The Captain’s (B)log

The Scar

I finished both of these books in sequence (though it really isn’t important to read them that way) about eight or nine months ago.  The first book in Mieville’s “Bas-Lag” books, Perdido Street Station, I finished a good while before that.  (What’s funny is that I was really eager to read them — just dragged my ass getting them from Half.com, I guess.)

Like I say, even though these books are part of the same “world,” they’re not really supposed to be read in sequence.  Especially The Scar — it doesn’t even take place in Mieville’s imaginary city of New Crobuzon, but on the high seas (it’s a pirate adventure!).

The Scar

The Scar tells the tale of Bellis, a political refugee from New Crobuzon, who is trying to escape the city by ship (I’m assuming that these events are taking place after the events of Perdido Street Station).  Unfortunately for her, her ship is soon hijacked, and all of her fellow passangers are in a sense press-ganged into working and living on a massive floating island called Armada.

Armada is an ancient pirate stronghold, made from the lashed-together hulls of ships, big and small.  That’s where Bellis gets caught up in a huge, lengthy tale that she is only a small, small part of.

And that’s about all I’ll tell you at risk of spoiling the bloody thing for you.

However, I just love this book.  Love love love.  I love the characters of “The Lovers,” the de facto rulers of Armada.  They are probably two of the most “driven” characters in a book that I’ve ever come across.  They remind me of the character of Roland in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower — driven to the point of excluding all else in the world.

The book doesn’t make it readily apparently why they’re on the course that they’re on (both literally and figuratively, har har), but if you let your mind wander a bit, you’ll probably figure it out.

[That's another thing I love about China Mieville's books -- he doesn't hold your bloody hand through all of the story.  There are plot points and motives that you're only given inklings to -- you have to see them through the main characters.

I also love the little hints and bits of the greater history of Bas-lag that you're given here and there (quite a bit of it is explained in The Scar).  Among these are little hints you were given about The Ghosthead Empire, the Malarial Queendom, and the giant Cold Claw Sea that exists to the north and west of New Crobuzon.]

Iron Council

The story of Iron Council picks up (as I’m able to extrapolate) some 25 or 30 years or so after the events of Perdido Street Station. The story is long and massive, and eventually starts telling a dual-story of events happening “now,” and events that happened to one of the main characters actually before the events of Perdido Street Station (if I’m understanding the map in the front, since there is a “ruined railroad” in the map of Perdido Street Station that I think is being built during the flashbacks of Iron Council).

It tells of a revolution amongst the people of New Crobuzon, brought on by the existence of the “Iron Council,” a group of one-time workers on the great railroad who revolted, stole a train, and went to live their lives  freely.  The allegory of the train is incredible — or incredibly blunt, whatever way you want to look at it (I’ll let you find out about it).

Either way, it’s a great read!  (Plus, you finally get to find out what the hell “Inchmen” are, and learn quite a bit more about the force known as the “Torque.”)

The Faded Sun Trilogy

I finished reading this book last fall — so bear with me if I don’t get all the details exactly right.

Brief Synopsis

The Fade Sun Trilogy is a collection of three novels by C.J. Cherryh — a lot of classic SF that I’ve been reading is like that (I’m guessing it was the style at the time).

They tell the tale of the last two members of a proud an noble race, the “mri.”  The mri are a warrior space-faring species, used exclusively as the mercenaries and bodyguards of a race of creatures called the “Regul” that are have been fighting a war with the forces of Earth for nearly four decades.

The books pick up as the war has ended — Earth has won, the Regul are defeated, and the noble mri have been almost completely eradicated, after having been used as cannon fodder in the last few years of the Earth-Regul war.

The books tell the tale of the remaining members of the mri as they slowly die out, and of one man, Sten Duncan, who is tasked to investigate the mri and who eventually “goes native.”

My Thoughts

Well, it’s classic C.J. Cherryh, and I love it for that.  The mri are like one of C.J. Cherry’s many inceptions of the tall “fair folk” present in her books, be they elves in her fantasy novels, or a species like the “qhal” in The Morgaine Saga.  They are noble and superior to humans, but small in number and in “time left.”  (Kind like the Jedi, I guess.)

