This book is not a novel, but a collection of short stories, very loosely relating to Mars, which were stitched together by small vignettes and intermezzos.
It doesn't really work well. Although I respect Bradbury and his seminal novel "Fahrenheit 451" had strong influence on me when adolescent, the "Martian Chronicles" fail short of the vision, depth and breadth in his other novels.
Bradbury writes "soft" science fiction, so don't look for plausible science, or even an emphasis on accuracy. Science fiction is used as a narrative device, while the actual topics of the stories are quite different; oppression of women, treatment of black people, cohesion and viability of the family unit, etc.
All these topics and their mixing with Science Fiction is not a problem in itself, the great Ursula LeGuin has mixed and matched with great success, but in this novel/short story collection - it just doesn't work.
Many of the stories could be classified more as horror than science fiction, but I guess the "speculative fiction" moniker covers all that ground. The first story, Yilla (and Yill), seems completely out of place in this book, but then again we had to have a 'first' expedition to Mars.
The rest of the stories vary in quality: from silly contraptions about the first hot dog stand on Mars (built by a psychopath) - to meditations on loneliness and companionship, even if not with true human beings.
Interesting book from a historic perspective, but not much else.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Monday, May 1, 2017
"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester
There's nothing likable about Gully Foyle. He's a rapist, murderer, thief, swindler, uneducated, unmannerly. But he is the main protagonist of this novel and even if the reader does not like him, the reader at least learns to appreciate his point of view, especially towards the end of the novel.
This novel is a great mixture of the old and the new. Published in the mid-50s, this novel is a proud representative of the pulpy 30s and 40s with their melodramatic plots, paper-thin characters, unfeasible science and generally being written like pirate stories in space. However, there's much of the new. This novel is the direct precursor of the Cyberpunk genre, with its corrupt corporations more powerful than governments, sarcastic and resigned view of life and death where everyone is expendable, straying away from "hero" main characters. Gibson's "Neuromancer" is just the next step.
Gulliver Foyle was a nobody dock worker who happens to be in space. Large, dumb, uncaring, with no plans, motivation or aspirations, his life was looking like a dead end at 30. However, after his cargo ship Nomad was attacked by Outer Satellites and he, as the only survivor, left to die, and was passed over for pickup by the Vorga, a ship owned by the Presteign corporation, the most powerful one on Earth and the Inner Planets. Gully is enraged by the Vorga passing him by and his life gets only one meaning - to exact revenge on the Vorga and its crew.
Gully moves the Nomad with some spare rockets and lands it on the Sargasso asteroid, where leftover humans have formed their own primitive civilization - "The Scientific People." Gully is accepted into the tribe and his face is tattooed with a hideous tiger-like mask by Joseph, the leader and priest of the Scientific People. However Gully finds a working ship on the asteroid and flies to Earth where he meets Robin, a one-way telepath, whom he rapes and threatens with exposing her as an Outer Satellites agent.
Further Gully is found by Presteign and his minions and thrown into a jail deep in a gorge in France from where "jaunting" - teleporting, is impossible. However Gully meets Jizzbelle in the jail and they escape together to find the money on the Nomad, but Gully abandons Jizz. Later Gully takes the name of Geofrey Fourmyle from Ceres with his enormous fortune from the Nomad, but everyone is looking after the PyrE, which can be telepathically exploded and could be the key in winning the war with the Outer Satellites. Here Fourmyle meets Olivia Presteign, a blind albino daughter of Presteign, the head of the clan and incidentally the one who ordered the Vorga not to pick up Foyle from the Nomad.
Eventually Gully learns to jaunt through time and space, goes around the galaxy to scout some new inhabitable planets, appears as the "Flaming Gully" several times in the past, and with Robin's help, he finds his way back to the present when he goes back to the Scientific People and falls asleep.
Much of the plot is ripped directly from the Count of Monte Cristo, but it is interesting to see it set up in space. No good characters in the book - everyone has a flaw - even Robin who gets raped by Gully later accepts him and betrays him again. Same with Jizz who has sex with Gully before discovering his tiger tattoos and hates him afterwards. An interesting pointer in the 1950s as to where would the genre go next.
