Review: The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

Published: Avon, 1995

Awards Won: Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Book:

“This story of malaria, fever, delirium and discovery stretches across time and space—from Ronald Ross’s malaria research in Victorian India, to the obsessed Murugan’s study of Ross’s life in 1995 Calcutta, to Antar’s investigation into the disappearance of his acquaintance Murugan in near-future New York.  The cord that binds them all together may involve a shadowy conspiracy, which makes use of malaria’s ability to affect the brain to achieve a kind of immortality.” ~Allie

This is the first novel I’ve read by Amitav Ghosh, and it was also my next commute audio book. It’s my second review for Stainless Steel Droppings’ Sci-Fi Experience.

My Thoughts:

This was a very confusing novel for me, and while I was trying to process it I came across this interesting analysis by Prof. Shubha Tiwari.  For anyone who is interested in an examination of the ideas and thematic goals of the novel, I would recommend taking a look.  After reading that article, though, I feel like I just didn't have an understanding of Indian culture, mythology and history that was sufficient to fully appreciate what Ghosh was doing. This is not a novel that leads the reader by the hand, so others like me might want to be prepared to do some outside supplemental reading.  On the other hand, I did enjoy the opportunity to learn a bit more about India, both in the novel itself and in my internet reading afterward. The setting of Calcutta in 1995 was especially vivid and unfamiliar to me, so the bits of usual daily life were just as intriguing as the more unusual or confusing elements.

In addition to the unfamiliar cultural setting, there’s an awful lot going on. The story intertwines a fictional version of Ronald Ross’s malaria research, a ‘present’ story in 1995 Calcutta, a near-future story, and various one-off side stories.  The strongest thread is the ‘present’ one, which includes not only Murugan but also two Indian women—Sonali, a celebrity and former actress, and Urmila, an ambitious reporter.  I enjoyed reading about these characters, but I felt like the plot was a little overly dominated by uncovering and explaining information in dialogue.  Quite a lot of Ross’s story, as well as other historical tales and theories about the shadowy organization and their goals, are directly told by Murugan to whichever character he is around at the moment.  Listening to this in audiobook form, it felt especially noticeable that a lot of the story involved Murugan spouting information at people.  There was a lot of discussion about influencing reality through the careful control of information, so I suspect this may have been a deliberate narrative choice.  

With all of this, there are a lot of ideas and bits of plot floating around, which did not all seem to gel at the end of the novel.  It’s entirely possible I missed some metaphorical meanings or subtle connections, and that I will just need to read this again one day to try and work them out.  However, on this read through it felt like a lot of things were introduced that did not lead much of anywhere. For instance, there were side stories about spiritualists, an epidemic, and a ghostly encounter at a train station, all of which seemed only very loosely connected to the main story.  For that matter, assuming the main story involves the shadowy organization that is searching for the “Calcutta Chromosome”, the entire novel is set at something of a distance.  I vaguely understand some of the organization’s goals, but we only ever see these people through the lenses of other peoples’ stories. In the end, The Calcutta Chromosome felt like something of a puzzle, but one that I could not quite manage to solve.

My Rating: 3/5

I felt like The Calcutta Chromosome was a challenging novel, and one which I think I ultimately did not fully understand. Despite this, it was fun to read a science fiction novel based in India, and it was probably a good experience to read so far out of my reading comfort zone.  I enjoyed reading about Calcutta in 1995 and the characters who lived there.  At the same time, I felt like too much of the story was tied up in the transfer of information through dialogue, and I was disappointed by how little closure there was in the end for the many different topics brought up through the course of the novel.  I found reading this novel to be both and interesting and a frustrating experience. 

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.

Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Published: Crown Publishers, 2011

Awards Nominated: Locus First Novel and Campbell Memorial Awards

The Book:

“It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune-and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle. Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt-among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize.” ~WWEnd.com

Ernest Cline’s first novel, Ready Player One, has met with a lot of success, including a deal for a movie that will reportedly be directed by Steven Spielberg.  I have to agree that this novel is a lot of fun, and I think it has a good chance of becoming an excellent movie adaptation as well!  On another note, Ernest Cline is publishing his next novel, Armada, this summer.  