There are also many similarities between the mri and the “Fremen” in Frank Herbert’s famous Dune series of books.  They’re emotionless (or just hide their emotions well).  Their existence is hard and daily life is a struggle, leading them to be tough as iron (because of the condition of the planet they have settled on).  They favor simple weapons and hand-to-hand combat but are very proficient in modern technology, though they eschew any technology that might make their life easier.

All in all, a good read!

Songs of Distant Earth

By Arthur C. Clarke

Ah, good ol’ Arthur C. Clarke.  Even though he’s no longer with us, his optimistic beliefs in what humanity will one day accomplish live on.

In the world of Songs of Distant Earth, humanity has spread to the stars (only a handful of stars, however) in order to escape the Earth’s sun going nova, around the year 3650.  Humanity has known about the imminent fate of the Sun since the early 21st century, but in true human fashion, it has dragged its ass over the ensuing millennium and a half, sending out a few probes and human “seeding” ships on slow-speed journeys to other habitable stars.

The story stars on a star seeded by one of these ships — an idyllic, ocean world, whose few land masses seem to have weather that makes them exactly like Hawaii. In other words, a nearly perfect world.

This world has been on its own for nearly 700 years, having been seeded in about the year 2700 or so — at first, it’s colonists communicated with the Earth, sending back progress reports and whatnot, but their main transmitter disc for the planet was damaged in an quake, and the totally laid-back colonists just never got around to fixing it.

Well, eventually a ship appears in their system, carring a million passengers from the last, wild days of Earth before the planet was destroyed by the sun going nova, and this beautiful laid-back planet gets its first bit of true strife and trouble.

But, you see — this is an Arthur C. Clarke book, so there’s not really any “bad guys,” and everybody generally gets along. I’m not trying to point this out as a downside — his books are still very enjoyable. (Mankind’s antagonist isn’t a singular evil figure in an Arthur C. Clarke book — his antagonist is usually just the “unknown” or something that needs to be “explored.”)

Though, usually his books end on a sad note — and I’m not just talking about the death of a character or anything simple like that.  When you’re done reading one of his books, you’re always left with the idea that man is just a small, small part in the entire canvas of the universe, and that no matter what we ever discover, or how many millions of years we’re here, after we’re gone (and we will eventually cease to be) the universe will continue to spin on, and on, nearly forever.

Really humbling, you know?  Seriously — get to the end of the Rama series and tell me you didn’t nearly want to weep (for all the second book’s shortcomings, the series was amazing, trust me).

Friday

By Robert Heinlein

I’m guessing that there may have been a lot of hubbub around Heinlein’s Friday when it was released — the little blurbs on the back speak to me of how this is Heinlein’s first “strong” woman protagonist, etc., etc., etc….

Yeah, I don’t see it.  Not that the character of Friday in the book Friday isn’t a strong female character — she is — I just don’t see the need for it.  The character of Star in Glory Road was a pretty damn strong female character, wasn’t she?  I mean Jesus, she was [spoiler here] — isn’t that strong enough? Can you get any “stronger” of a lead than that?  And he wrote that book 20 years prior.

Either way — Friday‘s a good book.  The lead character is a genetically created artificial person — an “artifact,” as they’re referred to in the book.  No different than a regular human being, of course, besides the super-strength and intelligence and imperviousness to illnesses and so on.  She works as a “combat courier,” shuttling top secret intelligence and small items back and forth across the lines of security present in this world — a world in which the entire Earth has seemingly Balkanized, that is, where all nations have further split into other small nations, and no real power is held by anyone except for large, multi-national corporations.  Friday really doesn’t know who she works for, and doesn’t care, as long as she’s given the respect she feels she deserves, which she gets working for her shadowy employer.

Now, the book is not “hard” SF, but there’s two instances in which Heinlein’s description of a particular part of technology sounded real neat to me.

First was his description of a world without money — one totally reliant upon electronic credit and debit.  It was really neat and really relevant to the way we perform business today, but I can’t for the life of me remember what page it was on, so blegh.

