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Bug's Book-Bites 2013
Archangel Protocol by Lyda Morehouse
- 3.5/5The year is 2076. A quarter century before, the dropping of Medusa bombs in a global world caused havoc - followed by a resurgence in religious beliefs and aversion to secular science. A new world where most people in the world are linked by the LINK systems embedded in their skulls, but which resents a government favoring science over religion, and thus, in their eyes, war over peace.
Deidrei, an ex-cop suspended from her job and excommunicated by the Catholics for her possible involvement in the assassination of the Pope is now hired just before election time by Archangel Michael to expose to the world that Archangels, who appear only on LINK, are but technical constructs. But are they? Or are they real angels adapting themselves to technology?
Like many wonderful works, this is one I have mixed feelings about. On certain levels, it is an absolute delight - the subtexts of a work are what lend it a depth beyond that of the obvious plot. Morehouse delicately brushes against a variety of issues with gentle irony – political lines divided over versions of religion, some controversial issues of celibacy and LGBT traits and its acceptability in the Catholic religion, and its curious mix of Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions and characters, their fates all entwined with each other as people and politicians.
This novel is perhaps a lot more accessible to those familiar with the Bible or the Torah, since these two dominate and dictate the theological part of the story.
The most obvious theme of the novel was the confluence of highly advanced technology and a theocratic world, and I was expecting a stimulating ideological novel through this intersection, especially when informed by politics. Something philosophical, perhaps, on the lines of H.G.Wells, or perhaps a Mievillian slant – but as the story progresses, the brilliant scope for an exposition on these lines is wasted and this becomes a mere techno-thriller.
This is, perhaps, despite being written in the 21st century, closer to classic cyberpunk in many ways than feminist cyberpunk ever was even in the ‘90s. While it does slightly touch upon real-life issues, it refrains from backing up its own controversial statements, and towards the latter part of the work, evacuates itself entirely from such concerns and is solely focused upon the primary thriller plot. Perhaps Philip K. Dick, I think in retrospect, did a far better work in The Divine Invasion in terms of holding on the readers’ interest.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
- 4/5Wordy – the first word that comes to mind when I reflect upon this work. It is long… at 650 pages, it is a monstrosity of a novel, and is filled with words that would have given Shakespeare a run for his vocabulary. It is detailed, beautiful, haunting and gothic with impressive and exquisite world-building. It is dark, compelling and coldly reflects on our squalid lives in an unprecedented way.
Bizarre - the next thing I think of to describe this – it is weird with its god-knows-how-Mieville-thought-them-out characters and races that form the population of the bustling city. Its logic is rational, alright, but it is mind-bogglingly detailed – the slakemoths, their unusual food, the perversity of Motley, the home of the Cactacae, the Construct Council (minds without dreams), the Weaver and his endless dreamy monologues (akin to the famous Lucky’s speech). Every detail, every nuance, every intention and act is bizarre, yet impressively fleshed out in real-time values, alien-yet-comprehensible ways, all tied up with each other lucidly.
The first in the Bas-Lag trilogy, Perdido Street Station is a curious mix of fantasy and steampunk – I’d rather say it is a grand tale, and the city itself, the New Crobuzon city is it’s heart – a swarming metropolis with its filth and scum, its variety of minority population jostling for survival in the squalor of ghettoes, eking out a living by community ties that defy rationality, living by their own legends and myths, its own repertoire of outcasts and misfits – a city that revels in its decadence, festers and reeks of its squalid characters.
"moves from the industrial to the residential to the opulent to the slum to the underground to the airborne to the modern to the ancient to the colorful to the drab to the fecund to the barren... You take my point. I won’t go on."
In Mieville’s hands, the city is a living thing, a pulsating being – a setting affecting and being affected by its characters – feeding upon and fed by its airs… the setting is not a silent spectator to the events, but an active participant.
It is in this city that all his weird population breathes – the vodyanoi, the cactacae, the khepris, all humans cross-bred with unimaginable things, grudgingly co-existing with normal humans and Remade humans (humans punished for a crime into remaking themselves), in this surreal city reminiscent of early Industrial Revolution London – its stink, its squalor, its preposterousness, its possibilities – a ripe place for all degradations to fester – drugs, crime, slums, mafia and the ruthless militia.
In this grimy city, Isaac, a normal human lives as an anomaly, an outcast scientist spending his days in thinking up theories – while his khepri (read crossbred) lover artist Lin, equally outcast and an anomaly, lives in another part of the city, pursues her art for which Khepris are renowned. Yagharek, a garuda from Cymek, his wings torn off as a punishment for his Cymek second-degree choice-theft crime, approaches Isaac, pleading him to make him fly again and in the pursuit of this, arises the story where a lab-specimen goes out of control.
Does it sound like a cheap, Evolution (the movie) kind of regular stuff? Yes, but only that it is not. It is a heart-breaking tale of love and hatred, of human failings and betrayal, stinking of our own cultural ghettos and prejudices, shining with bits of hope and valor, of the weird form of justice that we mete out to others. There are no heroes in the conventional sense – the protagonists grow as individuals, like they do in classic literature – and yet, they are flawed.
Yagharek is the most impressive character, moving from a tormented, timid, fearful, guilt-ridden garuda to his transformation into a warrior filled with valor and depth, to his ultimate discovery of his own self. Isaac, the scientist, torn between duty and justice. Lin, oh poor Lin…. If Yagharek is the most well-rounded character, Lin is the most tragic one.
If you do not like descriptions, detailed world-building, or atmosphere-building, and are more story-oriented, destination-targetting reader, this book is not for you. The city, with all its filth, is absolutely essential to the understanding of the characters – strip off New Crobuzon, or skim-read most of the descriptions and you won’t understand the motivations of the characters. The gothic city is as much a living, breathing creature as the characters themselves.
