mostly harmless books

I finished The Dispossessed a week or so ago. I still don’t like Ursula K. LeGuin so much, but I realized the difference 10 years make. Reading stuff like this at ~14 left me with a big “WTF” since I didn’t know what she was talking about and there’s no real story. (Guy lives on a planet, guy goes live on a different planet, guy runs off… wow, fascinating… not.) I really appreciated the balanced view. Everyone’s free to draw their own conclusions, but neither Urras or Annares were made to seem better. All societies have flaws…

The idea of an invented language being used on a large scale like that seemed exagerrated at first (and didn’t feel completely justified in the end either), but the non-possession was interesting to witness in speech. “The mother” instead of “my mother” is weird.

And now I am blown away for the second time by Vellum. Unless you’re a genius (or are able to pay more attention that me), the book begs for a re-read. I am getting more of the parallels than the first time around. However, since I’m almost done and I’m leaving on holiday tomorrow, I won’t take it with me. Carrying a trade paperback for 100 pages’ reading is too much, and I doubt I can read Ink without google at my fingertips. So they shall have to wait for a week a so until I can devote my full attention too all those cultural and historical references.
(It’s funny I love books I don’t understand… and it’s funny - as in weird - that I can read for an hour about the 1919 Battle of George Square because it’s mentioned in about 5 pages of a book but I stay as far away from alternate histories as I can.)

Thanks to the lovely BoingBoing and Cory Doctorow, I occasionally end up on a podcast/audiobooks website and download all the cool-sounding fiction I can get my grubby virtual hands on. I’m not really into podcasts, but I’ve found a couple of nice places - StarShipSofa and EscapePod, plus SFFAudio which has links to many places. And, for someone who loves accents, listening to Starship’s Tony Smith is very fun (like a puzzle! “now what did he say here?”)

So yesterday, finding myself without a bus book, I listened to stories - one from EscapePod, several from StarShipSofa.

First up was Elizabeth Bear’s Tideline. It’s about death and mourning and new life. And a robot and a kid. Chalcedony is the last of her (human) plutoon, a broken down battle robot that devotes the rest of her existence to creating a memorial to her dead companions and, unexpectedly, protecting a young boy. Another story of the robot-that-develops-a-heart? Yes and no. Every action can be explained by the laws of robotics - Bear’s, if not Asimov’s. A robot protects humans. A robot learned how humans honor their dead. A robot learned about the importance of remembering.

I wasn’t expecting to like a robot story so much, but I did. And although Arthurian myth might sound out of place, it fits right in.

Second, the SSS podcast.

Poetry: Greg Betty - Bottles
I didn’t even realize this was a poem, I thought it was a very short story. A bit of a different take on the “ships in bottles” idea.

Flash Fiction: Atalanta Pendragonne - Moon Over Baton Rouge
Another different take, this time dealing with vampires. A fun little story I enjoyed a lot. (But, really, that name?! Why?)

Article: Matthew Sanborn Smith - Jim Sawgrass
I never had any particular interest in genealogy or genetics, but this guy has a lot of free time on his hands and the short overview of how we’re all really related and how no family is really older than each other and how migration influences genealogy was really fascinating. He’s also funny, which made it even better.

Main Fiction: Paul Di Filippo - Bad Beliefs
I’d heard about Paul Di Filippo, never read anything by him as far as I can recall, and I got this podcast for the Jeff Carlson bit, so I had no particular interest in the fiction. But… boy was it cool. I never got what memes were (except for those annoying tags on blogs), but in here they’re personifications of… ideas? There’s “Drunk driving is safe” and “I’ll never die” and “Fuck the police” and another dozen or so embodiments of good and bad beliefs. Mostly bad, like the title says. The idea might be old, but it was new and exciting for me. I hope I’ll be able to track down a text copy of this, because I kept drifting off and I missed some parts, which is too bad for such an interesting and fun story.

On The Sofa With Jeff Carlson
This actually wasn’t as interesting as I was hoping. I’m sort of currently reading Carlson’s Plague Year and I was curious about the author, but I’d already read his bio so there was nothing really new. I might listen to it once I finish the book(s), because it might be better learning about his sources of inspiration after I finish reading.

And since we’re on internet stuff, Afterworld is an awesome post-apocalyptic animated series which can be watched online (on on AXN if they have it in your country).

To finish off on a positive note, my boyfriend informs me that Big Bang will happen again in 9 days and I should read Forever Peace. Plus: we won’t have to go to work anymore. Minus: we won’t get to go on holiday. I really want to go to Spain, so I hope the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t kill us all. At least not before October 4th.

I started Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep almost accidentally. I was at the seaside and I had finished my other 2 books, so my boyfriend lent me his (or, as he said later, “I got this for you because I’d known you’d run out of reading material and start whining”).

My previous encounters with space opera had been less than fortunate. I tried to like Dan Simmons’ Hyperion books (and failed); I copyedited Peter F. Hamilton Pandora’s Star and almost fell asleep several times. But now I know what the problem was: not the space opera, but the politics and innumerable characters.

