Cixin Liu
Bestselling Chinese Sci-Fi novel that was translated to English. Although it is sci-fi, I would probably say its primary genre is Mystery-Thriller based on how it reads. It just so happens that the mystery is sci-fi based. Beginning at the cultural revolution, we are introduced to a scientist and his family and a set of ethics/values that sets the stage for a conflict between a scientific worldview and a cultural/religious worldview. This feels like a common conflict and recalls the feeling of other Chinese cultural revolution or Soviet Marxist revolution story-lines. This setting provides the basis for decisions, planning and scheming around a first contact event with an alien (extra-solar) civilization. Liu does an excellent job of playing with both the psychology of humans knowing about alien civilization and the reality of physical interaction with that civilization. Overall, this is a fun exploration of competing worldview's and the implications of worldview on actions.
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Sunday, May 31, 2015
Monday, May 25, 2015
The Martian
Andy Weir
This is straight up science fiction of the best sort. No dystopian messages or utopian hopes. It is near future, human space travel to Mars. We start with the third manned mission to Mars aborting after 6 days on planet due to a massive dust storm. During evacuation, Mark Watney (mechanical engineer/botanist) is injured, blown away, and then left for dead. This gets you through about page 3. The entire story is a survivalist thriller in an extreme environment. Watney is the ideal "think outside the box" engineer who refuses to believe that a problem exists that doesn't have a solution. His only task is to survive for around four years until the next manned mission arrives and can rescue him. This is a page turner novel, putting one extreme situation after another in front of the reader that you can't really believe, but need to see how he solves the problem. It is also fun to cut back to earth to see NASA, etc. working Apollo 13 style to try to solve problems from their end. If you want a feel good, hope for humanity, space thriller, this is it. Well done Weir.
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This is straight up science fiction of the best sort. No dystopian messages or utopian hopes. It is near future, human space travel to Mars. We start with the third manned mission to Mars aborting after 6 days on planet due to a massive dust storm. During evacuation, Mark Watney (mechanical engineer/botanist) is injured, blown away, and then left for dead. This gets you through about page 3. The entire story is a survivalist thriller in an extreme environment. Watney is the ideal "think outside the box" engineer who refuses to believe that a problem exists that doesn't have a solution. His only task is to survive for around four years until the next manned mission arrives and can rescue him. This is a page turner novel, putting one extreme situation after another in front of the reader that you can't really believe, but need to see how he solves the problem. It is also fun to cut back to earth to see NASA, etc. working Apollo 13 style to try to solve problems from their end. If you want a feel good, hope for humanity, space thriller, this is it. Well done Weir.
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Friday, May 15, 2015
behind the beautiful forevers
Katherine Boo
Narrative non-fiction. Boo spent about 5 years interviewing people and learning about life in a small slum called Annawadi, near the Mumbai airport. She follows several "characters" to explore what life is like in what she calls the undercity. Abdul is one of 9 siblings working in the recycle trade, Manju is the daughter of an aspiring slumlord and one of the few who is attending college. As these two lives intersect with the city around them, we discover just how small their world is as they rarely leave the area surrounding the airport. For most of the book, the fact that it read like a novel was distracting. I continuously wondered if it was actually true, how could Boo have known what characters where thinking or feeling. And as a novel, it wasn't really that engaging. Boo was restricted in her storytelling by only being able to attribute thoughts and feelings that were coming out of her research. Even with these literary limitations, I found the book fascinating, giving insight to Hindi-Muslim relations, corruption, politics, slum life, caste restrictions and hopes & expectations for a progressive life. For some reason, it also made me start to wonder about parallels between Indian poverty and US poverty. Are race and class issues in U.S. cities similar to the caste issues in India? From the perspective of the local poor, how big of an issue is government corruption? Are the hopes for upward mobility in the U.S. just as strong (and just as unrealistic) as described for the Mumbai slum? As a final note, I will also recommend as a companion Shantaram, which is the fictional story of life in Mumbai's underworld, with both books referencing some of the same landmarks and slum life descriptions.
