Kim Stanley Robinson
Aurora
This will, no doubt, show up on my Favorite SF Novels List for 2016, as it's hard to believe more than ten novels will appear in the next ten months that are superior. Of course, it is Kim Stanley Robinson, who is one of my top SF writers just practicing his art. And, art it is.
Aurora tells the story of the voyage of a generation ship that is headed toward Tau Ceti, with several thousand humans aboard. The novel begins when the ship approaches Tau Ceti, some one hundred and sixty years, and seven generations, after it left Earth. Their mission is to plant a self-sustaining colony on one of the moons, which they have named Aurora, in the Tau Ceti solar system
While others may disagree with me, the generation ship is actually the main character. I think this way because the main plot involves the necessity of the survival of the generation ship, with a subplot about the slow growth of consciousness or self-awareness in a machine-based intelligence. In addition, the ship's AI is the narrator of the novel.
The humans in the ship have two main problems to resolve: one is the survival of the ship, which is slowly breaking down after one hundred and sixty plus years and the other is the need to maintain control over the human population which has known no other life than that confined to the ship. If the humans can't live together relatively harmoniously, then all are doomed. This turns out to be one of the many crises faced by the colonists, and it is resolved in a rather surprising (and potentially frightening) manner.
Kim Stanley Robinson must have done an incredible amount of research into the physical creation of the generation ship, along with the possible threats to the integrity of the ship from various chemical, biological, and mechanical sources.
He has also created a number of separate habitats, or biomes, each with its own climate, soil, and life forms. Part of the problem facing the ship's crew is maintaining those biomes, for they contain a myriad of living organisms, which must work together as they do here on Earth. And, those organisms are not static--they do evolve over time and not necessarily at the same rate, which poses additional problems.
Robinson also speculates on the psychological and emotional effects of life within a closed environment. Moreover, he asks a moral or ethical question I have never encountered in any generation ship story before, and to be honest, I have never asked this question myself. The first generation are volunteers, but the second? third? and so on. They were never asked whether they wanted to live this way. Is this a form of child abuse?
Rather surprisingly for an SF novel, near the end of the work one of the human colonists gives a speech in which he insists we will never be able to leave the solar system and successfully plant human colonies elsewhere, even in our own galaxy, much less anywhere else. He maintains this is impossible and provides a very strong argument in support. The opposing argument relies mainly on emotional issues.
This may be true today, but in the future? I was reminded of Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong." There are also numerous examples of scientists who first declared that it was impossible for a ship to leave the planet and others who argued we could never even reach the moon, much less land on it.
What is Robinson doing here? Is he really arguing against space travel and the possibility of living on other planets? This seems strange considering that his Mars trilogy, "RGB Mars" goes into such great detail about terraforming Mars. I wonder if, however, he is really arguing with a theme that seems prevalent in many SF stories today--that we have ruined Earth and our only hope is to go somewhere else. Perhaps Robinson is really saying that we should be concerned now with protecting the environment so that future generations won't have to leave in order for the human race to survive.
This is a must-read for all who see SF as something more than sheer and mere entertainment. There are ideas here to think about, which is true of all of Kim Stanley Robinson's works.
Showing posts with label ROBINSON Kim Stanley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ROBINSON Kim Stanley. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Some novels, stories, and poems that I revisit regularly, Pt. 2
These are stories and authors who popped up after I began the first post on works I regularly reread. And, as I think about what I'm going to write about them, the urge to jump up, hustle over to the bookcase, and dust them off for another reread is ever present. Oh well, it's that old "too few hours or years and too many books" problem as usual.
Herman Melville
Mardi
I have a theory that every writer has a wild book tucked down deep inside somewhere. Some manage to get it out, while others either repress it or aren't aware of it. If it does get out, then readers and critics are confused and generally don't like it, for it's not what they want or expect from the writer. I think Melville's wild book is Mardi. And, in my usual contrary way, I consider it a favorite. Mardi is satire, rather like Gulliver's Travels which was published in 1726 and revised in 1735, whereas Melville's work was published in 1849. Melville may have been influenced by Jonathan Swift, but I haven't read any scholarly commentary that suggests that.
In Mardi, Taji, the narrator, is in pursuit of his lost love, Yillah, a Polynesian woman whom he had rescued from native priests who were going to sacrifice her to their gods. She was once again kidnapped, and Taji, in a small boat, went off in search of her once again. He is accompanied on his mission byKing Media, who was bored with his duties and looked for adventure; Babbalanja, a philosopher; Mohi, an historian; and Yoomy, a poet. As you can imagine, with such a crew representing the political, the philosophical, the historical, and the poetic viewpoints, there are long and sometimes confusing discussions about the universe and everything else as they traverse the South Seas in search of Yillah. During their journey they visit various islands, each of which exhibits some facet of human cruelty or weakness or folly. One of the islands is obviously Europe and another is the US in the late 1840s.
Some contemporary critics have called it an allegory and others "a mess." Some have called it both an allegory and a mess. It's one of those books that the reader has to go along with Melville (or Taji) and enjoy the ride and not insist on a tightly woven consistent narrative with no loose ends at the end.
Read it for fun, and whatever else you can get out of it.
Herman Melville
The Confidence Man: This is a short allegorical novel set on a Mississippi riverboat, the Fidele, Fidelity or Faith in English, if I'm not mistaken. It consists of a series of encounters that passengers have with various confidence men (or perhaps really only one in disguise), all "representing" various charitable organizations. Perhaps what fascinates me the most is that I'm never quite sure what underlies the various encounters.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick is probably considered his greatest work, if not one of the greatest novels written in the US during the nineteenth century, if not also the twentieth century. It's too early to say anything definite about the twenty-first century, but so far I haven't seen anything to compare to it. It's a comedy, a tragedy, a revenge play, a travelogue, a history of whaling, and a scientific treatise on cetology. Enough said.
Greg Benford:
The Galactic Center Series
Six novels. The first is In the Ocean of Night which was published in 1977. It is set in the late 1990s on Earth and near-Earth space and features the adventures of Nigel Walmsley, a Brit who somehow got himself a position as an astronaut in the NASA Space Program. He wanted to go into space and England didn't have a space program. The sixth novel is Sailing Bright Eternity, published in 1996 and is set some 30,000+ years in the future in the vicinity of the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
In between are some of the most spectacular science fiction adventures I've ever read and that covers 60+ years of reading SF. In volume three, Great Sky River, published in 1987, we jump ahead some 30,000 years and meet Kileen Bishop and his group of friends and relatives on the run from the mech civilization, AIs and robots who are determined to wipe out all organic life. Bishop and the other humans are closer to being cybernetic hybrids than 100% human with their metal and plastic reinforced exoskeletons and electronically enhanced senses. Volumes Four, Five, and Six are mostly concerned with the activities of the Bishop clan and their struggle to avoid destruction by the mechs. However, there a few surprises in store for the reader.
Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
It's one of the great mystery novels, at least to my way of thinking. Part of its attraction may be that when I read the novel, I always see the actors from the film playing their respective roles. I must also admit that I've seen the film more often than I've read the novel. Actually I saw the film first, actually long before I read the novel. It features a tough, cynical detective, a femme fatale, sleezy villains, and, of course, the Falcon! Great stuff.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Zorba the Greek
This is another example of having seen the film first and then reading the novel, primarily because of the film. A young bookish intellectual attempts to escape his cloistered life by reopening a lignite mine on Crete which he has inherited. He is aided and abetted and confused by Zorba, an adventurer, miner, soldier, and survivor. Zorba is the exact opposite of the intellectual--earthy, practical, exuberant, almost a life force in himself. The book is ironic in that it encourages the reader to put down the book and go out and do something in the real world. After reading Zorba, I got so entranced by Kazantzakis' works, that I went out and read everything of his that I could find. I think that by now I've read almost everything he's written that's been translated.
George R. Stewart
Earth Abides
This is another of my favorite SF post-holocaust novels. It's what I call a quiet novel in that it depicts the quiet day-by-day struggles of the survivors of a war that killed most of the humans on Earth. There are no mutant, slavering monsters, semi-human or otherwise. The threats are the typical ones of providing food and shelter, and dealing accidents and disease in a world without ERs and vaccines. And, of course, there are some who figure taking food, etc. is easier than working. It's also the story of how myths about the survivors or first families begin in a society that is largely illiterate and how those survivors might be viewed in the future. One other element is that of the making of a sacred symbol purely by accident.
Lawrence Durrell
The Alexandria Quartet
I was hooked from the first pages of Justine, the first novel in the series. It was on the reading list of a class I took, and I immediately went out and got the next three. I've read it at least 3 or 4 times now and had to search for the hardbound copies as the paperback ones were disintegrating.
Justine: LGD's accounting of events of past year spent in Alexandria just before outbreak of WWII--primarily of his relationship with several women, one of whom is the enigmatic Justine.
Balthazar: LGD sent his manuscript to Balthazar, one of his friends in Alexandria who also appears in the manuscript. Balthzar then returns the novel with his version of those same events as seen from his perspective. We now have two versions of what happened.
Mountolive: a third version of that same period by Mountolive (who is mentioned in the first two books) of the same events, giving a third and completely different version of LGD's relationship with Justine.
Clea: this is an accounting of the events that take place when LGD returns to Alexandria in the midst of WWII, about a year or so after the events told in the first three novels.
The series really asks us if we really ever know the full story of our own history.
Durrell's second series, The Avignon Quintet--he sometimes referred to it as The Quincunx and consists of the following five novels: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx.
This is a strange series of novels in which Durrell creates an Author who creates a character who writes a novel in which the Author includes a number of his friends and acquaintances, but takes "poetic" license in his creation. This is the first novel in the series--Monsieur.
The remaining four novels are about the Author and his experiences in Egypt and France during WWII. What is bizarre is that "fictional" characters from the first novel appear in other later four novels and interact with the Author and his friends. In addition, several characters from "The Alexandria Quartet" also briefly appear. It's all rather confusing at times, and I had to create a diagram to keep the characters separate as many of the characters from the first novel are actually created from different friends and acquaintances of the Author.
One of these days I will go back and reread both series for a third? fourth? time.
Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
This novel is one of my top ten SF novels. If anyone ever asks me to recommend an SF novel for someone who has never read SF, I always mention this one. It is well-written and has an engaging main character, action, and an idea to explore. The idea is simple. Humans do not have sexually active periods like so many of our fellow residents here on earth. Humans are sexually active all the time. Moreover, humans like most of our neighbors here have two genders, male and female. Le Guin in this novel asks the question: What if humans had specific periods in which they were sexually active and in between those periods, they were sexually neuter?
Winter or Gethen, as the inhabitants call it, is a planet in which someone has apparently modified humans. Humans on this planet become sexually active every three weeks and remain so for several days. At this point they develop sexual characteristics, typically at random, so that humans on this planet can become either male or female. If a Gethen is paired with someone It (they are genderless during this period--what pronoun would you use?) likes, then the first one to go into kemmer (their term for the sexually active period) becomes by chance either male or female. The other one then becomes the other sex. If the one who becomes a female at that point gets pregnant, then that person will remain female and nurse the child until it is weaned. At which point, that person then reverts to the sexually neutral state. So, in a family pair with two children, each of the two adults could have been the mother of one of the two children. As you can see, this upsets all of our ideas about what males and females are like. In fact, that's the issue Le Guin explores in this work: what are the real characteristics that belong exclusively to males and females. If you haven't read this one yet, I strongly recommend you do so.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Three Californias: Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge
When first published, they were known as the Orange County Trilogy, but the series title was changed when the trade paperback edition was issued. My own name for these three is The California Troika. A troika is a Russian horse-drawn vehicle in which the three horses are side-by-side, so there is no lead horse. The three novels in this series all take place in the Orange County area at approximately the same time, some years in the future. But, this is an alternate universe series like no other I have read. I have made several posts on these works, and clicking on the label Three Californias or The California Trioka will take you to them. If you decide to read them, it makes no difference with which one you start.
The Wild Shore is set some half century or so after the US was destroyed by a sneak nuclear attack. It is the story of a young male, late teens, and his experiences during one year in a small village that has grown up after the bombing. In that respect, it is somewhat similar to another of my favorite post-holocaust novels, Earth Abides by George Stewart.
The Gold Coast is set some years in the future and is an extrapolation of what life would be like if there were no dramatic changes. The main character, again, is a young male, whose father is an engineer in the military-industrial complex--he works for a company that strives to get contracts to build hardware for the US military. Like most of his friends, our hero is mildly opposed to what his father does for a living, and he is mostly concerned about the latest designer drugs, sex, and the contemporary music scene. The novel is the story of events in this person's life that change him.
If the others can be classified as SF, then Pacific Edge is clearly a fantasy. It is set some years in the future, again in Orange County, in a world that has gone green. Large corporations and nation states have been broken up all over the world. Small is beautiful. Recycling has become an important activity. Cars are a rarity and most people get around a bicycles. The main character is a young man, possibly in his early20s who has become the local expert in remodeling and fixing up abandoned houses. Local politics features strongly in the novel.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Notes from the Underground"
This is almost impossible for me to describe. The first part is a philosophical rant against those who think that human behavior will eventually be completely predictable and explainable by the immutable laws of science. In addition the narrator contends that there are two types of people: the doers and the thinkers or the intellectuals. Everything that is accomplished is done only by the doers, because the thinkers are paralyzed when they attempt to handle all the ramifications of acting.
The second part shows our reclusive narrator in action and supports both of the arguments put forth in the first part. In one sense, the work is an essay and an example of many of Dostoyevsky's themes that he depicts in his novels.
