Review: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Published: Tor (2017)

Awards Nominated: Nebula, Campbell Memorial and Locus First Novel Awards

The Book:

“Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane.

Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack's drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand. And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?” ~WWEnd.com

I picked up this book because of all the award attention, and also because the premise sounded like it would make an interesting story.  This is Annalee Newitz’s first novel.

My Thoughts:

The world of Autonomous is a future capitalist nightmare, extrapolated from current trends.  Corporations have far more power than they do now, so laws have shifted to accommodate what is best for them. For instance, patents are permanent and secret, so that pharmaceutical companies can continue to profit on drugs indefinitely.  The question of robotic AI rights vs. human rights is also settled in a way that prioritizes profits -- if robots can be considered human, then humans can also be considered commodities. It’s a pretty dark future, but not a fully unrecognizable one.  It also doesn’t seem completely hopeless, since we see people like Jack fighting against the status quo, even if she isn’t altogether noble.

I enjoyed what I saw of the world-building, but I had a hard time sympathizing with the characters, even though I often like reading about people with major flaws. Eliasz is a murderous homophobe, and, for all their initial naivete, Paladin seems to become similar.  Jack is the most objectively decent main character, but her black market drugs make her responsible for a lot of suffering. In addition, both Jack and Eliasz separately engage in sexual relationships that seem very exploitative, due to uncomfortable power dynamics. I think that part of my issue might have been that I did not feel like their character flaws were sufficiently acknowledged or addressed within the story. 

Even if they didn’t engage me emotionally, some of the characters were pretty fun to read about.  I enjoyed seeing Jack navigate her counterculture, and I especially liked Paladin’s character arc.  Paladin begins the story as a newborn robot AI, and we get to see them learn about the world and their place in it.  I enjoyed the idea of what a robotic AI perspective might be like, and it was interesting to see how their thoughts were affected by things like code and communication protocols.  There were also differences in the relative importance that humans and robots put on particular topics. For instance, gender is not something the robots care about, and they don’t have any natural instinct to value organic components over mechanical. I think Paladin’s arc is going to be the part of the story that sticks with me the strongest.

My Rating:3.5/5

Overall, Autonomous was an entertaining book, set in a corporate dystopia that I seriously hope we never reach in reality.  Though the world was bleak, it was also interesting, and I enjoyed the exploration of the perspective of a robotic AI.  The characters had some serious flaws, which I usually like, but in this case it made it difficult for me emotionally invest in the story.  Overall, I liked this book, and I would be interested in reading more from Newitz. It looks like her next book, The Future of Another Timeline, is coming out Sept. 24, 2019!

Review: Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Friday by Robert A. Heinlein

Published: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982

Awards Nominated: Nebula, Hugo, Locus SF, and Prometheus Awards

The Book:

“Friday is her name... She is as thoroughly resourceful as she is strikingly beautiful. She is one of the best interplanetary agents in the business. And she is an Artificial Person... the ultimate glory of genetic engineering.

Friday is a secret courier. She is employed by a man known to her only as "Boss." Operating from and over a near-future Earth, in which North America has become Balkanized into dozens of independent states, where culture has become bizarrely vulgarized and chaos is the happy norm, she finds herself on shuttlecock assignment at Boss's seemingly whimsical behest.

From New Zealand to Canada, from one to another of the new states of America's disunion, she keeps her balance nimbly with quick, expeditious solutions to one calamity and scrape after another. Desperate for human identity and relationships, she is never sure whether she is one step ahead of, or one step behind, the ultimate fate of the human race.” ~WWEnd.com

Heinlein is always kind of hit and miss for me, and I have to say this book was kind of both.  My husband and I listened to this one together as an audiobook. There are some spoilers in the review below.

My Rating: 2 /5

Friday has a lot of the social quirks I expect from a Heinlein novel, and it ended up being a weird combination of things I enjoyed and things that annoyed the crap out of me. It was fun following Friday as she skips from one exciting spy situation to the next, and it seemed for a while that her story was going to be about uncovering some events that are causing upheaval in the fractured future US.  I was really getting into this plot arc, but it was dropped without resolution later in the book. On a character level, I initially liked reading about Friday’s efforts to find a place for herself in the world. I especially enjoyed the subplot about her New Zealand family, which addressed both her desire to belong and the unpleasantness of finding out loved ones hold bigoted beliefs.