My Thoughts:

I knew going in that the novel was going to play heavily on nostalgia for the 1980s, and that is very true.  The quest for Halliday’s Easter Egg requires all of its candidates to have an extensive knowledge of 1980’s pop culture and skill with the video games of the era, and movies, games, and music are constantly references throughout the story.  It seems like Ernest Cline must have really enjoyed the decade, to naturally have such an extensive bank of knowledge to weave into his story! One thing I wasn’t expecting, but which was quite welcome, was the nostalgia for MMORPGs.  So much about the OASIS seemed designed to trigger happy MMO memories, though it is clear that OASIS exists after the unfortunate migration of games from subscription-based to free-to-play/pay-to-win.  In any case, I would expect this novel to hit some positive buttons for anyone with happy memories of either 1980s or of MMORPGs.

For me, most of the novel was an exciting thrill ride, but the beginning started off a little bit bumpy.  I know it was important to establish the physical world and Wade’s part in it, but I felt like the bleakness of that beginning segment dragged on too long.  It featured a little too much of Wade being alone, thinking about his lack of meaningful family or friends, the environmental and social ruin of the world, and how his life was a miserable march towards death.  For a book that I’d expected to be mostly a fun quest story (and had chosen to read specifically for that reason), I found this dismal enough that I almost decided to start reading something else instead.  Happily, once the story moves to Wade in the OASIS, his virtual friends, and the treasure hunt, the pace and tone both perk right up.

As you can probably gather from the description, this is a quest story, where the main character Wade is trying to acquire three keys and pass through three gates in a virtual world using his knowledge of 1980s pop culture and skill in gaming.  The story really is that straightforward, so it is a credit to Cline’s storytelling ability that it is so engaging and entertaining. Wade’s companion top egg hunters (‘gunters’)-- Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto/Daito--are interesting characters in their own rights, each with their own stories and dreams. There is a stereotypically evil corporation, but its existence makes a certain sort of sense in their dying world--they may impress people into debt slavery, but some people are willing to accept that in exchange for food and shelter.  I was hopeless at figuring out the solutions before the characters, because I’m just not that good at the 80’s, but the riddles seemed both challenging and well-designed.  I’m glad I finally got around to reading Reader Player One, and I’m excited to see what Cline will write next.         

My Rating: 4/5

Ready Player One is a highly entertaining debut novel, which makes excellent use of 80’s pop culture and MMO experience in an Earth that is in environmental and societal decline.  The beginning is a little bit too bleak and full of existential dread for me, but the story soon picks up as the dangerous puzzle quest that Wade has made his life’s goal starts to get underway. The story is pretty straightforward, featuring Wade and some of his enthusiast friends squaring off against an evil corporation in the search for Halliday’s Easter Egg.  However, the pacing, the characters, and the storytelling ability that are on display here are really impressive, and make this one of the most fun books I’ve read so far this year!     

Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian by Andy Weir

Published: Crown Publishers (2014)

The Book:

“Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?” ~WWEnd.com

The Martian is Andy Weir’s debut novel, and it has a pretty interesting origin.  It was originally posted serially on his blog (which I think is here, though he has another author page here), and it took off in a serious way after he self-published the full novel for Kindle.  Now, it’s a best seller and already has a movie adaptation in the works for later this year!  I originally noticed the novel due to very positive reviews from other bloggers, so I had high expectations from the start.

My Thoughts:

I would highly recommend The Martian for fans of stories of survival in harsh conditions, realistic science, and optimistic, intelligent protagonists.  The events takes place in the near future, where Weir has carefully imagined a potential manned space program to Mars. Though the mission does include some technology that is not currently in existence, the capabilities are clearly explained and internally consistent.  I admit that I did not double-check Mark’s math, but I really enjoyed that the basic math and science were explicitly described.  The novel makes the future where we have a Mars program, and where a man could struggle to survive for years alone on Mars, feel like a plausible extension into the future of our current reality.

While this is a science-based tale of survival, Mark’s personality keeps it from ever getting too dry or grim.  The story is mostly told through Mark’s logs, where his conversational style, optimistic attitude, and good sense of humor keeps things relatively light in the most difficult situations.  A lot of his humor also involves pop culture, as in the following excerpt:

“I got really bored, so I decided to pick a theme song!  …  There are plenty of great candidates: “Life on Mars?” by David Bowie, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan.  But I settled on “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.” ~p. 223

Things are not always quite so goofy, though, and when things go wrong Mark’s panic (and his use of profanity) comes through just as clearly. Mark also has MacGyver-level resourcefulness and an expertise in botany.  I think his charming personality and intelligence are a large part of why the story works so well— I can’t imagine anyone not rooting for him to make it home alive.