There are others, of course, but I have resolutely refused to think about them for fear that what was supposed to be one post will expand to a trilogy, or even worse. Some may find it hard to believe that I actually do so much rereading, but I do and this explains why I really am decades behind in my knowledge of contemporary literature. But, that's a decision I made long ago. I'm sure you made your own and very likely it's not the one I made. Be that as it may, there's room for both of us, isn't there?
I just realized that the title of the posts includes poems, and I haven't mentioned any at all. Oh well, maybe some time in the not too distant future. . .
I hope you consider reading some of these.
Herman Melville
Mardi
I have a theory that every writer has a wild book tucked down deep inside somewhere. Some manage to get it out, while others either repress it or aren't aware of it. If it does get out, then readers and critics are confused and generally don't like it, for it's not what they want or expect from the writer. I think Melville's wild book is Mardi. And, in my usual contrary way, I consider it a favorite. Mardi is satire, rather like Gulliver's Travels which was published in 1726 and revised in 1735, whereas Melville's work was published in 1849. Melville may have been influenced by Jonathan Swift, but I haven't read any scholarly commentary that suggests that.
In Mardi, Taji, the narrator, is in pursuit of his lost love, Yillah, a Polynesian woman whom he had rescued from native priests who were going to sacrifice her to their gods. She was once again kidnapped, and Taji, in a small boat, went off in search of her once again. He is accompanied on his mission byKing Media, who was bored with his duties and looked for adventure; Babbalanja, a philosopher; Mohi, an historian; and Yoomy, a poet. As you can imagine, with such a crew representing the political, the philosophical, the historical, and the poetic viewpoints, there are long and sometimes confusing discussions about the universe and everything else as they traverse the South Seas in search of Yillah. During their journey they visit various islands, each of which exhibits some facet of human cruelty or weakness or folly. One of the islands is obviously Europe and another is the US in the late 1840s.
Some contemporary critics have called it an allegory and others "a mess." Some have called it both an allegory and a mess. It's one of those books that the reader has to go along with Melville (or Taji) and enjoy the ride and not insist on a tightly woven consistent narrative with no loose ends at the end.
Read it for fun, and whatever else you can get out of it.
Herman Melville
The Confidence Man: This is a short allegorical novel set on a Mississippi riverboat, the Fidele, Fidelity or Faith in English, if I'm not mistaken. It consists of a series of encounters that passengers have with various confidence men (or perhaps really only one in disguise), all "representing" various charitable organizations. Perhaps what fascinates me the most is that I'm never quite sure what underlies the various encounters.
Herman Melville
Moby Dick is probably considered his greatest work, if not one of the greatest novels written in the US during the nineteenth century, if not also the twentieth century. It's too early to say anything definite about the twenty-first century, but so far I haven't seen anything to compare to it. It's a comedy, a tragedy, a revenge play, a travelogue, a history of whaling, and a scientific treatise on cetology. Enough said.
Greg Benford:
The Galactic Center Series
Six novels. The first is In the Ocean of Night which was published in 1977. It is set in the late 1990s on Earth and near-Earth space and features the adventures of Nigel Walmsley, a Brit who somehow got himself a position as an astronaut in the NASA Space Program. He wanted to go into space and England didn't have a space program. The sixth novel is Sailing Bright Eternity, published in 1996 and is set some 30,000+ years in the future in the vicinity of the black hole at the center of our galaxy.
In between are some of the most spectacular science fiction adventures I've ever read and that covers 60+ years of reading SF. In volume three, Great Sky River, published in 1987, we jump ahead some 30,000 years and meet Kileen Bishop and his group of friends and relatives on the run from the mech civilization, AIs and robots who are determined to wipe out all organic life. Bishop and the other humans are closer to being cybernetic hybrids than 100% human with their metal and plastic reinforced exoskeletons and electronically enhanced senses. Volumes Four, Five, and Six are mostly concerned with the activities of the Bishop clan and their struggle to avoid destruction by the mechs. However, there a few surprises in store for the reader.
Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
It's one of the great mystery novels, at least to my way of thinking. Part of its attraction may be that when I read the novel, I always see the actors from the film playing their respective roles. I must also admit that I've seen the film more often than I've read the novel. Actually I saw the film first, actually long before I read the novel. It features a tough, cynical detective, a femme fatale, sleezy villains, and, of course, the Falcon! Great stuff.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Zorba the Greek
This is another example of having seen the film first and then reading the novel, primarily because of the film. A young bookish intellectual attempts to escape his cloistered life by reopening a lignite mine on Crete which he has inherited. He is aided and abetted and confused by Zorba, an adventurer, miner, soldier, and survivor. Zorba is the exact opposite of the intellectual--earthy, practical, exuberant, almost a life force in himself. The book is ironic in that it encourages the reader to put down the book and go out and do something in the real world. After reading Zorba, I got so entranced by Kazantzakis' works, that I went out and read everything of his that I could find. I think that by now I've read almost everything he's written that's been translated.
George R. Stewart
Earth Abides
This is another of my favorite SF post-holocaust novels. It's what I call a quiet novel in that it depicts the quiet day-by-day struggles of the survivors of a war that killed most of the humans on Earth. There are no mutant, slavering monsters, semi-human or otherwise. The threats are the typical ones of providing food and shelter, and dealing accidents and disease in a world without ERs and vaccines. And, of course, there are some who figure taking food, etc. is easier than working. It's also the story of how myths about the survivors or first families begin in a society that is largely illiterate and how those survivors might be viewed in the future. One other element is that of the making of a sacred symbol purely by accident.
Lawrence Durrell
The Alexandria Quartet
I was hooked from the first pages of Justine, the first novel in the series. It was on the reading list of a class I took, and I immediately went out and got the next three. I've read it at least 3 or 4 times now and had to search for the hardbound copies as the paperback ones were disintegrating.
Justine: LGD's accounting of events of past year spent in Alexandria just before outbreak of WWII--primarily of his relationship with several women, one of whom is the enigmatic Justine.
Balthazar: LGD sent his manuscript to Balthazar, one of his friends in Alexandria who also appears in the manuscript. Balthzar then returns the novel with his version of those same events as seen from his perspective. We now have two versions of what happened.
Mountolive: a third version of that same period by Mountolive (who is mentioned in the first two books) of the same events, giving a third and completely different version of LGD's relationship with Justine.
Clea: this is an accounting of the events that take place when LGD returns to Alexandria in the midst of WWII, about a year or so after the events told in the first three novels.
The series really asks us if we really ever know the full story of our own history.
Durrell's second series, The Avignon Quintet--he sometimes referred to it as The Quincunx and consists of the following five novels: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx.
This is a strange series of novels in which Durrell creates an Author who creates a character who writes a novel in which the Author includes a number of his friends and acquaintances, but takes "poetic" license in his creation. This is the first novel in the series--Monsieur.
The remaining four novels are about the Author and his experiences in Egypt and France during WWII. What is bizarre is that "fictional" characters from the first novel appear in other later four novels and interact with the Author and his friends. In addition, several characters from "The Alexandria Quartet" also briefly appear. It's all rather confusing at times, and I had to create a diagram to keep the characters separate as many of the characters from the first novel are actually created from different friends and acquaintances of the Author.
One of these days I will go back and reread both series for a third? fourth? time.
Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness
This novel is one of my top ten SF novels. If anyone ever asks me to recommend an SF novel for someone who has never read SF, I always mention this one. It is well-written and has an engaging main character, action, and an idea to explore. The idea is simple. Humans do not have sexually active periods like so many of our fellow residents here on earth. Humans are sexually active all the time. Moreover, humans like most of our neighbors here have two genders, male and female. Le Guin in this novel asks the question: What if humans had specific periods in which they were sexually active and in between those periods, they were sexually neuter?
Winter or Gethen, as the inhabitants call it, is a planet in which someone has apparently modified humans. Humans on this planet become sexually active every three weeks and remain so for several days. At this point they develop sexual characteristics, typically at random, so that humans on this planet can become either male or female. If a Gethen is paired with someone It (they are genderless during this period--what pronoun would you use?) likes, then the first one to go into kemmer (their term for the sexually active period) becomes by chance either male or female. The other one then becomes the other sex. If the one who becomes a female at that point gets pregnant, then that person will remain female and nurse the child until it is weaned. At which point, that person then reverts to the sexually neutral state. So, in a family pair with two children, each of the two adults could have been the mother of one of the two children. As you can see, this upsets all of our ideas about what males and females are like. In fact, that's the issue Le Guin explores in this work: what are the real characteristics that belong exclusively to males and females. If you haven't read this one yet, I strongly recommend you do so.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Three Californias: Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge
When first published, they were known as the Orange County Trilogy, but the series title was changed when the trade paperback edition was issued. My own name for these three is The California Troika. A troika is a Russian horse-drawn vehicle in which the three horses are side-by-side, so there is no lead horse. The three novels in this series all take place in the Orange County area at approximately the same time, some years in the future. But, this is an alternate universe series like no other I have read. I have made several posts on these works, and clicking on the label Three Californias or The California Trioka will take you to them. If you decide to read them, it makes no difference with which one you start.
The Wild Shore is set some half century or so after the US was destroyed by a sneak nuclear attack. It is the story of a young male, late teens, and his experiences during one year in a small village that has grown up after the bombing. In that respect, it is somewhat similar to another of my favorite post-holocaust novels, Earth Abides by George Stewart.
The Gold Coast is set some years in the future and is an extrapolation of what life would be like if there were no dramatic changes. The main character, again, is a young male, whose father is an engineer in the military-industrial complex--he works for a company that strives to get contracts to build hardware for the US military. Like most of his friends, our hero is mildly opposed to what his father does for a living, and he is mostly concerned about the latest designer drugs, sex, and the contemporary music scene. The novel is the story of events in this person's life that change him.
If the others can be classified as SF, then Pacific Edge is clearly a fantasy. It is set some years in the future, again in Orange County, in a world that has gone green. Large corporations and nation states have been broken up all over the world. Small is beautiful. Recycling has become an important activity. Cars are a rarity and most people get around a bicycles. The main character is a young man, possibly in his early20s who has become the local expert in remodeling and fixing up abandoned houses. Local politics features strongly in the novel.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Notes from the Underground"
This is almost impossible for me to describe. The first part is a philosophical rant against those who think that human behavior will eventually be completely predictable and explainable by the immutable laws of science. In addition the narrator contends that there are two types of people: the doers and the thinkers or the intellectuals. Everything that is accomplished is done only by the doers, because the thinkers are paralyzed when they attempt to handle all the ramifications of acting.
The second part shows our reclusive narrator in action and supports both of the arguments put forth in the first part. In one sense, the work is an essay and an example of many of Dostoyevsky's themes that he depicts in his novels.
There are others, of course, but I have resolutely refused to think about them for fear that what was supposed to be one post will expand to a trilogy, or even worse. Some may find it hard to believe that I actually do so much rereading, but I do and this explains why I really am decades behind in my knowledge of contemporary literature. But, that's a decision I made long ago. I'm sure you made your own and very likely it's not the one I made. Be that as it may, there's room for both of us, isn't there?
I just realized that the title of the posts includes poems, and I haven't mentioned any at all. Oh well, maybe some time in the not too distant future. . .
I hope you consider reading some of these.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
The 500th
According to the blog counter, this is my five hundredth post. When I first began some four years ago, I had no goal or target to shoot at. I just started posting and assumed that I would eventually lose interest or burn out or get interrupted by fate or some chance event. I even wondered whether I would be able to come up with enough material to make more than a few posts. I still may burn out or lose interest some day, and fate may still interrupt me, but I definitely won't run out of material. One day years from now I may even reach 1000, maybe.
This does give me an opportunity to do something I've been thinking about for some time--compare the list of my favorite posts and the posts, according to the Blogger Stats, that have received the most visits. I've often wondered how much overlap there really is.
The Ten Most Visited Posts (according to Blogger Stats)
N. Scott Momaday The Way to Rainy Mountain
May 23, 2010 2422 visits
Shirley Jackson "The Lottery"
June 27, 2010 1286 visits
Brian Aldiss "Super-Toys Last All Summer"
March 25, 2011 679 visits
Robert Frost "Storm Fear"
Feb. 3, 2011 521 visits
Alfred Bester "Fondly Fahrenheit"
August 14, 2008 442 visits
Thomas Mann The Transposed Heads
Nov. 3, 2011 428 visits
Robert Frost a terrifying poet?
Sept 16, 2008 182 visits
Friedrich Durrenmatt The Pledge, novel and film
Jan. 16, 2009 165 visits
Theodore Sturgeon Three By Theodore Sturgeon
Jan 16, 2010 151 visits
Tales of Times Past Japanese medieval stories
March 6, 2011 148 visits
It's a rather mixed collection. I don't see much of a pattern here, except for some slight predominance of SF and fantasy, but that may be due to a predominance of posts about SF and fantasy. I haven't really ever taken a genre census.
The following is a list of some of my favorite posts. I'm not certain exactly why they are. Maybe some day I will be enlightened. They are in no particular order.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam --a series of posts, one for each quatrain in the first edition which has 75 quatrains. I'm now up to Quatrain LXII, so I have thirteen to go to finish the work.
Kim Stanley Robinson: four or five posts about his "Three Californias" series: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge. Each of the three novels depicts a different future for Orange County, California--a post holocaust future, a continuation of the cold war and the dominance of the military-industrial complex in the US, and an ecological/environmental oriented future, respectively.
Blade Runner--five versions of the film.
Shirley Jackson--"The Lottery"
Gregory Benford--The "Galactic Center" series: six posts, each of which is about the six novels in the series, which is one of the greatest SF series (if not the greatest) ever written, in my view anyway. It begins in the late 1990s on Earth and ends somewhen about 35,000 (yes, thirty-five thousand) years in the future around the black hole at the center of our galaxy..