The parts I didn’t enjoy include a gang rape scene (which Friday was weirdly blasé about) and some occasional bizarre gender stereotypes that were presented as if they were commonplace. It wasn’t so much misogynistic stereotypes, as it was stuff that just seemed nonsensical.  For example, “there is no stronger aphrodisiac than a woman’s tears.” Was that actually a thing in the 80s? I’m not even offended, just confused. The plot also didn’t flow like a traditional narrative, and not in a way that felt well planned. I guess was expecting the smaller parts to build into a coherent story, but instead it was just a collection of slice-of-life short stories about Friday.  This means that a lot of subplots are randomly dropped, and some short stories are much more interesting than others. On a last note, I am also not a fan of Heinlein’s “all women desperately want to have kids and fulfill traditional gender roles” kick, which is on display by the end of the book.

x

Review: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Published: Orbit (2015)

Series: Book 1 of the Broken Earth

Awards Won: Hugo Award

Awards Nominated: Nebula, Locus Fantasy, World Fantasy and Red Tentacle Awards

The Book:

“This is the story of the Stillness, a land that is threatened constantly by seismic activity.  Orogenes have the power to control the quaking of the earth, and their lives and abilities are strictly controlled by the organization known as the Fulcrum.  Even with their abilities in use, everyone knows it is only a matter of time until the next cataclysm, or ‘fifth season’, rips through the fabric of their civilization.

Within the Stillness, this is the story of three women and of one.  Damaya is a frightened orogene child, whose parents have turned her over to the Fulcrum for training. Syenite is a young woman of the Fulcrum, full of rage at being treated as less than human but determined that nothing will break her.  Finally, Essun is a hidden orogene and mother, who comes home one day to find her husband has murdered their child.  Essun’s life is shattered, but soon hers is not the only one.  The day she discovers the body of her son, a massive seismic event kicks off the next fifth season--which may be the last.” ~Allie

Over the past few years, I have become a big fan of Jemisin’s work.  At this point, the only novel of hers that I have not read is The Obelisk Gate, which I plan to start tonight.  It seems like just about every book I read of hers becomes my new favorite out of her work.

Spoiler warning: I am going to talk about the structure of the book and the identity of the main characters below.

My Thoughts:

The Fifth Season alternates between three storylines that each follow a single heroine. Damaya is a young girl just discovering her orogenic powers and the place society has made for her kind. Syenite is a powerful young woman enslaved by the Fulcrum, unaware of how much is being hidden from her. Essun is a woman who lost everything on the day her husband realized that she and their children were orogenes. I didn’t immediately pick up on how these three storylines and heroines fit together, or even when each story was taking place. I first thought the intention was to show different slices of what life is like as an orogene in this world.  While the three stories do serve this purpose, it eventually becomes clear that each of these stories describes a separate period in the life of the same woman. Taking these three starting points emphasizes how different a person can be from one phase of their life to another, as well as how much our experiences affect who we become.  In the beginning, the three women seemed to have very distinct personalities from one another, but as events unfolded, I began to see the seeds of their future selves.  This three-pronged approach was an engaging way to explore the character of a fascinating heroine.

The stories of Damaya, Syenite and Essun all involve the legal and social treatment of orogenes in the current empire.  Orogenes (derogatively called “roggas”) are widely considered subhuman and dangerous, but also an important resource that must be controlled.  For this reason, they are collected while young into an organization called the Fulcrum, which trains them and indoctrinates them to servitude in all areas of their life.  An order of Guardians oversees the orogenes, keeping them in line by any means necessary. The system reminds me of the treatment of mages in the game Dragon Age, though I feel that The Fifth Season is more willing to follow the premise through to its darker implications. It’s undoubtedly true that orogenic abilities can be dangerous, but I think the story demonstrates that the oppression of orogenes can’t possibly be the best answer to the situation.  Through the heroine’s life, we see the explicit hatred and prejudice she faces, the more subtle jabs, and the quiet rage of living in a society that rejects her personhood.

In addition to a very interesting heroine and story of oppression, The Fifth Season takes place in a highly creative world that is terrifying and full of uncertainty about the future. This is a world that is so used to cataclysms that they have an entire class of lore dedicated to surviving them.  The hints that this lore has been altered over the years for political reasons only makes the world feel more natural.  I feel like there is a rich history to uncover here, and there are plenty of mysteries that I hope we will learn more about in the next two books of the trilogy.  I believe that the three storylines have linked up by the end of this novel, so it will be interesting to see what structure Jemisin will use in The Obelisk Gate. I’ve just acquired the second book, and I’m excited to see what might happen next.