The Martian is a pretty straightforward story, where essentially all of the conflict is external.  Mark faces one crisis after another, but I felt that the different circumstances and details kept the pattern from feeling repetitive.  Everything that happens seems to arise naturally from Mark’s situation and the consequences of his own actions. The precariousness of Mark’s situation kept the tension up, and it was fun to try to figure out what might go wrong next.  The story was well-paced and easy to read, and this was a book that I flew through very quickly. I can see why it was optioned as a movie, since I think this is the sort of novel that would be relatively easy to adapt.  I’m looking forward to seeing the film— maybe I can even review it here as well!

My Rating: 4/5

The Martian is a debut novel that has exploded in popularity, and I’m happy to say that it has lived up to the hype for me.  It’s an entertaining survival story that features an upbeat protagonist and a thoroughly imagined future Mars mission program.  In his log, Mark clearly lays out the science and math behind the problems he faces, as well as his proposed solutions.  Events move along quickly and Mark’s personality from his log entries keep things optimistic and funny.  This was a really fun book, and one that I think could translate well to a movie!

Review: Nexus by Ramez Naam

Nexus: Mankind Gets an Upgrade by Ramez Naam

Published: Angry Robot Books, 2013

Series: Book 1 of Nexus 5

Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award, John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author

The Book:

“In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage - for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand - Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion.” ~WWEnd.com

Nexus is Naam’s first science fiction novel, though he has published non-fictional works. The second novel of the series, Crux, is already available.  I haven’t yet read the second, but it seems like this is going to be the kind of series where it is important to read in order.

My Thoughts:

Nexus is a techno-thriller about the effects of developments in mind-altering/linking technology.  The title is from a drug, Nexus, which allows people to temporarily link minds with other users.  The main character, Kaden Lane, has worked with his friends to create a new version “Nexus 5” (the series title) which installs a permanent network within a user’s mind.  With this network one can run applications on one’s own nervous system, and mentally connect with other users.  These apps can control your heart rate, the words you say, and even give you Bruce Lee style martial arts reflexes.  The last is no Matrix-level kung-fu app, though, since it can’t make an ordinary person comparable to someone who has actually been trained in combat.  The linking aspect of the technology also allows communication and control between multiple people’s minds, which is where many of the moral problems of this new technology arise.

I can’t deny that this sounds like a very cool idea, but it is also one that I hope is never developed.  There are so many uses this technology could have, ranging from the positive to the extremely negative.  The novel mostly addresses the extremities of this range—from psychological healing and meditation to mind control and manipulation of memory and personality.   I can see a whole range of negatives and positives in between these two extremes as well, though, which are not yet addressed in the story.  I mean, imagine a world where men on the street could harass you or send unsolicited pictures of their genitalia directly into your mind. Or on the even more mundane level, communicating with someone mind-to-mind would drastically change the accepted model of social interactions, and I imagine there would be a wave of global culture shock, even if the technology were dispersed peacefully.  All of this goes to say that I think this is a really fascinating idea, and it seems like there are so many directions this series could go with its premise.

For this first novel, though, the direction it goes is towards a pretty standard action-thriller format.  The Nexus technology was banned by the government (for good reason, I think), and agents have uncovered Kade’s Nexus 5 development group.  In exchange for the freedom of his friends, Kade is forced to work as a government agent.  He’s paired with his watchdog, super-agent Samantha Cataranes, and sent on a sting mission to investigate a potentially highly advanced Chinese scientist. Of course, there’s more going on than Kade knows, and he’s soon stuck in an impossible situation with no good choices and no one to trust.  The ensuing conflicts involve a whole lot of surprisingly intense and emotionally disturbing violence, so reader discretion is definitely advised.

In addition to the relatively standard plot format, the characters tended toward familiar clichés as well. The main characters include a counterculture-supporting, anti-government, idealistic scientist (Kade), and a human-weapon secret agent with an excessively tragic past (Sam).  Other characters include corrupt, bumbling government agents, mentally pure Buddhist monks, a veteran super-soldier with PTSD, and a scientist whose views remind me of Magneto.  They’re all interesting in terms of portraying different perspectives on the developing technology, but they still fall into familiar roles.  I also had some difficulty in feeling an emotional connection to the characters. In the case of Kade, his behavior in the first chapter, in an app-assisted sexual misadventure, left me thinking of him as a pretty sleazy guy.  In a general sense, though, I felt like there was a certain lack of consistency in the characters’ emotional reactions to traumatic situations. 

