Well, let me know if you like it…

I think I’m gonna pass on this one.

Let’s see, you spend your entire life defining yourself in terms of your relationship to another person, and when you finally realize this leaves you completely unfulfilled…it’s somehow *his* fault.  Next!

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

OK, someone please explain to me how Neal Stephenson is a best selling author in America.  The man writes these huge, complex, meandering thought experiment novels, that require good foundations in scientific thinking in order to be parsed and understood; like Stephen King writing XKCD.  This is a criticism, yes, but still, I quite like his books.  Usually (still haven’t managed to get all the way through Cryptonomicon.)  But I seriously don’t get how it’s possible that it’s not just me.   America’s been telling me for years that I’m a freak for liking stuff like this, that she likes it too just boggles me.

Not that you SHOULDN’T like Mr. Stephenson’s work, because you should.  And I have said so, so please start liking it now.  Thank you.  In all honesty, I’m glad that so many people DO like his books.  There’s a lot to like about them, and some of them are important books.  Anathem, in particular, is up for a Hugo this year.  (For the record, my Hugo prediction for best novel is Saturn’s Children, since three of the other four nominees are books I adore and the fourth is a book by a writer I quite like.  The Hugos have a long and distinguished career of being awarded to books I don’t like and don’t quite get.  Except when it gets awarded to books I like, in which case it’s perfectly valid for me to use it as justification of the books’ quality.)

(Seriously, I’m glad I’m not responsible for choosing between Anathem, The Graveyard Book and Zoe’s Tale as the best book of the year.  ’Cause I won’t, man, I just won’t.  They’re ALL good.)

Confession, I haven’t actually read Anathem.  Remembering my failure to finish Cryptonomicon (after three tries, no less), I figured I’d give it a whirl as an audiobook. Do you know what Anathem comes to as an audiobook?  Twenty-eight freaking CD’s, that’s what it comes to. Thirty-four freaking hours.  To contrast, I just looked up Cryptonomicon, which has a similar page count (918, to Anathem’s 937) and it comes up as almost 9 hours according to Audible. Which makes me wonder if the guy from the Jimmy John’s radio ads is reading it, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, this is a really long book.

Click here to see a trailer for the book.

Come back after you’ve read (or listened) to the book. 

When evaluating speculative fiction, I think it’s important to keep two things in mind.  One is what is being conveyed, the other is how well it is being conveyed.  Speculative fiction is the fiction of ideas, and as such should be evaluated primarily on the ideas presented; the ability of the book to communicate those ideas is secondary, but still vital.  Anathem is a book that succeeds in both criteria; it is both interesting and entertaining.

In Anathem, Mr. Stephenson posits a world in which those who are capable of sustained discourse on mathematics, science and reason are gathered up and fostered in concents where they spend their lives isolated from the saecular world and are carefully, mindfully trained to use their powers to the utmost. It is revealed that the ultimate result of this training is people capable of communicating across the multiverse, yet who are incapable of interacting with the majority of people on their own planet.

Interestingly, most of the people living in the concents appear to have some degree of Asperger syndrome (or, as Mr. Stephenson would have it, Attention Surplus Disorder); the core group’s “mascot,” Barb, being described in detail to convey that idea.  This personality trait, as it is perceived in Anathem’s universe, is not seen as a disability or a disorder; it is instead an asset to concent community. The concents are viewed, by the saeculars, as the proper fostering houses of (or dumping ground for) children with this personality trait. Given a culture that encourages their strengths and does not needlessly penalize their weaknesses, the children of the concents grow into strong, intelligent, integrated adults.

In the world of Anathem, the concents have been destroyed and rebuilt three times in the past, and the story of Anathem is the story of the fourth rebuilding.  The three prior rebuilds have all come at the insistence of the saecular world, who have sacked the concents out of fear of the developments made within their confines. The third sack occurred 3000 years before the beginning of the novel, and resulted in the greatest restrictions imposed on the concents by the saeculars.