My Rating: 5/5

The Fifth Season is my new favorite of N.K. Jemisin’s novels.  I loved reading about the world, and am looking forward to seeing some of the mysteries of its past revealed.  The heroine was compelling, and I enjoyed seeing the history that lay behind the decisions she made in difficult situations.  I liked the immediacy of reading about three segments of her life in parallel.  The depiction of the oppression of the orogenes was central to the story, and I hope that there is more hope for Essun and those like her in the future of this world.  I can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy!

Review: Persona by Genevieve Valentine

Persona by Genevieve Valentine

Published: Saga Press, 2015

Series: Book 1 of the Persona Sequence

The Book:

“When Suyana, Face of the United Amazonia Rainforest Confederation, is secretly meeting Ethan of the United States for a date that can solidify a relationship for the struggling UARC, the last thing she expected was an assassination attempt.

Daniel, a teen-runaway-turned-paparazzi out for his big break, witnesses the first shot hit Suyana, and before he can think about it, he jumps into the fray, telling himself it's not altruism, it's the scoop. Now Suyana and Daniel are on the run--and if they don't keep one step ahead, they'll lose it all.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the first book I’ve read by Genevieve Valentine, though I initially planned to read some of her work when Mechanique was receiving award attention. I am not into circus stories (though I’ve heard some great things about Mechanique), so I held off and planned to read one of her future novels.  Now, the time is here, and on with the review of Persona!

My Thoughts:

Persona is a short, fast-paced thriller set in an unusual near-future.  In this world, politics has been merged with celebrity, for the purpose of keeping the general public entertained.  Each country has its own ‘Face’, an attractive young person that becomes the personification of their country to the world.  Faces don’t truly wield political power (that falls to the real politicians behind the scenes), but their carefully arranged romances, friendships and scandals draw global attention to their countries. Considering the role celebrity and the meaningless scrutiny of private lives currently plays in American politics, I can see this as an extrapolation from the present. The other major change in this future society is the illegalization of the free press (if I understood correctly), which I find much harder to believe.  Transparency and freedom of information are so strongly idealized, I don’t think most countries would take their destruction easily.  There was not much time to flesh out the worldbuilding in this brief novel, but it is also the first of a series that I expect will eventually provide the answers to the remaining questions.   

Suyana and Daniel’s story moves forward with high momentum, and their experiences slowly reveal their world and the secrets beneath the reality-TV veneer.  Flashbacks of Suyana’s life fill in the blanks of the political system and her place in it.  The whole novel takes place over a relatively short length of time, so I liked that the flashbacks provided a bit more of a foundation for understanding the protagonists.  In general, I also felt like this story would translate exceptionally well to a visual medium, both due to the trendiness and visual appeals of the dystopian premise as well as the similarity of the plot’s arc to a cinematic thriller.  It would make for an unusual film, too, since few of the characters are white.  In fact, I even found an interview from last year where Valentine put together her own dream cast.  In terms of its appeal as a novel, though, the pacing and action made it exciting and often hard to put down.

I enjoyed the perspective of the two protagonists, even when I wasn’t alway completely convinced by their motivations.  For instance, I did not altogether buy the speed with which Daniel’s loyalty to Suyana developed, especially since it sometimes seemed to lead him to act against his own interests in ways that would propel the plot. All the same, I was curious to see how both Suyana the ‘Face’ and Daniel the ‘Snap’ coped with the ridiculous demands their society makes on them. I appreciated the parallels between their two positions, how both of their paths involve the sacrifice of authenticity and privacy.  As a Face, Suyana makes her life into a performance, though she fights to keep some free will behind the scenes.  As a Snap, Daniel’s life is an open book to his superiors, and any action he takes against them could have deadly consequences.  They both take face similar cages, and their roles even force them to be isolated from one another. I’m interested to see how this will progress, and to see if either of them can find a way to build a life with integrity.