N. Scott Momaday: The Way to Rainy Mountain, part history of the Kiowa people, part legends of the Kiowa people, and part personal history of Momaday.
The Rashomon posts, several posts about the film by Akira Kurosawa and the stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa that formed the basis of the film.
The Maltese Falcon: a post discussing the three versions of Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon.
William Hope Hodgson: The Night Land, a post about one of my favorite fantasy novels.
King Kong: a post comparing the three versions of the film.
Ikiru: a post discussing one of my favorite films, directed by Akira Kurosawa.
Robert Frost a terrifying poet?--a slightly different view of the poet
Robert Frost: "For Once, Then Something"
Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost: "Hap" and "Design"
and others.
Not much overlap is there?
I've enjoyed the ride so far, so I guess I'll stay with it for a while longer.
And thanks, to you and the others who have visited me here and had something to say about what you read here. Hearing from you is important and I think most every blogger would agree with me.
This does give me an opportunity to do something I've been thinking about for some time--compare the list of my favorite posts and the posts, according to the Blogger Stats, that have received the most visits. I've often wondered how much overlap there really is.
The Ten Most Visited Posts (according to Blogger Stats)
N. Scott Momaday The Way to Rainy Mountain
May 23, 2010 2422 visits
Shirley Jackson "The Lottery"
June 27, 2010 1286 visits
Brian Aldiss "Super-Toys Last All Summer"
March 25, 2011 679 visits
Robert Frost "Storm Fear"
Feb. 3, 2011 521 visits
Alfred Bester "Fondly Fahrenheit"
August 14, 2008 442 visits
Thomas Mann The Transposed Heads
Nov. 3, 2011 428 visits
Robert Frost a terrifying poet?
Sept 16, 2008 182 visits
Friedrich Durrenmatt The Pledge, novel and film
Jan. 16, 2009 165 visits
Theodore Sturgeon Three By Theodore Sturgeon
Jan 16, 2010 151 visits
Tales of Times Past Japanese medieval stories
March 6, 2011 148 visits
It's a rather mixed collection. I don't see much of a pattern here, except for some slight predominance of SF and fantasy, but that may be due to a predominance of posts about SF and fantasy. I haven't really ever taken a genre census.
The following is a list of some of my favorite posts. I'm not certain exactly why they are. Maybe some day I will be enlightened. They are in no particular order.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam --a series of posts, one for each quatrain in the first edition which has 75 quatrains. I'm now up to Quatrain LXII, so I have thirteen to go to finish the work.
Kim Stanley Robinson: four or five posts about his "Three Californias" series: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge. Each of the three novels depicts a different future for Orange County, California--a post holocaust future, a continuation of the cold war and the dominance of the military-industrial complex in the US, and an ecological/environmental oriented future, respectively.
Blade Runner--five versions of the film.
Shirley Jackson--"The Lottery"
Gregory Benford--The "Galactic Center" series: six posts, each of which is about the six novels in the series, which is one of the greatest SF series (if not the greatest) ever written, in my view anyway. It begins in the late 1990s on Earth and ends somewhen about 35,000 (yes, thirty-five thousand) years in the future around the black hole at the center of our galaxy..
N. Scott Momaday: The Way to Rainy Mountain, part history of the Kiowa people, part legends of the Kiowa people, and part personal history of Momaday.
The Rashomon posts, several posts about the film by Akira Kurosawa and the stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa that formed the basis of the film.
The Maltese Falcon: a post discussing the three versions of Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon.
William Hope Hodgson: The Night Land, a post about one of my favorite fantasy novels.
King Kong: a post comparing the three versions of the film.
Ikiru: a post discussing one of my favorite films, directed by Akira Kurosawa.
Robert Frost a terrifying poet?--a slightly different view of the poet
Robert Frost: "For Once, Then Something"
Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost: "Hap" and "Design"
and others.
Not much overlap is there?
I've enjoyed the ride so far, so I guess I'll stay with it for a while longer.
And thanks, to you and the others who have visited me here and had something to say about what you read here. Hearing from you is important and I think most every blogger would agree with me.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias (California Troika)
While Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias occupy differing universes, there still are some interesting links drawing them together. A brief reminder: Wild Shore (WS) is the post-holocaust novel about life in what was once Orange County; The Gold Coast (GC) tells of life in a Orange County which has become completely covered over with expressways, condos, and shopping malls; and Pacific Edge (PE) relates of life in a world that takes the future of humanity, the environment, and our fellow creature into account.
All three novels open with a similar event or adventure, depending upon the novel--digging up the past. In WS, Henry and his friends engage in a midnight raid on a graveyard located in one of the mostly deserted urban areas in the vicinity. They are looking for the silver trimmings (silver is especially valuable as a trade item at the swap meets) from the caskets. The problem is that these are considered to be their property by the scavengers who live there and have been known to kill trespassers. They find that the silver trimmings are not really silver and barely escape the scavengers who have come across them..
The past again becomes important in GC for Jim has persuaded his friends to dig up a parking lot which has paved over an old school, according to maps that Jim has found. He hopes to find a souvenir of that past time before the auto took over the county. In this case, the police take a dim view of the destruction of the parking lot and Jim and his friends barely escape them. One of his friends does manage to escape with a piece of wood.
In PE, Kevin and others in his town are engaged in town work. All residents must donate ten hours a week to doing work needed by the town, which has very few employees, part of the new legislation setting maximum levels of number of employees. Aside from this which is a distinct break from our world, is another even more startling: all governments must obey the same rules. They are busy digging up an old part of the town and putting aside for future use all the items made of metal with copper wiring and actually anything that can be reused.
Digging up the past is obviously an important element in all three novels, but this serves a different purpose in each. In WS it's for something that could be valuable as a bargaining/trading item, in GC, it's for a souvenir of the long ago dead past, while in PE, it's for recyclable items.
A second link uniting the three is the main character's love life, and the course is unfortunately consistent across the three universes. Henry, in WS, falls in love with the sexy daughter of a man who lives on the outskirts of the tiny settlement. He is viewed with suspicion by the others for he seems to have considerable wealth, but from where no one can say. It's a short brief but passionate affair (at least on Henry's side) that ends when Henry discovers the truth behind her sudden passion for him.
In GC, Jim has a short, brief passionate affair with a woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend, or perhaps he has dumped her. In any case, Jim is the lucky recipient of her affection, for a short time, that is.
Kevin, in PE, has been going with a woman for several years now, but it's clearly not going anywhere, and he's losing interest. Then he discovers that his long ago secret love has broken up with her boyfriend after living together for more than a decade. He finds that she suddenly discovers him, and he is ecstatic, until the sad end. He then decides that his old girlfriend is his true love but soon learns that in the interim she has found a new boyfriend.
The path of true love does not run smoothly, regardless of the universe.
The third link is the supposed author of the works, two of which are written by the main character in each work--Henry in WS and Jim in GC. In both cases we are shown just when Henry and Jim get the idea to write down their experiences of the past months which were highly significant for them, their families, and friends. We also hear from the author of PE, but the identify of that person is not clear. The authorial intrusions soon make it difficult to see him as Kevin. They live in two different universes. Comments made by the author also suggest that this is a work of fiction, and not autobiographical in any way. Perhaps this is Robinson's way of suggesting that this world could never exist. Sadly, I have to agree with Robinson that a post holocaust world is far more likely than a world that comes to realize that sheer greed and exploitation must be at least controlled, for eliminating greed and exploitation is impossible.
The last and most intriguing link is also the most direct. In each of the three novels, there is an old man called Tom. In WS, he is called Tom Barnard, and he is one of the few survivors from the pre-holocaust world. He is a valuable member of the small community, for his memories of the past are highly useful. Moreover, he is a teacher who conducts a school for the young people in the community. Literacy among the people of his community may be his greatest contribution. He is also a myth maker, not only telling about the pre-holocaust days but exaggerating the accomplishments of the Old Americans. For example, Shakespeare was an American. At one point, he becomes seriously ill and the entire community is concerned. Existence without Tom Barnard would be unthinkable.
In PE, the old man is also called Tom Barnard. He also lives on the outskirts of the community but is isolated from the community. This is his choice. He had been closely involved in the legislation that created the world as it is today in PE, and he now appears to be taking Voltaire's admonition to "tend to your own garden" quite seriously. He is Kevin's grandfather, and Kevin attempts to get him involved in the struggle to defeat Alfredo's plans. Tom's experience and knowledge would be very useful to those opposing Alfredo.
We find a very different situation in GC. The old man is Jim's uncle. I can't find any mention of him other than Uncle Tom, so I have no idea of what his last name is. He is in a nursing home, with moments of lucidness and times of confusion; He is mostly ignored by Jim, and by society in general, a too typical situation for many older people in our society as well. Jim has to be nagged at by his parents to visit him once in a while. On one visit, Tom is lucid and Jim finally realizes, much too late, that Tom has a storehouse of memories of the way Orange County was before progress took over.
In WS, the post-holocaust novel, and PE, the fantasy universe that has gone green, Tom is a valued member of the community with close ties to both Henry and Kevin. In GC, the universe that is closest to ours, Tom, for the most part, is ignored by Jim and of no value to society.
Highly Recommended (naturally)
All three novels open with a similar event or adventure, depending upon the novel--digging up the past. In WS, Henry and his friends engage in a midnight raid on a graveyard located in one of the mostly deserted urban areas in the vicinity. They are looking for the silver trimmings (silver is especially valuable as a trade item at the swap meets) from the caskets. The problem is that these are considered to be their property by the scavengers who live there and have been known to kill trespassers. They find that the silver trimmings are not really silver and barely escape the scavengers who have come across them..
The past again becomes important in GC for Jim has persuaded his friends to dig up a parking lot which has paved over an old school, according to maps that Jim has found. He hopes to find a souvenir of that past time before the auto took over the county. In this case, the police take a dim view of the destruction of the parking lot and Jim and his friends barely escape them. One of his friends does manage to escape with a piece of wood.
In PE, Kevin and others in his town are engaged in town work. All residents must donate ten hours a week to doing work needed by the town, which has very few employees, part of the new legislation setting maximum levels of number of employees. Aside from this which is a distinct break from our world, is another even more startling: all governments must obey the same rules. They are busy digging up an old part of the town and putting aside for future use all the items made of metal with copper wiring and actually anything that can be reused.
Digging up the past is obviously an important element in all three novels, but this serves a different purpose in each. In WS it's for something that could be valuable as a bargaining/trading item, in GC, it's for a souvenir of the long ago dead past, while in PE, it's for recyclable items.
A second link uniting the three is the main character's love life, and the course is unfortunately consistent across the three universes. Henry, in WS, falls in love with the sexy daughter of a man who lives on the outskirts of the tiny settlement. He is viewed with suspicion by the others for he seems to have considerable wealth, but from where no one can say. It's a short brief but passionate affair (at least on Henry's side) that ends when Henry discovers the truth behind her sudden passion for him.
In GC, Jim has a short, brief passionate affair with a woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend, or perhaps he has dumped her. In any case, Jim is the lucky recipient of her affection, for a short time, that is.
Kevin, in PE, has been going with a woman for several years now, but it's clearly not going anywhere, and he's losing interest. Then he discovers that his long ago secret love has broken up with her boyfriend after living together for more than a decade. He finds that she suddenly discovers him, and he is ecstatic, until the sad end. He then decides that his old girlfriend is his true love but soon learns that in the interim she has found a new boyfriend.
The path of true love does not run smoothly, regardless of the universe.
The third link is the supposed author of the works, two of which are written by the main character in each work--Henry in WS and Jim in GC. In both cases we are shown just when Henry and Jim get the idea to write down their experiences of the past months which were highly significant for them, their families, and friends. We also hear from the author of PE, but the identify of that person is not clear. The authorial intrusions soon make it difficult to see him as Kevin. They live in two different universes. Comments made by the author also suggest that this is a work of fiction, and not autobiographical in any way. Perhaps this is Robinson's way of suggesting that this world could never exist. Sadly, I have to agree with Robinson that a post holocaust world is far more likely than a world that comes to realize that sheer greed and exploitation must be at least controlled, for eliminating greed and exploitation is impossible.
The last and most intriguing link is also the most direct. In each of the three novels, there is an old man called Tom. In WS, he is called Tom Barnard, and he is one of the few survivors from the pre-holocaust world. He is a valuable member of the small community, for his memories of the past are highly useful. Moreover, he is a teacher who conducts a school for the young people in the community. Literacy among the people of his community may be his greatest contribution. He is also a myth maker, not only telling about the pre-holocaust days but exaggerating the accomplishments of the Old Americans. For example, Shakespeare was an American. At one point, he becomes seriously ill and the entire community is concerned. Existence without Tom Barnard would be unthinkable.
In PE, the old man is also called Tom Barnard. He also lives on the outskirts of the community but is isolated from the community. This is his choice. He had been closely involved in the legislation that created the world as it is today in PE, and he now appears to be taking Voltaire's admonition to "tend to your own garden" quite seriously. He is Kevin's grandfather, and Kevin attempts to get him involved in the struggle to defeat Alfredo's plans. Tom's experience and knowledge would be very useful to those opposing Alfredo.
We find a very different situation in GC. The old man is Jim's uncle. I can't find any mention of him other than Uncle Tom, so I have no idea of what his last name is. He is in a nursing home, with moments of lucidness and times of confusion; He is mostly ignored by Jim, and by society in general, a too typical situation for many older people in our society as well. Jim has to be nagged at by his parents to visit him once in a while. On one visit, Tom is lucid and Jim finally realizes, much too late, that Tom has a storehouse of memories of the way Orange County was before progress took over.
