The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
181 pages
Published 2013
Read from August 21 to August 22
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
An ancient anthology I found in some dusty used bookshop in bygone times -- Best SF: 1967, edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, one of the very few mementos I have of my childhood -- praises Harlan Ellison as "the only author who can write prose in a top-of-the-lungs shout." Never mind that barely fifty pages earlier the editors complain that "most SF stories are written with a sustained shout" -- when the figure of speech applies to Ellison, clearly Harrison and Aldiss mean it as a compliment. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is written with what I would peg as a sustained polite murmur. The tone fits the character and the dreamy recollection of his past supernatural traumas, but one can't help but wonder if a livelier or more poetic style might have elevated this charming, creeping tale into a position above merely "very good."
One could also argue, wryly, that End of the Lane conforms to the standard Gaiman setup: a useless lump of a boy fetches into supernatural trouble, thanks to the workings of a wiser, more confident girl figure, who helps guide him through the ensuing strangeness. But as the boy in question is 7, I'm willing to cut Gaiman some slack on his uselessness and dependency, and this time it's the girl who saves the day in the end, rather than the boy arbitrarily clicking into Hero Mode.
Lane actually falls closer to Gaiman's young adult (or juvenile reader) works in tone and construction, seeming to me a kiddie book that grew unexpectedly dark and body horror-ish and so got tapped for the grown-up imprint. Lane was excellent, overall, but it would be nice if Gaiman, someday, wrote another novel that felt intended for grownups.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
2014 read #82: My Real Children by Jo Walton.
My Real Children by Jo Walton
320 pages
Published 2014
Read from August 20 to August 21
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
For much of its length this struck me as a gentler, more soft-spoken update of The Female Man (though the comparison strains when I note that Pat/Trisha experienced divergent lives after a choice of her own, rather than as a result of different social environments). My biggest complaint is that most of it is rather boring, a quiet British family drama novel seen through two colored lenses. My Real Children can be a tearjerker, even soggy at times, but after a certain point the two alternate narratives skim rather than linger, forwarding through a practical bullet list of family developments and deaths and illnesses and births and world politics without the life and gusto of the earlier portions of the book. The ending feels inevitable and wholly unsurprising -- maybe even unearned -- and more suited for a short story besides. Still, I've yet to read a Jo Walton book that I didn't enjoy; her gentle prose goes down smooth.
320 pages
Published 2014
Read from August 20 to August 21
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
For much of its length this struck me as a gentler, more soft-spoken update of The Female Man (though the comparison strains when I note that Pat/Trisha experienced divergent lives after a choice of her own, rather than as a result of different social environments). My biggest complaint is that most of it is rather boring, a quiet British family drama novel seen through two colored lenses. My Real Children can be a tearjerker, even soggy at times, but after a certain point the two alternate narratives skim rather than linger, forwarding through a practical bullet list of family developments and deaths and illnesses and births and world politics without the life and gusto of the earlier portions of the book. The ending feels inevitable and wholly unsurprising -- maybe even unearned -- and more suited for a short story besides. Still, I've yet to read a Jo Walton book that I didn't enjoy; her gentle prose goes down smooth.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
2014 read #81: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon.
Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord by Olaf Stapledon
144 pages
Published 1944
Read from August 18 to August 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
A quaint intelligent animal fantasy -- if "quaint" is the acceptable term for a tale that ends with an interspecies love triangle and a young woman swearing to a super-intelligent dog, "I'm -- your wife, your dear constant bitch." Before that point, Stapledon indulges in what appears to be his characteristic metier, asking a lot of questions about the purpose of life and the existence of "the spirit" and what it means to be "wide-awake," in a species generally half asleep or unconscious altogether. I can't say this vague mystic mooning means much to me, though Stapledon's perspective -- expressing sympathy for Communism and logical positivism while insisting both are missing a crucial spiritual essence -- seems mostly benign. Overall, though, Sirius had easy charm and earned a moist eye, as all dog novels from time immemorial seemingly must.