My Rating: 3.5/5

Persona gives an entertaining look at a near future with no free press and public global politics that have devolved into essentially celebrity reality-TV.  In this world we follow Suyana, a low profile political ‘Face’, and the illegal paparazzi, Daniel, who rescues her during an assassin attempt. The story is fast-paced, with details filled in along the way, and I hope there will be more information on how the current society came to be in future novels. Though Persona is the first book of a series, it also tells an exciting story that comes to a satisfying close.  I’m looking forward to the release of the next novel, Icon, this June, to see where Suyana and Daniel’s lives will lead them next.

Review: Finch by Jeff Vandermeer

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer

Published: Underland Press (2009), Corvus (2010)

Series: Book 3 of Ambergris

Awards Nominated: Nebula, World Fantasy and Locus Fantasy Awards

The Book:

“In Finch, mysterious underground inhabitants known as the gray caps have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law. They have disbanded House Hoegbotton and are controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers.

Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels. Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.” ~WWEnd.com

Somehow, I completely missed the fact that Finch was part of a larger series until after I’d finished reading the novel. I don’t think the series is a continuous story, but I suspect some details might have been a little clearer if I’d read the other two first.  Anyway, this was a bewildering introduction to Jeff Vandermeer for me.  In any case, I’m open to trying more of his novels in the future, because of his unusual style. 

My Thoughts:

From the very beginning of the novel, I began to suspect that I had picked something completely outside my comfort zone.  I’m not really a huge fan of horror or noir, and I think Finch can be best described as a mix between the two.  Also, I am intensely disgusted by fungus, to the extent that it’s difficult for me to even prepare mushrooms (though I do eat them). The setting of Finch placed a lot of emphasis on feelings of dirtiness, lack of physical integrity, and disgust, through descriptions that lingered over various forms of fungi, fungal infestation and living fungal creatures.  I guess the setting achieved it’s goals with me, though sometimes it was so gross that I had to stop reading for a while.  It’s really a testament to the creativity of the story that I always wanted to come back and read it later. 

Aside from the revulsion factor, I enjoyed the strangeness and complexity of the situation in Ambergris. Though the story started with the usual noir “detective with a sad past investigates a mysterious murder” line, the investigation was really not the point. Finch told us from the beginning that he wasn’t really a detective, and that he was just going through the motions in hopes of surviving the occupation. It took me a long time to get a clear understanding of Finch’s past and of the different political human factions, and I think there’s quite lot that I never managed to grasp. In retrospect, I wonder how much clearer things would have been if I’d read City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword first.  Even without the grounding from the other Ambergris books, though, it was entertaining to try to make sense of everything that Finch uncovered. 

In addition to the fungal grossness, the overwhelming atmosphere of despair in the novel kept me reading it in small bites.  Finch had lost everything except his life, and he was forced to live in a never-ending nightmare. Ambergris was taken from the human inhabitants and transformed into something unrecognizable to them, as Finch’s partner Wyte was colonized by a fungus that was destroying both his mind and body. Finch’s sense of hopelessness gave the narration a feeling of detachment, which might have been part of why I never felt much of an emotional investment in the secondary characters. The end of the story was pretty exciting, but it also left a fair number of open questions.  Overall, this was a difficult book for me, but I appreciated it’s creativity.

My Rating: 3/5

I didn’t realize that Finch was the third Ambergris book until after I’d finished reading it, so I probably lacked some foundation in understanding the complicated world.  That, among other things, made this a challenging novel for me.  I’m not a huge fan of weird horror and noir, which this book combines, and I had a strong disgust reaction to the fungal setting.  Despite this, I really enjoyed the strangeness and creativity of the story and of Ambergris, and I’ll probably read more of Vandermeer’s work in the future.  I think I’ll pick a novel with less fungus next time, because his writing on that front is too evocative for me to handle!

TV Musings: The Man in the High Castle, Season 1

I watched the pilot for The Man in the High Castle during Amazon’s free pilot preview session, and discussed it briefly along with the novel, here.  Now I’ve seen the rest of the first season, and I wanted to discuss it a little bit.  This is going to be less of a general review, and more along the lines of pointing out things that I thought were interesting.  I’m also not going to compare it to the original novel any longer, since by now the show is really a separate entity. Given that a second season is already confirmed, it was pretty much guaranteed that they would need to deviate dramatically from the source material.

Beware of spoilers from here on out!