In WS, the post-holocaust novel, and PE, the fantasy universe that has gone green, Tom is a valued member of the community with close ties to both Henry and Kevin. In GC, the universe that is closest to ours, Tom, for the most part, is ignored by Jim and of no value to society.
Highly Recommended (naturally)
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Kim Stanley Robinson: Pacific Edge (Three California series)
I have to resist calling Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge the third book in the Three California Series because that sounds as though it's the third book in the series. It is, but only because it's the third book published in the series, which was originally called The Orange County Trilogy. Wild Shore was published in 1984 (actually his first published novel), The Gold Coast in 1988, and Pacific Edge in 1990. I published a short commentary on Wild Shore in March 2011, The Gold Coast in August 2011, and a very short summary of all three in a post titled The California Troika in January 2011.
Pacific Edge is a "what if" tale. It answers the question of what it would be like if the world turned green and developed a concern for the environment and ecology. It is also a fantasy whereas the first two novels are closer to SF in nature, and, frankly, I believe a nuclear war and a military-industrial takeover are far more likely than the premise in Pacific Edge. However, regardless of the change in perspective, Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) has not created a utopia. People are still people, and there are those who don't see why they can't use the new rules for their own purposes, including grabbing for power and wealth.
Sustainability is the rule in this society. Excesses are eliminated, or at least, attempts are made to do so. Corporations are limited by the number of employees, although this limit can be effectively circumvented by setting up dummy corporations, or at least circumvented until the linkage is discovered. The growth of urban populations are controlled by the amount of water available--insufficient water results in no growth. In Pacific Edge, we see how these issues are worked out in a small town setting.
This is not a rural fantasy, where technology has disappeared. People are living in space habitats and there's a colony on the moon. An expedition is now being fitted out for a trip to Mars. KSR has not created a completely low-tech culture, but one that makes decisions about when and where to apply technology. Cars still exist, but in Kevin's small town, people either walk or ride a bike when they move about town. Cars are necessary only for long trips, not for short jaunts around town. Moreover, when the novel begins, we see the people engaged in town-work. All able-bodied citizens have to put in ten hours a week of town work. This reduces the need for town employees and the associated costs. Small government comes with a cost.
Kevin, the main character, is in his early 30s, although he seems a bit younger than that. Perhaps this will be the summer that matures him. It certainly will be a busy one for him, testing him in a variety of ways and providing new experiences. As to be expected in our real world, his experiences have two sides to them--good and bad.
Perhaps one of the most frivolous, frivolous perhaps to some, is his love of softball. This summer, as in the past, he plays in a softball league. But, this summer is different, for well into the season, he has compiled a perfect record at bat--he is batting 1.000! All recognize that this can't last the season, but when will it end? The attention he gets (the absolute silence, including a few hushes) from the players and spectators each time he comes up to bat is disconcerting. At times he wishes that it will end and even considers ending it deliberately. But, he is competitive and each hit helps his team.
He has been involved in a lukewarm relationship that's been going on for years and obviously going nowhere. This summer, though, the word (gossip) flashes through the young folk: Ramona has broken up with Alfredo. Ramona and Alfredo have been living together for years now, ever since high school, but they've never formalized their relationship. Now it appears as though it's over. Kevin has been nursing a secret (even from himself) love for her for years, but did nothing about it for there seemed to be no hope. Now, she was free.
He unobtrusively (or so he thinks) begins to pay her some attention. At first he has to listen to her complaints about Alfredo's faults. Frankly, this is a bad sign, although Kevin isn't aware of it. However, Kevin is ecstatic and their relationship flourishes during those summer months.
Kevin has also just been appointed to the town council. Being relatively apolitical, he hasn't paid much attention to local politics, but now he will find himself immersed in political maneuvering that could affect him personally. Kevin eventually wonders if perhaps his apolitical past is the reason why he is now on the council. Someone as naive as he is might not notice certain actions being taken by Alfredo, who is also the mayor at this time.
However, regardless of Kevin's lack of experience, there is one thing he's learned, and that is that Alfredo can not be trusted. Even if it's something as straightforward as giving the time of the day, Alfredo will create some sort of plot which will benefit him.
Therefore, at the first council meeting, Kevin discovers that one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to buy more water from the state water board. Kevin is immediately suspicious and questions Alfred about the reason for the proposal. They have enough water for the present and even a bit more than they need. Alfredo vaguely mentions that it is always good to have more water available than is necessary because something may arise requiring more water; however, he has nothing specific in mind, just thinking about the future.
Then Kevin discovers, buried at the end of the agenda, when most folks are gone and those who are left are tired and just want to go home, another innocuous proposal by Alfredo. A small hill outside of town would be given a commercial zoning rating. This hill, with no structures on it, is a favorite spot for picnickers and lovers and those (Kevin, for example) who just want to sit and be alone for awhile. It also has the best view in the area of the valley below.
Kevin then questions this motion, and Alfredo, irritated, insists he has nothing in mind; it's just that it's not zoned and he wanted to clear this up. Others on the council then begin to ask questions, and Alfredo withdraws the motion. After the meeting, Kevin, in a discussion with some members of the council, wonders if there is a connection between the proposal to buy more water, which would allow considerable growth in the town and the zoning motion for commercial use of the hill. What is Alfredo up to? It's time to take a closer look at Alfredo once again.
An interesting summer for Kevin--radical changes in his life in sports, love, and politics.
However, there's one more element to the story that isn't found in the other two novels of The Three Californias. In the other novels, the stories are written by the two main characters. as a record of the events of the unusual events of the past six months or so. This is made very clear in both works. KSR has decided to do something different in this novel. There are authorial intrusions throughout the work. The first one begins:
2 March 2012, 8 A.M. I decided that as a gesture to its spirit, I would write my book outdoors.
The author is in Zurich, Switzerland. Is this Robinson, injecting himself into the novel as does Samuel R. Delany in The Einstein Intersection or John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman? But, the year in the quotation is 2012 while this novel was published in 1990, Could this be Keven himself, just as in the other two novels, writing down the events of a past summer? The intrusions become even more bizarre as the author appears to be in conflict with a hostile US Government and even is imprisoned at one point. The tone of these insertions is decidedly Kafkaesque, in direct contrast to the tale of Kevin's summer. Could Kevin's summer be some sort of idyllic escape for the author who is trapped in a world that seemingly is closer to Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial than to Kevin's world?
Or perhaps, the authorial intrusions represent a fourth California, one so much worse than even a post-holocaust world that Robinson can't quite bring himself to write about it, except in this oblique way.
Highly recommended, but then again, I'm biased. I highly recommend anything and everything Kim Stanley Robinson writes.
Pacific Edge is a "what if" tale. It answers the question of what it would be like if the world turned green and developed a concern for the environment and ecology. It is also a fantasy whereas the first two novels are closer to SF in nature, and, frankly, I believe a nuclear war and a military-industrial takeover are far more likely than the premise in Pacific Edge. However, regardless of the change in perspective, Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) has not created a utopia. People are still people, and there are those who don't see why they can't use the new rules for their own purposes, including grabbing for power and wealth.
Sustainability is the rule in this society. Excesses are eliminated, or at least, attempts are made to do so. Corporations are limited by the number of employees, although this limit can be effectively circumvented by setting up dummy corporations, or at least circumvented until the linkage is discovered. The growth of urban populations are controlled by the amount of water available--insufficient water results in no growth. In Pacific Edge, we see how these issues are worked out in a small town setting.
This is not a rural fantasy, where technology has disappeared. People are living in space habitats and there's a colony on the moon. An expedition is now being fitted out for a trip to Mars. KSR has not created a completely low-tech culture, but one that makes decisions about when and where to apply technology. Cars still exist, but in Kevin's small town, people either walk or ride a bike when they move about town. Cars are necessary only for long trips, not for short jaunts around town. Moreover, when the novel begins, we see the people engaged in town-work. All able-bodied citizens have to put in ten hours a week of town work. This reduces the need for town employees and the associated costs. Small government comes with a cost.
Kevin, the main character, is in his early 30s, although he seems a bit younger than that. Perhaps this will be the summer that matures him. It certainly will be a busy one for him, testing him in a variety of ways and providing new experiences. As to be expected in our real world, his experiences have two sides to them--good and bad.
Perhaps one of the most frivolous, frivolous perhaps to some, is his love of softball. This summer, as in the past, he plays in a softball league. But, this summer is different, for well into the season, he has compiled a perfect record at bat--he is batting 1.000! All recognize that this can't last the season, but when will it end? The attention he gets (the absolute silence, including a few hushes) from the players and spectators each time he comes up to bat is disconcerting. At times he wishes that it will end and even considers ending it deliberately. But, he is competitive and each hit helps his team.
He has been involved in a lukewarm relationship that's been going on for years and obviously going nowhere. This summer, though, the word (gossip) flashes through the young folk: Ramona has broken up with Alfredo. Ramona and Alfredo have been living together for years now, ever since high school, but they've never formalized their relationship. Now it appears as though it's over. Kevin has been nursing a secret (even from himself) love for her for years, but did nothing about it for there seemed to be no hope. Now, she was free.
He unobtrusively (or so he thinks) begins to pay her some attention. At first he has to listen to her complaints about Alfredo's faults. Frankly, this is a bad sign, although Kevin isn't aware of it. However, Kevin is ecstatic and their relationship flourishes during those summer months.
Kevin has also just been appointed to the town council. Being relatively apolitical, he hasn't paid much attention to local politics, but now he will find himself immersed in political maneuvering that could affect him personally. Kevin eventually wonders if perhaps his apolitical past is the reason why he is now on the council. Someone as naive as he is might not notice certain actions being taken by Alfredo, who is also the mayor at this time.
However, regardless of Kevin's lack of experience, there is one thing he's learned, and that is that Alfredo can not be trusted. Even if it's something as straightforward as giving the time of the day, Alfredo will create some sort of plot which will benefit him.
Therefore, at the first council meeting, Kevin discovers that one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to buy more water from the state water board. Kevin is immediately suspicious and questions Alfred about the reason for the proposal. They have enough water for the present and even a bit more than they need. Alfredo vaguely mentions that it is always good to have more water available than is necessary because something may arise requiring more water; however, he has nothing specific in mind, just thinking about the future.
Then Kevin discovers, buried at the end of the agenda, when most folks are gone and those who are left are tired and just want to go home, another innocuous proposal by Alfredo. A small hill outside of town would be given a commercial zoning rating. This hill, with no structures on it, is a favorite spot for picnickers and lovers and those (Kevin, for example) who just want to sit and be alone for awhile. It also has the best view in the area of the valley below.
Kevin then questions this motion, and Alfredo, irritated, insists he has nothing in mind; it's just that it's not zoned and he wanted to clear this up. Others on the council then begin to ask questions, and Alfredo withdraws the motion. After the meeting, Kevin, in a discussion with some members of the council, wonders if there is a connection between the proposal to buy more water, which would allow considerable growth in the town and the zoning motion for commercial use of the hill. What is Alfredo up to? It's time to take a closer look at Alfredo once again.
An interesting summer for Kevin--radical changes in his life in sports, love, and politics.
However, there's one more element to the story that isn't found in the other two novels of The Three Californias. In the other novels, the stories are written by the two main characters. as a record of the events of the unusual events of the past six months or so. This is made very clear in both works. KSR has decided to do something different in this novel. There are authorial intrusions throughout the work. The first one begins:
2 March 2012, 8 A.M. I decided that as a gesture to its spirit, I would write my book outdoors.
The author is in Zurich, Switzerland. Is this Robinson, injecting himself into the novel as does Samuel R. Delany in The Einstein Intersection or John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman? But, the year in the quotation is 2012 while this novel was published in 1990, Could this be Keven himself, just as in the other two novels, writing down the events of a past summer? The intrusions become even more bizarre as the author appears to be in conflict with a hostile US Government and even is imprisoned at one point. The tone of these insertions is decidedly Kafkaesque, in direct contrast to the tale of Kevin's summer. Could Kevin's summer be some sort of idyllic escape for the author who is trapped in a world that seemingly is closer to Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial than to Kevin's world?
Or perhaps, the authorial intrusions represent a fourth California, one so much worse than even a post-holocaust world that Robinson can't quite bring himself to write about it, except in this oblique way.
Highly recommended, but then again, I'm biased. I highly recommend anything and everything Kim Stanley Robinson writes.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Gold Coast
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast (TGC) is one of the three novels in what was first called "The Orange County" trilogy, but is now being marketed as "The Three Californias." However, I still prefer my title, "The California Troika." The three novels are set in Orange County, California, at approximately the middle of the 21st century. However, they do not overlap because Robinson has postulated three widely differing futures for Orange County. It is, therefore, an alternate universe series, of a very unique kind.
I have already posted on another of the three novels--The Wild Shore (TWS), .which was a "What if" novel--one that answers the question what if there was a nuclear attack on the US? What would life be like for the survivors in Orange County some half century later?
The Gold Coast belongs to the “If this goes on” category, for it postulates the continuation of the Cold War along with massive urban population growth for Orange County, which is now a center for the military-industrial complex. Much of the industry in Orange County now consists of defense contractors, corporations whose existence depends upon gaining contracts for military weapons. The novel is an extrapolation of Orange County in the 80s when it was written.
The third novel, Pacific Edge, is a “What if” novel and is, in comparison to these two, pure fantasy. I will go into that in more detail in a later post.
While the two novels occupy widely varying universes, Robinson appears to have created a very broad pattern, at least for these two novels. The main character is a young male, Jim McPherson. In TGC he is about a decade older than the main character (Hank Fletcher) is in TWS. Physically McPherson is older; however, he still is a teenager for he hasn’t grown up yet. McPherson is still “finding himself.” He has two part-time jobs, one as a data entry clerk and the other a part-time instructor at a night school.