The other was this passage, where our protagonist was describing her trip to a library for a bit of research:

There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service.  People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can be — and I include myself.  One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain ways — paying bills, making telephonic calls, listening to news bulletins — that one can neglect its richer uses.  If a subscriber is willing to pay for the service, almost anything can be done at a terminal that can be done out of bed.

Like music?  I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening, but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as “live,” just as immediate, as any listed on today’s program.  Electrons don’t care.  Once data of any sort go into the net, time is frozen.  All that is necessary is to remember that all the endless riches of the past are available any time you punch for them.

Do you see what he’s describing there?  It’s the bloody Internet.  Now, granted, computers were around in 1982, and there was some idea that they could be hooked together to form networks, but the idea of a world-spanning network with all knowledge that humanity has available at your fingertips wasn’t a realization until the modern day world wide web, circa 1996-1997 or so.

Oh, but that’s not all.  Listen to this:

That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled onto a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked.  I don’t recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons.

I was still reading about the evolution of stars when Professor Perry suggested that we go to lunch.

[...]

That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to Show Boat, a musical play concerning the era — and then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces.  Why can’t they write music like that today?

If that’s not an eerily-exact description of what it’s like to get lost in Wikipedia today, I don’t know what is.  And Heinlein was writing about this kinda of thing back in 1982.

Anyway, it’s a damn good book, and one of the last Heinlein wrote before he sadly passed away in the later 80′s.

The Jewels of Aptor

By Samuel R. Delany

I picked up this book not realizing that it was actually Samuel R. Delany’s very first work he ever published.  And let me tell you, it’s different.  I mean, if you’re like me and very first stuff you ever read by Delany was Triton and “Aye, and Gomorrah.”

I’ll just break it down for you — no orgies, no gender-bending hypersexual roles, no sarcastic social commentary — just a pretty straightforward fantasy story taking place in a civilization long after a “Great Fire,” which I take to mean nuclear war.  That’s right — it’s actually fantasy, not really SF.  I mean, it’s not bad, just not what I was expecting.

You can see some of Delany’s later themes taking their first roots here, though.  It’s a short work, though, so definitely give it a read if you’re a fan.

The Fall of the Towers

By Samuel R. Delany

The Fall of the Towers is actually a saga of three books that Delany wrote early in his career, too — right after The Jewels of Aptor, early 60′s.   It’s kinda like Jewels in that it’s kinda of a “serious” work — however, I really, really liked this one.

Taking place far in the future, somewhere (could be Earth, though it might not be), after another apocalyptic event has razed the planet and most of humanity has returned back to primitive roots.  There exists three distinct species of human in these days.  One is a squat, primitive, short form of human, a little over 1.5 m high, with very low intelligence;  these are called “neandrathals” by the characters of the book.  Next is regular humans — I don’t need to describe these, hopefully.  Finally, the final form of human present in this world is a quiet, extremely tall (2.5 m or more) form of human whom the “regular” humans call “forest guards,” due to their likeness for living in the vast forests present on this world.

The Fall of the Towers is an extremely long tale (not so much in words, but in depth), full of multiple themes and plots — far, far too many to go into here.  Just know that the main theme is that of the city (and empire) of Toromon — an extremely advanced city that has somehow escaped the apocalypse to reign supreme over whatever parts of the planet not rendered unlivable by vast amounts of radiation — and its eventual fall from grace due to corruption and “societal decay,” I guess you’d call it.

The book largely follows the lives of three characters — an escaped prisoner, a Duchess of one of the royal families of Toromon, and a forest guard with telepathic abilities.  They are being used as agents by an unknown entity in its fight against a being called the “Lord of the Flames.”

Somewhat present thoughout the series, but especially in the third book, is a very, very strong anti-war message.  And not just any “war is bad message,” but a Orwell-esque message about how war is sometimes used by very successful civilizations in order to “use up” surpluses of goods and money that could otherwise be used to improve upon its peoples’ lives.

Trust me — I’m barely scratching the surface of this book.  It’s actually really, really good, even if it’s an “earlier” Delany work and somewhat surprised me.