This novel is a great mixture of the old and the new. Published in the mid-50s, this novel is a proud representative of the pulpy 30s and 40s with their melodramatic plots, paper-thin characters, unfeasible science and generally being written like pirate stories in space. However, there's much of the new. This novel is the direct precursor of the Cyberpunk genre, with its corrupt corporations more powerful than governments, sarcastic and resigned view of life and death where everyone is expendable, straying away from "hero" main characters. Gibson's "Neuromancer" is just the next step.
Gulliver Foyle was a nobody dock worker who happens to be in space. Large, dumb, uncaring, with no plans, motivation or aspirations, his life was looking like a dead end at 30. However, after his cargo ship Nomad was attacked by Outer Satellites and he, as the only survivor, left to die, and was passed over for pickup by the Vorga, a ship owned by the Presteign corporation, the most powerful one on Earth and the Inner Planets. Gully is enraged by the Vorga passing him by and his life gets only one meaning - to exact revenge on the Vorga and its crew.
Gully moves the Nomad with some spare rockets and lands it on the Sargasso asteroid, where leftover humans have formed their own primitive civilization - "The Scientific People." Gully is accepted into the tribe and his face is tattooed with a hideous tiger-like mask by Joseph, the leader and priest of the Scientific People. However Gully finds a working ship on the asteroid and flies to Earth where he meets Robin, a one-way telepath, whom he rapes and threatens with exposing her as an Outer Satellites agent.
Further Gully is found by Presteign and his minions and thrown into a jail deep in a gorge in France from where "jaunting" - teleporting, is impossible. However Gully meets Jizzbelle in the jail and they escape together to find the money on the Nomad, but Gully abandons Jizz. Later Gully takes the name of Geofrey Fourmyle from Ceres with his enormous fortune from the Nomad, but everyone is looking after the PyrE, which can be telepathically exploded and could be the key in winning the war with the Outer Satellites. Here Fourmyle meets Olivia Presteign, a blind albino daughter of Presteign, the head of the clan and incidentally the one who ordered the Vorga not to pick up Foyle from the Nomad.
Eventually Gully learns to jaunt through time and space, goes around the galaxy to scout some new inhabitable planets, appears as the "Flaming Gully" several times in the past, and with Robin's help, he finds his way back to the present when he goes back to the Scientific People and falls asleep.
Much of the plot is ripped directly from the Count of Monte Cristo, but it is interesting to see it set up in space. No good characters in the book - everyone has a flaw - even Robin who gets raped by Gully later accepts him and betrays him again. Same with Jizz who has sex with Gully before discovering his tiger tattoos and hates him afterwards. An interesting pointer in the 1950s as to where would the genre go next.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) by Gabriel García Márquez
I've read this book, in Serbian (or was it Croatian?) translation when I was in 9th grade and it remained my favorite book for several years after. This is the first time I am re-reading it in English translation, and some of the finesses of the language and the phrasing seem to have been lost in translation. My Spanish is far from fluent, unfortunately, and I cannot read it in original (one day!), but I like the Slavic languages translation better, as those languages are closer in spirit and form to Spanish and less is lost during the translation.
What can be said about Cien años de soledad that has not already been said? Marquez received a Nobel prize in literature and not in small measure because of this book. It is one of the most amazing books you will ever read - not in a cheap thriller/mystery/romance way like current pulp fiction - but in a way that makes you see your life and the life of people around you. The big things seem trivial, like the massacre of the 3,000 people at the train station in Macondo by the corrupt government's army, while the small things are magical, like the hive of yellow butterflies following Babylonia.
Jose Arcadio Buendia founds Macondo after he kills a man during a cock fight in the previous place he used to live with his wife Ursula. Macondo is found after passing a magical area on the way out of Riohacha and north of the swamp areas. The 100 years between the founding and the destruction of Macondo are the subject of the book, and in some way the town of Macondo is the main character of the book.