A second commonality is the importance of the relationship between the young man and his father, though the relationships are quite different. Jim McPherson’s father, Dennis, is an engineer who works for a defense contractor. A significant part of the story concerns the father’s problems at work, both with the work itself and his immediate supervisor, whose goal is getting the task done, regardless of whatever harm this might do to his subordinates.
The father has a dream: the weapons system (reminds me a bit of Pres. Reagan’s Star Wars System) he is now working on could eliminate the need for nuclear weapons. It might not completely eliminate war, but at least it will remove a possible nuclear holocaust that both threatens and sustains the volatile political world situation. As it is, the US is now involved in “Open wars in Indonesia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Thailand” and “Covert wars in Pakistan, Turkey, South Korea, and Belgium.”
Dennis McPherson’s job and employer are two of the reasons for the estrangement between Jim and his father. Jim is vaguely opposed to the war and therefore opposed to his father’s work. Dennis is unhappy with his son whom he feels hasn’t grown up yet, even though he was graduated from high school a decade ago. He also feels he’s being used by Jim as Jim only comes around when he wants a free meal and he needs his father to work on his car.
Both novels begin with digging into the past. In TWS, Hank and his friends, one night, go to a graveyard, hoping to dig up some coffins and find something valuable that they could use for bargaining at the local swap meet. In TGC, Jim and his friends dig up a parking lot, which covered the foundation of a school, hoping to find some relics of the past. In both cases, they are discovered and are forced to leave without finding anything valuable.
In both novels, there is an old man named Tom. Tom is an important character in TWS as he is one of the few sources of information about the world before the nuclear holocaust. In TGC, Tom is Jim’s uncle who plays a very minor role in the novel. However, he too is a source of information (occasionally) of what Orange County was like half a century ago.
One of the strongest parts of the novel is Robinson’s creation of a culture that is recognizable today, with some major differences, of course. If one were to describe Jim’s life, one couldn’t go too far wrong by bringing back the old cliché: “Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.” One of Jim’s friends is Sandy, who is an independent drug designer. What I find interesting is that his drugs are taken with an eyedropper and deposited directly on the eye. I guess this makes for a quicker absorption as it goes directly into the brain and also more efficient as less of the drug is lost along the way. Another friend is Tashi, who lives in a tent on a roof and tends his own rooftop garden. He fixes computers and other electronic devices.
The controlling technology in this world is TV. Nobody in the late 80s could have foreseen the development of the mobile phone and its impact on society. TV in TGC has supplanted reality. Jim, at a party, having accidentally hit himself on his head and under the influence of Sandy’s latest creation, has gotten himself involved in a ping-pong game with the local champion and is playing way over his head, making spectacular volleys and saves. The game gains the interest of the other partygoers who eventually leave the room the game is being played in for the adjoining room where they can watch it on CCTV. All of Jim’s friends, including Jim, have their places wired for CCTV so they can see what’s going on in any room from any room in the place. They would much rather watch the game on a TV screen than watch it directly.
Another incident demonstrating the superiority of life on a monitor over a flesh-and-blood presence occurs shortly after the ping-pong game. Jim hooks up with Virginia, and they leave the party for her place for sex. They arrive at her place:
Virginia flips on the lights, turns on the video system. Eight little cameras mounted high on the walls track them with IR sensors, and two big sets of screens on the side walls show Virginia undressing, from both front and back. Jim finds the images arousing indeed . . . They maneuver into positions where they can both see a wall of screens.
. . . . .
her face is in exquisite profile . . . and her breasts . . . well it’s almost enough to distract him from the screens. . .
The screens flicker and go blank. Glassy gray-green nothingness.
Virginia jumps off Jim . . . Angrily she punches the buttons of the control panel over by the light switches.
She can’t get the system to work. Sex is no longer interesting in itself, but only as performance.
Fortunately Jim comes to the rescue. He moves a large mirror into the room so that now they can see their reflections. They resume, finding the mirrors a bit kinky as the two couples stare back at each other.
The Plot: Jim becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his life and decides to become actively involved with a group that opposes the military-industrial complex. He begins with slapping posters around the mall and eventually gets involved with sabotaging the defense contractors. Eventually the group decides to attack Laguna Space Research (LSR), the company that Jim’s father works for.
Then it gets complicated and several plot lines converge. The next target is LSR. Since the group attacks installations only at night and only where there are no guards, many companies are putting guards in places they never were before. Surprisingly, LSR suddenly removes the guards from the site where Dennis McPherson is developing his super-weapon. The attack on LSR is set up. Sandy, who also occasionally deals as well as develops drugs, had to dump overboard a shipment of drugs along the coast where LSR is situated. He is told by those who ordered and paid for the drugs that he’s got to go back this night because the police and DEA will be distracted by an attack on LSR.
OVERALL COMMENTS: a complex tale with multiple themes—fathers and sons, the generation gap, the military-industrial complex, the effects of technology on those embedded in it, knowingly or otherwise. Recommended for those looking for a complex tale set in the near future that has some disturbing similarities to our own. Again, it makes no difference which of the three--The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, or Pacific Edge--you read first.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Wild Shore (concl)
Spoiler Warning: the following will bring out some important plot elements and hints about the ending.
Sometimes I think it's harder for me to write about a work that I have greatly enjoyed reading than to write about one I didn't like as much or even disliked. I have to step back, get some distance from a work, before I can comment on it and go beyond a simple plot summary or gushing about how much I liked it. If I really like a work, it's because the writer has grabbed me and put me in some way into the story itself and I can't get an overall view. Another reason is that I fear my comments will suggest the story is uninteresting and therefore drive readers away.
To be brief, I finished The Wild Shore last week and have been putting off writing about it, just as I'm doing right now.
To the story
Robinson broke the story into four parts: the first being an accounting of the life of this small group who are trying make a life for themselves in an US that has been destroyed by a sneak attack. The people of Onofre are now living as their ancestors did several centuries ago. Power is mostly human and water. They are aware of electricity but have no way of generating it. The closest they can come are batteries, not the small kind but car batteries. Occasionally, scavengers (those who occupy the ruins of cities) find batteries that were never filled and therefore might be functional once they are filled. They have books that tell them of what was possible before the war, so they do have some idea of what can be accomplished. However, they lack the knowledge and the materials at present to do anything more than wish for what has been lost.
But, at the end of the first part, it became obvious that something was happening that was going to affect them. The people of Onofre are visited by two travelers from San Diego. Tom Barnard, the only one in Onofre who was alive before the war, is suspicious of them. Since the people of Onofre have no official leaders (they work by consensus when making decisions), there is no one to decide what they should do in this situation. At a meeting, Tom Barnard is selected to return with them to San Diego and find out what the Mayor has in mind.
In Part Two, we follow Henry (the seventeen-year-old narrator) and Tom to San Diego where they meet the Mayor and learn just what he has in mind. The Mayor is ready to go to war against the rest of the world. He wants to establish communication with the people in the Los Angeles area, and since Onofre is between the two, he wants them to help. As Tom explains again, he isn't a leader and all he can do is relate the Mayor's ideas to the people who will decide what they will do.
The trip back to Onofre is far more hazardous than it was going to San Diego. They go by boat and encounter one of the Japanese blockade ships. In the firefight that breaks out, Henry is separated from the others and barely makes it ashore, fearing that Tom and the others are dead. Fortunately all have survived, including Tom.
In Part Three, Henry and his friends make the usual mistake of teens: their parents and the other adults just don't understand the true situation, for the vote just barely went against going along with the Mayor's plans. The teens, wiser than the adults, decide to work secretly with the Mayor's men.
In Part Four, Henry and his friends discover, sadly, that adults aren't always wrong. They are betrayed by both the Mayor of San Diego and even several people of Onofre. This betrayal costs Henry several of his friends. However, the resulting fight also results in the Mayor's death, along with several members of his group. Since San Diego is now without a Mayor, an election takes place, and the party that was opposed to the Mayor's empire building dreams takes control. The people of Onofre no longer have to worry about San Diego, at least for awhile anyway. At least some good came out of the disaster.
When it's over, Henry has to learn to live with the knowledge that he was at least partially responsible for the death of one of his friends. None of the people of Onofre blame him, even his friend's father, but Henry does and he struggles to learn how to live with it.
The novel ends or rather doesn't end, for the people of Onofre suffer their losses and move on. It has become clear that they need to at least find out what the rest of the world is doing, so they plan to get a shortwave radio working, but just for listening, at least for the present. Another of the Onofreans has decided that it's time to try whaling again, especially since the whales visit their bay annually. The oil would be useful for lamps and lubricants and trading at the swap meet. And, Henry himself has suddenly noticed a young woman, one he's known all his life, but now she seems different in some way, and she seems to have noticed Henry also.
Henry may also turn out to be a writer, for the novel is his account of the events of that summer, the one "that would . . . change us." He's also a bit confused by Tom Barnard, and he's no longer quite so quick to accept everything Tom tells him. Tom, who almost died of pneumonia during the summer, decides to tell Henry the truth about life before the war, or at least as much of it as he can. On the one hand he talks about the scientific and medical advances, the rapid transportation, the use of electricity as power, but on the other hand, Henry points out to Tom that he has said that "the old time was awful, that we live better lives now than they ever did."
The last paragraph:
"As for me, the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold--it's getting so stiff I can't make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There's an owl, flitting over the river. I'll stay right here and fill another book."
Some times I wish Robinson had written a sequel to this work. What happened to Henry and the people of Onofre. What changes came about? Did they continue to live lives that Tom Barnard said were better than before the war?
How long will the blockade continue? Nothing is forever. The quarantine has gone on for decades already. How much longer could it continue? There were already almost regularly scheduled clandestine visits by "tourists" who paid large sums to come ashore for a short time and perhaps come back with a "souvenir." During Henry's trip back from San Diego, the ship he was traveling on was sunk by one of the Japanese blockade ships, and Henry was on board briefly. He met the captain of the ship and noticed that he was wearing a ring that was the type that graduating high school seniors used to wear before the war. The captain of the blockade ship obviously had some contact with those who were running the blockage. Did he regularly become blind, for a fee of course, to what was going on?
But, Robinson hasn't written a sequel so far, and perhaps he's wisest to leave it to the reader to continue the story.
Overall Rating: It's one of my five favorite post-holocaust novels.
Five stars on a scale of 0-5.
Sometimes I think it's harder for me to write about a work that I have greatly enjoyed reading than to write about one I didn't like as much or even disliked. I have to step back, get some distance from a work, before I can comment on it and go beyond a simple plot summary or gushing about how much I liked it. If I really like a work, it's because the writer has grabbed me and put me in some way into the story itself and I can't get an overall view. Another reason is that I fear my comments will suggest the story is uninteresting and therefore drive readers away.
To be brief, I finished The Wild Shore last week and have been putting off writing about it, just as I'm doing right now.
To the story
Robinson broke the story into four parts: the first being an accounting of the life of this small group who are trying make a life for themselves in an US that has been destroyed by a sneak attack. The people of Onofre are now living as their ancestors did several centuries ago. Power is mostly human and water. They are aware of electricity but have no way of generating it. The closest they can come are batteries, not the small kind but car batteries. Occasionally, scavengers (those who occupy the ruins of cities) find batteries that were never filled and therefore might be functional once they are filled. They have books that tell them of what was possible before the war, so they do have some idea of what can be accomplished. However, they lack the knowledge and the materials at present to do anything more than wish for what has been lost.
But, at the end of the first part, it became obvious that something was happening that was going to affect them. The people of Onofre are visited by two travelers from San Diego. Tom Barnard, the only one in Onofre who was alive before the war, is suspicious of them. Since the people of Onofre have no official leaders (they work by consensus when making decisions), there is no one to decide what they should do in this situation. At a meeting, Tom Barnard is selected to return with them to San Diego and find out what the Mayor has in mind.
In Part Two, we follow Henry (the seventeen-year-old narrator) and Tom to San Diego where they meet the Mayor and learn just what he has in mind. The Mayor is ready to go to war against the rest of the world. He wants to establish communication with the people in the Los Angeles area, and since Onofre is between the two, he wants them to help. As Tom explains again, he isn't a leader and all he can do is relate the Mayor's ideas to the people who will decide what they will do.
The trip back to Onofre is far more hazardous than it was going to San Diego. They go by boat and encounter one of the Japanese blockade ships. In the firefight that breaks out, Henry is separated from the others and barely makes it ashore, fearing that Tom and the others are dead. Fortunately all have survived, including Tom.
In Part Three, Henry and his friends make the usual mistake of teens: their parents and the other adults just don't understand the true situation, for the vote just barely went against going along with the Mayor's plans. The teens, wiser than the adults, decide to work secretly with the Mayor's men.
In Part Four, Henry and his friends discover, sadly, that adults aren't always wrong. They are betrayed by both the Mayor of San Diego and even several people of Onofre. This betrayal costs Henry several of his friends. However, the resulting fight also results in the Mayor's death, along with several members of his group. Since San Diego is now without a Mayor, an election takes place, and the party that was opposed to the Mayor's empire building dreams takes control. The people of Onofre no longer have to worry about San Diego, at least for awhile anyway. At least some good came out of the disaster.
When it's over, Henry has to learn to live with the knowledge that he was at least partially responsible for the death of one of his friends. None of the people of Onofre blame him, even his friend's father, but Henry does and he struggles to learn how to live with it.