I think the strength of the story is really how it combines an intriguing technological idea with a fast-paced thriller plot.  The story doesn’t get bogged down in lengthy explanations, instead allowing the reader to build up a sense of the near-future world and the Nexus technology through the events of the story. The showing-over-telling when it comes to the technological aspects also kept the jargon down to a readable level and allowed the plot to progress quickly.  Ramez Naam is also a technologist and non-fiction writer, so it is a bit chilling to think that the technological developments may be reasonable extrapolations from existing technology.  The first novel feels like a complete story to me, but it also clearly leads in to the next book.  The way it ended really makes me want to know what will happen next, so I will probably read Crux at some point in the future!

My Rating: 3.5/5

Nexus is a techno-thriller that gives a chilling look into the direction mind-linking technology might take, and how it could change our world.  Nexus 5 is a system that can be run on a human mind, allowing networking between minds as well as a new level of control over one’s own body.  The story was fast-paced and exciting, though the intensity of the violence sometimes exceeded my comfort level.  The characters did not always seem emotionally consistent to me, and they also sometimes felt more like standard types representing various viewpoints than well-developed individuals.  However, I am very interested in these kinds of near-future stories about the effects of technology extrapolated forward from current research, and I will probably be continuing the series with the second novel, Crux!

Review: Parasite by Mira Grant

Parasite by Mira Grant (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire)

Published: Orbit, 2013

Series: Book 1 of Parasitology

Awards Nominated: Hugo Award

The Book:

“A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the Intestinal Bodyguard worm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them. But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives . . . and will do anything to get them.” ~WWend.com

This is the fourth novel I’ve read by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire, and her fourth Hugo nomination for best novel.  I really loved Feed, but was not a huge fan of the sequels.

My Thoughts:

Parasite seemed very similar to the Newsflesh Trilogy, both in some ways I enjoyed and in other ways that I did not. The writing style is similar to the style of Newsflesh, with the same tendencies towards repetition of phrases (e.g. “the hot warm dark”, “Don’t go out alone”, etc.).  The story is also centered about a pretty neat speculative human-health idea, like the zombie virus in Newsflesh. I can see how a SymboGen worm that dispenses medicines would be very useful for people with chronic illnesses, and I’m sure it’s weight-managing abilities would help it gain popularity. While there was discussion on the genetics of the worm, I would have liked to get a little more information on how it could actually do all the things SymboGen claims.

Though the worm is pretty cool, the world situation in which the story begins seems a little improbable. Within about a decade, it seems that virtually everyone has accepted a SymboGen worm into their bodies. Even given the benefits of the worm, I think this seems very unlikely. I appreciated that the idea was somewhat addressed in a series of excerpts on advertising, titled “Selling the Unsellable”.  In addition to universal acceptance, the story relies on the idea that no one has ever skipped their 2-year replacement appointment, and that there has never been any official study of a commercial worm from the body of a consumer, outside of SymboGen. There may be good explanations for the last two, but for now, it was enough to stretch my suspension of disbelief a little bit too far.    

Some of the character types were also familiar from Newsflesh, including the cardboard villain, the mad scientist, and a quirky, hyperactive, violent, woman (similar to a minor character in Blackout).  I am not really a fan of any of these character types, and I was especially annoyed by the novel’s depiction of science/scientists. On the other hand, the heroine, Sal, had a really interesting personality and situation.  Sal woke up from a car accident with total amnesia (memories and knowledge), and spent six years trying to simultaneously fit back into her former life and establish her new identity.  In some ways she seemed to have re-adapted to her life almost unbelievably well, but she also still possessed a certain short-sighted immaturity.  Her difficulties in prioritization, making decisions, and figuring things out makes sense in terms of her overall inexperience with the world, even though it sometimes made her a pretty frustrating heroine.

Sal’s inability to put things together might have been less frustrating if so much of the novel hadn’t been built around a plot twist that was obvious to the reader from the beginning of the novel.  It takes most of the rest of the characters about half of the book to figure this twist out, but it takes Sal until the very end.  This is despite the constant, obvious clues throughout her story, as well as the fact that someone actually flat-out explains the situation to her at one point.  Aside from the revelation of the twist, I didn’t feel like there was all that much in the way of resolution at the end of the story.  This is clearly the first novel of a series, and it mostly sets up the premise and the conflicts that will likely drive the future installments.