One of my first reactions to the show was simply to be impressed by the high quality of the production.  It felt like a lot of care went into crafting the setting, the costumes, and the details of the world, and I think all of the actors for parts minor and major did really excellent work. I think that choosing “Edelweiss” from “The Sound of Music” as the opening theme was a also a good idea, since the American audience would likely associate that particular song with the grief of losing one’s nation to a foreign occupation.  

I really don’t know any German at all, but I can comment that I thought the Japanese language was well done. I found it a little amusing that all of the Japanese characters primarily spoke English to one another, but I think that was mostly to avoid scaring off English audiences with long stretches of subtitles. I was also initially a little confused by the value of yen. Today, yen is in the ballpark of around 100 yen per US dollar, so the amounts quoted for various extortions and ransoms seemed ridiculously low.  However, I had a look at the historical exchange rates, and pre-WWII Japanese Yen were around 2-3 yen per US dollar.  I thought that was an interesting historical detail that they carried forward into the alternate post-WWII world.

A good show, but so sad.

The Man in the High Castle quickly became a show I wanted to watch each evening, even though the turns the story took were often surprisingly painful to witness. By the end of the second episode, I realized that this was going to be a brutally depressing story, and one which would make me feel terrified of governments for a while.  The reveal at the end of the second episode--that the Kempeitai had executed Frank’s sister and her children--set the tone for the rest of the series.  Up until that point, I genuinely thought they were going to be saved at the last minute, or that the threat was just being used to scare Frank.  Afterward, I think I lost some essential bit of hope for the eventual outcome for the characters, and I spent each subsequent episode bracing for the worst to happen. The show has a very skillful way of showing the magnitude of impersonal evil that can be committed by humans for the most unworthy of reasons.

The Cost of Loyalty

I felt like loyalty, to a nation or a person, was a major theme throughout the show.  Rather than showing this as a positive trait, it seemed like loyalty always brought suffering to those who held it. For instance, Frank went through hell due to his connection to his girlfriend Juliana and his continuing support for her, while Juliana’s choices rarely took him into account at all.  The compassion and loyalty of Frank’s best friend Ed was admirable, but it also cost him dearly.

When it came to nations, loyalty was shown to be just as destructive. Tagomi, Kido and others were willing to sacrifice their lives and their integrity for the well-being of their government, even if the force demanding that sacrifice was the government itself.  I was also interested by the situation of John Smith, whose psychological comfort depended on his false belief that his loyalty to the Reich had helped build a better world.  Throughout the season, we see the cracks start to appear in this conviction, as he must confront the fact that the monstrous world he has built is going to destroy everyone he loves, as it has already done for millions of others.

The Ending

The Man in the High Castle ended with quite a few surprise twists, and I can only be happy that it has already been renewed for a second season.  Unless I miss my guess, we have now met The Man in the High Castle, and he is not at all who I expected him to be. Juliana’s decision at the end was quite a shock, and with Tagomi-san’s final scene, it looks like the second season may move into more mind-bending territory.  What do you think of season one?   

Review: Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

Published: HarperCollins/Voyager (2014), Original Finnish Publication (2012)

Awards Nominated: Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, and Golden Tentacle Awards

The Book:

“Climate change has dramatically altered the world, and water—or rather the lack of it—is at the center of everyone’s concerns.  Noria Kaitio is the daughter and apprentice of a rural tea master, but even their small town must cope with water rationing and military oversight.  When she is old enough, her father teaches her the family’s secret, an illegal hidden spring. 

After her father’s death, the water shortages get worse and the military begins to execute perpetrators of water crimes. Noria’s secret could help her friends and neighbors, but the risk is high.  As she learns more about the foundation of her world, Noria will have to choose the path that will define her life.” ~Allie  

Memory of Water is Emmi Itäranta’s debut novel, and she is currently working on her second novel, City of Woven Streets. If I’m understanding correctly, she worked simultaneously on the Finnish and English manuscripts of Memory of Water, so the English version is also directly written by the author.

My Thoughts:

I would consider Memory of Water a dystopian young adult novel, but it’s also very different from the image (Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) that this might bring to mind.  It is a slow, meditative novel that is more about observing the world as it is than about bringing change.  The story carries very strong messages, as well, about the need to protect the environment and the value of integrity.  The environmental concerns were laid on pretty thick, especially in the early parts of the novel, where the main characters talk about the irresponsibility and short-sightedness of the global society that ruined the world.  Considering the state of our world today, I think this is a good message to communicate.  However, with the ruined world, all of the death around Noria, and the inability of the characters to do much about it, it made for a pretty depressing book.