144 pages
Published 1944
Read from August 18 to August 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
A quaint intelligent animal fantasy -- if "quaint" is the acceptable term for a tale that ends with an interspecies love triangle and a young woman swearing to a super-intelligent dog, "I'm -- your wife, your dear constant bitch." Before that point, Stapledon indulges in what appears to be his characteristic metier, asking a lot of questions about the purpose of life and the existence of "the spirit" and what it means to be "wide-awake," in a species generally half asleep or unconscious altogether. I can't say this vague mystic mooning means much to me, though Stapledon's perspective -- expressing sympathy for Communism and logical positivism while insisting both are missing a crucial spiritual essence -- seems mostly benign. Overall, though, Sirius had easy charm and earned a moist eye, as all dog novels from time immemorial seemingly must.
Monday, August 18, 2014
2014 read #80: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon.
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest by Olaf Stapledon
157 pages
Published 1935
Read from August 17 to August 18
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The period between the heyday of Verne and Wells and the early stirrings of the New Wave is unknown territory for me. With the exception of a handful of short stories from various compilations (and of course The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), I don't believe I've read any piece of speculative fiction that falls between The Food of the Gods and The Man in the High Castle. Someday I'll attempt an exhaustive catalog of every book I've ever read, and no doubt discover some forgotten historical footnote, but in general it's safe to say I'm as ignorant of pulp era and Golden Age sci-fi as I am of anything.
Olaf Stapledon frequently gets name-dropped as a Golden Age grand master, usually in the context of lamentation about his works (and his wider period of sci-fi evolution) are largely forgotten by the modern generation of genre readers and writers. When Julian May's narrator in Intervention goes on at some length about the influence of Odd John, I had to bite. I probably should have begun with Last and First Men, but that's on its way to my library as we speak, so that'll be one of my next books, and I won't miss out on what is supposedly Stapledon's best work.
Odd John is definitively a Big Lecture on the Human Condition sort of novel, a didactic exercise on the supposed deep truths and spiritual insights of a mental superman coming of age between the World Wars. Straining a bit at the size of the conceit, Stapledon deftly avoids committing any of these deep truths to paper, his narrator hand-waving the titular John's enlightenment away as too vast and profound to be grasped by mere Homo sapiens. In this Odd John conforms with Siddhartha and Lost Horizon in the Interwar spiritual novel tradition, while stylistically bridging the didactic social sci-fi of Wells with the psychic superman glut of the New Wave. It's a slim volume devoted mostly to John's harangues on the inferiority of the mere human brain, offering little to support Homo superior's elevation beyond a general sense of "Trust me, it is so cool." John manages to be somewhat absorbing despite all that, and I'm by no means dissuaded from plunging onward into the rather random assortment of Stapledon titles available through my library system.
157 pages
Published 1935
Read from August 17 to August 18
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The period between the heyday of Verne and Wells and the early stirrings of the New Wave is unknown territory for me. With the exception of a handful of short stories from various compilations (and of course The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), I don't believe I've read any piece of speculative fiction that falls between The Food of the Gods and The Man in the High Castle. Someday I'll attempt an exhaustive catalog of every book I've ever read, and no doubt discover some forgotten historical footnote, but in general it's safe to say I'm as ignorant of pulp era and Golden Age sci-fi as I am of anything.
Olaf Stapledon frequently gets name-dropped as a Golden Age grand master, usually in the context of lamentation about his works (and his wider period of sci-fi evolution) are largely forgotten by the modern generation of genre readers and writers. When Julian May's narrator in Intervention goes on at some length about the influence of Odd John, I had to bite. I probably should have begun with Last and First Men, but that's on its way to my library as we speak, so that'll be one of my next books, and I won't miss out on what is supposedly Stapledon's best work.