My Rating: 2/5

Parasite kicks off a new series, one that has quite a lot of similarities to the previous Newsflesh Trilogy. It is another case of medicine gone wrong, but with parasites instead of a zombie virus.  Some of the character types are very familiar from Newsflesh, and I was really not a fan of how science and scientists were portrayed.  I found the main character’s situation intriguing, but it took her entirely too long to figure out a plot twist that was clear to readers from the first chapter.  The end of the story sets up some interesting conflict for the next novel, but, unless the second novel is also nominated for a Hugo award, I think I may sit this series out.

Review: Never Let Me Go, Book and Film

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Published: Faber and Faber (2005), Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award Never Let Me Go, directed by Mark Romanek (2010)

 This review is going to be a little different from my usual pattern, since I’m simultaneously reviewing the novel Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and the movie adaptation Never Let Me Go, by director Mark Romanek.  The focus will be on comparisons between the two representations of the story, so I will have to discuss the content of the story in some detail.  This means, there will be some spoilers of Never Let Me Go, both book and movie version, in this review. 

I don’t think there’s any way to talk about the story without giving away the central mystery of the plot, which seemed fairly obvious from the beginning, in any case. Never Let Me Go portrays a society in which human clones are used as organ donors, to support the health of ‘normal’ people.  The story is a personal memoir from the point of view of Kathy, a woman who grew up in a kind of boarding school known as Hailsham, with her friends Ruth and Tommy.  Kathy builds her personal story slowly out of handfuls of the memories that are in some way significant to her.  They are mostly moments that in some small way define her, the people close to her, her relationships, and her understanding of the world and her role in it.

While I enjoyed the subtlety of this method of revealing the story, I think it’s understandable that this doesn’t exactly work in a film. The film stayed relatively true to the events of the novel, but it seemed to streamline the plot by centering it on the love triangle between Kathy, Ruth and Tommy.  The romance element was definitely present in the novel, but I don’t think it had quite the same prominence.  Some details in the novel, such as the significance of the fictional song, “Never Let Me Go”, were changed to fit more into the romance angle.  In the novel, the song and its cassette had several different meanings to Kathy and others throughout her life, and I would have liked for a little more of that to have made it into the movie.

“She's not thinking about a boy, honest.”

While Never Let Me Go was not an incredibly long novel (288 pages), there was still much more story than could be shown in a 103 minute film.  The novel hit most of the major points of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy's lives, but I felt like there was often not quite enough to give the scenes the context they had in the novel.  This seemed most apparent to me in their early lives, possibly because their early days at Hailsham shaped so much of their future. For instance, Hailsham culture, and the extreme importance the students and teachers placed on ‘being creative’, was a huge influence in the development of the good-natured, easily angered Tommy.  Missing the full sense of how his lack of artistic ability stressed him early in life, I felt like something was missing from the understanding of Tommy as a whole.

“A happy home for happy future donors.”

In terms of the other main characters, I thought Ruth’s personality translated fairly well to the screen, but the story lacked some of the moments that showed her personal vulnerabilities. I was a little puzzled by the portrayal of Kathy as a shy, socially awkward girl.  It’s possible that she just seems very different when viewed from inside her head than she does when viewed externally.  I would have described Kathy as quiet, extremely observant, compassionate, and good at parsing social situations. I think it makes sense for the movie to take a different, simpler approach to the characters than the novel, though, and I think the acting really helped to bring the movie’s version of the characters to life.

 The darker themes may have seemed to take a backseat to romance in the movie, but they were definitely not entirely absent.  The story still pointed to the parallels of the clones’ experience of life to our own, and it also explored the different reactions the characters have to the inevitability of their early death throughout their lives.  It may also seem strange, at first glance, that there was no grand clone rebellion or escape plan, but I think this is because Kathy and the others are simply like ordinary people. They had a relatively comfortable life, it had a purpose, and it contained everyone and everything that they knew and loved.  I think that there are many people who wouldn't risk leaving a familiar life, even if it didn't promise them a long life-span. In the case of the clones, their community was also pretty closed, such that they had almost no interaction with those outside of their situation.  The internal culture of their community, and their unfamiliarity with the outside world probably contributed to keeping them quietly imprisoned. This mindset is not one I have often encountered in science fiction, and I felt that the sense of it was portrayed with eloquence, particularly in the novel.

