This is the most recent Mental Floss book. I love these books, which like the magazine they're based on, organize random factoids, generally under some sort of theme.
"Be Amazing" takes the them of being a how-to book, explaining how to do a variety of things. But the things they explain how to do are not necessarily the kind of thing one actually would want to do, for instance how to "Be Raised By Wolves," "be Killed by Soda Water," and "Go Insane." Not that I wouldn't want to know how to be a hacker, get out of jury duty, or become a ninja, but some of this stuff isn't that interesting.
Anyways, the format is just a platform to inform the reader about a truly eclectic collection of facts. I'm now a little afraid of dying by soda water (well, a massive CO2 bubble, but same diff) or a tide of molasses, and I'm intrigued at what ninjas actually were like (they didn't wear black pyjamas, by any rate). Learning about the guy who was the archrival of the Wright Brothers, or that H.G. Wells and Martin Luther King Jr. might have been plagiarists, is really fun.
The only real problem I have with this book is its apparent lack of a copy editor. Words are missing or repeated, and "its" is often spelled "it's," and "whose" "who's." It's distracting, and annoying, and it makes the book harder to respect, but it doesn't subtract from the overall quality of the book.
Overall, I liked "Be Amazing." It was fun, there were a lot of cool facts, and aside from the spelling and grammar errors it was of pretty good quality. I would reccomend it to any knowledge junkies looking for their fix.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Dandelion Wine
"Dandelion Wine" is a book by Ray Bradbury. I wouldn't call it a novel, as it's more like a collection of vignettes. It's also not quite fantasy, but it is full of magic.
It's set during the summer of 1928 in the town of Green Town, Illinois, and is told mostly through the perspective of a 12 year old boy named Douglas Spaulding. The magic comes from the wonder that Douglas has in the world around him. A wax fortuneteller at the carnival is transformed into poor soul cruelly imprisoned by the black magic of Napoleon, an old man's memories become a vessel for travel into the past, and a new pair of shoes is able to make Douglas run faster than the wind.
I really liked a lot of the little vignettes, and Douglas and his brother Tom are both really fun characters to read about. But they didn't seem quite right to me: too virtuous, too wise, I'm not quite sure what it was. Also, the writing, full of rich details as it was, didn't grab me at first. It was wondrous while reading, but took a while each time I started up again. This might have been because I was constantly being interrupted in my reding of it by schoolwork or other things I needed to read first.
All in all, it was a good book, but not necessarily one I would read again. I'll probably read other Bradbury if I can, however.
It's set during the summer of 1928 in the town of Green Town, Illinois, and is told mostly through the perspective of a 12 year old boy named Douglas Spaulding. The magic comes from the wonder that Douglas has in the world around him. A wax fortuneteller at the carnival is transformed into poor soul cruelly imprisoned by the black magic of Napoleon, an old man's memories become a vessel for travel into the past, and a new pair of shoes is able to make Douglas run faster than the wind.
I really liked a lot of the little vignettes, and Douglas and his brother Tom are both really fun characters to read about. But they didn't seem quite right to me: too virtuous, too wise, I'm not quite sure what it was. Also, the writing, full of rich details as it was, didn't grab me at first. It was wondrous while reading, but took a while each time I started up again. This might have been because I was constantly being interrupted in my reding of it by schoolwork or other things I needed to read first.
All in all, it was a good book, but not necessarily one I would read again. I'll probably read other Bradbury if I can, however.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Who Killed Amanda Palmer
This is a strange book. A collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman, singer Amanda Palmer, and various photographers (most especially Kyle Cassidy), this is a collection of stories, and pictures, all depicting the death of Amanda Palmer. There is also a tie-in CD of the same name, and Palmer's lyrics for her songs are also interspersed with the rest.
I loved Neil Gaiman's stories. He comes up with some rather strange ideas, like a time travel story where an older Amanda travels back in time to kill her younger self, or a modern day folk tale where Amanda is sent to get drugs for her evil stepmother and is rewarded for her kindness to junkies and drug dealers with the ability to have jewels come out of her mouth. Some of Gaiman's stories are really helped with the pictures that accompany with them, such as the picture that appears on the cover, of Amanda's body on a couch covered in leaves which is accompanied with a fake catalog entry as if it was an art installation. There are also some nice pics that are unaccompanied by a story, such as Amanda dead surrounded by wallabies.
However, too many of the pics are too similar, just Amanda lying face down in some location or other, and the locations are too similar for the differences to matter.
Also, I didn't really like Amanda's lyrics. I'm not that big a fan of her music anyways, and reading the lyrics misses something. It was like really bad poetry that's also completely nonsensical.
All in all, Neil Gaiman's stuff is OK, and the photography is nice, but all in all, it wasn't quite worth it. I don't regret reading it, but I don't think I'll read it again, except maybe some of the Gaiman stuff.
I loved Neil Gaiman's stories. He comes up with some rather strange ideas, like a time travel story where an older Amanda travels back in time to kill her younger self, or a modern day folk tale where Amanda is sent to get drugs for her evil stepmother and is rewarded for her kindness to junkies and drug dealers with the ability to have jewels come out of her mouth. Some of Gaiman's stories are really helped with the pictures that accompany with them, such as the picture that appears on the cover, of Amanda's body on a couch covered in leaves which is accompanied with a fake catalog entry as if it was an art installation. There are also some nice pics that are unaccompanied by a story, such as Amanda dead surrounded by wallabies.
However, too many of the pics are too similar, just Amanda lying face down in some location or other, and the locations are too similar for the differences to matter.
Also, I didn't really like Amanda's lyrics. I'm not that big a fan of her music anyways, and reading the lyrics misses something. It was like really bad poetry that's also completely nonsensical.
All in all, Neil Gaiman's stuff is OK, and the photography is nice, but all in all, it wasn't quite worth it. I don't regret reading it, but I don't think I'll read it again, except maybe some of the Gaiman stuff.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
And Another Thing...
"And Another Thing..." is the sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book, and the first one not to be written by Douglas Adams, given that Adams has died. Instead, it is by the Irish writer Eoin Colfer, which unfortunately means that most of the people I've mentioned it to to declare they don't want to read it, because it "isn't Adams." But I decided to try it out, and was not disappointed.
"And Another Thing..." starts off where the last book, "Mostly Harmless," left off, with the obliteration of the planet Earth in all possible universes. However, our main characters are saved through a series of ass pulls, first being saved by ex-President of the Universe Zaphod Beeblebrox in the improbabilty drive-powered ship The Heart of Gold, then by the immortal alien Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged in the dark-energy powered Viking longship he stole from the god Thor. Already you're beginning to sense that Colfer is able to capture at least some of the insanity of Adams in his writing.
However, Colfer seems to have based a lot of what is featured in "And Another Thing" based on characters and incidents that Adams had mentioned in passing in his books. The two most notable examples of this are Wowbanger and Thor, both minor incidents in previous books and both major important characters here. Colfer does a pretty good job of it, and Adams did it as well (most notably in the character of Fenchurch, who appeared first in the first book only to become a main character in the fourth), but it does make it seem that Colfer isn't really creating all that much original of his own.
However, nothing further could be the truth. The book is littered with notes from the Hitchhiker's Guide itself, which more often than not are just as random and off-the-wall as Adams' mentions from the guide. The most notable touch of Colfer's comes in the leader of the planet Nano, a colony of super-rich humans who managed to escape Earth before it was eradicated, who's an Irishman who behaves exactly like the most stereotypical Irish person imaginable ("fecks" and "begorrahs" included), in order to distract people from his manipulations. I'm sure Colfer was digging at the British and American readers of the book who probably believe some of those stereotypes.
Colfer is able to develop all of the human characters he inherited from Adams (Arthur Dent, Trillian, and Random) into very unique characters. Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox don't change all that much, but both are as fun to read as they always were. The new characters of Wowbanger and Thor are both interesting and somewhat complicated, Wowbanger being snarky and jaded because of his involutary immortality while still sympathetic, and Thor being big, powerful, and strong, while gripped with a very pronounced insecurity. The Vogons are back as the big bad, specifically Prostetnic Jeltz, who was fun in his utter evil horribleness. His son Mown, who's secretly sympathetic to the humans, is slightly too hard to believe: Vogons have been set up as evil, ugly, and totally unsympathetic, and it's a little hard to buy a sympathetic, even good, Vogon.
the plot is interesting, mostly getting all of the characters to the planet Nano and then seeing what happens. Thor and Wowbanger are set up as rivals (basically Wowbanger thinks only a god would be able to actually kill him, and so stole Thor's ship to provoke him), while still being both sympathetic: the reader wants both to succeed in their struggles against each other. I liked how this book drew upon Adams' material while forging its own path. I can see this growing into a series of its own, one that could even possibly be as cool as the original. The ending is a little bit of a confusing downer, so I didn't like that all that much, but aside from that it was a pretty fun book, and I would suggest all Adams fans check the book out if they can. You won't be disappointed
"And Another Thing..." starts off where the last book, "Mostly Harmless," left off, with the obliteration of the planet Earth in all possible universes. However, our main characters are saved through a series of ass pulls, first being saved by ex-President of the Universe Zaphod Beeblebrox in the improbabilty drive-powered ship The Heart of Gold, then by the immortal alien Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged in the dark-energy powered Viking longship he stole from the god Thor. Already you're beginning to sense that Colfer is able to capture at least some of the insanity of Adams in his writing.
However, Colfer seems to have based a lot of what is featured in "And Another Thing" based on characters and incidents that Adams had mentioned in passing in his books. The two most notable examples of this are Wowbanger and Thor, both minor incidents in previous books and both major important characters here. Colfer does a pretty good job of it, and Adams did it as well (most notably in the character of Fenchurch, who appeared first in the first book only to become a main character in the fourth), but it does make it seem that Colfer isn't really creating all that much original of his own.
However, nothing further could be the truth. The book is littered with notes from the Hitchhiker's Guide itself, which more often than not are just as random and off-the-wall as Adams' mentions from the guide. The most notable touch of Colfer's comes in the leader of the planet Nano, a colony of super-rich humans who managed to escape Earth before it was eradicated, who's an Irishman who behaves exactly like the most stereotypical Irish person imaginable ("fecks" and "begorrahs" included), in order to distract people from his manipulations. I'm sure Colfer was digging at the British and American readers of the book who probably believe some of those stereotypes.