Every iota imagined serves a purpose – it is not an adornment or a cheap device to imagine and present something new – it is part of the evolution of the new place itself. It is the result of adaptation to the new world, without which it cannot survive. Which is why, despite the grossness of some elements, it cannot be denied its utility, its necessity to the plot. The gore is not for shock-value. It is a part of the city itself, it has evolved and survived, despite of, and due to its ugliness, its deformity. - Remade people, cactus people, khepris, vodyanoi – communities of cross-bred humans.
The novel has a dream-like quality – the conscious rendered incomprehensible by the subconscious. Dreams are the portals to our hidden thoughts – and this novel is structured like a dream – unfolding itself through patterns at first haphazard, then slowly revealing their design, starting from the absurd to reveal its stunning simplicity.
What seems weird in his work is not actually weird, but the absurd that seems to make no sense at first, only to reveal a pattern of cleverly hidden clear meanings beneath its absurdity. The familiar shrouded beneath the garb of weird metaphors and absurd worlds, the politics of today “remade” into something new – less recognizable, but more hard-hitting.
It has to be one of the most amazing works of fiction I have ever read – it is such a curious combination of fantasy, steampunk setting and serious literature, it, like the rest of Mieville’s repertoire, is impossible to pin down to one genre or one characteristic or distinctive feature – it simply refuses to be effectively pigeon-holed into our drab generalizations. It wears the Weird label with pride, and cannot yet be dismissed as being NOT literary.
For all my loquacity, then, why not FIVE stars? Well, I told you it’s wordy, and it is tiring, of course, even if it is important to read through it. And bugs – ah, too many bugs, and at the end, I feel a bit creepy… If you do not mind too many bugs and loads of detailing of this noir world, go ahead, it deserves a FIVE STAR.
Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh
- 4/5This is going to be one of those works dearest to my heart - not because they are stimulating, nerve-challenging or fast enough to make my heart race. No, this is far from traditional SF - the plot is of no importance here, nor the characters - what matters is the world and how difficult it makes life for those who question its ways.
What makes this novel stand out for me is its setting - it is so rare to see the future in a place that no one has bothered to look at, as if the future will not have it - Morocco.
In the 22nd century, Hariba got jessed at twenty-one - a neurological implant that would make her artificially, but inescapably subservient to her master for life, to whom she would be a slave. Five years later, she flees to her home, Nekropolis - an act that could cost her her life, because it is illegal for a slave to flee her master. Even more scandalous, she bids a harni Akhmim, a bio-engineered being equal in status to a jessed human, a cyborg, a lesser-than-human and the property of her ex-master, to flee with her.
What is disturbing about this simple work is how realistically it looks at a future fundamentalist theocratic state in command of immense technology - and how it marginalizes certain people through the use of invasive technology. Hariba, despite her repulsion for a socially-despised harni, falls for his intelligence, soft, concerned temperament.
Maureen's political concerns are evident - the idea of a chemically indentured woman in an ultra-conservative future and how we willingly tend to give up freedom for security and safety are intriguing, and reflect largely on our own times, despite being set in the future. She allows no easy answers, and the farther our freedom is, the steeper is its price.
When you read this book, don't expect adventures, twists and turns or fantastic writing skills. Read between the lines - this is ideological SF - it penetrates our own views of life, of what it means to be human, and reflects on how a current political, social, traditional and moral ideology has an impact on the choices we make. Our choices are not mere reflections of our own selves, but that of the place and community we live in.
A very short read, nevertheless, it is heart-breaking and liberating at the same time, and will be most easily related to by people who find themselves misfits in their cultures.
Faust 2.0 by Michael Brookes
- 5/5Impeccable.
It has become one of my favorite cyber-mystery novels. A far cry from the stock-thrillers who unabashedly trail behind clichéd plots and characters and situations, Brookes has penned a very different kind of work that is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s themes with astounding clarity of thought and a lucid, impeccable, swift but precise narration. This work is worth more than it costs.
The plot conception is fantastic, as well as challenging – that of a virtual entity born into the Internet, unleashing its wrath upon humans through their own creations – through malware, manipulating them and leading them to what it saw as their justified ends.
What is interesting is the kind of characters the virtual entity picks as its victims, and how they meet their destined ends – each character is suitably differently fleshed out, with distinct vulnerabilities, which is why even after we recognize the pattern of the virtual entity, the story always is new – and hair-raising. Brookes deftly weaves a background of each character that seamlessly merges with its present – and most importantly, refrains from over-doing it, unlike many other novelists who wish to force us to sympathize with all their characters. Brookes knows where to stop – and a measured brevity is a rare commodity these days.
The end is absolutely intriguing, not at all the way I had speculated, and I hate to admit that I’m waiting eagerly for the next in the series to know what choice will be made. And that reminds me of the title, including the title of the series – it is a seductive hint of what is to come, but only a hint – not a revelation, which is titillating.
Overall, it is a splendid read – the writing is absolutely impeccable, the plot well-developed, the characters have a depth that in no way interferes with the basic story and yet makes us suitably empathize with their lives. As for the hacking/cyber part, only a geek can truly judge the credibility of the processes shown – but for a non-geek who doesn’t understand hacking, fortunately, it takes away none of the joys of reading – after all, we know already the perpetrators and the victims – what holds us captivated is how the drama unfolds.
I thought Brookes only writes marvelous drabbles – 100 word short horror stories – I loved the ones that I read from An Odd Quartet - it is not surprising he shows the same deftness in a novel – it is sheer pleasure to read a work that I cannot find fault with.
It is free till tomorrow - http://www.amazon.com/Faust-2-0-Morto...and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faust-2-0-Mor...
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
- 4/5A dystopian short story by Vonnegut, it describes an eerie world where everyone is equal in every way - or rather, forced to be absolutely equal. The story is centered on the parents of Harrison Bergeron, who is forcibly taken away by the State for being above average in brains and beauty.