A Fire Upon the Deep has two plotlines and just a handful of characters, and at about 900 pages in my edition Vinge has more than enough time to focus on each and every one. No complex politics of some huge galactic federation, no dozen of characters each on another planet. The novel gives you a sense of the size of the Universe, actually; civilizations and species come and go, and on the universal scale, it’s the norm, not a tragedy. How could one destroyed planet be important when thousands have dissapeared before? Makes you feel insignificant, really.

Quick summary before I go on: evil entity (aka the Blight) comes to life and starts swallowing up civilizations; one ship with 2 humans and 2 aliens race against their many enemies to try to destroy it, while the Countermeasure is on a planet on the verge of war.

I admit much of the (pseudo?) scientific stuff was boring at times; fortunately, understanding it was not very important for understanding the story, as long as you got the basic idea that the Universe is made up of zones where the properties of physics are different so civilizations can develop in ways we can only imagine (since the Earth is in one of the “slowest” areas).

The characters aren’t its strong point, either. After 900 pages you know little to nothing about their past - or much about their thoughts and wishes. There’s a bit of a love story, but it’s not too convincing, there’s some drama which is better… but the worldbuilding and the adventures are truly impressive. And, for me, the planet of the Tines is one of the most interesting fictional places I ever read about.

The Tines are a race of dog-like creatures with a collective mind. Each Tine is actually a pack of several members who are only intelligent when together; they cannot get too close to another pack (except for sex) because their thoughts get mixed up, they cannot spread their members too far apart or they lose intellectual capacity. Add this to a conquest war in a medieval setting with one human child on each side and you get a page turner… the 900 pages won’t seem that much anymore.

I found the fictional society of the Tines fascinating; the concept was original and Vinge explored it in many ways, making the Tines feel very human and very alien at the same time. It’s no small feat that he made me care more about “dogs” than the human characters.

The rest is interesting, too, although at some point it becomes clear what will happen.. Even though it was the main plotline (after all, the Universe was in danger), I felt the Blight and Countermeasure were secondary to the war and scheming on the planet of the Tines. Maybe because things on a human (well, alien) scale are easier to perceive. Or because one of the climaxes of the book was more difficult to predict. Anyway, the result was that I kept reading on to see what would become of the packs, not to learn the fate of the Universe. Individuals are more interesting than abstract concepts.

I could go on, but writing about such a large book in a couple of hundred words is difficult to impossible, and I am tired, so I’ll leave it at this. If you don’t generally like space opera, this is the way to start. I don’t like the idea of “intergalactic adventures”, it makes me think of Star Wars silliness (yes, blasphemy, I don’t like Star Wars), but this is an adventure and it takes place at FTL speed and it’s great.

(Last in the www.nemira.ro campaign Scrie ca sa primesti… o carte, which ends today.)

[Part 1]
I stopped just before this story for a reason: it was the reason I got this anthology and, like I suspected, it turned out to be my favorite. It started out (for me) on Larry’s blog, where I learned of another reviewer who had a… let’s say “less than positive” opinion of Margo Lanagan’s The Goosle. Apparently the anthology was aimed at a young public (why? just because some stories feature kids?) and a retelling of Hansel and Gretel with some gay forced relations in it makes it somehow not worthy.

Personally, I thought the story was very well done. I have a soft spot for retold fairy tales, I admit it, and this was a particularly good one. Hansel and Gretel gone bad, without Gretel but with an abusive (older?) man, plus a grim realization concerning the “real” fate of Gretel (what reality means when we’re comparing make-believe stories… I don’t know). One of the “complaints” was that, in one particular fragment, the author supposedly suggests sexual abuse might be ok, or that it was put there purely for shock value. The quote is over on Larry’s blog so I won’t paste it here again. Shock value? Well, it is shocking, but it does add to the story. A lot. Sexual abuse ok? Uh, if a person questions whether the abuse might be a normal thing it’s not saying it is normal. What about all those battered women who think it’s “a part of life”? Does that make it ok in any way?

So, long story short, since I have a bunch of other stories I want to write about: The Goosle rocks and everything fits perfectly.

Lavie Tidhar - Shira. Seeing as it’s been a month or so since I read the book, the details are fading. I do rememeber that the story didn’t impress me that much, though. It wasn’t a bad tale by any means, just… it didn’t stay with me. I did read it in a fitting moment, though. A story about travel read while traveling.

Barry N. Malzberg - The Passion of Azazel. One word: weird. Since I don’t know much about golems (the only related book I read was a Discworld novel…) or anything else Jewish for that matter… I won’t comment much. It was interesting but I failed to see the point, in the end.

Laird Barron - The Lagerstätte. One of the best stories in the antho, even if it might not even be speculative fiction, depending on how you look at it: woman delusional from grief or woman who can perceive more than other people? The story is half-told through the therapist sessions of Danni, who lost her husband and child in a plane crash and starts to believe there is a way she could be reunited with them. There’s no end, so we never do find out what ultimately happens. And that’s alright.

