mostly harmless books

Yesterday, when I left home, I took Ally with me thinking I had about 20 pages to go, more than enough for the journey downtown. I finished the book unexpectedly, after about 5 pages, in a subway station. “Whoa! The ship left! Let’s see what happens next… Shit, the book’s over!” Who’d have thought a book has acknowledgments and editorial stuff at the end? Yeah, I’m a bit thick sometimes.

I thought of 2 or 3 titles before finally deciding on this one. I think it fits, because in the end, almost every character in the book is alien in a way. The wess’har, the eqbas, the bezeri, the isenj are the “classic” aliens. Little green men (squid, insects…) from Mars (Bezer’ej, Umeh…). But Shan, Eddie, the marines are also aliens. Shan was an alien even on Earth due to her unusual mentality; Eddie became an alien when he got attached to Wess’ej and a little matriarch-to-be.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was the wess’har amazement at the way humans conduct their affairs. Once you think about it, we don’t make much sense, and it’s very weird to hear it coming from an alien, completely innocently. It’s never judging, it’s simple curiosity: how can humans be so stupid? It’s a very refreshing change of perspective after all the SF based around “the human spirit” conquering all. Let’s face it, we’re screwing up our planet and fighting pointless wars, we probably shouldn’t be running loose around the galaxy.

But then… is genocide justified for environmental reasons? (more…)

Just random thoughts so far. I’d had (and ignored) City of Pearl by Karen Traviss for years when I was asked to read it and the following two books in the series, for work. I was pretty dissapointed with SF in general at the time, after a couple of much-praised books I didn’t like, so I was expecting to trudge through these. I was blown away.

It is classic SF in some aspects: we’ve got humans and aliens, FTL travel, high-tech guns and communications and everything… but it’s not Star Trek. First off, it’s got an environmental theme, which would’ve been enough to get me interested. But it’s also got ethical dilemmas that make you (well, me) really think. It’s got relationships (and alien sex! :D). It’s got drama. It’s got more moral dilemmas. It’s got a bunch of different characters, but I like them so much it’s impossible to decide on a favorite. It’s got a writer who, judging by her background (journalism, military-type stuff), knows what she’s writing about. And she does it in the most awesome British English!

I’m halfway through book 5 (Ally) at the moment and loving it. The only unfortunate thing is that I read the rest of the books almost a year ago and I’m realizing how many details I forgot…

It’s also a bit weird that a book about aliens and their thoughts can remind me so much of some of my friends.

Technically, it wasn’t on the road. I read the book in bed. But ‘in bed with Cormac McCarthy’ sounded too lame, and didn’t include the book title in an oh so clever pun (I wonder how many newspapers also used this title).

Last year I heard some guy called McCarthy won the Pulitzer. Good for him, now what’s for dinner? I don’t care for literary awards very much, my backlog of books is too big to let me worry about new things that don’t sound extraordinary.

But then a friend of mine (who knows about my love of books where half the population of the globe dies), told me it was a post-apocalyptic story - and a damn good one. Fast forward a couple of months later, I finally read The Road.

In short: I liked it. I didn’t love it.

It was scary sometimes, heartbreaking at others, intriguing at times… However, I missed some background. I’m sure this was the author’s intention, not to offer any clue about the catastrophe that left the States (the world?) almost deserted, but I wanted more clues. Maybe it’s a mainstream thing? If you explain it, it become SF, if you don’t, it’s “real literature”? It reminds me of Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, same kind of story of a cataclysm with no explanation whatsoever.
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I think it’s fitting that the first real entry on this blog should be about my favorite writer.

Last month’s reading highlight: I read Lord of Light and I liked it.

Why is that unusual? It needs a little (personal) history lesson.

I discovered Zelazny around 1996. I was 12 and I think me or my brother got Nine Princes in Amber (the translation) as a present at the end of the school year. I was already a voracious reader and had just started discovering speculative fiction via my parents’ collection (which included stuff like Dune and Foundation). So, I read Nine Princes in Amber and I loved it. Then re-read it. And again. I honestly think I must’ve read it 10 times. Thing is, 1996 Romania didn’t have two things that are important for me now: many SF/F books and internet. So it took me 7 or 8 years until I got online and found out there were 9 more books in the series! You can imagine my joy.

Anyway, back to the story. I determined that Zelazny was a very cool writer and set out to find more books by him. Until 2007, only four of his books were published here: Nine Princes in Amber, Lord of Light, Damnation Alley and This Immortal. (In 2007, Tritonic started publishing The Amber Chronicles and they’re up to book 6 at the moment.)

So I read Lord of Light (knowing that it was considered Zelazny’s best by many) and was dissapointed. I just couldn’t see what the fuss was about. A few years later, I read it in English (maybe something had been lost in the translation). Nope, the translation was fine, I just didn’t get it. Then, last month, I re-read the book as part of a book club and lo and behold, it was amazing!
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