The actual story is of little consequence here - Vonnegut's strengths lie in his ability to tear apart our hearts in a matter of minutes. The anguish of his parents is heart-breaking, and the recurring sounds in the ears of his father at every 20 seconds leave the reader disturbed like hell. Vonnegut needs exactly 5 minutes to make us feel the way we do after reading the entire length of 1984 - even without a strong story.
Yet, I infinitely prefer 2BR02B to this - this one is but a pale shadow of the other. In short, Vonnegut is a genius.
Memories With Maya by Clyde Dsouza
- 3/5The basic premise of this work is what appeals to readers of serious SF - interrogating how advanced science would eventually tweak not only our way of working, but also our dearly-held beliefs, our sense of ethics and consequently, our long-attested attributes of what makes us human.
I love SF where the technology has bearings on our life as we know it, and the work scores pretty well on that count. The concept of WIZER, the fusion of Augmented Reality and AI was well-thought out in terms of possibilities. It appeals to our hearts that, with advanced tech, will someday battle with our cultural dilemmas.
However, there were some things which didn't appeal to me much - for instance, I found the narrative too slow - it was only a little after half the book was over that the tech shown therein began to serve its true purpose - turns out that the first-half of the book, essentially, is the pre-preparation for the main premise. I would have loved this book really if the first-half of the book had been covered in one-fourth, and left the rest three-fourths to investigate more into how future-tech will alter our perspective on life and death - or if this had been a short-story - it would have been hard-hitting then.
Also a bit jarring were the mundane dialogues, regarding the details of the tech, which I think, could have been more precise and would have left more scope for examining the moral issues that follow futuristic tech.
Overall, I'd say it was a good read - I appreciate the non-commercial angle of looking at SF, the literary slant, but I found it rather slow, with the main premise not explored deep enough. The lack of an action-plot is not an issue at all, but then, the philosophical aspect must be given more space and depth. I liked the second part of the book, but I'm not so sure about the first-half. But I'd think it is more about lack of editing skills here than lack of real talent.
You've devoured all the books in no time. I would rather call you a big monster. :D
:D Maybe it's time I should call myself Lit Monster ;P
Point Apocalypse by Alex Bobl
- 4.5/54.5 Stars
This one was again an extremely good work in the techno-thriller action genre - I was constantly reminded of the Bourne Series (movie, not book). Compared to Memoria. A Corporation of Lies, however, there is less ideological SF, more action SF. Yet, if one is not specifically looking for how science will change our perception of humanity, and instead enjoys techno-thrillers, this one is definitely a great pick.
The writing, as in the other book, is crisp, sharp and devoid of melodrama or sentimental crap. The plot is extremely well-thought out, the execution flawless, the characters credible, and as usual, the suspense extremely well-maintained. Like the other book, I loved that his female characters were not weaklings, and also that there was no romance involved - the family angle didn't descend into sentimental, mushy ruminations and did not take over the fantastic plot. The world-building was novel, neat and meticulous.
What I personally didn't like much was the latter half of the book, which was more about action. The first half of the book is pure brilliance, a genuine delight to read, but that gives way to a load of action towards the end, which I thought took away the ideological part of how tech alters our perspective of life, death, reality or humanity. But I guess it is more about individual preferences than any real drawback.
Anyway, not only I do not regret reading it, rather I'm glad I didn't miss it. The work is worth more than it costs, and the author deserves to be known more than he is currently known.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In/Screwtop by James Tiptree Jr.6/5 (Review only for The Girl Who Was Plugged In)
It's a pity I cannot rate it higher than the maximum allowed - it is astonishing that Tiptree, in this little story achieves so much. I liken her to Vonnegut, who could pull your guts out in a matter of minutes with stories that take barely half-an-hour to read.
The present story is rich in terms of ideas - it anticipates cyberpunk, rather feminist cyberpunk - the process of jacking in, and taking up the issues of representing women's bodies in a genre that was indifferent to anyone apart from white loner males. The undertones of the story are overwhelmingly dark and sharpened further by satire.
The thinly veiled attack on consumerist culture, driven by profits with little concern for humans, the ugly side of successful businesses and the ethical conflict presented by P. Burke and Delphi - what begins as emancipation for Burke ends in tragedy for Delphi, Burke and Paul - are heart-wrenchingly depicted.
The narrative in present continuous is so hard-hitting, the author-as-narrator works so well at stabbing the reader at appropriate times, for instance, the references to Cinderella and the ugly duckling. It intensifies the grim, mocking, sharp tone of the story.
It is absolutely befuddling to believe this story was written so many years ago, yet it refuses to become outdated. And it is infinitely better written than most of the so-called SF today is churned out.
This is not only SF - it is classic literature, and it is a serious loss to English literature that Tiptree is remembered only as an indispensable SF writer. Now I know why she is called The Queen of SF, and what a big honor the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, given in her memory, is.
The story can be read online here - http://hell.pl/agnus/anglistyka/2211/...
NO WOMAN BORN from The Best of C. L. Moore by C.L. Moore
- 6/5This is a truly memorable classic short story spanning a range of issues from ethics of resurrecting the dead with the help of technology, the ensuing dilemma of what is meat and what is machine, the delicate ramifications of transhumanism, not just from the perspective of humans, but from the perspective of the humanoid itself (itself?), the explicitly painful issue of what makes us women, to how our bodies are appropriated and pigeonholed into what Judith Butler so correctly summarized in three words ”Gender is Performance”.
This is an immensely rich, layered complex work with minimal plot and extensive social, biological and ethical dilemmas – all written in a deceptively simple narrative. It is an unparalleled critique of the limited ways in which we perceive the idea of transhumanism, how narrowly we construct the ideological arguments about the “essential nature” of a human mind in a new metal body, without for once speculating the issue from the perspective of the humanoid itself (see? I’ve already labelled humanoids as “it”, like I’d a robot).