Colfer is able to develop all of the human characters he inherited from Adams (Arthur Dent, Trillian, and Random) into very unique characters. Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox don't change all that much, but both are as fun to read as they always were. The new characters of Wowbanger and Thor are both interesting and somewhat complicated, Wowbanger being snarky and jaded because of his involutary immortality while still sympathetic, and Thor being big, powerful, and strong, while gripped with a very pronounced insecurity. The Vogons are back as the big bad, specifically Prostetnic Jeltz, who was fun in his utter evil horribleness. His son Mown, who's secretly sympathetic to the humans, is slightly too hard to believe: Vogons have been set up as evil, ugly, and totally unsympathetic, and it's a little hard to buy a sympathetic, even good, Vogon.
the plot is interesting, mostly getting all of the characters to the planet Nano and then seeing what happens. Thor and Wowbanger are set up as rivals (basically Wowbanger thinks only a god would be able to actually kill him, and so stole Thor's ship to provoke him), while still being both sympathetic: the reader wants both to succeed in their struggles against each other. I liked how this book drew upon Adams' material while forging its own path. I can see this growing into a series of its own, one that could even possibly be as cool as the original. The ending is a little bit of a confusing downer, so I didn't like that all that much, but aside from that it was a pretty fun book, and I would suggest all Adams fans check the book out if they can. You won't be disappointed
Friday, November 20, 2009
Moonlight and Vines
Canadian author Charles De Lint is most well known for his Newford stories, all set within the fictional city of Newford. "Moonlight And Vines" is the third collection of short stories set in Newford, and it demonstrates quite well all of the neat things one can do if all of the stories have a common setting.
This is largely because Newford is an expansive and diverse locations. Stories in "Moonlight and Vines" are set in the artsy bohemian area of Gracie Street, Newford's gay district, the slums known as the Tombs, and the blue-collar neighborhood of Crowsea. De Lint's talents lie in his ability to tie all of these places together: all seem like part of the same city, despite being significantly different. Each story that takes place in a different area immerses the reader in a place that has history, culture, and its own dynamic, unique characters.
The characters as well as quite diverse. they include temps, journalists, strippers, the homeless, fortunetellers, and De Lint's apparent favorite class of people, artists. There are all kinds of artists: musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, and even a comic book creator. It's this presence of an art scene that really makes Newford seem dynamic and interesting.
De Lint is a fantasy writer, and so almost all of the stories have a fantastical element. A lot of the stories deal with what happens after death, but they vary from a story about a fiddler who doesn't want to move on after his death to a countrysinger having a final chat with the dead aunt who inspired her, to a gritty crime story of two people murdered by the mob who have to take revenge against their killers. Quite a lot of stories also involve human interaction with supernatural beings, be they the mysterious "animal people" who seem to be Native American animal spirits, to faerie folk who appear in the most unique guises, to a very odd take on the Greek Fates. But what is most important in De Lint's stories is not the external magic of spells and faeries, but the internal magic of the characters discovering the beauty and magic of the mundane world around them, or the kindness of those around them. This makes almost all of the stories inspirational and uplifting, leaving the reader with a good feeling after finishing a story.
I really loved this book, and it really made me want to read more De Lint, to immerse myself more into his intricate and interesting world. If Newford was a real city, I would move there in a second. Characters like the artist Jilly, folklorist Christy, and fortunetellers Cassie and Bone seem like such interesting, diverse, and real people that I really intensely want to meet and just hang out with them. I think that's probably the best rule of thumb for whether a book had succeeded or not: whether you would want to be around its characters. All of the stories are interesting and unique, and I highly reccomend this book.
This is largely because Newford is an expansive and diverse locations. Stories in "Moonlight and Vines" are set in the artsy bohemian area of Gracie Street, Newford's gay district, the slums known as the Tombs, and the blue-collar neighborhood of Crowsea. De Lint's talents lie in his ability to tie all of these places together: all seem like part of the same city, despite being significantly different. Each story that takes place in a different area immerses the reader in a place that has history, culture, and its own dynamic, unique characters.
The characters as well as quite diverse. they include temps, journalists, strippers, the homeless, fortunetellers, and De Lint's apparent favorite class of people, artists. There are all kinds of artists: musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, and even a comic book creator. It's this presence of an art scene that really makes Newford seem dynamic and interesting.
De Lint is a fantasy writer, and so almost all of the stories have a fantastical element. A lot of the stories deal with what happens after death, but they vary from a story about a fiddler who doesn't want to move on after his death to a countrysinger having a final chat with the dead aunt who inspired her, to a gritty crime story of two people murdered by the mob who have to take revenge against their killers. Quite a lot of stories also involve human interaction with supernatural beings, be they the mysterious "animal people" who seem to be Native American animal spirits, to faerie folk who appear in the most unique guises, to a very odd take on the Greek Fates. But what is most important in De Lint's stories is not the external magic of spells and faeries, but the internal magic of the characters discovering the beauty and magic of the mundane world around them, or the kindness of those around them. This makes almost all of the stories inspirational and uplifting, leaving the reader with a good feeling after finishing a story.
I really loved this book, and it really made me want to read more De Lint, to immerse myself more into his intricate and interesting world. If Newford was a real city, I would move there in a second. Characters like the artist Jilly, folklorist Christy, and fortunetellers Cassie and Bone seem like such interesting, diverse, and real people that I really intensely want to meet and just hang out with them. I think that's probably the best rule of thumb for whether a book had succeeded or not: whether you would want to be around its characters. All of the stories are interesting and unique, and I highly reccomend this book.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sense And Sensibility and Sea Monsters
This book is the second in the Quirk Classics line, the first being "Pride and Predjudice and Zombies." The point behind these books is to rework classic books that have fallen out of copywright to include subject matter the original author probably didn't intend. I can't judge the effect of PPZ (having not read it yet) but SSSM doesn't quite mesh. I think that this may be because "zombies" are a well-established horror trope: we kind of know what to expect from reading a zombie story, and applying it to a Jane Austen romance is intriguing because of it. Whereas "sea monsters" is much more broad and vague, leading to Ben H. Winters (the co-author with Austen) to have our characters just be attacked by giant hostile versions of a variety of sea life, which just seems silly and not scary. Also, Pride and Predjudice is probably Austen's most well-known novel, and more people would know the basic plot than Sense and Sensibility.
The plot consists of the three Dashwood sisters and their mother who are cheated of their inheritance and are forced to live in the remote Barton Cottage in Devonshire. the main alteration in this story is that the cottage is in fact on one of a desolate aeries of islands, full of ferocious giant octopi, a fearful two-headed sea serpent, and strange half-seen figures chanting in a terrifying language. There they attempt to find suitors in order to be married.
Some of the new stuff works. Colonel Brandon, who in the original novel was a slightly older and slightly more boring of two suitors for the middle sister Marianne, is given another reason why Marianne initially prefers his competitor the dashing treasure hunter Willoughby: Brandon had been cursed with a face covered in tentacles by a sea witch, and is therefore physically repulsive. a brief interlude with pirates is interesting, as is the way the characters deal with them, although it's much too brief. And near the end of the book there is an introduction of Lovecraftian-style horrors that was really cool, although the payoff is waaaaay too little and waaay too late in the story (practically the end of the book, actually).
However, there is too much whimsy in the book for it to really work. Willoughby the treasure hunter has an oragutan valet named Monsieur Pierre. Why? Presumably because Winters thought oragutans inherently funny. They aren't, especially since Monsieur Pierre does absolutely nothing in the book except be an oragutan and stand around in the background. There are also way too many scenes of some servant fending off some terrible sea beast in the background while the main characters talk about who they love and who they're wanting to marry in the foreground, completely unconcerned. I get what Winters was trying to do, lampoon the Regency-era aristocracy for their detachment from real life, but it just comes off as the main characters being assholes. Really, in some places the Austen plot gets in the way of the Winters story: in my least favorite scene two of the girls discuss their relationship to one of the men in the story WHILE FIGHTING OFF A GIANT SEA SERPENT. It just doesn't work.
However, one final thing that I quite liked was the Reader's Discussion Guide at the back, a parody of the sort of questions one finds in cheap copies of classic texts that supposedly aid in the understanding of the same. Some of the questions they ask are really quite funny in my opinion.
All in all, SSSM is an interesting try with some good sequences, but all in all it doesn't quite work. The jury's still out on PPZ, but I hope for the best.
The plot consists of the three Dashwood sisters and their mother who are cheated of their inheritance and are forced to live in the remote Barton Cottage in Devonshire. the main alteration in this story is that the cottage is in fact on one of a desolate aeries of islands, full of ferocious giant octopi, a fearful two-headed sea serpent, and strange half-seen figures chanting in a terrifying language. There they attempt to find suitors in order to be married.
Some of the new stuff works. Colonel Brandon, who in the original novel was a slightly older and slightly more boring of two suitors for the middle sister Marianne, is given another reason why Marianne initially prefers his competitor the dashing treasure hunter Willoughby: Brandon had been cursed with a face covered in tentacles by a sea witch, and is therefore physically repulsive. a brief interlude with pirates is interesting, as is the way the characters deal with them, although it's much too brief. And near the end of the book there is an introduction of Lovecraftian-style horrors that was really cool, although the payoff is waaaaay too little and waaay too late in the story (practically the end of the book, actually).
However, there is too much whimsy in the book for it to really work. Willoughby the treasure hunter has an oragutan valet named Monsieur Pierre. Why? Presumably because Winters thought oragutans inherently funny. They aren't, especially since Monsieur Pierre does absolutely nothing in the book except be an oragutan and stand around in the background. There are also way too many scenes of some servant fending off some terrible sea beast in the background while the main characters talk about who they love and who they're wanting to marry in the foreground, completely unconcerned. I get what Winters was trying to do, lampoon the Regency-era aristocracy for their detachment from real life, but it just comes off as the main characters being assholes. Really, in some places the Austen plot gets in the way of the Winters story: in my least favorite scene two of the girls discuss their relationship to one of the men in the story WHILE FIGHTING OFF A GIANT SEA SERPENT. It just doesn't work.