“An expressive face can be worth a thousand words”

In both romance and other aspects, Never Let Me Go is an emotional, introspective story, and it is a credit to the actors that they were able to bring so much of that across onscreen.  I enjoyed the quiet expressiveness of the actors, and I think that the effectiveness of the story was enhanced in many places by the human connection afforded by telling the story in film. I read the novel before watching the movie, and in this case, I think it improved the experience of both.  I’m glad that I read the novel first, because knowing too many details in advance might have made me impatient with the slow discovery of Kathy’s life.  While watching the movie, my knowledge of the novel filled in the gaps with the details that weren’t included.  Altogether, I think the movie was a pretty faithful adaptation of a profoundly sad, but thought-provoking novel.  I would recommend interested readers or viewers to experience both versions, but to read the novel first.

Review: Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout by Mira Grant

Published : Orbit, 2012

Series : Book 3 of the Newsflesh Trilogy

There are Major Spoilers of the series ahead, so stop now if you haven't read the first two books! There is also a significant spoiler about Georgia & Shaun, which was implied in Book 2. If you're certain you know what it is already from that sentence, carry on! If not, you should probably skip this review.

The Book :

“The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.

The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.

Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this: Things can always get worse.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the final installment in Mira Grant's (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire's) Newsflesh Trilogy. I loved the first book, but I was not much of a fan of the second. The final novel falls somewhere in between for me. I would strongly advise anyone interested in starting the series to not begin here, but to begin with the first novel, Feed. This is not a trilogy that is designed to be read out of order!

My Thoughts:

In Deadline, there were two major plot twists that threw me off, but I only alluded to them briefly in the review of that book. Since they continue to be a major factor in Blackout, I will now discuss them in more detail. The first was that George and Shaun had a romantic relationship, and the second was George's resurrection. It had been well established that George and Shaun were not related, though they were raised in the same household, so that was not the reason the re-definition of their relationship bothered me. My issue was that I had been really impressed by their intimate, non-romantic, brother-sister relationship, which is not something I see portrayed particularly often in novels. When I found out that it was actually a romance, I just felt disappointed. For George's resurrection, I felt that it ruined the emotional impact of the events at the end of Feed.

Having waited for roughly two years in between reading Deadline and Blackout, I feel like I am well enough over my initial disappointment to approach the final novel of the series with more of an open mind. While I'm still skeptical of the science and the motivation behind the new George, I enjoyed how the character was portrayed. The new George has some interesting identity issues, since she self-identifies as George while knowing analytically that she is not the same person. While I wasn't a huge fan of George and Shaun's romance, I did think their relationship was portrayed pretty well. I think it has mostly been George's story that has engaged me throughout the series, so the return of George, in whatever form, is welcome to me.

I was happy to see that George returned to narration, now splitting the role with Shaun. I was not partial Shaun as a narrator in Deadline, and I still prefer George's chapters in Blackout. Shaun is less abusive in Blackout, but he still seems very focused inward, on his grief about Georgia. He still talks to her in his head, and he still tends to repeat the same phrases and ideas over and over. For instance, just about every time he talks to illusion-George, he makes some comment about how he's chosen to be crazy because it's the only way to stay sane. I welcomed the return of George's more observant narration, even though she also used some repetition. A side effect of the two narrators' intense focus on each other, though, was the fact that few of the side characters seemed to get much development. I think the main focus was on the relationship between George and Shaun, though, and it is this relationship that is the most thoroughly and affectingly developed throughout the whole series.

In terms of the world-building, the focus this time around is on those who live “off the grid.” This includes Dr. Abbey and her secret lab, as well as others who choose or are forced to live outside ordinary society for one reason or another. The plot this time seemed to rely a bit too much on coincidence in a few places, and there were some digressions, but the conclusion did resolve the main questions from the previous books. I still felt the villains and their grand conspiracy was too over-the-top and illogical, but I anticipated that after the first two books. Overall, I think I can say I enjoyed the Newsflesh series for its thorough and creative depiction of a post-zombie-rising society, and for the story of Georgia Mason.

My Rating: 3/5

I enjoyed Blackout more than Deadline, but I still think that Feed is by far my favorite of the trilogy. I think that Blackout would be more enjoyable for those who appreciated the character-related plot twists of Deadline more than I did, though I think that Blackout expanded on these twists pretty well. The final novel also included the return of a narrator that I preferred over Shaun, and whose story I found more engaging. However, Blackout also contained some of the same weaknesses of the earlier books in the series, such as excessive repetition and stereotypical, over-the-top villains. I think that I enjoyed Feed more than I enjoyed the series as a whole, but I am still a fan of the detailed post-Rising world that Grant has created.