The story begins with Harris coming, with palpable concern, to the lab of his friend Maltzer, who has, after a year’s hard work, succeeded in recreating Deirdre, a theater icon beloved among the masses, after she died in a fire. Her body was burnt, but her brain was retrieved, now caged in a metal body. Deirdre is still what she was before, and now wants to go back onstage to perform, to the horror of her creator. She does go, however, and performs. There is only this much plot.
But the verbal exchanges that take place between Harris, Deirdre and Maltzer in between all this forms the real crux of the work – it is through these dialogues that we see what each of the three think about the nature of life and death, and about the resurrection of Deirdre in particular. Far from being didactic, the exchanges are food for thought – they stretch our sense of what we consider human, how we perceive womanhood and how we view ourselves, finally.
Maltzer’s apprehensions about how she will be received by people reminded me of Emiko, the windup girl in Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl - heechy-keechy, as she was derisively referred to as. Deirdre’s combination of meat and metal often brought back memories of Andrew from Asimov’s The Bicentennial Man - agreed, both Emiko and Andrew are robots that gain consciousness, while Deirdre is a human mind that gains a metal body, but the complex emotions that they face are reminiscent of each other.
The narrative style too, is reminiscent of Asimov – of course, they were both contemporaries, and it is astonishing, given the immense popularity of Asimov and the obscurity of C. L. Moore today, how similar their concerns were, how excellent their works and themes (I now find The Bicentennial Man a pale shadow of No Woman Born) and yet how different their fates!
A true gem in the vast treasure of good SF.
Read it here online - http://www.thepit.org/books/Science%2...
Journeys with the caterpillar: Travelling through the islands of Flores and Sumba, Indonesia by Shivaji Das
- 5/5Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Infoquake by David Louis Edelman
- 3.5 starsI had a hard time deciding what I feel about this book. Giving a conservative 3.5 stars, despite liking the novel overall.
I just love this work immensely for proving them all wrong - NO, CYBERPUNK ISN'T DEAD! This is the closest any modern novel has ever come to cyberpunk. It not only employs most standard cyberpunk tropes – that of a loner, alienated white male, a low-brow making it big with his virtual skills against the giant mega-corporations - but truly surpasses the outdated genre, clothing it in a fresh, radical, but grounded-in-highly-probable-future-noir technology.
The matrix, cyber-hacking/cracking part of cyberpunk has become so common now, that since the late ‘90s which saw the Web booming and real life bringing the cyberpunk world right at our doorstep, critics vehemently pronounced cyberpunk dead. In a way, they were right – all cyberpunkish novels that emerged were but off-shoots or derivatives of classic cyberpunk – carried forward in terms of themes and social concerns, but diluting the genre.
But this novel brings back futuristic cyberpunk back with a bang! It has kept the cyberpunk feel solidly in its roots, but surpassed the lame imitation of recent so-called cyberpunk novels.
Like the popular-literature sub-genre of espionage thrillers, this one is a business thriller of sorts. Fast-forward to far-future that has the entire world connected to the Data Sea with your mind – you have OCHREs in your bodies, artificial substances that deliver efficient medical treatment on their own before you even notice you’re infected – you can be virtually present in any corner of the world, so no need for travelling – or you can teleport if you are stinking rich. Fine, it is quite predictable.
But then how does it change the configurations of economic/corporate structures, politics and social hierarchies? Natch, one of the privileged kids studying in the Hives strikes out his roots against the ruthless mega-corporations at a young age, against his guardian’s advice – he is a bio/logics master, a science of the human body engineering, and with brute force and sheer cunning, he swiftly climbs the corporate ladder, only to be drawn into a mysterious deal by the progeny of one of the most esteemed inventors of all time, to release a secret, radical technology called Multireal that has been in secret development for more than 16 years, and which sends out waves of disturbance through business and political circles through its probable repercussions – and with that, it becomes a fast-paced techno-business thriller.
I absolutely loved certain aspects of the work – apart from the fact that it has reinvented the sub-genre charmingly. The world-building is neat, exciting, realistic, yet radical enough to draw in the most demanding reader. The characterizations, including that of Natch, too, are credible, interesting and palatable. The plot is well-executed, the numerous yet logical twists and turns smoothly transitioning into an exciting read. Keeps you glued.
But here’s why I rate it so conservatively despite my elated rhetoric – the thing I absolutely hate in any work is a cliffhanger ending. It reads like a book torn into half, and me having the first half of it. This is the first book of the Jump 225 trilogy and it is not always possible to read it in succession – I want every book to be complete in itself, like the Harry Potter series. I absolutely detest half-tales. It is what put me off primarily.
Secondly, the language/narrative sometimes descends into pathetic expressions that come in the way of the riveting plot – forced descriptions that make you cringe at aesthetics of writing made the book slightly more unpalatable, though the plot kept me hooked.
Third, there were some factual errors – not exactly detrimental to the plot since they were errors of research rather than that of logic. Andhra Pradesh (a southern state in India) is consistently spelt as Andra Pradesh and worse, cited as a city, rather than a state. Vindaloo, a Goan curry dish of Portuguese origin, is mistakenly referred to part of Andra Pradesh cuisine. Unpalatable, coming from a well-respected author.
So, temporarily, I rate it thus, and might increase the ratings when I’m done with the trilogy. The other flaws were bearable, but not a cliffhanger ending. I’d rather have a book of monstrous proportions but complete than half-lingering tales split into three novels.
But I still love it, and someday, I’ll read the entire series with glee and in all probability, be pleased enough to raise the rating by a star or so.
Mod
TBRed.