Due to the nature of the story, there really aren’t any plot twists or unexpected turns.  The book’s description more or less covers the plot, and anything else is heavily foreshadowed.  I kept waiting for the pace to pick up, and only realized that was not going to happen as I approached the end. However, Noria was an interesting and eloquent narrator, and the descriptions of her study as a tea master, her daily life, her friendship with her neighbor Sanja, and her ideas about life were sometimes quite beautiful. Noria also carried a particular naïveté, in that she both believed deeply in the way of tea masters and her parents teachings, but—with the invincibility of the young—she also did not seriously believe that she could meet with failure. When the novel ended, I was frustrated by how little had changed, but perhaps readers should carry that frustration with them as they return to the current reality.

My Rating: 3/5

The Memory of Water is a very slow, thoughtful dystopian young adult science fiction novel, set in a water-poor world after an environmental collapse.  It follows the life of an apprentice tea master apprentice, Noria, whose family also illegally holds knowledge of a secret spring.  While the prose is often lovely, I felt like very little happened in the story.  I would say the focus is more on Noria’s understanding of her life, her craft, and her world, as well as on the importance of protecting the environment.  At the conclusion, I found the lack of change depressing, even though I felt the ending fit with the tone of the novel.  I think this was a well-written novel, but it was not exactly what I was looking for.

Review: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Published: Amazing Stories/Scribner (1971), Gollancz (2001)

Awards Won: Locus SF Award

Awards Nominated: Hugo and Nebula Awards

The Book: 

“George Orr discovers that his dreams sometimes have the power to alter reality, and the knowledge fills him with terror of his own mind and dreams.  His actions lead him to psychiatric therapy, where he consults with a dream expert that he hopes can help to cure him.  

His well-meaning therapist, Haber, sees other possibilities in George’s power, and begins to see him more as a powerful tool than a patient.  Playing God is a dangerous game, though, and dreams are a difficult tool to control with precision.”  ~Allie

This was my next commute audio book. Reviews of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work have not shown up on this blog for the same reason as Asimov’s; I enjoyed her work immensely as a child, and had read the majority of her novels-to-date before I began this blog.  There are a few that slipped through the cracks, like The Lathe of Heaven, and I’m sure I’ll review them here eventually!  

This is also my first science fiction review for Stainless Steel Droppings Sci-Fi Experience, which runs from December 2015 to January 2016.  The review site for all participants can be found here.  I haven't managed an intro post for this, but I am planning to put up some reviews of science fiction books, television shows, and (maybe) movies in the weeks to come. Thanks to Chris Goff for the cool banner!

My Thoughts:

The Lathe of Heaven is a short book set in Portland, Oregon, and it is tightly focused on a few characters and the single central premise of dreams altering reality. The main conflict is between the dreamer George and his therapist Haber, who have very different personalities, ideologies and places in society.  Since Haber is a respected therapist and George is labeled as a mentally ill patient who is legally obliged to seek help, Haber is able to directly exert power over George. Haber is also an overbearing and paternalistic man, confident in his own beliefs, while George is passive, uncertain, and believes that Haber means well. Haber believes the correct path is to use George’s ability to improve the world, while George wants to rid himself of the ability and to live in harmony with a stable reality. They both had pretty reasonable arguments to support their goals, though I’m not sure I completely agreed with either of them.

The interplay between them was compelling, even while it was frustrating and infuriating to see how Haber attempted to undermine and control George.  I think I believe George, though, that Haber was not acting out of malice, but out of the misguided sense that he was in a position to know what was best for everyone. The third major character, a dark-skinned lawyer named Heather Lelache, is the one who eventually acts as a catalyst for change in George’s hopeless situation. I enjoyed Heather’s temperament—it was nice to see her described as prickly and aggressive, and then to realize that this was not a negative characterization.  As things begin to spiral out of control, it was interesting to see what constants survived between shifts in reality, within each of these characters and in relation to one another.

