Connie Willis
This book was a slow starter. I almost tossed it a couple times in the first third. In the year 2060 time travel has been invented, is controlled by the historians at Oxford, and is used to send students back in time to observe first person, significant historical events. The time continuum somehow does not allow historians to alter the past. It does this by not allowing them to travel to places that they could cause problems that can't be fixed. Several historians are traveling back to World War II England to observe different aspects of life during the war (e.g. shop-girls before and after the beginning of the Blitz, ordinary people becoming heroes in the evacuation of Dunkirk, life in the country with the hundreds of children evacuated from London, etc.). Once these historians are on assignment, and we stick with their stories, the book becomes fascinating. It really is interesting what can be learned from observation of the mundane that was not likely ever recorded in any history book. Willis does a great job of painting the portraits of routine wartime life in England.
My biggest disappointment was to get to the end and find out that this was a two volume novel. Stay tuned for All Clear to find out what happened. You can't read just this book. Either don't read it, or plan to read both. Since I plan to read both, I will rate it...
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Definitely one of the top 5 books I have read this year (see The Windup Girl, Divergent, and The Years of Rice and Salt for the others). How can you not appreciate a cyberpunk, political thriller with a strong metaphysical thread running throughout? The setting is presumably in the future, but perhaps not too far into the future. The world has been franchised out (MegaCops, General Jim's Defense Systems, The Mafia, CosaNostra Pizza, Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, etc.). That is, there are no laws anywhere and the entire globe has been balkanized into for profit enterprises. There is also the MetaVerse (an online virtual world a la Second Life) where people can create avatars and conduct both business and pleasure. Hiro Protagonist is the main character here. He is a hacker, sword fighter and band promoter. As a hacker, he gets involved with a nefarious plot to distribute a virus that can not only crash computers, but can also crash brains. This is where it gets fun. Stephenson treats us to long discourses that describe how language and religion and ancient Sumerians have all contributed to the development of human civilization and how each individual religion is either a virus leading to monoculture and human destruction or an anti-virus and maintaining civilization. Encased in the clothes of a futuristic thriller, we get to think about the meaning and role of religion and belief systems. What exactly is this thing I believe, why do I believe it and how does it interact with the world around me.
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Definitely one of the top 5 books I have read this year (see The Windup Girl, Divergent, and The Years of Rice and Salt for the others). How can you not appreciate a cyberpunk, political thriller with a strong metaphysical thread running throughout? The setting is presumably in the future, but perhaps not too far into the future. The world has been franchised out (MegaCops, General Jim's Defense Systems, The Mafia, CosaNostra Pizza, Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, etc.). That is, there are no laws anywhere and the entire globe has been balkanized into for profit enterprises. There is also the MetaVerse (an online virtual world a la Second Life) where people can create avatars and conduct both business and pleasure. Hiro Protagonist is the main character here. He is a hacker, sword fighter and band promoter. As a hacker, he gets involved with a nefarious plot to distribute a virus that can not only crash computers, but can also crash brains. This is where it gets fun. Stephenson treats us to long discourses that describe how language and religion and ancient Sumerians have all contributed to the development of human civilization and how each individual religion is either a virus leading to monoculture and human destruction or an anti-virus and maintaining civilization. Encased in the clothes of a futuristic thriller, we get to think about the meaning and role of religion and belief systems. What exactly is this thing I believe, why do I believe it and how does it interact with the world around me.
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Truancy
Isamu Fukui
In the prologue, we get the setup (and it feels like the map for the rest of the story). The Mayor of an undisclosed city is meeting with his cabinet and discussing the purpose of education (to instruct/subject children and future citizens into becoming mindless instruction-followers) and the perhaps inevitable result (a local rebellion group called The Truancy, made up of kids, fighting for freedom). It seems from this prologue that we will now read a story of how the Truancy started and how it will win its fight against the evil Mayor. And in many ways, this is true. But Fukui adds in some interesting drama along the way that makes this a worthwhile read. Most interestingly is the portrayal of three characters as proponents of Just War, Pacifism and Militarism. In many ways, these three characters are battling for control of the city with their own philosophy and we actually see them interacting along the way, explicitly espousing their point of view and tactical approach to conflict. Since the fun of this book is actually the unfolding of conflict doctrine in the plot, I won't reveal which doctrine/character wins. I will say that I have yet to see a book written that is both entertaining and provides a good role model of how to think about conflict, violence and resolution within a framework that is not so detached from reality that it becomes useless (this book included). But the fact that I just read a YA novel (written by a teen author no less) where conflict doctrine is a major plot element is quite fun. It definitely allows us to ask the questions that need to be asked.
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In the prologue, we get the setup (and it feels like the map for the rest of the story). The Mayor of an undisclosed city is meeting with his cabinet and discussing the purpose of education (to instruct/subject children and future citizens into becoming mindless instruction-followers) and the perhaps inevitable result (a local rebellion group called The Truancy, made up of kids, fighting for freedom). It seems from this prologue that we will now read a story of how the Truancy started and how it will win its fight against the evil Mayor. And in many ways, this is true. But Fukui adds in some interesting drama along the way that makes this a worthwhile read. Most interestingly is the portrayal of three characters as proponents of Just War, Pacifism and Militarism. In many ways, these three characters are battling for control of the city with their own philosophy and we actually see them interacting along the way, explicitly espousing their point of view and tactical approach to conflict. Since the fun of this book is actually the unfolding of conflict doctrine in the plot, I won't reveal which doctrine/character wins. I will say that I have yet to see a book written that is both entertaining and provides a good role model of how to think about conflict, violence and resolution within a framework that is not so detached from reality that it becomes useless (this book included). But the fact that I just read a YA novel (written by a teen author no less) where conflict doctrine is a major plot element is quite fun. It definitely allows us to ask the questions that need to be asked.
Read
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