However, one final thing that I quite liked was the Reader's Discussion Guide at the back, a parody of the sort of questions one finds in cheap copies of classic texts that supposedly aid in the understanding of the same. Some of the questions they ask are really quite funny in my opinion.
All in all, SSSM is an interesting try with some good sequences, but all in all it doesn't quite work. The jury's still out on PPZ, but I hope for the best.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sloth
"Sloth" is a graphic novel by acclaimed comics writer and artist Gilbert Hernandez, most famous for working on the legendary series 'love and Rockets." "Sloth" is a slightly less ambitious story, dealing with changing perspectives, teen friendships, and the meaning of love.
the story starts out with the hero, a teenager named Miguel Serra, waking up after a year-long coma he apparently willed himself into. He has trouble moving quickly, for whatever reason, and so acquires the nickname "Sloth." Sloth is coincidentally the name of his garage band with his girlfriend Lita and best friend Romeo. Together they go to the local lemon grove one night to see about the stories that a mysterious goatman haunts it. And then the story changes completely, with characters being assigned new roles and new relationships being developed.
"Sloth" is a very odd story. It takes its time, and parts of it are very dream-like. It's very character-focused, which is interesting, as the roles of all of the characters change halfway through. There's a lot of unexplained stuff that happens in the story. If you're willing to tolerate all of that, it's really quite good. the art is also good, very clear while also allowing cartooniness to sneak in at appropriate moments. I especially like how who wears a specific beanie cap changes as who tells the story changes. All in all, a solid piece of work.
the story starts out with the hero, a teenager named Miguel Serra, waking up after a year-long coma he apparently willed himself into. He has trouble moving quickly, for whatever reason, and so acquires the nickname "Sloth." Sloth is coincidentally the name of his garage band with his girlfriend Lita and best friend Romeo. Together they go to the local lemon grove one night to see about the stories that a mysterious goatman haunts it. And then the story changes completely, with characters being assigned new roles and new relationships being developed.
"Sloth" is a very odd story. It takes its time, and parts of it are very dream-like. It's very character-focused, which is interesting, as the roles of all of the characters change halfway through. There's a lot of unexplained stuff that happens in the story. If you're willing to tolerate all of that, it's really quite good. the art is also good, very clear while also allowing cartooniness to sneak in at appropriate moments. I especially like how who wears a specific beanie cap changes as who tells the story changes. All in all, a solid piece of work.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
"Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" is a two-issue Batman storyiline written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Andy Kubert. It was written to be, essentially, the last Batman story, no matter how many Batman stories come after it. This is because WHTTCC is about Batman's funeral.
Batman himself incorporeally watches as his friends and enemies eulogize him with their stories of his life and his death. The thing is, no one's story of Batman is exactly alike, and the incorporeal Batman remarks in confusion that none of their stories matches his own life. But each Batman has a few things in common, even though their realities are drastically different: each one is brave, and self-sacrificing (it's remarkable how many of the stories end with Batman sacrificing homself to save someone else), and each one never gives up, ever. It's a wondrous tribute to Batman (there are references to things from throughout Batman's career peppered through the story), and I loved it. I can only imagine what Batman fanatics would think of it (new Bible, perhaps?).
After WHTTCC, there are preliminary sketches from Kubert and some other short Batman stories that Gaiman did earlier in his career. Unfortunately, although the stories are mostly good, they really suffer from the bad art and coloring standard to the late 80s and early 90s comics. My favorites were a very meta black and white story where Batman and the Joker sit around small-talking as they wait to go on the comics page (however, this had the worst art of all of the stories) and a neat little story where a recruiter for the Suicide Squad visits Poison Ivy in jail to possibly recruit her, and finds her a much trickier opponent than he was expecting. the first was funny, and I did kind of like the self-aware comic book characters (the art is even excusable as a parody of stereotypical Dark Age art), while the second really delves deeply into what drives Poison Ivy, and how she's possibly one of Batman's most deadly foes (even though the big Bat only appears in a few flashbacks).
But these are all merely extras. Why you should really look into this book is the main event: a brilliant and touching tribute to one of the most iconic superheroes ever, written by a master storyteller and drawn by a great artist.
Batman himself incorporeally watches as his friends and enemies eulogize him with their stories of his life and his death. The thing is, no one's story of Batman is exactly alike, and the incorporeal Batman remarks in confusion that none of their stories matches his own life. But each Batman has a few things in common, even though their realities are drastically different: each one is brave, and self-sacrificing (it's remarkable how many of the stories end with Batman sacrificing homself to save someone else), and each one never gives up, ever. It's a wondrous tribute to Batman (there are references to things from throughout Batman's career peppered through the story), and I loved it. I can only imagine what Batman fanatics would think of it (new Bible, perhaps?).
After WHTTCC, there are preliminary sketches from Kubert and some other short Batman stories that Gaiman did earlier in his career. Unfortunately, although the stories are mostly good, they really suffer from the bad art and coloring standard to the late 80s and early 90s comics. My favorites were a very meta black and white story where Batman and the Joker sit around small-talking as they wait to go on the comics page (however, this had the worst art of all of the stories) and a neat little story where a recruiter for the Suicide Squad visits Poison Ivy in jail to possibly recruit her, and finds her a much trickier opponent than he was expecting. the first was funny, and I did kind of like the self-aware comic book characters (the art is even excusable as a parody of stereotypical Dark Age art), while the second really delves deeply into what drives Poison Ivy, and how she's possibly one of Batman's most deadly foes (even though the big Bat only appears in a few flashbacks).
But these are all merely extras. Why you should really look into this book is the main event: a brilliant and touching tribute to one of the most iconic superheroes ever, written by a master storyteller and drawn by a great artist.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Gifts
"Gifts" is a young adult novel by famed sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula K. LeGuin. It's the first in a loose trilogy of books called "The Annals of the Western Shore,' and if the next two are as good as this one was, I look forward to reading them.
"Gifts" takes place in the Uplands, a northern country divided into the holdings of various families. Each family has its own unique gift, everything from the ability to call fire to reading minds to causing crops to wither. The most powerful practitioner of the family is called the brantor and is considered the head of the family. The gift of the family of main character Orrec is known as "the undoing", and it consists of the ability to destroy anything the user can see and point at. Unfortunately, Orrec cannot seem to control his gift, which doesn't work when he wants it to and seems to become imcredibly destructive when he uses it involuntarily. So Orrec binds his eyes so he cannot hurt anyone.
There isn't much of a plot to "Gifts," but that's alright as it allows it to focus more on its characters: Orrec, who is disturbed and uncomfortable with his family's gift; Orrec's father Canoc, a deeply flawed but very sympathetic man; Orrec's mother Melle, a Lowlander unaccustomed to uplander ways; Gry, Orrec's childhood friend who is uncomfortable with how her gift to commune with animals is usually used to help with hunting; Ogge Drum, a dangerous brantor looking to expand his family's territory; and Emmon, a rascal from the Lowlands who inspires Orrec and Gry to look beyond their limited lives. All of these characters are complicated and three dimoensional, and all of them fit very well in the world LeGuin creates for her characters. Sometimes they work at cross purposes to one another, and their behavior always seems to fit their character and the situation at hand. Especially of interest are how Orrec's wild gift means wildly different things for him, his father. and his mother; and the subtle (but rather sweet) love story that happens over the course of the book between Orrec and Gry.
The Uplands is a wonderful location. In an early chapter we are told about the various families, their brantors and their gifts, and it all seems credible: the society described sounds very much like one that would have to exist under the circumstances. I also liked how LeGuin pulls very few punches with how hard it is living there: this is a distinctly low-tech place, with the economy based on sheep- and cow-herding, members of families with powers living little better than the serfs who serve under them, and approximately three people in the entirety of the place who can actually read. Too often in traditional fantasy, people seem to be living 20th or 21st century lives with a thin coat of medieval flavor on the outside, but not here.
The lack of a plot is the only real problem. Except for the struggle between Canoc and Ogge and Orrec's own insecurity regarding his gift, most of the rest of it is giving us backstory rather than plot. As I said, this works out nicely (we get to see Orrec grow up from a baby to a teenager in the book), but at the end of it I wasn't quite sure what the point had all been.
But LeGuin is a wonderful writer, and I highly recommend this book. Check it out if you can.
"Gifts" takes place in the Uplands, a northern country divided into the holdings of various families. Each family has its own unique gift, everything from the ability to call fire to reading minds to causing crops to wither. The most powerful practitioner of the family is called the brantor and is considered the head of the family. The gift of the family of main character Orrec is known as "the undoing", and it consists of the ability to destroy anything the user can see and point at. Unfortunately, Orrec cannot seem to control his gift, which doesn't work when he wants it to and seems to become imcredibly destructive when he uses it involuntarily. So Orrec binds his eyes so he cannot hurt anyone.
There isn't much of a plot to "Gifts," but that's alright as it allows it to focus more on its characters: Orrec, who is disturbed and uncomfortable with his family's gift; Orrec's father Canoc, a deeply flawed but very sympathetic man; Orrec's mother Melle, a Lowlander unaccustomed to uplander ways; Gry, Orrec's childhood friend who is uncomfortable with how her gift to commune with animals is usually used to help with hunting; Ogge Drum, a dangerous brantor looking to expand his family's territory; and Emmon, a rascal from the Lowlands who inspires Orrec and Gry to look beyond their limited lives. All of these characters are complicated and three dimoensional, and all of them fit very well in the world LeGuin creates for her characters. Sometimes they work at cross purposes to one another, and their behavior always seems to fit their character and the situation at hand. Especially of interest are how Orrec's wild gift means wildly different things for him, his father. and his mother; and the subtle (but rather sweet) love story that happens over the course of the book between Orrec and Gry.
The Uplands is a wonderful location. In an early chapter we are told about the various families, their brantors and their gifts, and it all seems credible: the society described sounds very much like one that would have to exist under the circumstances. I also liked how LeGuin pulls very few punches with how hard it is living there: this is a distinctly low-tech place, with the economy based on sheep- and cow-herding, members of families with powers living little better than the serfs who serve under them, and approximately three people in the entirety of the place who can actually read. Too often in traditional fantasy, people seem to be living 20th or 21st century lives with a thin coat of medieval flavor on the outside, but not here.