The novel ends or rather doesn't end, for the people of Onofre suffer their losses and move on. It has become clear that they need to at least find out what the rest of the world is doing, so they plan to get a shortwave radio working, but just for listening, at least for the present. Another of the Onofreans has decided that it's time to try whaling again, especially since the whales visit their bay annually. The oil would be useful for lamps and lubricants and trading at the swap meet. And, Henry himself has suddenly noticed a young woman, one he's known all his life, but now she seems different in some way, and she seems to have noticed Henry also.
Henry may also turn out to be a writer, for the novel is his account of the events of that summer, the one "that would . . . change us." He's also a bit confused by Tom Barnard, and he's no longer quite so quick to accept everything Tom tells him. Tom, who almost died of pneumonia during the summer, decides to tell Henry the truth about life before the war, or at least as much of it as he can. On the one hand he talks about the scientific and medical advances, the rapid transportation, the use of electricity as power, but on the other hand, Henry points out to Tom that he has said that "the old time was awful, that we live better lives now than they ever did."
The last paragraph:
"As for me, the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold--it's getting so stiff I can't make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There's an owl, flitting over the river. I'll stay right here and fill another book."
Some times I wish Robinson had written a sequel to this work. What happened to Henry and the people of Onofre. What changes came about? Did they continue to live lives that Tom Barnard said were better than before the war?
How long will the blockade continue? Nothing is forever. The quarantine has gone on for decades already. How much longer could it continue? There were already almost regularly scheduled clandestine visits by "tourists" who paid large sums to come ashore for a short time and perhaps come back with a "souvenir." During Henry's trip back from San Diego, the ship he was traveling on was sunk by one of the Japanese blockade ships, and Henry was on board briefly. He met the captain of the ship and noticed that he was wearing a ring that was the type that graduating high school seniors used to wear before the war. The captain of the blockade ship obviously had some contact with those who were running the blockage. Did he regularly become blind, for a fee of course, to what was going on?
But, Robinson hasn't written a sequel so far, and perhaps he's wisest to leave it to the reader to continue the story.
Overall Rating: It's one of my five favorite post-holocaust novels.
Five stars on a scale of 0-5.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Wild Shore, Pt. 1
I have finally managed to get some reading done in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore, the first novel in what I call "The California Troika." But, now that I've started, it should flow quickly to the end.
I've now finished Part 1, "San Onofre." The story is possibly set in what is now San Onofre State Beach. The year is 2047, some 60? years since the war. It wasn't much of a war. The US was caught by a sneak attack--planted bombs--only a few survivors were left. Tom Barnard is the only one among the 20 some households that make up the settlement who remembers before the war. He is their sole repository of their history.
One of the continuing arguments at the local swap meet among the few who survived the war is the identity of the attacker. Some thought it was either the Russians or the Chinese, others the South Africans, some the French, and others the Vietnamese. Another debate is about whether the President of the US was right in refusing to retaliate. In a discussion that reminds me of Theodore Sturgeon's short story, "Thunder and Roses," Tom Barnard insists, in defense of President Eliot, that "'We were goners as soon as the bombs went off . . . Makes no difference what happened to the rest of the world. If Eliot had decided to push the button, that just would've killed more people and wrecked more countries. It wouldn't have done a thing for us. Besides, it wasn't the Russians or the Chinese that planted the bombs--.'"
Regardless of who did it, it was effective. Moreover, the rest of the world was not affected. Somehow there was an agreement among the nations of the world on two points: for future peace, the Americans must not be allowed to rebuild beyond a certain point and no one was to attempt to settle there. The West Coast was patrolled by the Japanese Navy to capture anyone who left (they were never seen again) and to prevent anyone from attempting to make landfall. At the beginning of the story, a bullet-riddled body washes ashore, apparently a Chinese who perhaps had attempted to run the blockade. They can only speculate.
This is not one of those post-holocaust novels filled with slavering mutants, zombies, or vampires who suddenly appear as the result of a nuclear war, nor is it that post-holocaust Edenic garden so beloved of some groups who believe Life would be Perfect if we could just get the Dang Government off our backs. It is a relatively realistic attempt to portray life where most of the inhabitants have died, and the infrastructure has been destroyed: no power, no water, no transportation (except for the original means of getting from one place to another--walking). There's no existential despair either ; the survivors are too busy surviving.
The first person narrator is Henry, a seventeen year old boy who is just beginning to get restless. There's a whole world out there about which he knows nothing. He and his friends have a lot of energy that isn't quite used up by the daily struggle to survive. The novel opens with an example of this:
"'It wouldn't really be graverobbing,' Nicolin was explaining. 'Just dig up a coffin and take the silver off the outside of it. Never open it up at all. Bury it again nice and proper--now what could be wrong with that? Those silver coffin handles are going to waste in the ground anyway.'
The five of us considered it.
. . . . .
Gabby Mendez tossed a pebble out at a gliding seagull. 'Just exactly how is that not graverobbing?' he demanded of Nocolin.
'It takes desecration of the body to make it graverobbing.' Nicolin winked at me; I was his partner in these sorts of things. 'We aren't going to do any such thing. No searching for cuff-links or belt buckles, no pulling off rings or dental work, nothing of the sort.'"
The swap meet was run on the barter system mostly, but silver was slowly becoming important as currency. The people of San Onofre, living in the hills just off the beach, found that fishing served several purposes: it provided a dependable supply of food, and the surplus could be dried and traded at the swap meet for whatever they lacked.
"Part One" of the novel focuses for the most part on the lives of the people clustered around the San Onofre River, as Henry experiences it. It is hard work, but there are the good times also, and Henry is the optimistic sort.
"As I turned up the south path towards the little cabin that my pa and I shared, the smells of pine and sea salt raked the insides of my nose and made me drunk with hunger, and happily I imagined chips of silver the size of a dozen dimes. It occurred to me that my friends and I were for the very first time in our lives actually going to do what we had so often boastfully planned to do--and at the thought I felt a thrilling shiver of anticipation. I leaped from root to root in the trail: we were invading the territory of the scavengers, venturing north into the ruins of Orange County."
But, nothing stays the same. Near the end of Part One, two strangers appear. They have come up from San Diego. The Mayor of San Diego has ideas and plans:
Lee, one of the two strangers, tells them that "'We've been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now. . .The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns . . . And since the Mayor began organizing things, we've accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There's a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia--all manner of things there weren't before.'"
They are there as sort of ambassadors. The Mayor would like to establish communication as far north as the Los Angeles basin, and they would like the permission and the cooperation of the San Onofre people. Part One ends with Tom Barnard and Henry going down to San Diego to meet with the Mayor. Henry is excited, for he is leaving San Onofre for the first time in his life and going to a place that has maybe 2000 people and electricity, but Tom is somewhat suspicious about what really is on the Mayor's mind.
End of Part One
I've now finished Part 1, "San Onofre." The story is possibly set in what is now San Onofre State Beach. The year is 2047, some 60? years since the war. It wasn't much of a war. The US was caught by a sneak attack--planted bombs--only a few survivors were left. Tom Barnard is the only one among the 20 some households that make up the settlement who remembers before the war. He is their sole repository of their history.
One of the continuing arguments at the local swap meet among the few who survived the war is the identity of the attacker. Some thought it was either the Russians or the Chinese, others the South Africans, some the French, and others the Vietnamese. Another debate is about whether the President of the US was right in refusing to retaliate. In a discussion that reminds me of Theodore Sturgeon's short story, "Thunder and Roses," Tom Barnard insists, in defense of President Eliot, that "'We were goners as soon as the bombs went off . . . Makes no difference what happened to the rest of the world. If Eliot had decided to push the button, that just would've killed more people and wrecked more countries. It wouldn't have done a thing for us. Besides, it wasn't the Russians or the Chinese that planted the bombs--.'"
Regardless of who did it, it was effective. Moreover, the rest of the world was not affected. Somehow there was an agreement among the nations of the world on two points: for future peace, the Americans must not be allowed to rebuild beyond a certain point and no one was to attempt to settle there. The West Coast was patrolled by the Japanese Navy to capture anyone who left (they were never seen again) and to prevent anyone from attempting to make landfall. At the beginning of the story, a bullet-riddled body washes ashore, apparently a Chinese who perhaps had attempted to run the blockade. They can only speculate.
This is not one of those post-holocaust novels filled with slavering mutants, zombies, or vampires who suddenly appear as the result of a nuclear war, nor is it that post-holocaust Edenic garden so beloved of some groups who believe Life would be Perfect if we could just get the Dang Government off our backs. It is a relatively realistic attempt to portray life where most of the inhabitants have died, and the infrastructure has been destroyed: no power, no water, no transportation (except for the original means of getting from one place to another--walking). There's no existential despair either ; the survivors are too busy surviving.
The first person narrator is Henry, a seventeen year old boy who is just beginning to get restless. There's a whole world out there about which he knows nothing. He and his friends have a lot of energy that isn't quite used up by the daily struggle to survive. The novel opens with an example of this:
"'It wouldn't really be graverobbing,' Nicolin was explaining. 'Just dig up a coffin and take the silver off the outside of it. Never open it up at all. Bury it again nice and proper--now what could be wrong with that? Those silver coffin handles are going to waste in the ground anyway.'
The five of us considered it.
. . . . .
Gabby Mendez tossed a pebble out at a gliding seagull. 'Just exactly how is that not graverobbing?' he demanded of Nocolin.
'It takes desecration of the body to make it graverobbing.' Nicolin winked at me; I was his partner in these sorts of things. 'We aren't going to do any such thing. No searching for cuff-links or belt buckles, no pulling off rings or dental work, nothing of the sort.'"
The swap meet was run on the barter system mostly, but silver was slowly becoming important as currency. The people of San Onofre, living in the hills just off the beach, found that fishing served several purposes: it provided a dependable supply of food, and the surplus could be dried and traded at the swap meet for whatever they lacked.
"Part One" of the novel focuses for the most part on the lives of the people clustered around the San Onofre River, as Henry experiences it. It is hard work, but there are the good times also, and Henry is the optimistic sort.
"As I turned up the south path towards the little cabin that my pa and I shared, the smells of pine and sea salt raked the insides of my nose and made me drunk with hunger, and happily I imagined chips of silver the size of a dozen dimes. It occurred to me that my friends and I were for the very first time in our lives actually going to do what we had so often boastfully planned to do--and at the thought I felt a thrilling shiver of anticipation. I leaped from root to root in the trail: we were invading the territory of the scavengers, venturing north into the ruins of Orange County."
But, nothing stays the same. Near the end of Part One, two strangers appear. They have come up from San Diego. The Mayor of San Diego has ideas and plans:
Lee, one of the two strangers, tells them that "'We've been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now. . .The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns . . . And since the Mayor began organizing things, we've accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There's a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia--all manner of things there weren't before.'"
They are there as sort of ambassadors. The Mayor would like to establish communication as far north as the Los Angeles basin, and they would like the permission and the cooperation of the San Onofre people. Part One ends with Tom Barnard and Henry going down to San Diego to meet with the Mayor. Henry is excited, for he is leaving San Onofre for the first time in his life and going to a place that has maybe 2000 people and electricity, but Tom is somewhat suspicious about what really is on the Mayor's mind.
End of Part One
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The California Troika
When Kim Stanley Robinson published these three novels--The Wild Shore (1984), The Gold Coast (1988), and Pacific Edge (1990)-- they were known collectively as "The Orange County Trilogy." In 1995, the three were reissued in trade paperback editions and were then called "The Three Californias." This probably represents the recognition that these three works do not constitute a trilogy, at least not in the accepted sense of the word. Calling them three Californias does suggest that they are related but not as tightly as a trilogy would be.
I think a better descriptive would be the Russian term "troika," which is a sled or carriage drawn by three horses that are harnessed side-by-side. The three horses therefore move forward into space side-by-side and are equals in that sense--no lead or trailing horse. The same is true of Robinson's three novels, for they move forward side-by-side into time. There is no first or last novel. All three are independent, and it makes no difference in which order the three are read. I read them over twenty years ago in the order of publication, and for this second visit, I will read them in the same order.
I never learned the reason for the change from Orange County to California, but my guess would be a marketing decision--more readers might go for a series set in California than in Orange County, because California is a more recognizable locale than Orange County.
These three novels are inhabitants of my TBR bookcase (To Be Reread in this case). I won't read all three back-to-back but hope to be able to move them eventually during the year out of the TBR bookcase. I shall start within the next week or two with The Wild Shore.
The Wild Shore is a post-holocaust novel and belongs in the "what if" SF category. "What if the US was suddenly attacked, and it was the only country attacked." No other country came to the aid of the US for fear of retaliation. The novel begins in 2047, several decades after the war, if a one-sided attack can be called a war. The POV character, Hank Fletcher, is a young man who lives with his father in a small community made up of others who struggle to survive on the California coast in what was once known as Orange County. He can see ships from Japan and other countries as they maintain a blockade along the Pacific Coast. They will prevent any ships from entering or leaving the coastal waters.
The people survive by farming and trading surplus goods and pre-destruction artifacts with other small communities in the area. Not surprisingly, barter is now the dominant economic system. These people's lives are not characterized as part of that idyllic pastoral romance that shows up in so many post-holocaust fantasies. It is a hard, difficult life, and there is little in the way of significant change until several strangers arrive, who claim to be from San Diego, and they have some ideas about disrupting the status quo.
The Gold Coast belongs to the "if this goes on" category of SF. It is Robinson's extrapolation of what life would be like in Orange County, California, if some existing trends continued. It is set in 2027 and the back page description says it better than I could:
Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent into the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.
Pacific Edge, the third novel in the troika, is set also in the same area in 2065, but again in a very different universe. It belongs to the "what if" category, and frankly I consider it to be closer to fantasy than the other two works. I, anyway, believe this universe to be the one that is least likely to happen because the question answered by Pacific Edge is this: "What if the whole world suddenly goes green?"