Glory Road

By Robert Heinlein

Glory Road was a fun little book by Heinlein.  The entire book was written in his favorite first-person-narrator-who’s-sarcastic-as-hell style and spans about 200 pages or so.  It follows the tale of a young Korean War vet (you can glean this easily from the story) who’s soon whisked away to another universe/dimension by a woman he meets on a nude beach in France.  Ah, classic Heinlein.

The woman, accompanied by a squire of some sort, seems determined to name our narrator her “champion” to do various acts of bravery and assist her in certain quests.  And for the first half or so of the book, that’s about it.

But… the last third or so is completely different, and features the narrator and his Lady settling down — the book loses its lighthearted touch by this point and becomes very serious and downright depressing, as you’ll see.  But there, I’ve told enough.

I love reading Heinlein’s novels simply for the writing style, though — his books are some of the first ones I try to recommend to non-SF readers.

Dark is the Sun

By Philip Jose Farmer

This book still befuddles me now, even after a month or two of reading it.  I can’t tell if it was a translation or not (I don’t think Philip Jose Farmer is foreign, though I’m not sure — Spanish, maybe?), but it sure reads like one.

The sentence structure is strange, the character development is weird, the story seems to jump around here and there — I really don’t know what to make of it.  Anyone know?

The story has a neat backstory, though — taking place something like billions of years in the future, during the time of the Big Crunch, it features mankind in its last stages of existence, a broken people returned to tribal ways, worshipping old gods that haven’t been seen in years.

Even though reading this book could be a chore, I loved the amazing world that Farmer created — on this dying Earth are relics from billions of years of science and development.  You’re constantly discovering the relics of lost civilizations that have risen, and fallen, and risen back again.

The Sparrow

Mary Doria Russel

Like Perdido Street Station, I found this book from a list on the site IO9.com (can’t remember the exact article) — some of the books I had read, and some I had never heard of before.  This was one of the latter, but most of the comments on the article spoke highly of it, so I went out on a limb and bought it.

Turns out it’s not bad — man’s first contact with interstellar life is received in the form of radio signals emanating somewhere around the Alpha Centauri system (conveniently close).  Whilst the UN and other worldly bodies are dickering around about what to do, the Catholic Church is actually quickest to the punch, organizing a mission (composed of Jesuits and some scientists) to encounter whoever or whatever is now living on those planets.

Oh, but that’s just how it starts.  The problem of near-light speed travel is actually solved by easier means than you think (just use an asteroid as your ship, and keep using its fuel to slowly accelerate you to near-light speed travel, turn around halfway, and decelerate), and with relativity the time passed by the people on the ship is only about 10 months, even though something like 20 years passes by on Earth (it’s amazing how the universe works, isn’t it?).

The story is told partly in the “present” (the goings-on of the landing party) and partly in the future by the only surviving member, a Puerto Rican priest.  He hasn’t aged more than a few years, though nearly 40 years have gone by on Earth, and he’s since returned to Earth.  However, he’s not well received, and is currently being softly interrogated by his fellow Jesuits on Earth.

Apparently, the landing trip didn’t go so well, and this  is slowly revealed through both the present-tense storytelling and the future.

Also, this book has one of the most fucked-up endings imaginable.  Luckily, it has a sequel, and I’m going to get it eventually.

(Seriously, my review of  this book sucks.  Read it if you get the chance — it’s not hard SF, and is very enjoyable.)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

By Philip K. Dick

The book that the movie Bladerunner was based off of.  It’s only loosely connected, as usual — they both have androids.  The main character hunts them.  That’s about where the similarity ends.

Good book, though, if short.  Earth is a dying world in the book (the result of nuclear wars), and everything is decaying and falling apart — not quite the bustling economy is present as was in the movie.

Perdido Street Station

By China Mieville

My new favorite book.  Seriously — this book is both wonderfully written and incredibly exciting;  I couldn’t put it down for a week.  (Yes, a book can be wonderfully written but incredibly boring — anything by Charles Dickens comes to mind.)