The lack of a plot is the only real problem. Except for the struggle between Canoc and Ogge and Orrec's own insecurity regarding his gift, most of the rest of it is giving us backstory rather than plot. As I said, this works out nicely (we get to see Orrec grow up from a baby to a teenager in the book), but at the end of it I wasn't quite sure what the point had all been.
But LeGuin is a wonderful writer, and I highly recommend this book. Check it out if you can.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Book of Flying
This book was a wonder to read. It's a picaresque fairy tale, as the hero goes on his quest and has many adventures. it's also a celebration for the power of storytelling and the written word, where some of the most beautiful language is reserved for describing the joy of reading.
the novel concerns a young librarian named Pico in a city by the sea. In this city, there are people with wings, and people without, and the two never mix. So when Pico, who has no wings, falls in love with a winged woman named Sisi, he is forbidden from pursuing his love. He therefore decides to set out for a legendary town called Paunpuam, where there is a book called the "The Book of Flying" that grants people wings if they read it.
All of the following chapters details Pico's adventures as he encounters many strange characters, learns their stories, writes poetry, and learns many things about life. Much of the book is taken up with the people Pico meets telling their stories, and many of them are just as fascinating as Pico's tale. It was something like getting many stories for the price of one.
Pico himself is a good character. He's likable for his unflappability and for his determination. I really wanted for him to suceed.
Aside from one part of the story where Pico encounters a cannibal, which was somewhat gut-turning, it was all a wondrous experience. Now what I want from the author, Keith Miller, is to write another book saying what happened to some of the characters Pico meets in his travels. We are told near the end that some of them have gone on to their own adventures, but they aren't detailed. I wanted more stories told in this same fairy-tale-like style.
All in all, a great book.
the novel concerns a young librarian named Pico in a city by the sea. In this city, there are people with wings, and people without, and the two never mix. So when Pico, who has no wings, falls in love with a winged woman named Sisi, he is forbidden from pursuing his love. He therefore decides to set out for a legendary town called Paunpuam, where there is a book called the "The Book of Flying" that grants people wings if they read it.
All of the following chapters details Pico's adventures as he encounters many strange characters, learns their stories, writes poetry, and learns many things about life. Much of the book is taken up with the people Pico meets telling their stories, and many of them are just as fascinating as Pico's tale. It was something like getting many stories for the price of one.
Pico himself is a good character. He's likable for his unflappability and for his determination. I really wanted for him to suceed.
Aside from one part of the story where Pico encounters a cannibal, which was somewhat gut-turning, it was all a wondrous experience. Now what I want from the author, Keith Miller, is to write another book saying what happened to some of the characters Pico meets in his travels. We are told near the end that some of them have gone on to their own adventures, but they aren't detailed. I wanted more stories told in this same fairy-tale-like style.
All in all, a great book.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Essential Bordertown
"The Essential Bordertown" is the fourth in a series of anthologies all set in the same shared world, where elves and the Realm from which they come becomes acessible to humanity. All of the stories take place in the city of Bordertown, in between the World and the Realm. Here technology works half of the time and magic the other half of the time and the city is populated by both elves and humans, who are mostly exiles, runaways, outcasts, halfbreeds, and others who don't fit in.
"The Essential Bordertown" takes the form of a guidebook for new arrivals with advice on how to live in the Soho district of Bordertown, a poor neighborhood full of the young and the energetic, the waifs and strays who make Bordertown what it is. It alternates between essays on a variety of subjects (cooking, jobs, nightlife, etiquette) and stories that complement them. The guidebook sections, written by the editor, Terri Windling, are easily the best part--funny, snarky, informative, and it cnjures up a whole world of fascinating places and people. It's a brilliant example of of worldbuilding.
The stories written to take place in the world created by the guidebook sections, however, are a very mixed bag. Some, like "Dragon Child," "Socks," and "Changeling," are very good, well-written, and live up to the potential of the setting, while others, like "Oak Hill," "When the Bow Breaks," and "Arcadia" are just confusing and don't quite work. "Hot Water" has an interesting concept (an epidemic of talking teapots) but it seems half-baked. "May This Be Your Last Sorrow" is a sad little well-written vignette, but it's also very short. "Argentine" and "Cover Up My Tracks With Rain" are both good, and I want to see more of the characters in them. "How Shannaro Tolkinson Lost and Found His Heart" had a few nice moments, but other parts didn't work, and some things (such as the two elvin families involved being named after fantasy authors) just seemed cheesy.
All in all, there were some good stories, some not-so-good, and quite a few in between. I'm glad I read it, and I might even read some more Bordertown books, but the stories were greatly outshone by the background materials. I want to explore Bordertosn some more, but this book doesn't wuite live up to its potential.
"The Essential Bordertown" takes the form of a guidebook for new arrivals with advice on how to live in the Soho district of Bordertown, a poor neighborhood full of the young and the energetic, the waifs and strays who make Bordertown what it is. It alternates between essays on a variety of subjects (cooking, jobs, nightlife, etiquette) and stories that complement them. The guidebook sections, written by the editor, Terri Windling, are easily the best part--funny, snarky, informative, and it cnjures up a whole world of fascinating places and people. It's a brilliant example of of worldbuilding.
The stories written to take place in the world created by the guidebook sections, however, are a very mixed bag. Some, like "Dragon Child," "Socks," and "Changeling," are very good, well-written, and live up to the potential of the setting, while others, like "Oak Hill," "When the Bow Breaks," and "Arcadia" are just confusing and don't quite work. "Hot Water" has an interesting concept (an epidemic of talking teapots) but it seems half-baked. "May This Be Your Last Sorrow" is a sad little well-written vignette, but it's also very short. "Argentine" and "Cover Up My Tracks With Rain" are both good, and I want to see more of the characters in them. "How Shannaro Tolkinson Lost and Found His Heart" had a few nice moments, but other parts didn't work, and some things (such as the two elvin families involved being named after fantasy authors) just seemed cheesy.
All in all, there were some good stories, some not-so-good, and quite a few in between. I'm glad I read it, and I might even read some more Bordertown books, but the stories were greatly outshone by the background materials. I want to explore Bordertosn some more, but this book doesn't wuite live up to its potential.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The True Meaning of Smekday
"The True Meaning of Smekday" by Adam Rex is an interesting and inventive book. It' a fun read, and I finished it in about a day. It has a very quirky sense of humor, but also manages to be dark and sometimes even scary.
The book takes the form of a series of essays that the main character, a young girl with the improbable name of Gratuity Tucchi, writes about the title subject, the meaning of the day when Earth was invaded by an alien race called the Boov, who renamed the planet Smekland and sent all the humans in America to Florida. Gratuity, along with her cat, Pig, encounters a rogue Boov mechanic on the run named J. Lo who fixes her car so it can fly. The rest of the book is the trio's many wild and crazy adventures. The plot is very unpredictable, as where the Americans must go changes just as Gratuity reaches Florida, and the invasion by the Boov is overshadowed by a subsequent invasion by a different and much more intimidating alien species. While few plot points seem contrived, the story manages to go in directions one wouldn't necessarily expect.
And it's also a very funny book. Gratuity is a very witty narrator, and is quite snarky and impatient with the BS that's thrown her way. J. Lo is a bit of a Cloudcouckoolander, and his difficulty at grasping Earthling culture is another source of comedy, but Rex doesn't use it to make J. Lo a butt of jokes, but to emphasize the alienness of his character. rex also illustrates the book, both with Gratuity's photographs of everything, which manage to both look realistic and like caricatures, and J. Lo's explanatory comics, which are easily the funniest parts of the book. Other characters, like Gratuity's not-very-smart mom, the Chief (an old Navajo man with a very fake UFO in his junkyard), and the crazy UFOlogists the main characters encounter when they pass through Roswell, add just something more that makes this such a fun book.
All in all, I really quite liked this book. It's funny, clever, and unpredictable. Read it for a good time.
The book takes the form of a series of essays that the main character, a young girl with the improbable name of Gratuity Tucchi, writes about the title subject, the meaning of the day when Earth was invaded by an alien race called the Boov, who renamed the planet Smekland and sent all the humans in America to Florida. Gratuity, along with her cat, Pig, encounters a rogue Boov mechanic on the run named J. Lo who fixes her car so it can fly. The rest of the book is the trio's many wild and crazy adventures. The plot is very unpredictable, as where the Americans must go changes just as Gratuity reaches Florida, and the invasion by the Boov is overshadowed by a subsequent invasion by a different and much more intimidating alien species. While few plot points seem contrived, the story manages to go in directions one wouldn't necessarily expect.
And it's also a very funny book. Gratuity is a very witty narrator, and is quite snarky and impatient with the BS that's thrown her way. J. Lo is a bit of a Cloudcouckoolander, and his difficulty at grasping Earthling culture is another source of comedy, but Rex doesn't use it to make J. Lo a butt of jokes, but to emphasize the alienness of his character. rex also illustrates the book, both with Gratuity's photographs of everything, which manage to both look realistic and like caricatures, and J. Lo's explanatory comics, which are easily the funniest parts of the book. Other characters, like Gratuity's not-very-smart mom, the Chief (an old Navajo man with a very fake UFO in his junkyard), and the crazy UFOlogists the main characters encounter when they pass through Roswell, add just something more that makes this such a fun book.
All in all, I really quite liked this book. It's funny, clever, and unpredictable. Read it for a good time.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Wide Awake
This was a fantastic book. It has wonderfully complex characters, an intriguing story, and a uplifting--dare I say inspirational--tone. It's a very short book, and a very fast read, as you find yourself constantly being pulled forward to find out what happens next.
Taking place several decades in the future, the US has just elected its first gay and Jewish president, a man named Abe Stein. America, having suffered through an economic collapse known as the Greater Depression and a disastrous series of wars, is seeming to be pulling out thanks to a progressive movement that has swept Stein into office. But Stein also won by a very slim margin: only a few thousand votes in Kansas finally tipped the scale in his favor.
