long joke about how the narrator doesn't speak English very well. But where Foer's was something like 40 damned pages long and caused me to abandon the book, this was only a couple of pages, and so I stuck with it.

I'm very glad I did.

The rest of the book makes that first email make sense, and you're supposed to find it a bit irritating, a bit presumptuous and controlling. The rest of the story gives it meat, makes you not necessarily agree with the father, but understand the complex web of relationships that led to it.

Two things grabbed me about this book. One was the characters and how badly they wanted things. Liontas does a really excellent job of giving us vivid people who bull through the world with more or less success. Pretty much everyone here wants things so very badly that they're willing to push through just about anything in their way. Of course, that's not always the way to get anything, but the straight-line thinking in trying to get from here to there was strong and compelling.

The other was a theme that fell into place with me when I was reading an entirely unrelated online blog post about how people understand their own stories, and got frustrated when other people didn't want to slot themselves into the supporting roles. It was about the context of breakups specifically, but it really resonated, and then when I got back to this book, it made everything make so very much sense.

Two characters in this book, in particular, are so angry at the world and their family members because they just damned well won't fit the stories they have in their heads. And they don't understand why, and get frustrated and lash out because they are the centers of their own stories and don't understand why other people refuse to accommodate that. The self-centered absorption and pain that comes from wanting something other people can't ever give you I found really intriguing. Hence, the title becomes more poignant - ostensibly referring to an idiom, it ends up being about wanting to be able to explain other people, to have them fall into line with your desires.

So, the plot? A Greek immigrant to the United States, and restaurant owner, Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, sends an email to his three daughters and ex-wife, telling them that he's going to die in 10 days, and here are all the things they're doing wrong with their lives. His eldest daughter, Stavroula, is a chef in love with her boss' daughter. Second is Litza, who blazes through life angry at everyone - she and Stavros himself are the ones who are angriest when others won't follow their scripts.

There is also his daughter Ruby and ex-wife Carol. I think those are the names, and therein lies my main quibble with the book. I don't actually remember their names. While the three characters mentioned in the previous paragraph are vivid and strong, two of the four women addressed in the email make much less of an impact. They're present a bit, but while the email addresses them all equally, they're not all equal characters, and it feels odd to have the focus tilted in exactly that way.

It makes me wonder if there were sections that ended up under the editor's pen, that were more balanced. It just feels like a spot where the structure of the novel got away from Liontas a little bit. Again, first novel. Forgivable offence, but definitely something I noticed.

As a whole, though this was very enjoyable, if a little unevenly focused. The strong characters and that theme of wanting control of other people's stories, that's what really got me. I hope Liontas' next book is as strong.

(An ARC of this book was provided in exchange for an honest review from Simon & Schuster Canada)

Blameless by Gail Carriger

Third book in the series, and after the second, I believe I said that if the third book had any hint of forgiveness without extreme grovelling, I was out. I'm not sure I got quite the level of grovelling I wanted, but enough so that I'm not entirely kicking this series to the curb.

In this book, Alexia is pregnant and cast out by her husband, causing quite the scandal in London. Her sisters continue their running for queen high bitch by having her mother cast her out as well, lest it hurt their prospects. Then vampires start attacking, and mechanical bugs trying to stick her with unpleasant needles. With her father's manservant and her crossdressing inventor friend, they leave for Italy, in search of finding the answer to what Alexia's child is.

There, there are more vampire attacks, and taking refuge with the Templars, who aren't above using Alexia as a weapon, but certainly wouldn't share their eating utensils with her. (Literally. They have to be destroyed after she uses them.) Some of us might take this as a clue, but Alexia feels she needs to stick it out.

There is more flirting on the side of the inventor, which Alexia continues to stubbornly not get. Honestly, at this point, if you're not going to pay it off, why is it there?

Back in London, the vampires are stealing each others drones, which leads to unexpected consequences for Buffy.

Lord Maccon gets high on formaldehyde a lot, leaving his second to fight off challengers and the questions of Queen Victoria.

Like the others, this is fun, with glaring plot gaps and the still unanswered question of how Alexia is actually different from anyone else, given that they have souls and she does not. Is this ever going to be resolved? I mean, she has powers, but all the "Alexia not having a soul makes her so different" without ever giving us proof of that is quite old by this point. And this book doesn't even really bring it up, which, given that it's been a looming question, maybe at some point that would be good?

At any rate, I'm being too nitpicky for books that are just plain fluffy fun. It's not quite the level I want my fluffy fun to be at, but I still enjoy them enough to not avoid them when they cross my path.

Still, even with grovelling, and still loving him, having the man I love mistrust me that much? Getting past that would take more than an apology and heroic rescue. I do get wanting to forgive him, but if he reacts that way once, what's to stop him from doing it again?

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

In many ways, this book reminds me of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, except that I liked it a hell of a lot more. It's got the same crazy scavenger hunt pop culture vibe, but I felt that the tension was lacking in Mr. Penumbra's, the characters weak, the puzzles not really that difficult, and the so-called love of books more notable for its absence than its presence. In contrast, Ernest Cline's book has strong plot drive, interesting characters, good puzzles, and truly, truly, truly loves its source material.

It's just plain fun. You don't come to this looking for weighty philosophy, other than "giant corporations wanting to control every aspect of our lives are bad," and as far as philosophy goes, I have no trouble getting on board with that one. Although it's not philosophical, the stakes are high, and they stay high.

The creator of the biggest game ever, The Oasis, the world-wide immersive experience that spans pretty much everything from games to education to shopping to socializing, has died. His fortune is left to the person who can find the three Easter eggs and get them through the three gates. So not only does every video game nut on the planet start egghunting, so does his main competitor, a corporation that would like to take over and thoroughly monetize the whole deal.

It's 30 years in the future, and bleak. Food supplies are failing, oceans are rising, causing waves of refugees inland. Children are growing up with no hope - but inside the Oasis, they can forget their troubles for a little while, even if they're limited by their lack of money, for even the Oasis is a money-making enterprise. Just not a thoroughly evil one.

The game designer was a child of the 1980s, and so his puzzles have spawned a resurgence of interest in 80s culture, allowing this to be jampacked with just about as many references as you can possibly imagine.

Now, I grew up without a TV, so I tend to say that I skipped the 80s. I get most of the references, I just don't have the deep emotional attachment to them. But I've watched my husband swear at Joust quite a lot, I've seen War Games and Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (okay, that last one I do have a deep emotional attachment to), and I know of the band Rush, although I don't know if I've ever heard their music.

The great thing for me was that it didn't matter. I knew enough to enjoy this book, although I'm sure I would have liked it even more if I'd spent hours mashing buttons in an arcade. The main character, Wade, is a stereotypical overweight acne ridden teen, who latches on to the egghunt as a lifeline in a terrible life. As he progresses through the puzzles, he makes friends with other gunters (short for egghunter), although they're wary of helping each other too much. He has a crush on one of them.

At least one bit about who these people were when Wade meets them in real life surprised and delighted me. The reasons make perfect sense, and it's a nice twist on a tired trope.

Ready Player One asserts that you can make real friends online, even while saying that perhaps ultimate immersion is not the healthiest. It walks that middle line very well at the end, and given that I've made some amazing friends online (one of whom sent me that Lois McMaster Bujold care package earlier in the year), I'm glad this book acknowledged how possible that can be.

The evil corporation exists to be ruthless and evil, and I have no problems with that. Evil corporations are allowed to be caricatures, because they pretty much are already. The twists are perhaps sometimes predictable, but they're the sort that are enjoyable even if you saw them coming, because you're invested in the story. At least, I was.

And I skipped the 80s, so that says something.