Odd John is definitively a Big Lecture on the Human Condition sort of novel, a didactic exercise on the supposed deep truths and spiritual insights of a mental superman coming of age between the World Wars. Straining a bit at the size of the conceit, Stapledon deftly avoids committing any of these deep truths to paper, his narrator hand-waving the titular John's enlightenment away as too vast and profound to be grasped by mere Homo sapiens. In this Odd John conforms with Siddhartha and Lost Horizon in the Interwar spiritual novel tradition, while stylistically bridging the didactic social sci-fi of Wells with the psychic superman glut of the New Wave. It's a slim volume devoted mostly to John's harangues on the inferiority of the mere human brain, offering little to support Homo superior's elevation beyond a general sense of "Trust me, it is so cool." John manages to be somewhat absorbing despite all that, and I'm by no means dissuaded from plunging onward into the rather random assortment of Stapledon titles available through my library system.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
2014 read #79: Intervention by Julian May.
Intervention: A Root Tale to the Galactic Milieu and a Vinculum Between It and The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May
546 pages
Published 1987
Read from August 13 to August 16
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
It takes some talent, I think, to keep me invested in a story whose outcome I know. Prequel to The Saga of Pliocene Exile, which I read back in May, as well as the Galactic Milieu Trilogy, which I'll read when I get around to it, Intervention traces -- in the populist sci-fi mode of its time -- the origins and early development of humanity's first metapsychic operants, culminating in a rather silly and contrived shootout and last-possible-minute redemption of humanity in a storm atop Mount Washington. The secret to making me care, I think, lies with the protagonists, whom (May's penchant for ethnic and regional cliches aside) I generally found likeable and worth following on their adventure, despite knowing how it all must end. It seemed silly when the Remillards were introduced out of thin air in the third Pliocene book, but I have to admit, the family has grown on me. I look forward to their further wild psychic adventures in the Milieu -- again, whenever I get around to it.
The antagonists were another story, a handful of metapsychic sociopaths lacking much inherent interest. Here's a tip for all you '80s sci-fi and thriller authors: Giving your Big Bad a traumatic childhood and psychological wounds doesn't make them sympathetic or complicated, it's just another cliche. I rolled my eyes whenever another baddie chapter came up, and the whole "Irish American nihilist and Kali devotee embraces the destructive side of psychocreative powers and wants to use laser death satellites to destroy humanity's only chance at psychic unity and growth" thing never quite gelled for me, but fortunately most such chapters were brief.
546 pages
Published 1987
Read from August 13 to August 16
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
It takes some talent, I think, to keep me invested in a story whose outcome I know. Prequel to The Saga of Pliocene Exile, which I read back in May, as well as the Galactic Milieu Trilogy, which I'll read when I get around to it, Intervention traces -- in the populist sci-fi mode of its time -- the origins and early development of humanity's first metapsychic operants, culminating in a rather silly and contrived shootout and last-possible-minute redemption of humanity in a storm atop Mount Washington. The secret to making me care, I think, lies with the protagonists, whom (May's penchant for ethnic and regional cliches aside) I generally found likeable and worth following on their adventure, despite knowing how it all must end. It seemed silly when the Remillards were introduced out of thin air in the third Pliocene book, but I have to admit, the family has grown on me. I look forward to their further wild psychic adventures in the Milieu -- again, whenever I get around to it.
The antagonists were another story, a handful of metapsychic sociopaths lacking much inherent interest. Here's a tip for all you '80s sci-fi and thriller authors: Giving your Big Bad a traumatic childhood and psychological wounds doesn't make them sympathetic or complicated, it's just another cliche. I rolled my eyes whenever another baddie chapter came up, and the whole "Irish American nihilist and Kali devotee embraces the destructive side of psychocreative powers and wants to use laser death satellites to destroy humanity's only chance at psychic unity and growth" thing never quite gelled for me, but fortunately most such chapters were brief.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
2014 read #78: The Female Man by Joanna Russ.
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
215 pages
Published 1975
Read from August 5 to August 12
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The only way I can grok this book, it seems, is to think of it in terms of '70s-style avant garde film. Not that I'm an expert on that domain -- Zardoz (if it can be counted as avant garde, and not merely trying-hard-to-be-cult) and Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain are pretty much the extent of my exposure. But The Female Man shares much with The Holy Mountain: the burlesque on gender in different societies, the satirical exaggeration of social arenas such as the military and housewifery, the broad allegory, the non-linear structure, the metafictional incorporation of the auteur within the work, the occasional lack of actually making sense in any way.