To most of the people of the world of Arbre, what happens in Anathem is that some aliens show up, threaten Arbre, and a select group of the avout, including the protagonist, get shot into space, blow up the aliens’ biggest weapon, and then instigate peaceful negotiations with them.  Ironically, it is revealed that what happened may not be as clear-cut as all that, that in fact, the aliens were drawn to Arbre by actions taken 3000 years ago, during the third sack by the avout themselves.  The aliens are akin to Alan Moore’s squid monster in Watchmen, they are an outside threat brought in to disrupt the argumentative status quo of a contentious planet and foster a sense of unity between distrustful factions.  The initial appearance of the aliens causes a large contingent of the avout to be allowed to leave their various concents to join with saecular leaders to discuss what to do with about the aliens.  The discovery of purpose of this meeting (the convox) by the aliens leads to the creation of the antiswarm. All steps along the way involve the careful, peaceful insertion of the avout into the saecular world, and the end of the book describes the new style of consent, in which the mathic gates that once opened each year, decade, century and millennium are simply left open.

I find it intriguing that a novel that describes in great detail the benefits of creating a separate “thinking” culture concludes with the reintegration of that and the “active” culture into a new society. Presumably the assumption is that after 3000 years, the Mathic Society culture is strong enough to withstand the influence of the saecular culture. The Mathics are not convinced that the reintegration will last, they are preparing for the eventuality that it will not last, but ultimately, everything that happens in the book is set in motion to bring the reintegration about.

To return, for a moment, to the squid monster analogy, I find it interesting that Mr. Stephenson’s protagonists choose to employ this kind of deception to further their goals.  Is their cause just?  Are they more right to do so than Ozymandias, since they aren’t trying to save their world from imminent nuclear devastation, they are simply trying to free themselves of unreasonable oppression?  Or are they, in fact, planning on maintaining the deception?  The book is written in the first person, and the narrator specifically states at one point that he is writing the book with the possibility of it being read by aliens in mind.  And the avout themselves are not temperamentally inclined toward deception; frankly, it annoys them.  So, ultimately, who is Fraa Erasmus writing the book for?  The saeculars, to let them know how they have been deceived into accepting the avout as heroes?  The avout, to make sure that a large group of people who have difficulty engaging in deception are aware of how their new rights and responsibilities have been secured through deception?  Or the aliens, to let them know that they have been used for political gains by the people who encouraged them to leave their worlds in search of some mathematical heavenly ideal?

Also, if aliens show up in Earth space, and the only recognizable markings on the outside of their ships are a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, and they ask to speak to a representative of our planet, please don’t let anyone send the pope. Especially if we turn out to be living in a Neal Stephenson novel.

Philosophical quibbling over the morality of the ending aside, I really enjoyed this book.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

 

 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, byJunot Díaz

Let me start by stating that I have made a wonderful new discovery. In my personal hierarchy, I have four great loves: my goob, my cats, my books, and my jewelry. And I have found a great new way to combine two of them! That’s right, little jeweled collars for the cats! 

Oh, wait, that’s a different post. No, I’ve figured out how to combine books and jewelry making. Audiobooks! I have to admit that I was extremely reluctant to try audiobooks initially, because my hearing, or my auditory comprehension, I’m not sure which, isn’t always the greatest. (Seriously, if there’s such a thing as auditory dyslexia, I have a touch of it, to go with the large basket of other dyses I’ve been handed.) But one of the women at my book club constantly raves about how much she likes them, so I figured that, since I’m always looking for a something to occupy my brain while I’m beading, I’d give them a shot. I have to say, the experiment has been successful.

I picked up The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on, as usual for me, a recommendation from Amazon (there is something extremely satisfying about having a computer program tell me what science fiction books I should read, there really is.) It was recommended as a companion to Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World. I’m not really sure why, other than the fact that the two books are narrated by men almost reluctant to enter their own story. It’s a good book, an interesting book. It is not a speculative fiction book, it’s proper genre is ethnic fiction. It explores, in excruciating and loving detail, the culture of the Dominican Republic and the culture of the American male geek. If you’re a geek, read it for the geek culture. If you aren’t a geek, read it for the history.