The main character, Duncan, a high school student who like Stein is gay and Jewish, is elated that the candidate he supported has won. But things take a darker turn when the governor of Kansas declares a recount because he doesn't believe Stein won his state. Since the governor of Kansas is a dutiful member of the party that lost the presidential election, this is viewed as a political stunt by pretty much every character in the book. The uncertainty over the election is mirrored in problems in Duncan's own relationship with his boyfriend, Jimmy, and the revelation that one of his friends has been cheating on her girlfriend. When Stein calls on his supporters to come to Kansas to stop the governor from throwing the election, everything comes to a head.
As I said before, this is a fantastic book. Duncan, Jimmy, and all of their friends are all very interesting characters, and they are definitely complex ones: for instance, Duncan is a true believer in Stein but is also somewhat timid when it comes to confrontation, which causes problems with his relationship with the more confrontational Jimmy. Stein's speeches, which litter the book, are all inspirational, so much so that I kinda wish I could vote for him as president. I also liked the background details that David Levithan, the author, includes in his story, like how the progressive movement that has elected Stein was greatly supported by a progressive evangelical Christian movement known as the Jesus revolution based around Jesus's actions as a man.
However, there are a few problems with it. After a while, the dramas of Duncan and his friends are kind of pushed aside for the greater drama concerning Stein and Kansas. This kind of makes sense in context (they're all so swept up in their protest against Kansas throwing the election that they forget their petty dramas), but some of the smaller dramas, like Duncan feeling insecure about his relationship with Jimmy, feel unfinished. I also wished that there were more and less extreme characters representing the other side: those who did not support Stein seem to be made up entirely of the kind of people who think Barack Obama was born in Kenya and who think that healthcare reform will result in "death panels." Duncan mentions talking to more moderate opponents of Stein when he was canvassing, but they never actually appear in the story itself. This makes the whole political divide in the story seem a bit more than a bit one-sided.
Speaking of Obama, this book also feels a little dated now that a black semi-progressive Democrat has been elected president. Levithan was clearly expecting the US to go further into the toilet after Bush's term, and Obama's pointing us in a different direction doesn't seem now like it would lead to the future depicted in this book. A small quibble, but one I bring up nonetheless.
However, all in all I really liked this book and I found it a fantastic read, one I can truly call inspirational. I hope that one day our world can be like the one envisioned by the characters in the book, as a Great Community brought together in tolerance and equality.
Taking place several decades in the future, the US has just elected its first gay and Jewish president, a man named Abe Stein. America, having suffered through an economic collapse known as the Greater Depression and a disastrous series of wars, is seeming to be pulling out thanks to a progressive movement that has swept Stein into office. But Stein also won by a very slim margin: only a few thousand votes in Kansas finally tipped the scale in his favor.
The main character, Duncan, a high school student who like Stein is gay and Jewish, is elated that the candidate he supported has won. But things take a darker turn when the governor of Kansas declares a recount because he doesn't believe Stein won his state. Since the governor of Kansas is a dutiful member of the party that lost the presidential election, this is viewed as a political stunt by pretty much every character in the book. The uncertainty over the election is mirrored in problems in Duncan's own relationship with his boyfriend, Jimmy, and the revelation that one of his friends has been cheating on her girlfriend. When Stein calls on his supporters to come to Kansas to stop the governor from throwing the election, everything comes to a head.
As I said before, this is a fantastic book. Duncan, Jimmy, and all of their friends are all very interesting characters, and they are definitely complex ones: for instance, Duncan is a true believer in Stein but is also somewhat timid when it comes to confrontation, which causes problems with his relationship with the more confrontational Jimmy. Stein's speeches, which litter the book, are all inspirational, so much so that I kinda wish I could vote for him as president. I also liked the background details that David Levithan, the author, includes in his story, like how the progressive movement that has elected Stein was greatly supported by a progressive evangelical Christian movement known as the Jesus revolution based around Jesus's actions as a man.
However, there are a few problems with it. After a while, the dramas of Duncan and his friends are kind of pushed aside for the greater drama concerning Stein and Kansas. This kind of makes sense in context (they're all so swept up in their protest against Kansas throwing the election that they forget their petty dramas), but some of the smaller dramas, like Duncan feeling insecure about his relationship with Jimmy, feel unfinished. I also wished that there were more and less extreme characters representing the other side: those who did not support Stein seem to be made up entirely of the kind of people who think Barack Obama was born in Kenya and who think that healthcare reform will result in "death panels." Duncan mentions talking to more moderate opponents of Stein when he was canvassing, but they never actually appear in the story itself. This makes the whole political divide in the story seem a bit more than a bit one-sided.
Speaking of Obama, this book also feels a little dated now that a black semi-progressive Democrat has been elected president. Levithan was clearly expecting the US to go further into the toilet after Bush's term, and Obama's pointing us in a different direction doesn't seem now like it would lead to the future depicted in this book. A small quibble, but one I bring up nonetheless.
However, all in all I really liked this book and I found it a fantastic read, one I can truly call inspirational. I hope that one day our world can be like the one envisioned by the characters in the book, as a Great Community brought together in tolerance and equality.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Brief History of the Dead
Like my last review, "The Brief History of the Dead" has a split narrative, with it alternating between two separate stories. However, in my opinion Kevin Brockmeier, the author of "The Brief History of the Dead," does it better than Cory Doctorow did in "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town." For one thing, in this book the two narratives are split into alternating chapters, whereas in Doctorow's story they alternated pretty much whenever Doctorow wanted them too, which led to some confusion and the feeling that Doctorow wasn't weighing his stories equally. "The Brief History of the Dead," on the other hand, feels equally balanced between its two stories.
The first of the two stories involves the City, where people go when they die. It's a city composed of everything people need where people live basically the way they did when they die. However, people don't stay in the City forever: only as long as there is someone alive to remember them. And lately huge groups of people have been vanishing to what comes after the city, as new arrivals report a worldwide pandemic of a virus that kills within 24 hours, nicknamed "The Blinks."
The other story concerns Laura Byrd, a wildlife specialist working for Coca-Cola in the Antartic, and quite possibly the last person alive in the world, as she struggles to survive and find shelter and a functioning radio to contact the outside world--assuming there's an outside world to contact. Her story compliments the stories of those still left in the City, as it both gives clues as to how she knows them and helps to show the state the living world is in, where the threat of terrorism is omnipresent and Coca-Cola owns one third of Antartica.
I really liked the chapters set in the City. Th first, which deals with the City as a whole, goes from person to person, giving a very powerful image of the City as a whole. It works very well as an introduction to the rest of the book, which makes sense, as it was originally a seperate short story. All of the other chapters in the City focus on one particular character, showing how they see the City and the situation that they're in with only one person still alive in the world. The City itself seems so interesting and unique that I found myself constantly interested in learning more about it.
I was less impressed with the Laura Byrd chapters. They were well-written, and Laura is an interesting character, but she's really the only character we see in them, aside from flashbacks. Really, they're a survival story, which, although it's a good survival story, is just not quite as interesting as exploring the City was. However, it is more a case of the City chapters being so good as opposed to the Laura chapters being bad.
I would have liked perhaps one more chapter each of the City and Laura chapters (or at least one more City chapter), as they both have somewhat ambiguous endings, but their endings do work as is. It's really more a function of me being so fascinated with some of the mysteries of the City that I wanted to learn more and more.
All in all, this was a wondrous and wonderful book that's thoughtful, exciting, and very well written. Everyone should read this book if they can.
The first of the two stories involves the City, where people go when they die. It's a city composed of everything people need where people live basically the way they did when they die. However, people don't stay in the City forever: only as long as there is someone alive to remember them. And lately huge groups of people have been vanishing to what comes after the city, as new arrivals report a worldwide pandemic of a virus that kills within 24 hours, nicknamed "The Blinks."
The other story concerns Laura Byrd, a wildlife specialist working for Coca-Cola in the Antartic, and quite possibly the last person alive in the world, as she struggles to survive and find shelter and a functioning radio to contact the outside world--assuming there's an outside world to contact. Her story compliments the stories of those still left in the City, as it both gives clues as to how she knows them and helps to show the state the living world is in, where the threat of terrorism is omnipresent and Coca-Cola owns one third of Antartica.
I really liked the chapters set in the City. Th first, which deals with the City as a whole, goes from person to person, giving a very powerful image of the City as a whole. It works very well as an introduction to the rest of the book, which makes sense, as it was originally a seperate short story. All of the other chapters in the City focus on one particular character, showing how they see the City and the situation that they're in with only one person still alive in the world. The City itself seems so interesting and unique that I found myself constantly interested in learning more about it.
I was less impressed with the Laura Byrd chapters. They were well-written, and Laura is an interesting character, but she's really the only character we see in them, aside from flashbacks. Really, they're a survival story, which, although it's a good survival story, is just not quite as interesting as exploring the City was. However, it is more a case of the City chapters being so good as opposed to the Laura chapters being bad.
I would have liked perhaps one more chapter each of the City and Laura chapters (or at least one more City chapter), as they both have somewhat ambiguous endings, but their endings do work as is. It's really more a function of me being so fascinated with some of the mysteries of the City that I wanted to learn more and more.
All in all, this was a wondrous and wonderful book that's thoughtful, exciting, and very well written. Everyone should read this book if they can.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
I purchased this book 2 years ago because the blurb on the back was so weird. IT described the main character as having a father who's a mountain and a mother who's a washing machine. I was so intrigued that I bought it, and after reading it, it lives up to the promise of its blurb.
The main character,most commonly known as Alan, does indeed have a mountain in northern Canada for a father and a washing machine for a mother. He also has an equally odd assortment of brothers: a fortuneteller, an island, a dead man, and a set of three nesting dolls. However, Alan left when he was 18 and went south to Toronto. As the book opens, he's about 40 and has run a series of businesses that people remember fondly. At the start of the novel he's bought a house and plans to settle down to write a story. However, complications arise, as they always do.
There are essentially two stories interwoven in "Someone Comes to Town." The first deals with Alan's younger brother Davey, who Alan and his other brothers murdered in revenge for a terrible crime Davey committed. However, Davey didn't stay dead, and he's come back to get his vengeance on his brothers, most especially Alan. Alan also has to deal with the strangeness of himself, and try to discover just what is he. The discovery that his next door neighbor Mimi, a twentysomething young woman, has wings sheds some clues.