Unlike The Holy Mountain, The Female Man additionally lacks much in the way of what I could recognize as a plot; what little there is could more aptly be described as a situation. A man-killing assassin (from a world in the multiverse where Manland and Womanland are locked in perpetual war) gathers together her equivalents from other worlds in the multiverse, whose stories and attitudes are used to amplify the arguments of second-generation feminism. As with all materials from second-generation feminism, women of color are mostly invisible, and transsexuals are depicted with what I feel is distaste verging on scorn, positing transsexualism as an aberrant identity forced into being by the needs of militant masculinity and a phobia of "true homosexuality."
The Female Man is best where Russ waxes angriest. Her extended rants, dripping with sarcasm and venom, hit with a hundred blows, most often on the mark. Where the story pauses to develop a half-assed science-fictiony framework for the parallel worlds and the different depictions of (white) womanhood is where it sags. I derived some amusement from the idea that a second-gen feminist would have to resort to alternate universes to present the role of enculturation and expectations on otherwise identical women, as opposed to noticing the experiences of women from different racial categories or levels of affluence or anything of that nature. Intersectionality, at this stage of ideological development, seemingly only referred to intersections of the multiverses.
215 pages
Published 1975
Read from August 5 to August 12
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
The only way I can grok this book, it seems, is to think of it in terms of '70s-style avant garde film. Not that I'm an expert on that domain -- Zardoz (if it can be counted as avant garde, and not merely trying-hard-to-be-cult) and Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain are pretty much the extent of my exposure. But The Female Man shares much with The Holy Mountain: the burlesque on gender in different societies, the satirical exaggeration of social arenas such as the military and housewifery, the broad allegory, the non-linear structure, the metafictional incorporation of the auteur within the work, the occasional lack of actually making sense in any way.
Unlike The Holy Mountain, The Female Man additionally lacks much in the way of what I could recognize as a plot; what little there is could more aptly be described as a situation. A man-killing assassin (from a world in the multiverse where Manland and Womanland are locked in perpetual war) gathers together her equivalents from other worlds in the multiverse, whose stories and attitudes are used to amplify the arguments of second-generation feminism. As with all materials from second-generation feminism, women of color are mostly invisible, and transsexuals are depicted with what I feel is distaste verging on scorn, positing transsexualism as an aberrant identity forced into being by the needs of militant masculinity and a phobia of "true homosexuality."
The Female Man is best where Russ waxes angriest. Her extended rants, dripping with sarcasm and venom, hit with a hundred blows, most often on the mark. Where the story pauses to develop a half-assed science-fictiony framework for the parallel worlds and the different depictions of (white) womanhood is where it sags. I derived some amusement from the idea that a second-gen feminist would have to resort to alternate universes to present the role of enculturation and expectations on otherwise identical women, as opposed to noticing the experiences of women from different racial categories or levels of affluence or anything of that nature. Intersectionality, at this stage of ideological development, seemingly only referred to intersections of the multiverses.
2014 read #77: The History of the Renaissance World by Susan Wise Bauer.
The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer
686 pages
Published 2013
Read from July 31 to August 12
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Continuing the now-inevitable pattern of Bauer's histories, this third (and presumably final) installment heaps up lists of names of kings, popes, and battles while neglecting the rather more important (if less glamorous) processes of social, technological, and ideological change. Despite the title, the rediscovery of Aristotlean logic, after a brief scene-setting summary at the beginning, receives scarcely any mention; the wider currents of thought and culture resulting from the translation movement, or the technological and mathematical heritage of the early Muslim world, or the technological innovations of the Chinese sphere, get at best spotty treatment, appearing in scattered paragraphs and one-sentence asides, if mentioned at all. Gunpowder, for example, materializes only in Bauer's description of battles, slowly making its way out of China into Viet lands, the Central Asian khanates, the Ottoman empire, and finally Western Europe.