It is pretty slow, but beautiful :)
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler 1/5
1 Star so we may never under-estimate the power fools can wield
Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Lohi Ni Sagai by Ishwar Petlikar - 5/5A very moving tale of a mother's indiscriminate, extraordinary love for her mentally unstable daughter Mangu.
Written in Gujarati, the title of the novel means 'Ties of Blood'.
Considered one of the finest Gujarati novels to be written, it was also made into an equally critically acclaimed movie by the same title.
One of those books that deserve to be read widely.
Mod
:D I didn't know how else to summarize that idiot...
I am stunned ... Wow look at the books you read. Seriously I can read only 3-4 from what your collection. O.o
Get into Arts, you'll be doing the same ;) It's a wonderful field!
Lit Bug wrote: "Get into Arts, you'll be doing the same ;) It's a wonderful field!"Aahh.... Art. Sadly am already in psychology. Done my MA. So will slowly start with light books.. but your collection is admirable.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 5/5What is the first thing we ask when a child is born? - GENDER
The six-letter word, not the three-letter word "sex" of the child - because gender involves our perception of what the child will be, our expectations of what roles the child will perform in the future - the life of the child is determined right away when we ask this question. As Judith Butler puts it, Gender is Performance.
But imagine a world where genders can be changed at will - an androgynous world where humans remain in neuter gender for most days of the lunar cycle, enter a phase of sexual activity, or kemmer for a few days during which one of them becomes female and the other male, and at the end of the cycle, become neuters again.
What are their roles in society? How are they identified in terms of social hierarchy?
Genly Ai, a man (like us Earthlings) from Ekumen, descends on another planet Gethen, which is in the Ice Age, and where androgynous people dwell, with their own curious lives as both men and women, and as neither. The beauty of this novel lies there - in how it questions our taken-for-granted ideas of gender and gender performance, family, relationships, marriage and parenthood, through the eyes of Ai, who finds himself perpetually perturbed by not being able to place the new people in a conventional framework of gender, and finds himself appalled at seeing in them both a feminity and masculinity, which to him, cannot co-exist in a single person.
Estraven, the other major character of the story serves as the object of study for him, and as Estraven struggles to help Ai with his mission on this planet, (view spoiler), Ai realizes that he need not look at them as either Male or Female - he had to see them for what they were - Humans.
More than anything, the novel gently teases our subconsciously ingrained impulses to seek the gender of the people we meet in order to decide on our behavior with them - in order to judge them by their genders, in order to know what to expect from them, without knowing it, and in fact, denying it all the time that we do such a thing.
We see ourselves, along with Ai, reluctant to let go our notions of an essential duality - that of yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil, light and darkness, left and right, in the world of Gethen that knows of no such distinctions, that is a whole in itself, rather than being a whole made up of two complementing opposites. Essentially, the novel breaks our prejudices of seeing a person as a man or as a woman - instead, with Ai, we learn to see a person as Human, and love them as such - with a bond that transcends the myth of man-man or girl-girl friendships made even more tangible by our highly publicized movies on bromances or womances.
Coming to the technical part, yes, the story was slow, but then, this is ideological SF, soft-SF that tends to play with ideas, and where the plot takes a backseat. This book is not intended for people who cannot imagine SF without moments of thrill. SF is a setting here, rather than the main thing itself.
The language is immensely, beautifully poetic, lyrical and charming - the captivating little poem provides the title of the book - the left hand of darkness is (view spoiler) - reading the work is a sheer delight, and in the chapters detailing Estraven and Ai travelling 72 days on the Ice, the language is almost elevated to the level of a classic, which is a rare, rare thing in SF. Reading this novel is like reading lucid, delicate poetry at its best.
There is a beautiful interplay of concepts that resonate through the work - the concept of light and darkness, sitting apt within the plot since the setting is Ice Age - like an echo, rebounds at us everywhere we look - the blinding light, the blinding darkness.
The world-building, especially for an ideological SF work where the emphasis is on ideas, rather than setting and plot, is not only remarkable, but outstanding. It repeatedly seemed to me I was reading Mieville, but abridged - Le Guin has gone to extraordinary lengths to make the world believable - the extraordinary number of legends and myths invented, apart from the radically different psychology of a world that does not know of gender imprisonments, and therefore, has different concepts of virility, shame, betrayal and faithfulness is a mammoth feat. And yet, the world of Gethen seems just as real as that of Earth.
For the slow start, slow pace and almost non-existent plot, I had considered rating it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. But in retrospect, thinking of the massive ideological impact it makes on our gendered thinking, I cannot help but rate it full.
It is not just a path-breaking, radical work - it is a means to introspect our own prejudices through fiction, which is one of the main aims of good literature. For that, it is a landmark work.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- 3/5This book had a wonderful premise – Charlie Gordon, a 32-year old mentally retarded man, but kind, warm and enthusiastic to become ‘smart’ like his peers, is chosen for an experiment to increase his IQ – after the experiment was successful on Algernon, a white lab mouse. With a successful operation, he starts gaining ‘smartness’ exponentially, and over the course of several months, turns into a genius – but at a price – not only does he learn about the bitter truths of living in a cruel world, but because he is far ahead in intelligence now than even the scientists who experimented on him, he finds himself just as isolated from the rest of humanity as he was when he was retarded. The only real bond he has formed right from his naturally retarded state to his genius stage to his eventual decline into his erstwhile state is the little white mouse Algernon. And yet, he manages to find a way for himself – until Algernon starts to go downhill again, and dies – and now Gordon knows he too will follow the same path, and he must live as much as he can in the short time he has
However, the narrative was cold, abrupt and unconvincing most of the time. The only time it was convincing was when Gordon was retarded, struggling first to become smart, and at the end to make peace with his declining intelligence – and it was so warm, you could not but love the kind man striving to be liked. But the narrative loses its magic when Gordon is a genius and is struggling to come to terms with his past, his relationship with his father and mother, his sister and trying to convince Alice of his love for her. The narrative is so abrupt, it fails to make any impact.