The other story thread, which Doctorow seems much more interested in, deals with a partnership between Alan and a thirty-year-old punk named Kurt to set up a free wireless network all across Toronto. They do this by building access points out of junked computer parts scavenged by street kids, which they then distribute to businesses to put on their roofs. Although the conflict between Alan and Davey is interesting, and exactly what Alan and his kin are is a fascinating mystery, Doctorow makes Alan and Kurt's quest to set up their wireless network the more exciting part of the book, and therefore the stuff about Davey and Alan's past seems like a distraction.
This is the one main flaw of the book: we are given Alan's unique and interesting background and the story of his early life, but not a lot was done with it. I frankly wanted to see more weird people who are not quite human, but aside from Mimi all we have are Alan and members of his family. I was OK with what they are being ambiguous and something of an unsolved mystery, I just wanted more to be done with it.
However, everything else was well done. Doctorow conjures up a very unique fantasy tale with Alan's background, and I loved reading it. Although I'm not a techie and a lot of the details went over my head, I loved the wireless story. Doctorow even acknowledges that it's all rather technical, as several times characters remark that they don't fully understand the plan. But the passion of the story demonstrates that this is something that Doctorow really cares about. I wasn't expecting to get excited about a story about creating a wireless network, but oh boy was that what happened.
The book is extremely well-written. The characters leap off the page and all of them seem fully formed and complicated, even Davey, who's basically pure evil. The plot is fast paced and I found myself zooming along quite easily. Doctorow also manages to pull off something quite tricky: Alan and each of his brothers, because of their odd upbringing, do not have a single name, but are instead known by a flurry of names all starting with the same letter. Alan, for example, is also referred to as Albert, Ari, Abraham, and the like. It could have been confuising but it ends up being pretty cool.
Aside from a lack of development of some of the weirder parts of the story and an attempt at a twist ending that suffers from being delivered too close to the end, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" is a really cool book, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something unique
The main character,most commonly known as Alan, does indeed have a mountain in northern Canada for a father and a washing machine for a mother. He also has an equally odd assortment of brothers: a fortuneteller, an island, a dead man, and a set of three nesting dolls. However, Alan left when he was 18 and went south to Toronto. As the book opens, he's about 40 and has run a series of businesses that people remember fondly. At the start of the novel he's bought a house and plans to settle down to write a story. However, complications arise, as they always do.
There are essentially two stories interwoven in "Someone Comes to Town." The first deals with Alan's younger brother Davey, who Alan and his other brothers murdered in revenge for a terrible crime Davey committed. However, Davey didn't stay dead, and he's come back to get his vengeance on his brothers, most especially Alan. Alan also has to deal with the strangeness of himself, and try to discover just what is he. The discovery that his next door neighbor Mimi, a twentysomething young woman, has wings sheds some clues.
The other story thread, which Doctorow seems much more interested in, deals with a partnership between Alan and a thirty-year-old punk named Kurt to set up a free wireless network all across Toronto. They do this by building access points out of junked computer parts scavenged by street kids, which they then distribute to businesses to put on their roofs. Although the conflict between Alan and Davey is interesting, and exactly what Alan and his kin are is a fascinating mystery, Doctorow makes Alan and Kurt's quest to set up their wireless network the more exciting part of the book, and therefore the stuff about Davey and Alan's past seems like a distraction.
This is the one main flaw of the book: we are given Alan's unique and interesting background and the story of his early life, but not a lot was done with it. I frankly wanted to see more weird people who are not quite human, but aside from Mimi all we have are Alan and members of his family. I was OK with what they are being ambiguous and something of an unsolved mystery, I just wanted more to be done with it.
However, everything else was well done. Doctorow conjures up a very unique fantasy tale with Alan's background, and I loved reading it. Although I'm not a techie and a lot of the details went over my head, I loved the wireless story. Doctorow even acknowledges that it's all rather technical, as several times characters remark that they don't fully understand the plan. But the passion of the story demonstrates that this is something that Doctorow really cares about. I wasn't expecting to get excited about a story about creating a wireless network, but oh boy was that what happened.
The book is extremely well-written. The characters leap off the page and all of them seem fully formed and complicated, even Davey, who's basically pure evil. The plot is fast paced and I found myself zooming along quite easily. Doctorow also manages to pull off something quite tricky: Alan and each of his brothers, because of their odd upbringing, do not have a single name, but are instead known by a flurry of names all starting with the same letter. Alan, for example, is also referred to as Albert, Ari, Abraham, and the like. It could have been confuising but it ends up being pretty cool.
Aside from a lack of development of some of the weirder parts of the story and an attempt at a twist ending that suffers from being delivered too close to the end, "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" is a really cool book, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something unique
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
More Information than You Require
"More Information Than You Require" by John Hodgman is Hodgman's continuation of his previous book, "The Areas of My Expertise." Like "Areas", "More" is a book of fake trivia, with Hosdman covering in this book the lives of the presidents, the societies of the mole men, and a weird weather war between Richmond, VA and Milwaukee, WI, amongst a variety of other subjects. To emphasize that "More" is a continuation rather than a mere sequel, the book's page numbers start where the previous book's end, and there are many footnotes back to the previous book.
In addition to its regular collection of fake facts on how to divine the future from a pig's spleen and Teddy Roosevelt's many superhuman acts, each page is also assigned a day of the year, starting with October 21st (when the book is officially published), and we are given a fake factoid for something that supposedly happened that day.
A lot of people that I talked to while I was reading this couldn't get over the whole "fake" part of the fake trivia book. They seemed to think it was weird and a little pointless to read. I whole-heartedly disagree with that: not only are many of the things Hodgman writes funny, but he manages to create an alternate US, one slightly more fascinating than our own, where presidents secretly have hooks for hands, the Declaration of Independance was inspired by mole men, and that a secret lab at Yakle has been secretly performing horrific experiments on cats for decades. And not only that, oftentimes Hodgman will show his nerd cred with a throwaway reference to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "No Exit", or the Harry Potter books.
All in all, I liked it. However, oftentimes chapters dragged on a bit, and sometimes individual essays did too. I liked the content of the list of 700 molemen, but after bout 200 I was a bit tuckered out. I also disliked the constant footnoting to other pages, including ones of "Areas." I would have preferred Hodgman had merely summarised useful inforamation from his previous book again. But these are all fiarly minor complaints.
Even though it's an odd book and not for everyone, "More Information Than You Require" is a fun and funny book. I enjoyed it a lot and I look forward to Hidgman''s next and final book in "The Areas of my Expertise." I recommend it to you if you consider yourself a nerd or are a fan of extremely surreal and dry humor.
In addition to its regular collection of fake facts on how to divine the future from a pig's spleen and Teddy Roosevelt's many superhuman acts, each page is also assigned a day of the year, starting with October 21st (when the book is officially published), and we are given a fake factoid for something that supposedly happened that day.
A lot of people that I talked to while I was reading this couldn't get over the whole "fake" part of the fake trivia book. They seemed to think it was weird and a little pointless to read. I whole-heartedly disagree with that: not only are many of the things Hodgman writes funny, but he manages to create an alternate US, one slightly more fascinating than our own, where presidents secretly have hooks for hands, the Declaration of Independance was inspired by mole men, and that a secret lab at Yakle has been secretly performing horrific experiments on cats for decades. And not only that, oftentimes Hodgman will show his nerd cred with a throwaway reference to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "No Exit", or the Harry Potter books.
All in all, I liked it. However, oftentimes chapters dragged on a bit, and sometimes individual essays did too. I liked the content of the list of 700 molemen, but after bout 200 I was a bit tuckered out. I also disliked the constant footnoting to other pages, including ones of "Areas." I would have preferred Hodgman had merely summarised useful inforamation from his previous book again. But these are all fiarly minor complaints.
Even though it's an odd book and not for everyone, "More Information Than You Require" is a fun and funny book. I enjoyed it a lot and I look forward to Hidgman''s next and final book in "The Areas of my Expertise." I recommend it to you if you consider yourself a nerd or are a fan of extremely surreal and dry humor.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The Escapists
When I read Micheal Chabon's "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" some years ago I really enjoyed it. The book followed two young men in the early days of comics who invent a comic book character, The Escapist,and their various creative struggles around him. Thebook spawned a series of comic book spinoffs, where various comic book writers and artists created their own Escapist comics, often pastiches of various eras in comic books. Accompanying those were Chabon's notes of how these stories fit into the greater history of comics. Now comes "The Escapists," a comic set in the world of "Kavalier and Clay" and those historical notes which deals with a modern-day revival.
The introduction to "The Escapists" is in fact a short story by Chabon about an encounter between Sam Clay (one of the creators of the Escapists) and a young Brian K. vaughn (the writer for "The Escapists"), and how this inspired Brian to go into comics. It's actually well done, and doesn't feel hokey at all, instead tying once again "the Escapist" to the real world.
The main character is Maxwell Roth, a young Clevelander who inherits a huge collection of Escapist memorobilia when his father dies. This causes him to grow up with a lifelong obsession with the Escapist, and when his mother dies years later he uses his inheritance money to buy the rights to the character in order to realize his dream of reviving the character.
Max decides to be the writer for the comic, and recruits his friend Denny as letterer and a he meets named Case for the artist. The three have great chemistry together, and all three are delightfully nerdy and very identifiable. There's a romance between Max and Case which is fine, and does lead to some cute moments, but it's somewhat artificially extended by Max not wanting to pursue it or something like that. Also, we're told a few times that Case is some sort of extreme sports nut, but nothing is really done with it.
The rest of the story consists of our three heroes coming up with their take on the Escapist (which is illustrated using a very different art style), their efforts to publicize it, and the various attempts by the media corporation that used to own the rights to the Escapist trying to get the rights back. It's a solidly told story, and I liked how the story of the comic our heroes are creating resonates with the overall story in interesting and somewhat unexpected ways. My only gripe is with an irritating plot twist near the end just before the main conflict is resolved that makes that resolution much more complicated and bittersweet. Although it's realistic and fits with what we know of the characters involved, it still seems like adding in unecessary angst and drama just for the sake of it.