Nonetheless, as with Bauer's History of the Medieval World, the wealth of anecdotal detail around historical figures and foibles is so damn entertaining, it's hard to dismiss this book out of hand. The chapter on the Black Death, while brief, is superbly well-done. The sections on Raziyya, female Sultan of Delhi, and Abubakari II, king of Mali and early explorer of the open Atlantic, among others, introduced me to people and events I'd never known of, and now I want to learn everything about them that I can.
Bauer's History of the World, then, is like a bulky, semi-portable Wikipedia of history -- a taste of knowledge that serves as an entertaining starting point, but often frustrates the desire for deeper understanding.
686 pages
Published 2013
Read from July 31 to August 12
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Continuing the now-inevitable pattern of Bauer's histories, this third (and presumably final) installment heaps up lists of names of kings, popes, and battles while neglecting the rather more important (if less glamorous) processes of social, technological, and ideological change. Despite the title, the rediscovery of Aristotlean logic, after a brief scene-setting summary at the beginning, receives scarcely any mention; the wider currents of thought and culture resulting from the translation movement, or the technological and mathematical heritage of the early Muslim world, or the technological innovations of the Chinese sphere, get at best spotty treatment, appearing in scattered paragraphs and one-sentence asides, if mentioned at all. Gunpowder, for example, materializes only in Bauer's description of battles, slowly making its way out of China into Viet lands, the Central Asian khanates, the Ottoman empire, and finally Western Europe.
Nonetheless, as with Bauer's History of the Medieval World, the wealth of anecdotal detail around historical figures and foibles is so damn entertaining, it's hard to dismiss this book out of hand. The chapter on the Black Death, while brief, is superbly well-done. The sections on Raziyya, female Sultan of Delhi, and Abubakari II, king of Mali and early explorer of the open Atlantic, among others, introduced me to people and events I'd never known of, and now I want to learn everything about them that I can.
Bauer's History of the World, then, is like a bulky, semi-portable Wikipedia of history -- a taste of knowledge that serves as an entertaining starting point, but often frustrates the desire for deeper understanding.
Monday, August 4, 2014
2014 read #76: Old Man's War by John Scalzi.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
316 pages
Published 2005
Read from August 2 to August 4
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Somewhere on the internet, someone voiced the opinion "John Scalzi writes good Robert Heinlein novels." I assume the commenter had Heinlein's earlier work in mind, as Old Man's War was totally lacking in the incest and old-men-sleeping-with-pubescent-girls that defines the latter half of the Grand Master's career. Instead, War is merely a fun space shoot-'em-up that opens with an excellent conceptual stroke -- everyone on Earth has the opportunity to join the space military at age 75, in exchange for a young new body of their very own -- but follows predictable paths to a ho-hum ending. The space military is awfully white and American, a situation weakly handwaved away with one or two lines about citizens of "overpopulated" nations having the opportunity to settle new planets without a stint in the bug-zappers. The narrator's plain-spoken Ohio sensibility runs laps around two centuries of space soldier experience, culminating (of course) in his getting tapped for a mission with the special forces alongside with the clone body of his wife, who died before she could enlist. It's a fun book that only falls apart if you stop to think about it at all.
316 pages
Published 2005
Read from August 2 to August 4
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Somewhere on the internet, someone voiced the opinion "John Scalzi writes good Robert Heinlein novels." I assume the commenter had Heinlein's earlier work in mind, as Old Man's War was totally lacking in the incest and old-men-sleeping-with-pubescent-girls that defines the latter half of the Grand Master's career. Instead, War is merely a fun space shoot-'em-up that opens with an excellent conceptual stroke -- everyone on Earth has the opportunity to join the space military at age 75, in exchange for a young new body of their very own -- but follows predictable paths to a ho-hum ending. The space military is awfully white and American, a situation weakly handwaved away with one or two lines about citizens of "overpopulated" nations having the opportunity to settle new planets without a stint in the bug-zappers. The narrator's plain-spoken Ohio sensibility runs laps around two centuries of space soldier experience, culminating (of course) in his getting tapped for a mission with the special forces alongside with the clone body of his wife, who died before she could enlist. It's a fun book that only falls apart if you stop to think about it at all.