Big is bad, small is good. Air and water pollution are not to be permitted for any reason. No company can have more than a certain number of employees. Growth, unless it is demonstrably necessary for survival, is forbidden; increasing profits has nothing to do with survival and therefore is not considered an adequate reason for expansion. A new set of three "Rs" has been added to the traditional "Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmatic": "Reuse, Recycle, and Repair."
From the back cover description: "Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this 'green' world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation." I suspect this book is on or would be on every Chamber of Commerce's black list.
While there are no links among the novels--all three are independent and occupy separate universes--there are some commonalities among them. Locale, of course, is one of them. Another commonality is that the main character in each is a young male. A third is that shortly after the novels begin, the young male is involved in digging up something from the past. A fourth is the presence of the old man, who provides a type of historical commentary or perhaps even continuity with the past in each of the three novels.
What Robinson has created is a work that provides three different futures for Orange County or California, if you prefer, each of which takes place roughly during the middle third of the 21st century. Robinson thus gives readers an opportunity to select and discuss which is the preferable one and which is the most likely one.
I don't know of any other author who has created a similar series. If there is one, I would certainly like to hear about it.
I think a better descriptive would be the Russian term "troika," which is a sled or carriage drawn by three horses that are harnessed side-by-side. The three horses therefore move forward into space side-by-side and are equals in that sense--no lead or trailing horse. The same is true of Robinson's three novels, for they move forward side-by-side into time. There is no first or last novel. All three are independent, and it makes no difference in which order the three are read. I read them over twenty years ago in the order of publication, and for this second visit, I will read them in the same order.
I never learned the reason for the change from Orange County to California, but my guess would be a marketing decision--more readers might go for a series set in California than in Orange County, because California is a more recognizable locale than Orange County.
These three novels are inhabitants of my TBR bookcase (To Be Reread in this case). I won't read all three back-to-back but hope to be able to move them eventually during the year out of the TBR bookcase. I shall start within the next week or two with The Wild Shore.
The Wild Shore is a post-holocaust novel and belongs in the "what if" SF category. "What if the US was suddenly attacked, and it was the only country attacked." No other country came to the aid of the US for fear of retaliation. The novel begins in 2047, several decades after the war, if a one-sided attack can be called a war. The POV character, Hank Fletcher, is a young man who lives with his father in a small community made up of others who struggle to survive on the California coast in what was once known as Orange County. He can see ships from Japan and other countries as they maintain a blockade along the Pacific Coast. They will prevent any ships from entering or leaving the coastal waters.
The people survive by farming and trading surplus goods and pre-destruction artifacts with other small communities in the area. Not surprisingly, barter is now the dominant economic system. These people's lives are not characterized as part of that idyllic pastoral romance that shows up in so many post-holocaust fantasies. It is a hard, difficult life, and there is little in the way of significant change until several strangers arrive, who claim to be from San Diego, and they have some ideas about disrupting the status quo.
The Gold Coast belongs to the "if this goes on" category of SF. It is Robinson's extrapolation of what life would be like in Orange County, California, if some existing trends continued. It is set in 2027 and the back page description says it better than I could:
Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent into the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.
Pacific Edge, the third novel in the troika, is set also in the same area in 2065, but again in a very different universe. It belongs to the "what if" category, and frankly I consider it to be closer to fantasy than the other two works. I, anyway, believe this universe to be the one that is least likely to happen because the question answered by Pacific Edge is this: "What if the whole world suddenly goes green?"
Big is bad, small is good. Air and water pollution are not to be permitted for any reason. No company can have more than a certain number of employees. Growth, unless it is demonstrably necessary for survival, is forbidden; increasing profits has nothing to do with survival and therefore is not considered an adequate reason for expansion. A new set of three "Rs" has been added to the traditional "Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmatic": "Reuse, Recycle, and Repair."
From the back cover description: "Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this 'green' world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation." I suspect this book is on or would be on every Chamber of Commerce's black list.
While there are no links among the novels--all three are independent and occupy separate universes--there are some commonalities among them. Locale, of course, is one of them. Another commonality is that the main character in each is a young male. A third is that shortly after the novels begin, the young male is involved in digging up something from the past. A fourth is the presence of the old man, who provides a type of historical commentary or perhaps even continuity with the past in each of the three novels.
What Robinson has created is a work that provides three different futures for Orange County or California, if you prefer, each of which takes place roughly during the middle third of the 21st century. Robinson thus gives readers an opportunity to select and discuss which is the preferable one and which is the most likely one.
I don't know of any other author who has created a similar series. If there is one, I would certainly like to hear about it.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Combination Plate 8
Kim Stanley Robinson
Vinland the Dream and Other Stories
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite SF writers, a result of discovering his The Memory of Whiteness and the "California Triad" (aka the "Orange County Triad"). I call it a triad because it's not really a trilogy, at least not in the commonly accepted sense, anyway. His short stories are also very good--some SF, some fantasy, some neither.
The quality of the tales in this collection is very high, as it should be, for this is sort of a "best of" collection. It's actually the best of two other anthologies, and that's the problem. All but one of the stories here have already appeared in The Planet on the Table (PotT) and Remaking History (RM). Only "Discovering Life" is not included in either of the two. In addition, there is an omnibus edition, Remaking History and Other Stories, which already includes all of the stories from PotT and RM.
The fourteen stories in Vinland the Dream range from future predictions to recreating the past, or in some cases rewriting the past, as in the title story "Vinland the Dream." In this story we see an archaeologist conduct an excavation to disprove a long accepted tenet, that of the discovery of Vinland by the Vikings.
In "A History of the Twentieth Century: with Illustrations," a historian is commissioned to do a coffee table work with this title. After researching the horrors of the twentieth century he comes up with a rather surprising conclusion.
"Venice Drowned" is the story of a future in which the sea level has risen sufficiently to cover Venice to the point that the shorter buildings are now underwater and the remaining residents have moved either to the upper stories of taller buildings or have build a shack on the roof. One such resident survives by taking sightseers on tours. He also guides and provides diving equipment for souvenir hunters who are busy looting the drowned city.
In the far future, some miners on far flung planets, all but slaves to the mining company, find release and relief in digging in the musical past in "Coming Back to Dixieland." This ragtag group of miner-musicians enter a contest, competing with professionals, with the grand prize an expenses paid series of gigs in the Solar System, one slim chance to escape the trap of the company owned mines.
The last part of the story tells of the concert the group played in the competition, and Robinson's word picture of that concert far surpasses any previous attempt I have ever read. At the end, I felt as though I had been there, immersed in the sounds of classic Dixieland. It reminded me of The Memory of Whiteness for that work also focused on a musician and his music. Robinson must be a musician for he writes so convincingly of music and musicians.
I believe Robinson is also a rock climber for this has played an important role in a number of his novels and short stories. In this collection is "Ridge Running," a story about three men who get together once again to go climbing. It is the first time out for one of them who has had a very serious accident and has suffered brain damage.
"The Disguise" is a neat little thriller, set on the stage in the future. Someone is killing actors on stage and no one knows who it is. Consequently, all involved in the production nervously watch everybody else, wondering if the killer is a part of this cast and crew.
"Mercurial" is a farce. It's a homage to "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"' and set on Mercury, in a city that reminds me very much of the city in Christopher Priest's strange little novel, The Inverted World. The city in both stories is set on railroad tracks and slowly inches its way across the landscape. Robinson has also dabbled in gender switching as the detective, Freya Grindavik, is a very tall (over 7 ft tall) lean woman whose arrogance approaches that of Holmes himself. Nathaniel Sebastian accompanies her somewhat reluctantly, which is understandable when he explains the life-threatening situations he found himself in as he reels off a number of her past cases. Sebastian also explains that the life of a "watson" (his term) isn't all that glamorous either.
Overall Rating: I would recommend anything with Kim Stanley Robinson's name on it.
==================================================
Michael Chabon
Gentlemen on the Road
Adventure tale, mostly
I had heard much about Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, so when this title was suggested for a discussion in the SF group I belong to, I was looking forward to it. From what little I had heard, it appeared to be a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, much like Fritz Leiber's Fahrd and the Grey Mouser tales. Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is, for me, still the classic tale of this sort. The heroes can best be described as gentlemen adventurers; "rogues' or 'thieves" or 'con men' sounds so harsh. They do get involved in a number of capers which would be unacceptable to law-abiding citizens, but they do it more for the excitement and the thrill of a well-plotted campaign than for any thoughts of pecuniary gain. They, of course, wouldn't reject any cash or jewels or plate that came their way.
There is generally magic involved, with the usual assortment of wizards, spells, incantations, demons, and all the usual assorted paraphernalia. Occasionally they will, unwillingly of course, do a good deed or two, usually when there's an attractive damsel in distress involved. The time of the novel would probably be closest to late medieval or early Renaissance. They don't wear armor, but if they did, they would be described as knights in tarnished armor.
Unfortunately, Chabon decided that wasn't exactly the sort of book he wanted to write. His two gentlemen on the road are con men and we meet them pulling off their usual scam. The planet is obviously Earth, and various references to other peoples and countries are mostly historical. The task they get saddled with is the restoration of a spoiled young man to his throne that has been usurped by his uncle.
The sword part is there but no sorcery. It's basically an adventure tale--well written but still a disappointment. However, I am going to read other works by him because he does strike me as a skillful writer with some imagination.
=============================================================
Primer: A film
SF, Time travel
According to a comment on imdb.com, this film was nominated for a number of awards and won two at Sundance. I can't figure out why, unless it was because it was so low-key, but "hurry-hurry-hurry" most of the time. The actors kept stepping on each other's lines, so it was hard to tell who was saying what. Moreover, when the time machine finally became functional, I found it impossible to follow the story line and was completely surprised by the ending.
Four friends combine their financial resources and develop a lab in a garage owned by one of them. Two of them stumble on a time machine and decide to keep it a secret from the other two. The story moves rather quickly and lucidly the first half of the film, until as I mentioned above, they begin jumping back-and-forth in time and eventually lose me. Moreover, a third man, one who wasn't one of the original four, somehow gets involved and begins doing a bit of time-traveling on his own.
Overall Rating: I would give it 3/5 rating, primarily for the first part which focuses on the initial discovery. This part, the discovery of the strange, unexpected effects of the device they were developing, and their attempts to find out just what is happening and what the implications are, is very convincing and interesting.
==============================================================
John Dos Passos
The 42nd Parallel, a novel
This is the first novel in John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy." The other two novels are Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money. The novel is set in the USA at beginning of the twentieth century.
It's structure is definitely experimental. Each section has three very distinct parts, distinct as to content and format.
The largest part tells of four or five individuals (three men and two women, in the first novel anyway)-- their lives, their accomplishments, and their fates. Or, at least we will learn this if we read all three volumes. All of the major characters leave home as soon as possible and strike out on their own, some to a large city to find work while others go on the road. Their fates are different, but Dos Passos manages at one point or another to bring most of them together, some briefly while for some it becomes a long-lasting relationship.
The second part is called "Newsreel," and it's just what the title suggests. It consists of headlines, which are presumably found in newspapers at the time: "Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade with Placards Saying Death to Czar Assassin" or "Riots and Streetblockades Mark Opening of Teamsters Strike" or "World's 'Greatest Sea Battle Near" or "Madrid Police Clash with Five Thousand Workmen Carrying Black Flag." This, of course, provides the context for the stories of the focus individuals mentioned above.
The third section is titled "The Camera Eye" and is the hardest part to follow. It appears to be semi-autobiographical fragments which are based on Dos Passo's life. What follows is the first part of a typical segment: "and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bathtub and the water leaked down through the drawingroom ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty although so very old came to tea and we saw him first through the window..."
My only complaint would be Dos Passos' style, which is somewhat flat, almost journalistic. However, he breaks the narrative up frequently with "The Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" segments, so I wasn't faced with 400+ pages of flat prose. Perhaps that's why Dos Passos decided to break up the narrative portion as he did.
Overall: very good. I have the second and the third books available, and I want to learn what happens to the focus characters, who have now reached a plateau in their lives and careers. They appear to be settled in for the duration, but there's those two other volumes waiting.
============================================================
Karin Alvtegen
Missing
a novel
Mystery? the accidental detective type
The blurb on the back cover reads as follows: "The New Queen of Scandinavian Crime Writing."
Nonsense.
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian writer, and Norway is considered part of Scandinavia. I think Fossum has a far better claim to being the Scandinavian Queen of Crime Writing than Alvtegen does.
Missing begins in media res. Sibylla discovers that the man she had been chatting up and manipulating to rent her a room at the hotel is found murdered. Of course, the police suspect her. The novel then spends considerable time detailing her abused childhood (what other kind of childhood can there be?) with the mother from hell and the absent father. Alvtegen fills numerous pages on Sibylla's pregnancy, the loss of the child through forced adoption (the mother from hell again), her time spent in a mental institution (well, she got away from the mother from hell, didn't she?), and life on the street after she left the institution.
Occasionally we return to the present and discover that there are multiple killings. Sibylla is now suspected of being a serial killer, who also (only vaguely described in the novel) mutilates the body and removes unspecified organs.
SPOILER WARNING: I will discuss significant plot elements and the resolution of the novel from this point on.
Buried within all this is a detective story as Sibylla decides that the only way to demonstrate her innocence is to find the real killer herself. Therefore, this is in the subcategory of smart citizen and stupid police. They should have called in Inspector Kurt Wallandar who would have solved the crimes in a few days.
In one of her hiding places, Sibylla meets a fifteen-year-old boy whose mother just happens to be a police officer. She convinces him of her innocence, and he manages to get access to his mother's computer at the police station.