The art is good. I liked the soft and rounded style of the main comic especially, although the sharp and spiky style of the comic within a comic also worked well. there's only one panel I hated, a picture of Case drawn in the spiky style that makes her look like deranged bag lady.
All in all, "The Escapists" is a good comic, especially for lovers of comics. It's not quite as good as "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," but it's still worth a read.
The introduction to "The Escapists" is in fact a short story by Chabon about an encounter between Sam Clay (one of the creators of the Escapists) and a young Brian K. vaughn (the writer for "The Escapists"), and how this inspired Brian to go into comics. It's actually well done, and doesn't feel hokey at all, instead tying once again "the Escapist" to the real world.
The main character is Maxwell Roth, a young Clevelander who inherits a huge collection of Escapist memorobilia when his father dies. This causes him to grow up with a lifelong obsession with the Escapist, and when his mother dies years later he uses his inheritance money to buy the rights to the character in order to realize his dream of reviving the character.
Max decides to be the writer for the comic, and recruits his friend Denny as letterer and a he meets named Case for the artist. The three have great chemistry together, and all three are delightfully nerdy and very identifiable. There's a romance between Max and Case which is fine, and does lead to some cute moments, but it's somewhat artificially extended by Max not wanting to pursue it or something like that. Also, we're told a few times that Case is some sort of extreme sports nut, but nothing is really done with it.
The rest of the story consists of our three heroes coming up with their take on the Escapist (which is illustrated using a very different art style), their efforts to publicize it, and the various attempts by the media corporation that used to own the rights to the Escapist trying to get the rights back. It's a solidly told story, and I liked how the story of the comic our heroes are creating resonates with the overall story in interesting and somewhat unexpected ways. My only gripe is with an irritating plot twist near the end just before the main conflict is resolved that makes that resolution much more complicated and bittersweet. Although it's realistic and fits with what we know of the characters involved, it still seems like adding in unecessary angst and drama just for the sake of it.
The art is good. I liked the soft and rounded style of the main comic especially, although the sharp and spiky style of the comic within a comic also worked well. there's only one panel I hated, a picture of Case drawn in the spiky style that makes her look like deranged bag lady.
All in all, "The Escapists" is a good comic, especially for lovers of comics. It's not quite as good as "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," but it's still worth a read.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Alice in Sunderland
I picked up "Alice in Sunderland" by Bryan Talbot at the library because I had enjoyed Talbot's previous work, "The Tale of One Bad Rat." Like "One Bad Rat," "Alice" is a graphic novel on several subjects that overlap in several odd and unexpected ways. In "One Bad Rat," this was by telling a fictional story which involved Beatrix Potter, the English Lake Country, child abuse, and rats. "Alice" is a nonfictional meander through the history of the city of Sunderland and the life of Lewis Carroll, the writer of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass." The story is told through the perspective of an actor onstage, sometimes wearing a white rabbit mask, who tells the story of Sunderland and of Alice to the only other person in the theater (barring some ghosts), a rude blue-collar type of fellow who interjects frequently with his own observations. Another character, the Pilgrim, walks the streets of Sunderland telling stories of its great and grand history. Both the Pilgrim and the Performer are clearly avatars of Talbot, and both speak as him throughout the story.
I had never heard of Sunderland before, so I suspected Bryan Talbot was making the whole thing up. As it went along, and it was tied into more and more pieces of British history, my doubt was marginalized and I became more fascinated with stories like the monkey hanged as a French spy and the tale of the Langdon Worm. The style of the comic, which incorporates pictures and others' pictures in with Talbot's own drawings, and often forgoes traditional panel borders for larger pictures or flowing panels where the Pilgrim goes from one place to another, helping to impress upon the reader the immensity and complexity of the story of Sunderland.
The Lewis Carroll parts are interesting. Talbot addresses with significant gusto several things he considers myths about Carroll and his masterwork, including that he came up with the story spontaneously in a single afternoon, that he was socially maladjusted, and that Carroll was a nerdy Oxford don who rarely dealt with others. Talbot also goes to great lengths to show that the Northeast, and particularly Sunderland, were a great influence upon Carroll in the creation of "Alice in Wonderland." My impression of Lewis Carroll certainly changed.
"Alice in Sunderland" is a very interesting and well-done book, which shows the hidden depths of its two subjects. It's infinitely readable and I would recommend anyone who wants to experience something new should read it immediately.
I had never heard of Sunderland before, so I suspected Bryan Talbot was making the whole thing up. As it went along, and it was tied into more and more pieces of British history, my doubt was marginalized and I became more fascinated with stories like the monkey hanged as a French spy and the tale of the Langdon Worm. The style of the comic, which incorporates pictures and others' pictures in with Talbot's own drawings, and often forgoes traditional panel borders for larger pictures or flowing panels where the Pilgrim goes from one place to another, helping to impress upon the reader the immensity and complexity of the story of Sunderland.
The Lewis Carroll parts are interesting. Talbot addresses with significant gusto several things he considers myths about Carroll and his masterwork, including that he came up with the story spontaneously in a single afternoon, that he was socially maladjusted, and that Carroll was a nerdy Oxford don who rarely dealt with others. Talbot also goes to great lengths to show that the Northeast, and particularly Sunderland, were a great influence upon Carroll in the creation of "Alice in Wonderland." My impression of Lewis Carroll certainly changed.
"Alice in Sunderland" is a very interesting and well-done book, which shows the hidden depths of its two subjects. It's infinitely readable and I would recommend anyone who wants to experience something new should read it immediately.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The City and the City
The British writer China Mieville is one of the most inventive speculative fiction writers currently working. I loved his three Bas-Lag books, as well as his children's book "Un Lun Dun." He specializes in ignoring all of the storytelling baggage of others, which often make the twists and turns of his plots genuinely surprising.
His latest, "The City And the City," is a good example of this. Although much less fantastical than his previous books (except for it's setting it's largely a straight mystery book), it has the unmistakable Mieville traits of an unpredictable plot and a few twists you'd never expect.
It is these same traits that unfortunately occasionally cause some problems. Because there are so many plot twists, the final reveal of who the murderer is seems like it's been sprung on the reader, and there' not enough setup to make it feel like it grew from the rest of the book. This also affects the pacing, as it seems there's too much exposition at the beginning and too much action at the end.
Not that the exposition is a bad thing, as Mieville has given us both an interesting setting to describe and an interesting character to deliver said description. The setting is the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma, somewhere in southeastern Europe, and the main character is inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crimes Squad. The main thing distinguishing the two cities is that they exist in the same place: a street in Beszel can also be a street in Ul Qoma. The two cities have been forced apart, and it is illegal to interact with people or places in the other city except via checkpoints in the very center of both cities. This makes things complicated for Borlu when it is revealed that a Jane Doe found in Beszel was murdered in Ul Qoma.
As Borlu looks into the murder, assisted by a Constable Lizbyet Corwi in Beszel and, about halfway in, his opposite number Qussim Dhatt in Ul Qoma. All three are interesting and multilayered characters. Borlu is cynical and somewhat contemptuous of authority, but he's no stereotypical antihero rebel cop: he merely cares nothing for politics or bureaucracy. Corwi is a cool character, very intelligent and very independant, and I liked that a lot of the accomplishments of the first third of the book were because of her. She's a strong, independant female character that it is not necessary to announce is a strong, independant female character. Really, most of the female characters who appear in the book are like that: capable characters we don't need to be told are capable. Corwi does disappear for about the middle third of the book, though, which is a little weird and kinda annoying. Her replacement, Dhatt, is interesting, as a character who has Borlu's temperament but not his personality. While Borlu is a somewhat introverted and thoughtful character, Dhatt is boisterous, a litle bit of a ham, and likable almost from his first appearance in the book by the sheer force of his charisma. The other characters in the book are all well done, as each seems to be a well-flushed out character who does what they do for reasons that make sense, although the character eventually revealed as the "villain" is a bit confusingly portrayed. A special favorite of mine is Borlu's boss, Comissar Gadlem, who appears for one scene in the entire book and completely stole it from Borlu with his sarcastic, no-BS manner. I liked all of the characters in the book immensely, and I think they're easily the best part of it.
The setting of Ul Qoma and Beszel allows for Mieville to play around a lot. Because it's a setting that often times characters can't acknoledge they can see, more often than not Mieville frames it so that the important part is happening in the part of the city they cannot acknoledge. And the concept that, in some neighborhoods at least, the part in Ul Qoma can be an upscale residential area and the part in Beszel can be a slum creates an interesting mindscape to picture. It's also great when Borlu remarks on the cultural influence the US has had on the youth of his city, or the immigrants to one city or another from the Balkans or north Africa, or the background detail that Ul Qoma (which is significantly less democratic than Beszel) is under sanctions by the US so the main international presence in that city is Canadian. These are lived-in cities, and feel like real places almost.
All in all, "The City and The City" is a whole lot of fun. An interesting story set in a fascinating location with interesting characters, I enthusiastically recommend it to all.
His latest, "The City And the City," is a good example of this. Although much less fantastical than his previous books (except for it's setting it's largely a straight mystery book), it has the unmistakable Mieville traits of an unpredictable plot and a few twists you'd never expect.
It is these same traits that unfortunately occasionally cause some problems. Because there are so many plot twists, the final reveal of who the murderer is seems like it's been sprung on the reader, and there' not enough setup to make it feel like it grew from the rest of the book. This also affects the pacing, as it seems there's too much exposition at the beginning and too much action at the end.
Not that the exposition is a bad thing, as Mieville has given us both an interesting setting to describe and an interesting character to deliver said description. The setting is the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma, somewhere in southeastern Europe, and the main character is inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crimes Squad. The main thing distinguishing the two cities is that they exist in the same place: a street in Beszel can also be a street in Ul Qoma. The two cities have been forced apart, and it is illegal to interact with people or places in the other city except via checkpoints in the very center of both cities. This makes things complicated for Borlu when it is revealed that a Jane Doe found in Beszel was murdered in Ul Qoma.