I guess you’d call China Mieville’s novels “steampunk-ish,” because they’re not exactly steampunk, as I understand — Perdido Street Station doesn’t take place in Victorian England, for one thing — though it’s very much like it.  Think steampunk mixed with a small bit of magic and elementalism, with many types of creatures other than mankind.

The story centers (somewhat) around Isaac, an overweight scientist, and his half-human, half-insect lover (yes, lover), a “khepri” called Lin.  (Though, they wouldn’t say they’re half-human, half-insect — they claim humans are “khepris with the heads of gibbons.”)

Isaac is approached by a creature known as a Garuda — think half-man, half-bird — who has had his wings ripped off by his people as a form of punishment.  Isaac does not know for what, and doesn’t pry — the Garuda has sought him out, due to Isaac’s small bit of noteriety in the field of biomechanics.

…and that’s just where the bloody story begins. The world of Perdido Street Station is absolutely huge, even though the entire story takes place within just one city!  I found myself constantly referring to the map at the beginning, just to try and figure out in what section of the city a part of the story was taking place in.  (It’s not necessary — I just like looking at maps.)

The book is just absolutely filled with amazing characters, places, and descriptions — Mieville is able to describe this dirty, decrepid city amazingly.  You can almost smell the raw sewage, garbage, and shit lining the streets.  (The world of Perdido Street Station isn’t quite falling apart, but the people who live there have both forgotten many different scientific subjects, all while learning new ones.)

I’ve already got his other book Iron Council waiting to be read on my bookshelf, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it as much as this one.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a book review — life has been pretty busy lately.  I’ll try to catch up — luckily, most of what I’ve reading has been part of a big series and I can pretty much review the whole thing in one go.

Tetrasomy Two

by Oscar Rossiter

Another classic science fiction novel, Tetrasomy Two reminded me very, very much of Chuck Palahniuk.  (That probably should be the other way around, of course — this book was published 20 years before Chuck ever published anything.)  It had that gritty, sarcastic first-person dialog written in short, bursts of sentence fragments that I just love (another author I love who writes like this is my personal favorite, William Gibson, of course).

The story centers around a character who’s somewhat of an introvert — he’s a first-year doctor working in a psychiatric ward.  He finds himself receiving “messages” in the form of one-word sentences from a particular patient, and soon begins to doubt his sanity.  However, as this catatonic patient seems to somehow “feed” off of our protagonist’s wants and desires (including delivering an attractive nurse at the ward into our main introverted character’s bed), he decides to just go along with whatever is happening to him and make the best of it.

I won’t spoil it for you, in case you ever come across this book, but it’s definitely a good read, and one of the better out of the “classic” old SF novels I’ve managed to randomly find.

The Forgotten Realms Series

by R.A. Salvatore

Might as well just get the whole series out of the way at once, eh?

I’ve been being told to read these books for years, both by a good friend of mine and by my brother.  I avoided it for as long as I could — not because I had anything against Mr. Salvatore, but just because I didn’t want to start another hugely long series of Fantasy novels!  (I think I’m up to three, now.)

However, the books are good.  Salvatore’s a good writer — even if he claims that his books are mostly based upon his experiences in playing Dungeons and Dragons.

The series is somewhat centered around a character named “Drizzt Do’urden” (you’ve probably heard that name before, even if you’ve never read these books) — an elf from an evil race of elves, yet one who’s trying to avoid the dark ways of his people.

Salvatore’s description of Drizzt starts off somewhat differently than it is in later novels — in the earlier novels, I almost swear that Drizzt is described as a semi-sane dark elf that, though he’s forgone the demon-worshipping, sacrificing ways of his people, is still somewhat cruel and less than honorable.  This seems to change in later novels, as Drizzt seems to become more and more “pure” in his actions and thoughts.

The books have all the staples — dwarves, orcs, goblins, wizards, paladins, several different types of elves — I’m starting to see plenty of influence from these novels present in World of Warcraft, that’s for sure.