I said above this was an example of the stupid police story. What else can one say when the police are unable to find a link among the four victims even though it's there in front of them, just waiting to be discovered by this homeless woman and a fifteen-year-old boy. For example. the police ignore the facts that all four victims had recently received a transplant. Not only that, they saw no significance in that all four had their operations within a day or so of each other. And, coincidentally, all four received organs from the SAME donor. Obviously, this must be a coincidence; it couldn't be a link among them. Of course not.
At the end, after she has solved the case for the police, she also discovers that her father died several years ago. He had a considerable estate and had left half to his wife and half to his daughter. Now, Sibylla learns that the mother from hell is trying to get her declared legally dead so she could get the millions of kronors that the father had left Sibylla. She finds a sympathetic lawyer, and now she will live happily ever after in that small cottage on that beautiful lake.
Overall Rating: I finished it because it was the choice of the mystery group I belong to. Once burned, twice shy, or something like that.
Vinland the Dream and Other Stories
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite SF writers, a result of discovering his The Memory of Whiteness and the "California Triad" (aka the "Orange County Triad"). I call it a triad because it's not really a trilogy, at least not in the commonly accepted sense, anyway. His short stories are also very good--some SF, some fantasy, some neither.
The quality of the tales in this collection is very high, as it should be, for this is sort of a "best of" collection. It's actually the best of two other anthologies, and that's the problem. All but one of the stories here have already appeared in The Planet on the Table (PotT) and Remaking History (RM). Only "Discovering Life" is not included in either of the two. In addition, there is an omnibus edition, Remaking History and Other Stories, which already includes all of the stories from PotT and RM.
The fourteen stories in Vinland the Dream range from future predictions to recreating the past, or in some cases rewriting the past, as in the title story "Vinland the Dream." In this story we see an archaeologist conduct an excavation to disprove a long accepted tenet, that of the discovery of Vinland by the Vikings.
In "A History of the Twentieth Century: with Illustrations," a historian is commissioned to do a coffee table work with this title. After researching the horrors of the twentieth century he comes up with a rather surprising conclusion.
"Venice Drowned" is the story of a future in which the sea level has risen sufficiently to cover Venice to the point that the shorter buildings are now underwater and the remaining residents have moved either to the upper stories of taller buildings or have build a shack on the roof. One such resident survives by taking sightseers on tours. He also guides and provides diving equipment for souvenir hunters who are busy looting the drowned city.
In the far future, some miners on far flung planets, all but slaves to the mining company, find release and relief in digging in the musical past in "Coming Back to Dixieland." This ragtag group of miner-musicians enter a contest, competing with professionals, with the grand prize an expenses paid series of gigs in the Solar System, one slim chance to escape the trap of the company owned mines.
The last part of the story tells of the concert the group played in the competition, and Robinson's word picture of that concert far surpasses any previous attempt I have ever read. At the end, I felt as though I had been there, immersed in the sounds of classic Dixieland. It reminded me of The Memory of Whiteness for that work also focused on a musician and his music. Robinson must be a musician for he writes so convincingly of music and musicians.
I believe Robinson is also a rock climber for this has played an important role in a number of his novels and short stories. In this collection is "Ridge Running," a story about three men who get together once again to go climbing. It is the first time out for one of them who has had a very serious accident and has suffered brain damage.
"The Disguise" is a neat little thriller, set on the stage in the future. Someone is killing actors on stage and no one knows who it is. Consequently, all involved in the production nervously watch everybody else, wondering if the killer is a part of this cast and crew.
"Mercurial" is a farce. It's a homage to "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"' and set on Mercury, in a city that reminds me very much of the city in Christopher Priest's strange little novel, The Inverted World. The city in both stories is set on railroad tracks and slowly inches its way across the landscape. Robinson has also dabbled in gender switching as the detective, Freya Grindavik, is a very tall (over 7 ft tall) lean woman whose arrogance approaches that of Holmes himself. Nathaniel Sebastian accompanies her somewhat reluctantly, which is understandable when he explains the life-threatening situations he found himself in as he reels off a number of her past cases. Sebastian also explains that the life of a "watson" (his term) isn't all that glamorous either.
Overall Rating: I would recommend anything with Kim Stanley Robinson's name on it.
==================================================
Michael Chabon
Gentlemen on the Road
Adventure tale, mostly
I had heard much about Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, so when this title was suggested for a discussion in the SF group I belong to, I was looking forward to it. From what little I had heard, it appeared to be a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, much like Fritz Leiber's Fahrd and the Grey Mouser tales. Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is, for me, still the classic tale of this sort. The heroes can best be described as gentlemen adventurers; "rogues' or 'thieves" or 'con men' sounds so harsh. They do get involved in a number of capers which would be unacceptable to law-abiding citizens, but they do it more for the excitement and the thrill of a well-plotted campaign than for any thoughts of pecuniary gain. They, of course, wouldn't reject any cash or jewels or plate that came their way.
There is generally magic involved, with the usual assortment of wizards, spells, incantations, demons, and all the usual assorted paraphernalia. Occasionally they will, unwillingly of course, do a good deed or two, usually when there's an attractive damsel in distress involved. The time of the novel would probably be closest to late medieval or early Renaissance. They don't wear armor, but if they did, they would be described as knights in tarnished armor.
Unfortunately, Chabon decided that wasn't exactly the sort of book he wanted to write. His two gentlemen on the road are con men and we meet them pulling off their usual scam. The planet is obviously Earth, and various references to other peoples and countries are mostly historical. The task they get saddled with is the restoration of a spoiled young man to his throne that has been usurped by his uncle.
The sword part is there but no sorcery. It's basically an adventure tale--well written but still a disappointment. However, I am going to read other works by him because he does strike me as a skillful writer with some imagination.
=============================================================
Primer: A film
SF, Time travel
According to a comment on imdb.com, this film was nominated for a number of awards and won two at Sundance. I can't figure out why, unless it was because it was so low-key, but "hurry-hurry-hurry" most of the time. The actors kept stepping on each other's lines, so it was hard to tell who was saying what. Moreover, when the time machine finally became functional, I found it impossible to follow the story line and was completely surprised by the ending.
Four friends combine their financial resources and develop a lab in a garage owned by one of them. Two of them stumble on a time machine and decide to keep it a secret from the other two. The story moves rather quickly and lucidly the first half of the film, until as I mentioned above, they begin jumping back-and-forth in time and eventually lose me. Moreover, a third man, one who wasn't one of the original four, somehow gets involved and begins doing a bit of time-traveling on his own.
Overall Rating: I would give it 3/5 rating, primarily for the first part which focuses on the initial discovery. This part, the discovery of the strange, unexpected effects of the device they were developing, and their attempts to find out just what is happening and what the implications are, is very convincing and interesting.
==============================================================
John Dos Passos
The 42nd Parallel, a novel
This is the first novel in John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy." The other two novels are Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money. The novel is set in the USA at beginning of the twentieth century.
It's structure is definitely experimental. Each section has three very distinct parts, distinct as to content and format.
The largest part tells of four or five individuals (three men and two women, in the first novel anyway)-- their lives, their accomplishments, and their fates. Or, at least we will learn this if we read all three volumes. All of the major characters leave home as soon as possible and strike out on their own, some to a large city to find work while others go on the road. Their fates are different, but Dos Passos manages at one point or another to bring most of them together, some briefly while for some it becomes a long-lasting relationship.
The second part is called "Newsreel," and it's just what the title suggests. It consists of headlines, which are presumably found in newspapers at the time: "Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade with Placards Saying Death to Czar Assassin" or "Riots and Streetblockades Mark Opening of Teamsters Strike" or "World's 'Greatest Sea Battle Near" or "Madrid Police Clash with Five Thousand Workmen Carrying Black Flag." This, of course, provides the context for the stories of the focus individuals mentioned above.
The third section is titled "The Camera Eye" and is the hardest part to follow. It appears to be semi-autobiographical fragments which are based on Dos Passo's life. What follows is the first part of a typical segment: "and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bathtub and the water leaked down through the drawingroom ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty although so very old came to tea and we saw him first through the window..."
My only complaint would be Dos Passos' style, which is somewhat flat, almost journalistic. However, he breaks the narrative up frequently with "The Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" segments, so I wasn't faced with 400+ pages of flat prose. Perhaps that's why Dos Passos decided to break up the narrative portion as he did.
Overall: very good. I have the second and the third books available, and I want to learn what happens to the focus characters, who have now reached a plateau in their lives and careers. They appear to be settled in for the duration, but there's those two other volumes waiting.
============================================================
Karin Alvtegen
Missing
a novel
Mystery? the accidental detective type
The blurb on the back cover reads as follows: "The New Queen of Scandinavian Crime Writing."
Nonsense.
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian writer, and Norway is considered part of Scandinavia. I think Fossum has a far better claim to being the Scandinavian Queen of Crime Writing than Alvtegen does.
Missing begins in media res. Sibylla discovers that the man she had been chatting up and manipulating to rent her a room at the hotel is found murdered. Of course, the police suspect her. The novel then spends considerable time detailing her abused childhood (what other kind of childhood can there be?) with the mother from hell and the absent father. Alvtegen fills numerous pages on Sibylla's pregnancy, the loss of the child through forced adoption (the mother from hell again), her time spent in a mental institution (well, she got away from the mother from hell, didn't she?), and life on the street after she left the institution.
Occasionally we return to the present and discover that there are multiple killings. Sibylla is now suspected of being a serial killer, who also (only vaguely described in the novel) mutilates the body and removes unspecified organs.
SPOILER WARNING: I will discuss significant plot elements and the resolution of the novel from this point on.
Buried within all this is a detective story as Sibylla decides that the only way to demonstrate her innocence is to find the real killer herself. Therefore, this is in the subcategory of smart citizen and stupid police. They should have called in Inspector Kurt Wallandar who would have solved the crimes in a few days.
In one of her hiding places, Sibylla meets a fifteen-year-old boy whose mother just happens to be a police officer. She convinces him of her innocence, and he manages to get access to his mother's computer at the police station.
I said above this was an example of the stupid police story. What else can one say when the police are unable to find a link among the four victims even though it's there in front of them, just waiting to be discovered by this homeless woman and a fifteen-year-old boy. For example. the police ignore the facts that all four victims had recently received a transplant. Not only that, they saw no significance in that all four had their operations within a day or so of each other. And, coincidentally, all four received organs from the SAME donor. Obviously, this must be a coincidence; it couldn't be a link among them. Of course not.
At the end, after she has solved the case for the police, she also discovers that her father died several years ago. He had a considerable estate and had left half to his wife and half to his daughter. Now, Sibylla learns that the mother from hell is trying to get her declared legally dead so she could get the millions of kronors that the father had left Sibylla. She finds a sympathetic lawyer, and now she will live happily ever after in that small cottage on that beautiful lake.
Overall Rating: I finished it because it was the choice of the mystery group I belong to. Once burned, twice shy, or something like that.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Martians
I just finished Kim Stanley Robinson's collection of short stories, The Martians. It consists of numerous short works, all related to his great trilogy, "RGB Mars." A number of the stories give us more information about the relationships among the various characters. For example, one is about the relationship between Maya and Coyote. Another tells of Coyote's search for Hiroko.
Some are whimsical tales about the red nanopeople--the real Martians. Those, also, obviously never were included. Others consist of short exploratory trips and hikes on Mars. One is clearly a mythic tale, a sort of Martian Paul Bunyan.
Another is an alternate beginning to the series, in which Michel recommends against sending a large ship with the 100 to begin a colony. Instead, he suggests trips in which fewer people go and colonization takes place over decades. His recommendation is accepted, and consequently the events of the first book never "take place." The history of the eventual colonization or settlement of Mars, therefore, is very different.
The longest story is "Green Mars," a tale about climbing Olympus Mons, which I think is considered to be the tallest mountain in the solar system. KSR must be a mountain climber, because the details of that climb are so realistic.
One could read the stories without having read "RGB Mars," but it adds a lot if one has read them.
I wonder if Robinson has visited the Red Rocks area and Arches National Park of southeastern Utah. That country, some of the most beautiful and striking scenery as anything I have found in the US, is the closest that I have seen to Robinson's description of the Martian landscape.
Highly recommended for those like me who are fascinated by and want more of
1. KSR's depiction of the colonization and settlement of Mars,
2. the Martian landscape, and
3. Mars' effects on the people
---a. who went there,
---b. who were born there, and
---c. who came afterwards.
Some are whimsical tales about the red nanopeople--the real Martians. Those, also, obviously never were included. Others consist of short exploratory trips and hikes on Mars. One is clearly a mythic tale, a sort of Martian Paul Bunyan.
Another is an alternate beginning to the series, in which Michel recommends against sending a large ship with the 100 to begin a colony. Instead, he suggests trips in which fewer people go and colonization takes place over decades. His recommendation is accepted, and consequently the events of the first book never "take place." The history of the eventual colonization or settlement of Mars, therefore, is very different.
The longest story is "Green Mars," a tale about climbing Olympus Mons, which I think is considered to be the tallest mountain in the solar system. KSR must be a mountain climber, because the details of that climb are so realistic.
One could read the stories without having read "RGB Mars," but it adds a lot if one has read them.
I wonder if Robinson has visited the Red Rocks area and Arches National Park of southeastern Utah. That country, some of the most beautiful and striking scenery as anything I have found in the US, is the closest that I have seen to Robinson's description of the Martian landscape.
Highly recommended for those like me who are fascinated by and want more of
1. KSR's depiction of the colonization and settlement of Mars,
2. the Martian landscape, and
3. Mars' effects on the people
---a. who went there,
---b. who were born there, and
---c. who came afterwards.
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