The shifts in reality from George’s dreams also allowed for some creative world-building.  Though the changes originated within George’s dreams, they did not manifest with dream-like illogic.  Instead, reality changed retroactively in such a way that the new reality would make coherent sense.  Therefore, after each shift, the reader is presented with an internally consistent world that takes into account, in past and present, the causes and effects of the change.  Early on, when the dreams are directed by Haber’s certainty about how to fix the world, the effects often demonstrate his lack of perspective.  For instance, at one point he ‘fixes’ racism by eliminating race.  This might superficially solve the problem, but it also greatly diminishes humanity, a fact that is obvious to everyone except Haber.  It was fascinating to watch each planned improvement for the world progress from intention, through interpretation and to incorporation into reality, and to consider what the effects said about the people involved.  The Lathe of Heaven was written 45 years ago, but the characters, social issues, and view of human nature are still relevant for today’s audiences.

My Rating: 5/5

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven is an excellent short novel that does not feel especially dated, despite being written near half a century ago. The interactions between George, whose dreams affect reality, his misguided therapist Haber, and the outsider Heather feel authentic despite how dramatically reality changes.  It was interesting to see how each alteration of reality changed the history and present of George’s world, as well as how each alteration reflected the characters’ perception of humanity and its problems.  I think this one is rightly considered a classic of science fiction, and I hope it finds a readership for many years to come.

Review: Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said

Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Published: Doubleday (1974), Gollancz (2001)

Awards Won: Campbell Memorial Award

Awards Nominated: Nebula, Hugo, and Locus SF Awards

The Book:

“Jason Tavener woke up one morning to find himself completely unknown. The night before he had been the top-rated television star with millions of devoted watchers. The next day he was just an unidentified walking object, whose face nobody recognised, of whom no one had heard, and without the I.D. papers required in that near future. When he finally found a man who would agree to counterfeiting such cards for him, that man turned out to be a police informer. And then Taverner found out not only what it was like to be a nobody but also to be hunted by the whole apparatus of society.” ~goodreads.com

I’ve read a handful of novels and short fiction by Philip K. Dick, and have enjoyed most of them.  Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said didn’t really work for me.  On a happier note, Amazon Prime’s television adaptation of The Man in the High Castle, one of Dick’s novels that I did really enjoy, is now online!

My Thoughts:

It might be the case that I was really just in the wrong mood for Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said, because I have generally enjoyed Philip K. Dick’s work in the past.  I know a lot of people really enjoyed this novel (look at all the awards!).  In fact, I’m really surprised I bounced off of this one as hard as I did.  For me, the first issue was the writing style.  Philip K. Dick’s prose is often pretty plain and workman-like, but it seemed particularly clunky in this novel.  For instance, he actually used the word ‘friendlily’ multiple times.  I wondered if he was deliberately playing up the artlessness of the prose to get the right tone for Tavener’s life of shallowness and celebrity.  Even if that’s the case, though, I find modern-day celebrity culture tedious, and thus was not really drawn in by this fictional version.

This lack of interest ties into my issues with the characters, who all seem pretty vapid and aimless, and with the plot, which is more or less nonexistent.  Random things happen, but they often don’t seem to have an impact on either past or future.  For instance, shortly after the opening of the story, someone nearly succeeds in murdering the main character.  Afterward, neither the event nor the perpetrator have any further role in the story.  Tavener’s vanished identity is a mystery, but it’s not one he’s going to solve.  Instead, he wanders around, encountering the a variety of women, and the reasoning for his situation is tacked on to the end of the story like an afterthought.  I gather that this is one of those books where the wandering around is really the point, and I know PKD often abruptly ends his novels with wild ideas that are interesting but might not make much sense.  In this case, though, I think I was just not engaged enough with the story or the characters to really appreciate the ideas behind them.

It seems like the world might have been a kind of 1970s nightmare, and in that sense I think it has not aged well.  Some of the things which might have been extrapolations of trends in the 1970s no longer have any resonance with this Millennial reader.  I think this would be a surmountable obstacle, except that the world-building seems to exist only for these atmospheric purposes that it does not achieve for me.  Tavener’s country is a police state, where rebelling university students have been trapped underground and people are regularly sent to labor camps for little or no reason. Everyone is always ready to turn on everyone else, so there’s not much genuine connection between people.  There’s also this weird thing about the main character being a ‘Six’, a person genetically engineered to be better and smarter than baseline humans.  Except he isn’t, at least in any way I can tell.  I’m not sure if this is a jab at the idea of genetic engineering or a failure of voice. Given how many novels Philip K. Dick has published, I suppose it’s not surprising that some of them are just not my thing.