Macondo is a place where magic is found in the small things, like the magic that the travelling gypsies brought early on, especially the intriguing mystic Melquíades who teaches Jose Arcadio Buendia alchemy. The sons of the Buendia family are called either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. And Colonel Aureliano fought 31 civil wars and lost them all. Then we have Remedios the Beauty who is so unworldly beautiful that she ascends to heaven in her corporeal body. And finally Amaranta-Ursula and Aureliano Babylonia who finish the 100 year cycle when their incest baby dies and is eaten by ants, while they both die in the final disaster of humongous wind destroying the entire town.
In between are the evil Americans with the Banana Company which destroys the life of the people in Macondo but is staunchly defended by the corrupt and evil government, who'd rather see thousands of people die at the American plantation than lose the bribes they received, even going so far as to claim in court that the company never existed and neither did the people who worked there and were murdered in the strike against the horrible working conditions.
This is a mind-blowing book that every human should read at least once in their lifetime.
What can be said about Cien años de soledad that has not already been said? Marquez received a Nobel prize in literature and not in small measure because of this book. It is one of the most amazing books you will ever read - not in a cheap thriller/mystery/romance way like current pulp fiction - but in a way that makes you see your life and the life of people around you. The big things seem trivial, like the massacre of the 3,000 people at the train station in Macondo by the corrupt government's army, while the small things are magical, like the hive of yellow butterflies following Babylonia.
Jose Arcadio Buendia founds Macondo after he kills a man during a cock fight in the previous place he used to live with his wife Ursula. Macondo is found after passing a magical area on the way out of Riohacha and north of the swamp areas. The 100 years between the founding and the destruction of Macondo are the subject of the book, and in some way the town of Macondo is the main character of the book.
Macondo is a place where magic is found in the small things, like the magic that the travelling gypsies brought early on, especially the intriguing mystic Melquíades who teaches Jose Arcadio Buendia alchemy. The sons of the Buendia family are called either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. And Colonel Aureliano fought 31 civil wars and lost them all. Then we have Remedios the Beauty who is so unworldly beautiful that she ascends to heaven in her corporeal body. And finally Amaranta-Ursula and Aureliano Babylonia who finish the 100 year cycle when their incest baby dies and is eaten by ants, while they both die in the final disaster of humongous wind destroying the entire town.
In between are the evil Americans with the Banana Company which destroys the life of the people in Macondo but is staunchly defended by the corrupt and evil government, who'd rather see thousands of people die at the American plantation than lose the bribes they received, even going so far as to claim in court that the company never existed and neither did the people who worked there and were murdered in the strike against the horrible working conditions.
This is a mind-blowing book that every human should read at least once in their lifetime.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
"The Forever War" by John Haldeman
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.
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.
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.