Friday, August 1, 2014
2014 read #75: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
278 pages
Published 1974; expanded "author's preferred edition" published 1997
Read August 1
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about this book, to my mind, is how its elements continue to get duplicated in later science fiction. "Some of Them Closer" by Marissa Lingen, supposedly one of the best stories published in 2011 (according to Rich Horton, anyway), takes the same exact "readjustment to a new life on Earth after relative time dilation" storyline from the middle section of The Forever War. The much-celebrated twist at the end of Ender's Game -- the interstellar war was all a misunderstanding, because our two species had such different ways of looking at the universe! -- appears in almost exactly the same form here, eleven years earlier. (I would be surprised if that "twist" weren't prefigured even earlier, but I won't go searching.) No doubt other bits of this book "inspired" much subsequent military sci-fi, though so far in my experience only Lucius Shepard follows Haldeman's technique of using military sci-fi to suggest military adventurism might not be the best or most glamorous thing ever. To be fair, I haven't read much military sci-fi, however.
More problematic, of course, is the altered society Mandella so famously comes home to, with its UN-mandated "homolife." One could argue that Mandella is clearly a biased narrator, a stodgy reactionary despite his repeated claims of tolerance. That argument doesn't seem to hold up at the very end, though, when his buddy Charlie decides to get his conditioning switched to heterosexuality and go cruisin' for chicks with Mandella in the boondocks of the galaxy. That scene excepted, Haldeman's portrayal of homosexuality is about as positive and non-judgmental as I think you could find in mid-'70s mainstream sci-fi, a portrayal that doesn't get improved much until the late '80s or earliest '90s. That doesn't mean it's really a positive depiction in absolute terms, but to trot out my usual apology, for its time this book wasn't the worst around.
I think my amusement at the eternal inefficiency and general mulishness of military procedure and bureaucracy helped tip my opinion toward the positive.
278 pages
Published 1974; expanded "author's preferred edition" published 1997
Read August 1
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about this book, to my mind, is how its elements continue to get duplicated in later science fiction. "Some of Them Closer" by Marissa Lingen, supposedly one of the best stories published in 2011 (according to Rich Horton, anyway), takes the same exact "readjustment to a new life on Earth after relative time dilation" storyline from the middle section of The Forever War. The much-celebrated twist at the end of Ender's Game -- the interstellar war was all a misunderstanding, because our two species had such different ways of looking at the universe! -- appears in almost exactly the same form here, eleven years earlier. (I would be surprised if that "twist" weren't prefigured even earlier, but I won't go searching.) No doubt other bits of this book "inspired" much subsequent military sci-fi, though so far in my experience only Lucius Shepard follows Haldeman's technique of using military sci-fi to suggest military adventurism might not be the best or most glamorous thing ever. To be fair, I haven't read much military sci-fi, however.
More problematic, of course, is the altered society Mandella so famously comes home to, with its UN-mandated "homolife." One could argue that Mandella is clearly a biased narrator, a stodgy reactionary despite his repeated claims of tolerance. That argument doesn't seem to hold up at the very end, though, when his buddy Charlie decides to get his conditioning switched to heterosexuality and go cruisin' for chicks with Mandella in the boondocks of the galaxy. That scene excepted, Haldeman's portrayal of homosexuality is about as positive and non-judgmental as I think you could find in mid-'70s mainstream sci-fi, a portrayal that doesn't get improved much until the late '80s or earliest '90s. That doesn't mean it's really a positive depiction in absolute terms, but to trot out my usual apology, for its time this book wasn't the worst around.
I think my amusement at the eternal inefficiency and general mulishness of military procedure and bureaucracy helped tip my opinion toward the positive.
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