Triton (also published as Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia)

by Samuel R. Delany

Phew boy.  What can I say about this book.  If you know Delany, and you know how he was, then you’ll love this.  It’s seriously one of those books that when you get done reading it, and you know it’s not part of a series, that you’re left saying, “What the fuck?  I want more!”

The book is beautifully written, full of humor, and the development of the main character couldn’t have been done better.  Bron Helstrom is an incredibly introverted man (emotionally wise — this could also be described as being “narcisistic,” I guess), and this is shown beautiful through the third-person narration, which, as an interplanetary war is unfolding, all Bron seems to care about is himself.  The world of Triton is a wonderfully libertarian (culturally) utopia, where anyone can be happy, yet Bron is miserable.

And when he goes through his “change,” well, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you that I didn’t see it coming from a mile away, even though it’s HUGE.  I’ll let you figure it out for yourselves.

*the third ear*
_by curt siodmak_

A quick book — I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a translation, but it almost reads like one. In it, a psychologist/scientist searches for a chemical substance that is extruded by psychics/mind-readers in the hopes of synthesizing it.

The book is written from the first person, and the doctor’s sense of paranoia really comes through to the reader — you can’t tell if he really _is_ being hounded by government agents and rival scientists, or if he only _thinks_ that he is.

A very good book, though it doesn’t really have an ending — it’s just, event-event-rising-action-end. No conclusion or anything — just… _ending_. You’d have to read it to know.

*Binary*
_By John Lange_

Not really a SF novel, but a sort of really quick Tom Clancy-esque super-government-agent novel, where a CIA agent has to stop a terrorist from killing all of San Diego! No, really, that’s what it’s about.

But it’s not as black-and-white as that — the book really gets into the the agent’s life and the meanings behind the terrorist’s plot, really making you think.

*From this Day Forward*
_By John Brunner_

A collection of short stories — the book was printed very weirdly in that none of the short stories told who the authors were… all I could tell from the index pages was that one of them was either written by or edited by Harlan Ellison.

Had quite a few good stories in it, including one about Vietnamese terrorists striking the United States in retaliation for the horrors committed during the Vietnam War, and one story (which I take it to be one of the first in this genre) featurning, literally, “Men in Black.”

*Stranger in a Strange Land*
_by Robert Heinlein_

What can I say about his book that hasn’t already been said? Just read it, if you haven’t already.

I’ve heard of people describing Heinlein as fascist, conservative, authoritarian in his writings — I am now of the conclusion that these people have never read one of this books.

_Stranger in a Strange Land_ is so far removed from those ideals as to be almost from another planet — much like the protagonist of the story! Hurr hurr!

Quick summary (if you _must_ have one): it’s about a man raised in an environment alien to Earth, and who suddenly comes to our planet as a sort of emissary. But, seriously — that’s like saying the Bible is about some people wandering around in a desert for a bit. Just read.

*Freezing Down*
_by Anders Bodelsen_

A classic SF book from the 70′s, _Freezing Down_ is a translation from the original Danish — I mention this, because the translation gives the entire thing a sort of “eerie” quality that I can’t quite put my finger on.

It’s not _badly written_—not at all—you’d just have to read it to know what I’m talking about (or if you’ve read other direct, only partly-edited translations of works before, you’ll know what I’m talking about).

I loved reading this book for several reasons, the main one being the different ideals and ways of living that were put forth by the author, who grew up in a very liberal Northern European country — the views present on sex, in particular, are very interesting. Sex is treated as just another part of life — not particularly special, but not particular forbidden either. This is doubly noteworthy, in my opinion, since a large part of the book takes place in (the author’s) present day, so there’s no “Oh, that’s just the way things are in the future” kind of thing going on.

*Nova 2*
_by Harry Harrison_

Well, _compiled_ by Harry Harrison, at least. This is a collection of about a dozen or so short stories from the early 70′s — there’s somewhat of a theme of environmentalism in a few of the stories, a theme that was just as prevalent in early 70′s society as it is today.

One story is a translation by a Brazilian author (André Carneiro), and as even Mr. Harrison describes of it in his foreword, it’s of a decidedly different nature — you’ll just have to read it and see what I’m talking about.