As Borlu looks into the murder, assisted by a Constable Lizbyet Corwi in Beszel and, about halfway in, his opposite number Qussim Dhatt in Ul Qoma. All three are interesting and multilayered characters. Borlu is cynical and somewhat contemptuous of authority, but he's no stereotypical antihero rebel cop: he merely cares nothing for politics or bureaucracy. Corwi is a cool character, very intelligent and very independant, and I liked that a lot of the accomplishments of the first third of the book were because of her. She's a strong, independant female character that it is not necessary to announce is a strong, independant female character. Really, most of the female characters who appear in the book are like that: capable characters we don't need to be told are capable. Corwi does disappear for about the middle third of the book, though, which is a little weird and kinda annoying. Her replacement, Dhatt, is interesting, as a character who has Borlu's temperament but not his personality. While Borlu is a somewhat introverted and thoughtful character, Dhatt is boisterous, a litle bit of a ham, and likable almost from his first appearance in the book by the sheer force of his charisma. The other characters in the book are all well done, as each seems to be a well-flushed out character who does what they do for reasons that make sense, although the character eventually revealed as the "villain" is a bit confusingly portrayed. A special favorite of mine is Borlu's boss, Comissar Gadlem, who appears for one scene in the entire book and completely stole it from Borlu with his sarcastic, no-BS manner. I liked all of the characters in the book immensely, and I think they're easily the best part of it.
The setting of Ul Qoma and Beszel allows for Mieville to play around a lot. Because it's a setting that often times characters can't acknoledge they can see, more often than not Mieville frames it so that the important part is happening in the part of the city they cannot acknoledge. And the concept that, in some neighborhoods at least, the part in Ul Qoma can be an upscale residential area and the part in Beszel can be a slum creates an interesting mindscape to picture. It's also great when Borlu remarks on the cultural influence the US has had on the youth of his city, or the immigrants to one city or another from the Balkans or north Africa, or the background detail that Ul Qoma (which is significantly less democratic than Beszel) is under sanctions by the US so the main international presence in that city is Canadian. These are lived-in cities, and feel like real places almost.
All in all, "The City and The City" is a whole lot of fun. An interesting story set in a fascinating location with interesting characters, I enthusiastically recommend it to all.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
Ursula K. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. Her stories are always interesting and all seem to have a lot of thought behind them. For these reasons why I picked up "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," a collection of short stories I had not previously heard of by LeGuin, when I happened to see it it in a used bookstore.
The collection starts out with an essay by LeGuin on many misconceptions the public and literary authorities have with science fiction. It's brief, but LeGuin is very persuasive in her belief that science fiction can accomplish many things that other genres cannot, and that it is often undervalued. She follows this up with notes on each of the eight stories in the volume, which are helpful as a way into the mindset LeGuin had when she wrote them.
The first story is a short and somewhat silly story called "The First Contact With the Gorgonids," about an American couple's contact with extraterrestrial forces in the Australian Outback. It is a bit sharper than I'm used to with LeGuin, and it's rather obvious in its message of cultural relativism. It's alright, but is definitely not my favorite in the collection.
Next is "Newton's Sleep," a much more skillful, although just as sharp, story than "First Contact." LeGuin explains that it's a rebuke of the kind of science fiction which assumes that the clean, shiny, advanced people on a space ship are superior to the dirty unadvanced people on a planet surface. On a future Earth which has collapsed into anarchy, a satellite called SPES launches containing a small collection of very intelligent people trying to create a sort of ideal society in space. However, as the story goes along the people on SPES realized they've carried all of their Earthly baggage with them, including their racism, classism, and other unattractive features, symbolized as visions of the plants, animals, and people they left behind. I found it a quite effective story, subtly and slowly building to its final point about how humanity thinks and acts.
"Ascent Of The North Face" is just weird. It's the journal of an adventurer as he climbs up the outside of a house. It's just weird. It wasn't bad, but I didn't really get the point of it.
"The Rock Than Changed Things" was one of my favorite stories in the collection. It concerns a culture of creatures called obls and their servants, the nurobls. The obls' main form of art is made of complicated rock patterns that also symbolize words. After a flood at Obling University, the nurobls are assigned to reassemble the rock patterns that were knocked askew. One nurobl named Bu discovers that in addition to shape and size, there can also seen to be patterns in the color of the rocks which also say things. This simple discovery changes everything in ways unexpected. LeGuin in her introduction notes her discomfort with this story, given that it's a parable and she dislikes parables, but I kinda liked it because it was clever and inventive.
"The Kerastion" is not really a story, it's more of a character/background sketch. A woman named Chumo watches as her brother is buried. It then flashes back to fill in the background. The world of this story is fascinating, with people divided by their professions, decided when they feel a calling in early adolesence. The people worship the goddess of beauty, who is a jealous goddess who reclaims the most beautiful things to herself. Therefore everything is made of perishable materials and it is considered a great honor when one's creation is destroyed soon after it is made. "The Kerastion" portrayed a world entirely different from our own in only a few short pages, and I was fascinated by it.
The last three stories are related, and are a part of LeGuin's larger Hainish cycle of stories, in which lightspeed communication is possible but lightspeed travel is not, and where long ago a species called the Hain seeded various planets with intelligent life, including humanity. These three stories deal with the creation of the churten drive, a way for ships to go from one place to the other instantaneously. However, in each story there is a complication. "The Shobies' Story" tells of the first crew to test the churten, and their discovery of the churten's flaw: it is necessary to be in perfect unity for it to work. "Dancing to Ganam" takes place several years later, as a former member of the Shoby test crew is persuaded to try another Churten test to a planet called Ganam. Even though they succeed, the explorers on Ganam discover that they still need to stay harmonized in order to understand the culture they discover there. The final story, "Another Story or The Fisherman of the Inland Sea," tells of a scientist from the planet of O who works on developing the churten drive, and how that forces him to sacrifice his possible life on his home planet. The story asks whether it was worth it, and comes up with a more complicated answer than you might expect.
I liked most of the stories I read in "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." they were interesting and very well-written. Leguin is an expert world-builder, creating alien cultures that seem like they could be real. I liked her little touches: the descriptions of the way marriages on O O(which are between four people) work and how the commander of the mission on "Dancing to Ganam," a childhood hero of the main character, is shown to be a flawed human being without having to make him secretly evil (which seems to be the fate of most childhood heroes in stories like this). I just all around liked them, and I'm going to make a point of reading mor LeGuin in the future
The collection starts out with an essay by LeGuin on many misconceptions the public and literary authorities have with science fiction. It's brief, but LeGuin is very persuasive in her belief that science fiction can accomplish many things that other genres cannot, and that it is often undervalued. She follows this up with notes on each of the eight stories in the volume, which are helpful as a way into the mindset LeGuin had when she wrote them.
The first story is a short and somewhat silly story called "The First Contact With the Gorgonids," about an American couple's contact with extraterrestrial forces in the Australian Outback. It is a bit sharper than I'm used to with LeGuin, and it's rather obvious in its message of cultural relativism. It's alright, but is definitely not my favorite in the collection.
Next is "Newton's Sleep," a much more skillful, although just as sharp, story than "First Contact." LeGuin explains that it's a rebuke of the kind of science fiction which assumes that the clean, shiny, advanced people on a space ship are superior to the dirty unadvanced people on a planet surface. On a future Earth which has collapsed into anarchy, a satellite called SPES launches containing a small collection of very intelligent people trying to create a sort of ideal society in space. However, as the story goes along the people on SPES realized they've carried all of their Earthly baggage with them, including their racism, classism, and other unattractive features, symbolized as visions of the plants, animals, and people they left behind. I found it a quite effective story, subtly and slowly building to its final point about how humanity thinks and acts.
"Ascent Of The North Face" is just weird. It's the journal of an adventurer as he climbs up the outside of a house. It's just weird. It wasn't bad, but I didn't really get the point of it.
"The Rock Than Changed Things" was one of my favorite stories in the collection. It concerns a culture of creatures called obls and their servants, the nurobls. The obls' main form of art is made of complicated rock patterns that also symbolize words. After a flood at Obling University, the nurobls are assigned to reassemble the rock patterns that were knocked askew. One nurobl named Bu discovers that in addition to shape and size, there can also seen to be patterns in the color of the rocks which also say things. This simple discovery changes everything in ways unexpected. LeGuin in her introduction notes her discomfort with this story, given that it's a parable and she dislikes parables, but I kinda liked it because it was clever and inventive.
"The Kerastion" is not really a story, it's more of a character/background sketch. A woman named Chumo watches as her brother is buried. It then flashes back to fill in the background. The world of this story is fascinating, with people divided by their professions, decided when they feel a calling in early adolesence. The people worship the goddess of beauty, who is a jealous goddess who reclaims the most beautiful things to herself. Therefore everything is made of perishable materials and it is considered a great honor when one's creation is destroyed soon after it is made. "The Kerastion" portrayed a world entirely different from our own in only a few short pages, and I was fascinated by it.
The last three stories are related, and are a part of LeGuin's larger Hainish cycle of stories, in which lightspeed communication is possible but lightspeed travel is not, and where long ago a species called the Hain seeded various planets with intelligent life, including humanity. These three stories deal with the creation of the churten drive, a way for ships to go from one place to the other instantaneously. However, in each story there is a complication. "The Shobies' Story" tells of the first crew to test the churten, and their discovery of the churten's flaw: it is necessary to be in perfect unity for it to work. "Dancing to Ganam" takes place several years later, as a former member of the Shoby test crew is persuaded to try another Churten test to a planet called Ganam. Even though they succeed, the explorers on Ganam discover that they still need to stay harmonized in order to understand the culture they discover there. The final story, "Another Story or The Fisherman of the Inland Sea," tells of a scientist from the planet of O who works on developing the churten drive, and how that forces him to sacrifice his possible life on his home planet. The story asks whether it was worth it, and comes up with a more complicated answer than you might expect.
I liked most of the stories I read in "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." they were interesting and very well-written. Leguin is an expert world-builder, creating alien cultures that seem like they could be real. I liked her little touches: the descriptions of the way marriages on O O(which are between four people) work and how the commander of the mission on "Dancing to Ganam," a childhood hero of the main character, is shown to be a flawed human being without having to make him secretly evil (which seems to be the fate of most childhood heroes in stories like this). I just all around liked them, and I'm going to make a point of reading mor LeGuin in the future
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