Anna Tambour - Gladiolus Exposed. Fantasy? Science fiction? No. What’s it doing in this book? Don’t know. A good enough story about a failing relationship, but I kept expecting the supernatural occurence and it didn’t show up. The gladiolus is a bone, by the way. And the writer has a beautiful name.

Jeffrey Ford - Daltharee. Ford is one of the few writers in here I had read before, so I knew what to expect. Naturally, my hopes were met: Daltharee is science fiction with a fantasy feel, and it’s damn good. Ships built in bottles are fascinating, but Ford builds a city inside one. Or rather his scientists do. Then they screw it up a bit. One of the best parts of the story are the fragments where we get to see the lives of the people in Daltharee. Almost like us, but not quite.

Pat Cadigan - Jimmy. This is probably my second favorite, even though I can’t put my finger on the “why”. Maybe because I wasn’t expecting to like it. Pat Cadigan says “cyberpunk” to me, and I don’t like that. Jimmy, however, isn’t even remotely close to cyberpunk. It’s about one of those kids who go from foster family to foster family and never quite fit in, and the one person who is his friend. But here the explanation isn’t the environment or abuse or education: it’s supernatural and it’s very cool.

Paul McAuley and Kim Newman - Prisoners of the Action. The best way to describe this is “fun”. It’s got the Army and aliens and tinfoil hats and a main character who never seems to get enough sleep and lots of bullets. It doesn’t take itself seriously and it’s just awesome.

A friend was saying that judging by the first part of my not-really-review it didn’t look like I enjoyed the book so much… well, it’s because all the best stories were at the end.

Lots of thanks go to Ellen Datlow who sent a book to some girl on the internet and impressed the hell out of her :)

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy almost missed its encounter with me, thanks to the incompetents at the post office. Fortunately, after postponing a trip and pleading with a lady, my precious envelope was rescued from the “to be returned” pile.. and boy, was it good timing. I was about to embark on a long train ride, so any book would’ve been welcome; but this proved to be more than “any book”.

I haven’t exactly read many anthologies, but most have been half-hit, half-miss. In this case, the misses were just a few.

The customary story by story review/opinions follows.

Jason Stoddard - The Elephant Ironclads. This seemed to require some knowledge of US history and geography, so I don’t think I got it all, and since I don’t want to give the plot away I won’t say much. Dinetah is a small country (?) somewhere on the border between the US and Mexico, which became independent with the aid of the legendary Elephant Ironclads. Two local (Native American) boys want to make a better life for themselves. I liked the glimpses of culture you could get - for example, the Dine gods live in the earth and look to the sky.

Lucy Sussex - Ardent Clouds. Not really fantasy, unless you consider two events connected; nevertheless, I enjoyed the story very much. My favorite aspect was probably the new love the main character (almost) finds (although it might shock some people, I think it’s very well potrayed). Plus, chasing volcanos sounds like a very interesting job.

Christopher Rowe - Gather. This is a weird one. I’m not sure I liked it. It’s incomplete. I read it twice and found new clues. It’s frustrating to not learn any answer. But… it’s part of a series of stories of a reconfigured Kentucky; I am dying to read more and I haven’t been able to find any. The story itself didn’t impress me that much, but the world seems absolutely fascinating. When Rowe publishes a collection of stories set in this world, I am so buying it.

Elizabeth Bear - Sonny Liston Takes the Fall. I don’t care about boxing, I’d never heard of Sonny Liston before, I don’t feel like re-reading the story. Not my cup of tea at all.

Nathan Ballingrud - North American Lake Monsters. Even though it does have a supposed monster, it’s a tale of relationships - father-daughter, husband-wife. I didn’t really understand what the monster had to do with anything, and what happened in the end.

Carol Emshwiller - All Washed Up While Looking for a Better World. Weird. In a bad way. I’d read her novel Carmen Dog before and I had the same reaction. I can’t put my finger on it, but I didn’t like any of them - but didn’t dislike them either. It’s probably the unusual mix of the real world with something that looks familiar, but isn’t, with no attempt to explain it. A woman wants to run from her life and go to a remote island, but what she finds there is not what she was expecting. The character acted in ways I just didn’t get.

Maureen F. McHugh - Special Economics. The only story set in China, a country I don’t find particularly interesting. It reminded me of Geoff Ryman’s Air, probably because the Asian setting and two characters that shared a similar profession. This vague resemlance aside, the story is very… rewarding. Two girls screw the system without any special skills. I just wonder how speculative it is… I can see most of the events happening today.

Richard Bowes - Aka St. Mark’s Place. A bit confused about this one. A guy whose work involves tracking down runaways. A boy who can partially see the future. And a girl, of course. Plus the way their lives keep intersecting. Interesting, but something was missing.

[Part 2]