There are some brilliant observations in between, but most of the rest is, well, melodramatic, predictable and unsubtle in tone – something that can be written by anyone who’s been explained the story well. The cringing part does little to depict the internal struggles Gordon faces. All in all, it is a wonderful work marred by clumsy writing in the middle part – when Gordon becomes ‘smart’. Especially when set off against the beautifully, effortlessly moving beginning and the end parts.
It was written as a short story first, and following its popularity, extended into a novel and then into a movie – I only hope the story and the movie are better at convincing their audience. A Hugo Award is understandable, it is voted upon by readers - but a Nebula?
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
3.5 Stars
This book manages to both impress and fail to impress, on account of its strong plot and weak narration.
The conception is realistic, exciting, and has enough elements of SF - that of a world teeming with graded Espers or mind-readers who police the world that has now expanded to settle on various planets, and catch the criminal before he can even properly lay on the plan.
In 2301, Ben Reich, owner of Monarch corporation, decides, in murderous passion, to murder (of, course) his rival - knowing well enough that it is nearly impossible. A premeditated murder can be easily detected by the Peepers. And he intends to not only commit it, but also get away with it - in a world where murder has been unheard of for at least 80 years.
And he succeeds. Police Prefect Powell, a Grade 1 Esper, knows it is him, but cannot nail him down. And thus begins the cat and mouse game to implicate Reich before THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE devours Reich.
It could have been amazing - the conception is strong, but fails on account of the clumsy, unbelievable narration. The motivations of the characters are too fast, too abrupt to allow the reader to enjoy the work. Comes across as phony when it could have been simply amazing. The narrative mars a solid concept, a promising story and nearly ruins it.
The only lines I liked in this work are these words that come at the end:
“Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.” And this is the only time I really felt like I had any insight in any character of this story.
The world-building is not only adequate, but in fact, novel, innovative, far ahead of its time and yet plausible. But too many things seem artificial, some things fall into place too conveniently, and the dialogues are plain pathetic.
And to think how much more scope in this novel has been wasted! THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE was such a beautiful trope - the psychological aspect that could have elevated the novel from a mere run-of-the-mill thriller to a psychological masterpiece - the Freudian elements were barely touched upon in a novel that focused so much on the gradations of Espers on the basis of their ability to peep into the layers of the mind.
The play of the conscious, subconscious and the unconscious was the perfect place to play out the game - Reich outwitting the Espers, pitting two Class 1 Espers against each other would have been so much fun, apart from the brilliant expositions Bester could have made deriving from Freud or Lacan or whoever he wished.
The conception is superb - but the execution is deeply flawed. The story wasn't properly explored, leaving quite a few glaring loopholes and other lapses, not to mention the narrative that bogged down the work even more.
And yes, what was it with female characters in the 50s? Why did all of them have to be fawning, helpless creatures waiting in the sidelines for their man to come and deliver them? Did this story really need Barbara or Mary in the way they were used towards the end? And how stupidly convenient was the resolution for Powell and Barbara - honestly, I'd already seen through it long before it actually came.
In the end, I'm only glad it didn't clinch the Nebula, because Nebulas came much later - it is way too flawed. As for the Hugo, well, I can see how radical this would have seemed in the 50s, and well, who cared back then about how women were depicted, anyway? And in any case, this was the first work to get a Hugo, so there was no set benchmark for it to be judged against.
To be concise, disappointed is the word. Great conception that descends into mediocrity. The stars are only for the world-building and plot-outline.
Mod
Smitha wrote: "have heard about Flowers for Algernon, may read it if time permits."Looking forward to it!
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil
- 3/5Set in the city of Bombay and spanning a time-frame from 1970s to 1994 as we listen to the narrator, just back from the U.S. as he goes about on Shuklaji Street, following the lives of the under-belly of the the chaos that is Bombay, from the hijra Dimple/Zeenat, Rashid, the khanawala, the sensational painter Xavier to Lalaji and Rumi, other lesser-characters that make up the streets, the squalor, the underside of the glittering city, Narcopolis is a pastiche of vignettes that build up the picture of the Bombay I knew, but never saw.
The novel starts with a 7-page sentence as we see the narrator cruising through the city, and sets the tone for the rest of the work - its themes of drugs, addiction, exploitation and survival in a city where everyone fends for oneself. The sheer brilliance of the one sentence that captured a myriad images of Bombay into a cohesive picture of its under-belly perked up my expectations.
But after the novelty fades off, well, it was quite disappointing. What started as an assemblage of pictures didn't go further into anything - no character-development, no plot-development, and though the city of Bombay itself was its protagonist, instead of the setting, there was no visible Bombay-development.
I didn't mind the non-linear narrative or the lack of a uni-directional plot. What bothered me was that the vignettes revealed nothing to me I didn't know - which I see as a flaw in the sense that though it portrayed Bombay very well, it hardly stepped out of its realm to examine issues surrounding its main premises, issues that had much to do with all that drug/prostitution/exploitation culture.
I found the characters to be mere caricatures, lacking depth. Often I felt I was reading the book-version of the movie 'Slum-dog Millionaire' - a movie that apparently had no aim apart from displaying its poverty, cruelty, filth and underworld to vicarious foreigners, but apart from that, having little value as literature.
I thought he was attempting to write like Rushdie - a mixture of cultural irreverence and political sarcasm delivered with a careless flourish that shocks the reader, all the while being bluntly truthful. But nor did the supposedly sharp knife slash through my sensitivity, nor did it its soft edges give a worthwhile result.