Friday, February 24, 2017
"The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi
"The Windup Girl" is the first novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, and at first it reminded me of the Murakami mind-blowing, world literature classic "The Windup Bird Chronicle", but the resemblance is only in the title. Luckily. This is an explicit, dark, unrepentant novel. There are no good characters. Every single character kills, tortures, rapes, cheats, lies or otherwise acts like a piece of shit. Nobody is likable. Not even the titular Windup Girl, Emiko, even after she's repeatedly and brutally raped on stage as a spectacle for leering human-animals. She is used as a rental sex toy for johns who, as she says, "fuck me then spit on me." The novel is set in 25th century Thailand, which is one of the few surviving countries after global warming/flooding, GMO plagues that destroy most of the world's plant life, famines, mass deaths and destruction of pretty much the entire developed world. What remains is controlled by a handful of GMO Conglomerates with their own private armies to monitor the usage of their "intellectual property" and destroy anyone and anything that stands in their path. They are also called "Calorie Companies."Anderson Lake is a "Calorie Man" working for AgriGen and despite posing as a "kink spring" factory propriator - is actually hunting for the last remaining seed bank in Thailind, that he wants to appropriate and destroy so that AgriGen gets market advantage over the other calorie companies. Hok San is the "Yellow Card" Malay Chinese refugee who manages the factory for Lake, and also tries to steal the plans for the latest advanced kink spring, to sell it to the Dung Lord in order to restore his shipping empire destroyed in Malaysia by the muslim nationalist "Green Bands" who gang raped his daughters and tortured and killed his sons. Only 1% of the Malaysian Chinese population survives the genocide. Another story line is of the rivalry between the two strongest Thai ministries, Trade and Environment, with their own private armies, black shirts and white shirts, while their top leaders vie for supremacy at the Thai Royal court and the Thai Child Queen. Jaidhee is a captain of the White Shirts, Environment Ministry's army and is betrayed by his lieutenant Kanya, and brutally killed by Trade (they push him of a roof of a building, then cut his head off and put his penis in his mouth). This unleashed a civil war which Trade eventually wins, but the destruction of Bangkok follows, so nobody really wins. At the end, Gibson (Gi Bu Sen), former Agrigen scientist, meets Emiko and promises to help her have genetic clone children. They stay together at the flooded Bankgok with Emiko and Gibson's lover, the lady-boy Kip.This book won all the Sci-Fi awards, but is definitely hard to swallow. Expect no mercy.
Friday, February 10, 2017
"Woken Furies" by Richard Morgan
The third part of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, definitely better than the second one (not a great achievement), but not as good as the first one. No wonder Netflix is basing its series only on the first volume, "Altered Carbon".
Kovacs is old here, both physically and definitely mentally, starting the question what has he done with his life and could have he made better choices. It happens on his home planet, Harlan's World, the only planet orbiting the Glimmer star system, and, of course, located by the human kind based on the "Martian" astrogation charts. The "Martians" being the ancient alien sapient race that populated large swaths of the Perseus Arm, home to the human race, and disappeared somewhere about 500,000 years ago.
The book also gives us the Morgan's most interesting creation, Quellcrist Falconer, or Nadia Makita, the revolutionary leader who overthrew the Harlan's world first families 320 years ago, for a short while, and got killed by "Angelfire' from the "Martian" probes orbiting the planet. The big reveal in the end has to do with what "Angelfire" does besides vaporizing. Also Tak seems to have been copied during his early UN Protectorate Envoy years and now this younger Tak, who hasn't been to Sanction 4, is working for the Harlans and tries to kill the old Tak, whom he despises, but only manages to kill, pretty much, all of his friends and collaborators.
The book is slow at parts, but overall works well. Not at the level of the first volume, Altered Carbon, but well nevertheless. Seems like Morgan tried to experiment with too many different genres in the three volumes, probably would'be been better to stick to the first volume formula, cyberpunk, hard-boiled detective story.
Kovacs is old here, both physically and definitely mentally, starting the question what has he done with his life and could have he made better choices. It happens on his home planet, Harlan's World, the only planet orbiting the Glimmer star system, and, of course, located by the human kind based on the "Martian" astrogation charts. The "Martians" being the ancient alien sapient race that populated large swaths of the Perseus Arm, home to the human race, and disappeared somewhere about 500,000 years ago.
The book also gives us the Morgan's most interesting creation, Quellcrist Falconer, or Nadia Makita, the revolutionary leader who overthrew the Harlan's world first families 320 years ago, for a short while, and got killed by "Angelfire' from the "Martian" probes orbiting the planet. The big reveal in the end has to do with what "Angelfire" does besides vaporizing. Also Tak seems to have been copied during his early UN Protectorate Envoy years and now this younger Tak, who hasn't been to Sanction 4, is working for the Harlans and tries to kill the old Tak, whom he despises, but only manages to kill, pretty much, all of his friends and collaborators.
The book is slow at parts, but overall works well. Not at the level of the first volume, Altered Carbon, but well nevertheless. Seems like Morgan tried to experiment with too many different genres in the three volumes, probably would'be been better to stick to the first volume formula, cyberpunk, hard-boiled detective story.
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