To me, the book read as a treatise on the psychology of escapism. Each of the characters whose lives are explored spend a good portion of honestly unpleasant lives desperately trying to get to be somewhere else, somewhere better purely by the mechanism of wishing to be there.

Interestingly, in a book about two such very male-dominated cultures, it is the women in the book who both learn and teach that change, real change, is an action, and not a reaction.

 

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union; Michael Chabon

Yeah, I know, I miss a Monday post the Monday after promising myself I’d be more consistent about posting on Mondays. Apparently I’m slow about this whole “Discordian” thing. Anyway, a Friday post. And I’ll even make it a book post. Since the book in question is the reason there wasn’t a Monday post. See, this was the book that was responsible for the fact that there was no Monday post.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was this month’s selection for my speculative fiction reading group. Because of time constraints, the group met a week earlier than usual. Let me give you a word of advice, if you DO pick this book up, do NOT attempt to read it in three weeks. (Of course, the boyfriend, who is much more interested in the mystery genre, in which this book muchly, if not mostly, falls, has read half of it in 2 days. But we knew he was brain damaged.)

This is a good book. It is, in very many ways, a VERY good book. I do recommend it. And I do this in spite of the fact that it’s not really a “me book,” and there are quite a few things I dislike about it.

I am stating for the record, that from this point forward you can expect spoilers in this post.

Reasons why I really like the internet…

Finding one site just leads you to finding another one, and so on…

My newest find is The Gods of Arr-Kelaan. Ordinary folks like us suddenly find themselves on another world, possessed of God-like powers. I’m completely enthralled.

So, in the event this happens to you, what do you think you’d end up being the god of? I don’t think I’d actually go for chaos. Yeah, I wander around the internet calling myself eris, but that’s more of a nod to the entity I KNOW is planning my life than anything else. If anything, I’d go for being the goddess of Balance. That’d be cool. But I’d probably end up being the goddess of Crotchetiness.  Anyone want dibs on the cool spheres of influence?

What I disliked about Twilight, et al. (Stephanie Meyer)

What I disliked about Twilight.

 

I’ll be honest here, Twilight had to be a much better book than it was to get me to like it. I don’t like vampire fiction, and I utterly LOATHE the trite and horribly over-used reformed bad-boy “oh, but he’s the GOOD vampire!” nonsense. Also, I’m 34. I truly doubt I’m in any way the intended audience. But I tried to give it a fair shot. I made it most of the way through the first book in the series. I finally bailed, and wiki-ed the plot lines for the rest. Nope, not a series for me.

 

I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of brutally hating Stephanie Meyer for this series. But I do feel like articulating some of the points raised in the series that I disliked.

 

This MEANS something. It HAS to.

OK, let’s get it out there. I like speculative fiction*.

I am of a bent of mind that, in most cases, values stories that have an intellectual impact over stories that have an emotional impact. Doesn’t mean I don’t like my fiction to *have* emotional impact. It just means I read for the intellectual impact first.

Being an American at the age of 34, this means that I have grown up in a culture in which the the hobby that I enjoy the most, which brings most pleasure and, yes, MEANING to my life is generally considered to be infantile, childish, or at best, immature. And because this is the way it works in human societies, it is considered perfectly acceptable for any person who dislikes any form of speculative fiction to have an opinion on the quality and significance of any piece of speculative fiction, without having read it, or read about it, or even without having even heard of it before. Because if the piece is speculative fiction, it is warm and cozy, but not really important. Unless it’s a classic of literature. Because then it’s not speculative fiction anymore. It’s literature.