My Rating: 2/5

I normally like Philip K. Dick’s work, but I bounced very hard off of this one. This is the story of a shallow pop star briefly losing his fame and identity, and of his wandering around until it is restored.  All of the characters seemed vapid, shallow and incapable of meaningful human connection, and I was frustrated by the apparent pointlessness of the plot.  I think the reveal at the end could have been an interesting twist if I’d been in the mood for it, but instead it just felt tacked on.  I’ll probably still read more Philip K. Dick in the future, because I am honestly surprised I did not enjoy this one.  

Review: Intrusion by Ken MacLeod

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod

Published: Orbit, 2012

Awards Nominated: BSFA, Campbell Memorial, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards

The Book:

“Do you believe people should be free to make their own personal choices?  What if they don’t choose what you believe is right? In a perfect world, where everyone has access to all information, perhaps everyone would make the ‘right’ choices.  Since we don’t live in this perfect world, maybe imperfectly informed individuals need to be protected from making the ‘wrong’ choices.  Then again, to what authority could we comfortably surrender that responsibility?

In a near future world with advanced technology, a pill (the Fix) has been developed that, when taken by a pregnant mother, cleanses her fetus’s DNA of any potentially troubling content.  Hope Morrison is pregnant with her second child, and she does not want to take the Fix.  She also refuses to give her decision any socially acceptable justification. In a state that increasingly controls the bodies of its people, in a world that is threatened by nihilistic anti-civilization terrorists, no personal decision is allowed to be as simple and harmless as it first appears.” ~Allie

This is the second novel I’ve read by Ken MacLeod, the first being “The Night Sessions”, which addresses how artificial intelligence might fit within religion. I bought a signed copy of Intrusion at last year’s WorldCon, LonCon3!

My Thoughts:

This is one of the scariest dystopian novels that I’ve ever read, most likely because it is very easy to imagine a similar society rising out of our current world. The central story involves a young couple, Hope and Hugh, whose second child is on the way. Hope does not intend to take the Fix, and refuses to give a rationale for her decision. This doesn’t seem like it should be a problem, since the Fix is not yet legally compulsory, and plenty of parents choose not to take it for religious or philosophical reasons.  However, due to the current political climate, what should be a quiet personal decision begins to be escalated to extreme levels.  From my perspective, her refusal to justify herself is exactly the point of the situation.  It is a question of whether or not Hope has a right to bodily integrity and to make choices for her unborn child.  Once one starts judging the case based on whether or not the reasons behind her decisions are acceptable enough, one has already answered the previous question in the negative.  

This is far from the only difficult issue the story grapples with, through Hope and Hugh as well as through a few secondary characters.  For instance, there was exploration about the compromises made between safety and privacy, in a populace whose monitored lives risk being flagged as suspicious by impersonal computing algorithms.  Similarly, how much should a government intrude in people’s lives ‘for their own good’?  This falls most heavily on women of child-bearing age, who face many restrictions on their lives, ostensibly for the good of a potential fetus. There are also discussions about about civil liberty, terrorism, and governmental use of physical torture. Things could get quite information-dense and confusing at times, especially since I am not particularly well versed in modern-day UK politics and the culture of the island of Lewis. Realistically, though, there are no simple solutions to ‘fix’ society.

This is definitely a book I will remember for a long time for its ideas, though it did not seem to spend quite as much time developing its characters.  I felt a bit like the characters were held at arm’s length--observed through their words and actions, but never allowed to be fully understood. The existence of Hugh’s second sight, also, seemed a strangely fantastical addition to an otherwise grounded near-future dystopian story. I appreciated its role in clarifying the motivations of Hope’s decision, but I did not really understand why it needed to be supernatural. From my perspective, at least, the ideas were so compelling that these minor complaints seem small in comparison.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Intrusion paints a terrifying picture of a dystopian society with policies that do not feel very far removed from those in place in many societies today.  The novel covers many topics in the uneasy relationship between the state and the individual, including, among other things, rights to privacy and to bodily integrity. The story escalates from the decision of a young married woman, Hope, to not take a genetic Fix for her unborn child, and her refusal to provide a socially accepted reason for her choice. While I thought the characters were somewhat distant and the inclusion of one slightly fantastical element seemed a little off tone, I was deeply affected by the topics explored. I think this is a frighteningly plausible dystopia that deserves many readers.