Too many ruminations that had nothing to do either with Bombay or the characters, that were not poignant as observations into a city or a culture or its time-frame. The period he has chosen is such a vast one, with many important political events taking place that had both local and national consequences, and all the while, he simply eschewed them all, as if they didn't matter - if they had been alluded to, well, the work would have been far richer. After all, the novel was supposed to be about Bombay - and what we get instead are sensational pictures of a part of Bombay - but not alluding to real life apart from that.
What do I feel at the end of the book, then? Disinterested is the word.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
- 5/5Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Tamas by Bhisham Sahni
- 4/5Partially based on true events that Sahni himself witnessed in the communal riots during India's Partition in 1947, the novel follows the life of people from both communities - Hindu and Muslim, and from various classes and backgrounds, as tensions in cities build up. Like most Partition fiction, Tamas (meaning Darkness) too identifies the complex nature humanity and inhumanity that drives people to massacre each other. Eschewing grossly simplifying explanations for these murderous rages, the novel looks into the multiple simultaneous drives that lead people to kill others, and yet, save some others they were supposed to kill.
Rather than following a single person's fate during the riots, as Train to Pakistan did, Tamas takes a bird's-eye view of the communal tensions raging through India, and how they were inextricably mingled with politics, economics and lies, not just on the part of the British who followed the policy of divide-and-rule, but also on the part of both communities. The motivations of murder were far more complex than simplistic narratives of religious clashes - the latter being stereotyped - not that religion wasn't involved - but that it was not the only thing of consequence involved.
It is difficult to write a review of a book like this. Partition is not something I can elatedly talk about, nor are the style/narrative/stylistic features a consideration in an issue like this.
Only, next time, I'd rather read it in Hindi - the English translation is often clumsy, and not effective.
An Odder Quintet by Michael Brookes - 4/5This was a fine series of odd quintets, each having a beautiful premise. They are varied, for one thing - ranging from mythology as in the Three Sisters to a battle-field to Demons and Computers and Convicts. Every story is very different in terms of plot.
I personally loved the last story - it was warm, extremely well-crafted and precise.
Two of the stories had quite simple endings, but they were eerily enjoyable, while the other two had obscure, enigmatic ends - I enjoy stories more when they have concrete ends that are unpredictable - it is what I loved about the last story as well as about Faust 2.0.
The stories were short, crisp, having an odd, eerie feel of mystery blended with the gothic, and quite enjoyable. I'm glad I bought it!
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein - 4.5/5A very important book that makes me reflect on my own position as a girl. Orenstein, a journalist, was baffled when blessed with a daughter - how would she raise up a healthy kid amidst the skewed world that, from her very birth, was bent upon giving her an identity that might be harmful for her?
Her nagging doubts led her to carefully research the American culture and its effects on girlhood, and childhood in general, and its latent impact on adulthood. Written in a very simple language devoid of high-flown research lingo, she looks into the various facets of contemporary American life and their impact on her daughter, her peers and hew own life.
Despite having almost exactly the opposite problems from Indians, this USA-focused book made me question my own status as a female in my surroundings. It is a wonderful, depressing book. It is easily one of the few books that will have a lasting impact on my life.
Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
The Uncertainty Consolation by Vardan Partamyan
- 5/5A very short, but touching, realistic and beautiful story - something very different from the author's earlier works that were less overtly philosophical.
The narrative is smooth, polished like much of good SF - a major improvement over his earlier works. The lyrical quality of this story works very well with its philosophical, reflective nature. It is crisp, precise, pointed and delivers the desired effect.
Lovely read - thoughtful in a subtle, beautiful way.
The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux
- 2/5An obnoxious, offensive book by an equally narrow-minded and unfortunately, popular author.
This is perhaps the dullest travelogue that I've ever read. Imagine cruising from London through Paris, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Japan, Siberia and back to London on nothing but trains for commute - long journeys punctuated with local food, local people, local culture and local weather - only to be bored to death while Theroux keeps on heaping loads of details without any insight save some common (sometimes aptly true) stereotypes.
Terse, dry and disinterested in tone, the book left me absolutely cold - series of abrupt, sketchy descriptions of peoples, places, anecdotes and observations that never go beyond a stereotypical crystallization of narrow experiences blended with the common perception held across the globe.
Essentially, Theroux said he wanted to travel by train, not by plane - so that he could leisurely enjoy the journey - my bad that I did not take it seriously. Clearly, he was focused on his journey - not in the people, hardly in the culture or history, maybe in some places of interest and basically, intent upon writing this travelogue. The result is the most pointless book ever written.
It seems hastily written with no nuances, no depth - just a string of experiences that put you to sleep.
The only place where he strikes a chord are in some cynical, sharp, bitter yet true observations that only a local can identify with - in my instance, observations such as "In India, I had decided, one could determine the sacredness of water by its degree of stagnation. The holiest was bright green."
But again, they were primary inferences that can be made by anyone who looks a bit closely at his/her encounters - but the mechanism behind these phenomena hold no interest for him. Perhaps he took too seriously the adage - "It is the journey that matters - not the destination."
Mod
Unfortunately, Theroux's idea of travel by train consists of little more than an empty carriage for himself, a book and a bottle of whisky - anything else is but a nagging disturbance deserving his ill-humor.
50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies by Jane Pilcher
- 4/5Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction by Wendy Gay Pearson
- 4/5Review in two parts:
Part 1 - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Part 2 - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Dongri To Dubai: Six Decades of The Mumbai Mafia by S. Hussain Zaidi
- 3/5Review - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Indian Readers
Books mentioned in this topic
India: A Million Mutinies Now (other topics)To Kill a Mockingbird (other topics)
Brave New World (other topics)
Solo (other topics)
Free Fall (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
V.S. Naipaul (other topics)Aldous Huxley (other topics)
Rana Dasgupta (other topics)
William H. Keith Jr. (other topics)
Ivan Turgenev (other topics)
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In 22nd century, China has replaced America as the world’s dominant political, economic and cultural capital, following a political revolution in America that has displaced its capitalistic economy and brought in an era of socialism.
