I dislike Military (Science) Fiction, but make exceptions for the classics of the genre like "Starship Troopers" and Haldeman's 1974 masterpiece. Unlike "Starship Troopers" there's less emphasis here on the virtues of camaraderie, building a cohesive fighting unit, or even 'winning' for that matter. Haldeman is more interested in depicting the alienation soldiers feel when coming back from the front, the inability to fit in, the feeling of not belonging, all of which forces the soldiers back to the front, to the military, as it is the only constant in their lives they can rely on. Haldeman's Vietnam War experience and the subsequent adaptation (or lack thereof) to civilian life served as the main inspiration for this book.
The Forever War Haldeman speaks of, although just a metaphor for the Vietnam War, or all wars, is fought between the Earthlings and the Taurans, a humanoid race which seems to be at about the same technological level. The greatest scientific breakthrough is the Collapsar Jump, which allows space ships to cover enormous distances in no time at all. However, because of relativistic laws, this incurs what other sci-fi writers have called "Time Debt" where although subjective time of mission might be 10 months, relativistically back on Earth, decades and centuries have passed. Such "time debt" is a great allegory for the alienation Vietnam Vets felt when they came back from the front.
The first come back to Earth finds it in poverty and violence, with most of the population homosexual, encouraged by UNEF, the world government, in order to control population growth. William Mandela, the protagonist of the novel, does not feel he fits well in this new society, although his mother is still alive (now in a homosexual relationship with another woman), and has to walk around with armed bodyguards because of the omnipresent violent robberies.
He leaves for the front for a second time, the military tricking him by offering him a training job in Earth's orbit, and then substituting the orders for a front posting within the hour. When he comes back a second time, this time to a R-and-R planet called "Heaven" - he learns that now limbs are artificially grown nowadays and there are no prosthetics, although the process is quite painful. He also finds out that sex between humans is being deprecated and all new humans are grown in a lab, from genetic materials selected and combined by UNEF, which causes most of the human population to be of the same skin color and racial characteristics.
Mandella calculates his odds of surviving his 10 year posting and it comes to about 1.2 in 60,000, which is a commentary on the casualties in the Vietnam War and other wars. Eventually his team, he's an officer now since he is one of the oldest surviving soldiers in UNEF, gets sent to the edge of the Galaxy, and by the time they all come back several centuries have passed, the human population is all a single clone nowadays and they communicate telepathically, turns out that the Taurans are also a million-year old civilization of telepathic clones and once the two clone-entities get together - they realize that the entire 7-8 century war was a mistake based in misunderstanding and overzealous-military-crackpots in UNEF who see the whole universe as a nail because all they've ever got was a hammer.
A fine meditation on the futility and utter stupidity of a war, any war, for whatsoever reason.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Thursday, March 2, 2017
"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood
This is a heavy book. And disturbing. And deceptively easy to read. And full of multi-layered messaging that needs to be discovered by the readers using their own brains. But one would expect nothing less from Mrs. Atwood, one of the greatest literary writers alive today. This book is not meant for entertainment, although simple souls could take it as such - it is definitely written in an easily-readable style, despite the occasional "big word" showing Mrs. Atwood's utter command of the English language.
Snowman used to be known as Jimmy, when growing up in the Corporate Compounds where the privileged lived, employed by mega corporations, well-fed, well-protected, watching extreme violence, rape, mutilation, executions, child porn and other appropriate stuff allowed on the future internet. His best friend was Glenn, or Crake, as the nickname came from one of the many MMORPG games they were playing together. Outside of the compounds were the "pleeblands" - for the ordinaries, the rabble, the consumers who were squeezed out of their last dollar by the products and advertising campaigns coming out of the Compounds.
There are different compounds: some produce new animals, like the pigoons, genetically modified pigs to grow human tissue so that they can be used as farms for human transplants, the rakunks, a playful combination of raccoon and skunk that doesn't have the bestiality of the raccoon, nor the stench of the skunk, and is the new popular pet animal for the privileged, or the wolfogs, acting playful as a dog from a distance, but tearing apart anyone that comes at a biting proximity; other compounds produce human enhancement, like better skin, more hair, youth potions of a motley variety, all intended to be gobbled by the indiscriminate masses of the pleebs.
Crake goes onto an elite school, and then gets employed by a top genetic modification company, while Jimmy becomes a lowly ad-copy writer, but he's good at it. They both love Oryx, the little girl from that peculiar child porn movie they watched together, with eyes that pierce through the screen into their souls. Crake locates Oryx when he grows up, and has more and more resources available to him, because of the perceived monetization of his intelligence. Oryx's job, besides being a sexual relief for Crake, and later Jimmy as well, is to strip naked and educate the "Crakers", a new, benevolent, vegan race of humans that Crake has created in the lab.
But there's more, much, much more. Although far less graphic than "The Windup Girl" - "Crake and Oryx" manages to be more disturbing, on a far deeper, believable level that would make any non-braindead, non-tvhypnotized human thinking for a long time to come.
Snowman used to be known as Jimmy, when growing up in the Corporate Compounds where the privileged lived, employed by mega corporations, well-fed, well-protected, watching extreme violence, rape, mutilation, executions, child porn and other appropriate stuff allowed on the future internet. His best friend was Glenn, or Crake, as the nickname came from one of the many MMORPG games they were playing together. Outside of the compounds were the "pleeblands" - for the ordinaries, the rabble, the consumers who were squeezed out of their last dollar by the products and advertising campaigns coming out of the Compounds.
There are different compounds: some produce new animals, like the pigoons, genetically modified pigs to grow human tissue so that they can be used as farms for human transplants, the rakunks, a playful combination of raccoon and skunk that doesn't have the bestiality of the raccoon, nor the stench of the skunk, and is the new popular pet animal for the privileged, or the wolfogs, acting playful as a dog from a distance, but tearing apart anyone that comes at a biting proximity; other compounds produce human enhancement, like better skin, more hair, youth potions of a motley variety, all intended to be gobbled by the indiscriminate masses of the pleebs.
Crake goes onto an elite school, and then gets employed by a top genetic modification company, while Jimmy becomes a lowly ad-copy writer, but he's good at it. They both love Oryx, the little girl from that peculiar child porn movie they watched together, with eyes that pierce through the screen into their souls. Crake locates Oryx when he grows up, and has more and more resources available to him, because of the perceived monetization of his intelligence. Oryx's job, besides being a sexual relief for Crake, and later Jimmy as well, is to strip naked and educate the "Crakers", a new, benevolent, vegan race of humans that Crake has created in the lab.
But there's more, much, much more. Although far less graphic than "The Windup Girl" - "Crake and Oryx" manages to be more disturbing, on a far deeper, believable level that would make any non-braindead, non-tvhypnotized human thinking for a long time to come.
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