And since I’m putting that previous paragraph up out there for the rest of the world to read, I’m gonna go ahead and say it now, before you have to… yes, I do have a chip on my shoulder about this. I really, really do. Hey, I have to have SOME character flaws, don’t I? Again, spec. fic. is much more important to me than literature usually is to people who don’t actually make a living off of the stuff. I’ve recently joined a spec. fic. discussion group at my local library. At one point, after making a point about the book under discussion that linked up to three other books in two other distinct genres, one of the ladies in the group turned to me and said, “Wow, you really read a lot, don’t you?” Heck, I read more fiction that the boyfriend, and he reads at least twice as fast as I do.

Now, the funny thing is, I’ve been seeing the tide turn on this. Personally, I think the real turning point is the automatic inclusion of fantastic fiction by people from developing countries (also known as “magical realism”) as ”literature.” Once you start reading stories about guys who survive falls from airplanes and turn into satanic/angelic avatars**, are you really that unwilling to read a book comparing all the different ways one can define identity once cloning and brain recording become economically feasible***? OK, maybe you are. It’s alright. It’s not condescending at ALL to the people of developing nations to declare that fiction by natives of those countries is automatically better because of the country of origin of the author.

Or maybe it’s the number of people who grew up reading good comic books (God bless you, Alan Moore!) who are now adults and, get this, still reading comic books! And getting others to read them, too!

Or maybe it’s the development of CGI, which has made the “production quality” of speculative fiction movies so much higher.

Or maybe I’m not so much of a mutant freak as I think I am. Yeah, OK, that’s just crazy talk.

Whatever the reason, the tide IS turning. Spec. fic. is getting itself mainstreamed. And the good writers, the REALLY good writers in the many, many genres that spec. fic. encompasses are starting to get the respect that they’ve really deserved for a long time now.

And today, I think I’ve found the most conclusive proof of my theory to date. New Scientist, which covers many aspects of science, from the ridiculous to the sublime, asked several science fiction writers, including Margaret Atwood, whether or not they felt science fiction**** was dying. And, instead of running away from them yelling, “Handmaid’s Tale isn’t science fiction! I write LITERATURE,” she responded. And even referred to one of her own books as being… science fiction. A woman who has spent long years distancing herself from the genre is suddenly embracing it… well, it’s just another good sign in my mind.*****

*To those who don’t like the term, “speculative fiction,” I really don’t care. First, because use of the phrase “speculative fiction” has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the of this post. Second, because so much of the stuff I read is cross-genre these days it’s impossible to clearly label it science fiction, fantasy, etc. Seriously. Sherri S. Tepper, anyone? Where there’s space ships and people are doing magic and saying it’s not magic (by a seriously restricted definition of “magic,”) and oh, yeah, there really are gods?

** The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

*** Mindscan, by Robert J. Sawyer

**** Oddly enough, New Scientist has published several articles about how the mainstreaming of science fiction means that science fiction is dying. Obviously I disagree with this premise. I think this point of view is the other side of the argument that “well, if it’s speculative fiction, it’s not literature, and so if it’s literature it’s not speculative fiction any more.” For someone at New Scientist, it doesn’t matter if an intellectually stimulating story about the changes technology imposes on society; “if it’s mainstream, it’s not science fiction, and so if it’s science fiction it’s not mainstream anymore.” To some people, it’s REALLY IMPORTANT what section of the library they go into. Me, I’m just there to get books.

***** I would like to point out that my opinion of the author in question has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my opinion of her writing. Her writing is very, very good. She is a superb author. I’m willing to allow for outbreaks of Asshole Writer Syndrome, as long as it doesn’t start seeping into the books they write. And yes, yes I do still read, enjoy and recommend books by Orson Scott Card.

The Host; Stephanie Meyer

Again, go read the book before reading further here. I know it’s a big book. that’s part of its appeal. It’s good. I’m telling you it’s good. Go read it. Just don’t drop it on a cat. ‘Cause, you know, OUCH.

The fiction section

Read this post for a full explanation of the fiction section

Terrier (A Legend of Tortall); Tamora Pierce

I just finished this. Entertaining and interesting. (And, man, do I feel old… I just found out her first book came out 25 years ago…). Click here for a complete listing of Tamora Pierce’s books.

To discuss the book, and its ending, read on.