It is an immensely well-imagined and portrayed account of a plausible future where China takes precedence over the States – the latter becomes akin to a third-world dump following a financial crisis, while China rises in economic importance, and consequently, in cultural importance. Chinese phrases, Mandarin itself, Chinese dress and cuisine and Chinese genes suddenly become the next-gen cool things, the way everything symbolizing America/the West is hip now. With the Great Cleansing Winds in the US, followed by a Second American Revolution and a Second Civil War, the status-quo is changed.
Zhang Zhong Shan (Rafael), the protagonist, is a young gay man of mixed heritage, a Chinese father and Hispanic mother – born in Brooklyn and having undergone gene splicing in infancy in order to look more ‘Chinese’ (the reverse of what the Chinese are doing today – double eyelid surgery, for instance, to look more ‘Western’) and therefore attempting to gain social leverage as well as possible opportunity to study and live in China, his life takes a series of unexpected turns as he navigates through the turmoil of sexuality, cosmetically altered genes, identity and cultural legacy in and out of America, China and the Arctic.
The novel takes place in roughly the same time, following different threads that sometimes merge, and sometimes merely touch each other. While Zhang comes to terms with his life, Martine and Alexis, on Mars, try to eke out a living that ensures them a different kind of security, but at the same time, demands of them a hefty price. San-Xiang, a young Chinese girl in the US struggles to come to terms with her own marginalization on account of her ugly face, and then with the consequences of her cosmetically-enhanced beauty. Haobai, perhaps, followed by San-Xiang, is the most compelling character – the social critique hits the hardest and sharpest in these characters, while it is akin to merely a pervading mist in the rest of the work.
There is so much to both like and dislike in this work – there are aspects of it that sparkle throughout the text – its subtexts, its layers of thought and experience form the crux of the work – the sadness, the sarcasm, the brutality of an unequal, hypocritical world, the variously covert forms of marginalization that follow the lives of hundreds of people eking out a precarious survival. It is a story less of hope, more of the desperation to survive, merely survive – because the dream of flourishing is forbidden. Of forever having to move in the shadows, in the dark. Knowing that coming out in the light would not bestow warmth, but blister their lives, simply because they do not fit into the majority’s ideas of normalcy, of acceptability.
The LGBT angle, the marginalization by making it illegal, is a double blow to the hypocrisy of the world – not just a critique of the present, but also a sharp jab at the communists’ claim of equality of all, irrespective of everything. One is constantly reminded of Orwell’s statement in Animal Farm – Everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others.
This critique of communism is also resonant in its economic critique, where despite landing as a student of the reputed Nanjing University, Zhang finds it difficult to find a decent job back in the US. As a critique of communism and its ideal of perfect equality, it is breathtaking. The critique is often thinly-veiled, making it all the more impressive in places. As a work that examines the way in which misfits are marginalized, strongly alluding to own our present times, it is truly engaging, and in some scenes, brilliant even. The politics of marginalization are acutely present throughout the work as one of its subtexts.
Where this work fails to engage is primarily its plot – the world-building is pretty neat and convincing, the science part adequate to qualify as SF (climate-control equipped homes, - and the Kite-flying and ball-game sequences are pure brilliance), but the plot is not linear – chronologically, it is – but it follows no clear direction, even at the end. Like the characters themselves, the reader too is clueless of the novel’s destination, which is a bad thing when it turns out at the end that the story has no coherent plot at all.
Agreed, this is more of a Bildungsroman novel (that focuses on the growth of the character as the crux of the work, rather than the plot, e.g. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), but then it fails mostly on that account too. The story of Zhang is only one of the many threads of the novel, such as Martine/Alexis on Mars, Haobai in China or San-Xiang in the US, and yet, it is, despite taking up the most space, the most flimsy character. He comes out only slightly more mature than he first encounters the world’s injustices. A hugely disproportionate time is also spent upon Alexis/Martine, and though it is a charming little episode, they, or the whole existence of the Martian colony, does not in any way affect Zhang’s life, save allowing him to think in a different way of solving engineering problems.
The most glaring drawback is that the story of Alexis/Martine is left incomplete, in the sense that there is no definite conclusion into what happened to their farms, which could have been used magnify even better the consequences of being pushed back onto the fringes.
The most striking characters, rather, are the ones that have served as the background in Zhang’s life – San-Xiang, the ugly girl (she appears fleetingly in Zhang’s life, but does not make any impact on the way his life turns out, so in that sense her role is inconsequential to the main crux of the novel), and Zhang’s erstwhile mentor and secret lover Haobai. Their scenes are truly touching. It is primarily in these two characters and their scenes that this novel achieves its brilliance, bringing out the sadness, the thinly-veiled critiques, the helplessness and the incurable anguish of surviving on the periphery of an unforgiving society, of being utterly marginalized without hope of redemption – their stories, especially of Haobai, is dealt with astounding maturity and skill, which sort of falls flat in the case of the major character, Zhang Zhong Shan.
Another major drawback of this work is in how much space is allocated to insignificant details. Cooking and eating take up an enormous time, both in the US, China and Mars – food, when used as metaphor, is a brilliant device – but gets in the way when used without significance. Almost every other page threw up pizzas, pastas, salads, noodles, tandoori chicken, burgers, poori, rice and beans, cakes and God-knows-what Thai food.
While it exceeds expectations and shines bright in many places, it also falls below its own spectacular achievements in quite a lot instances. And yet, this is one book I’m glad to have read. Not one of the best, but definitely commendable. Although, I think, it has garnered adequate attention by winning the Lambda, the Locus and the Tiptree Awards, while rightly getting only a nomination for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.