Review: The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

Published: Tor, 2001

Awards Won: John W. Campbell Award

Awards Nominated: Hugo and Locus SF Awards

The Book:

“Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past—and soon to be haunted by the future. In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory—sixteen years in the future.

Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok-obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord "Kuin" whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future.” ~WWEnd.com

This is the second book I’ve read by Robert Charles Wilson, the first being Spin. The Chronoliths had a lot of basic similarities to Spin, though there are many differences in the details.  Of the two novels, I ended up preferring The Chronoliths, and I am curious to see more of Wilson’s work in the future.

My Thoughts:

The basic similarities between Spin and The Chronoliths left me often reading with a vague sense of “déjà lu”. Both stories feature an unexplained scientific phenomenon (involving temporal manipulation) that has a destabilizing effect on modern society.  Within this setting, both stories focus on the personal life of an ordinary protagonist.  The protagonist is a rather self-deprecating adult male who considers himself to be mediocre in his chosen field.  His life is largely shaped by his friendship with a highly regarded genius and his protective, fragile relationship with a vulnerable young woman.  He is hired by the genius, nominally for his professional skills, but actually to provide human companionship. Because of this, he learns about the nature of the scientific phenomenon. Despite these many basic similarities, The Chronoliths is much more than a proto-Spin. The strength of the characters and the ideas explored through the time-traveling monuments shape The Chronoliths into a novel that I will not forget anytime soon.

While there are some echoes of Scott Warden in Spin’s Tyler Dupree, I personally found Scott to be a more compelling protagonist.  While Scott is pulled into the circle studying the chronoliths more or less randomly, his personality is not that of a simple bystander.  He is constantly struggling to shape his own life, and to protect the people he cares about.  Scott is also no stranger to failure, and I was impressed by his maturity in being able to recognize and address his own failings. Specifically, after he fails his wife and daughter, he does not launch a campaign to ‘win’ his wife back.  He accepts that he has damaged his marriage beyond repair, and he does the best he can to salvage his relationship with his daughter (the young woman he wants to protect).  Scott does not always make the wisest decisions, but, to me, his flaws were what made him such a sympathetic protagonist.

Aside from Scott, there are many other characters (of varying levels of development) that fill out the world.  The eccentric genius Sue Chopra and her entourage are intensely dedicated to the studies of the chronoliths.  Through the personal lives of Scott, his daughter, his ex-wife, and her new husband, we see more of the social effects of Kuin’s chronoliths—organizations with strong opinions on Kuin and his supposed ideology.  There are also others that Scott meets throughout the story, such as the ex-pat drug dealer he befriends in Thailand. Though many of the characters are minor, it seems that they all have an important role to play in the story. 

In addition to the characters, I was very intrigued by the role of the chronoliths themselves.  While they’re mysterious and overwhelming, they’re also clearly a human undertaking (though the science is pretty fictional).  Since they presumably come from the near future, understanding the science and motivation behind the structures is never seen as an unobtainable goal. Furthermore, human perception shapes the importance of the chronoliths, in what Sue Chopra calls a ‘feedback loop’.  To put it very simply, when a monument to a future victorious battle appears in the past, it creates an expectation that the battle will occur and end in a certain way.  The belief that this will come to pass makes it more likely to happen.  I thought it was an intriguing way to tell a kind of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ story within the structure of science fiction.  However, rather than being unwitting victims of fate, the characters are consciously working to understand and manipulate the forces at play.   

My Rating: 4/5

The Chronoliths was very similar to Spin in its basic story and some character dynamics, but the many interesting details of The Chronoliths set it apart.  Though it is a story about a mysterious scientific phenomenon, the human perception of the chronoliths was more important than their physical existence. The arrivals of the chronoliths were physically destructive, but their main effect on the world was through human psychology and ideas of fate.  Wilson has an excellent cast assembled to explore these ideas, headed by the flawed and sympathetic Scott Warden.  Scott is an ‘everyman’ character who is drawn into the mystery of the chronoliths, while also trying to maintain his personal life in a changing world. This was a very entertaining and engrossing story, and it now ranks as my favorite novel by Robert Charles Wilson.