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Narrative non-fiction. Boo spent about 5 years interviewing people and learning about life in a small slum called Annawadi, near the Mumbai airport. She follows several "characters" to explore what life is like in what she calls the undercity. Abdul is one of 9 siblings working in the recycle trade, Manju is the daughter of an aspiring slumlord and one of the few who is attending college. As these two lives intersect with the city around them, we discover just how small their world is as they rarely leave the area surrounding the airport. For most of the book, the fact that it read like a novel was distracting. I continuously wondered if it was actually true, how could Boo have known what characters where thinking or feeling. And as a novel, it wasn't really that engaging. Boo was restricted in her storytelling by only being able to attribute thoughts and feelings that were coming out of her research. Even with these literary limitations, I found the book fascinating, giving insight to Hindi-Muslim relations, corruption, politics, slum life, caste restrictions and hopes & expectations for a progressive life. For some reason, it also made me start to wonder about parallels between Indian poverty and US poverty. Are race and class issues in U.S. cities similar to the caste issues in India? From the perspective of the local poor, how big of an issue is government corruption? Are the hopes for upward mobility in the U.S. just as strong (and just as unrealistic) as described for the Mumbai slum? As a final note, I will also recommend as a companion Shantaram, which is the fictional story of life in Mumbai's underworld, with both books referencing some of the same landmarks and slum life descriptions.
Read
Friday, April 10, 2015
The Book of Unknown Americans
Cristina Henriquez
This novel is set in New Jersey, following a few immigrant families who have traveled to the US for various reasons. The apartment complex they all call home provides a community of sorts for these families who come from Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Mexico, etc. In fact, one of the pleasures of this novel is the telling of the different stories of each family history, showing the uniqueness that each brings to their current situation. Our main characters are Mayor and Maribel. The storytelling mechanism is to allow each character to narrate a chapter (so as a reader we get first person insight from a variety of points of view) but strangely, Maribel is never a narrator. So her character is completely developed from the third person. While the story does have some weaknesses (caricature and a weak ending) it is definitely worth the read.
Read
This novel is set in New Jersey, following a few immigrant families who have traveled to the US for various reasons. The apartment complex they all call home provides a community of sorts for these families who come from Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Mexico, etc. In fact, one of the pleasures of this novel is the telling of the different stories of each family history, showing the uniqueness that each brings to their current situation. Our main characters are Mayor and Maribel. The storytelling mechanism is to allow each character to narrate a chapter (so as a reader we get first person insight from a variety of points of view) but strangely, Maribel is never a narrator. So her character is completely developed from the third person. While the story does have some weaknesses (caricature and a weak ending) it is definitely worth the read.
Read
Sunday, March 29, 2015
UBIK
Philip K Dick
Sometimes sci-fi writing provides insight to a particular social issue or gives a futurist glimpse into how our world could possibly develop. Other times it takes a scientific phenomena and just writes a story, without agenda. This book is the latter. We start out learning about a world where some people have special talents (seeing the future, changing probabilities, etc.) and others have the ability to interrupt these talents. So of course, we are introduced to two different talent agencies, one offering these talents for hire, and the other offering 'talent shielding'. In typical PKD fashion, things aren't always what they seem and trying to figure out what really is going on is half the fun. And we are treated to a little bit of a vision of this future world where everything in monetized, including your front door and morning coffee machine (no cash, your door won't open to let you out). I am a bit surprised that this hasn't been made into a film, as it seems like it could be lots of fun.
Read
Sometimes sci-fi writing provides insight to a particular social issue or gives a futurist glimpse into how our world could possibly develop. Other times it takes a scientific phenomena and just writes a story, without agenda. This book is the latter. We start out learning about a world where some people have special talents (seeing the future, changing probabilities, etc.) and others have the ability to interrupt these talents. So of course, we are introduced to two different talent agencies, one offering these talents for hire, and the other offering 'talent shielding'. In typical PKD fashion, things aren't always what they seem and trying to figure out what really is going on is half the fun. And we are treated to a little bit of a vision of this future world where everything in monetized, including your front door and morning coffee machine (no cash, your door won't open to let you out). I am a bit surprised that this hasn't been made into a film, as it seems like it could be lots of fun.
Read
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Getting To Know You
David Marusek
This guy is a genius. Loved his Counting Heads novel and this current selection of short stories includes several that were the basis for that novel. So we are seeing integrated nano-tech, corporate clones and ubiquitous surveillance. We also get a couple of soft scifi stories, of which my favorite is Yurek Rutz. In particular, I appreciated in the authors introduction the acknowledgement that it is difficult to both write short form as well as to read it (you must get the entire world defined within a couple pages) and his brief background about when and why he wrote each story.
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This guy is a genius. Loved his Counting Heads novel and this current selection of short stories includes several that were the basis for that novel. So we are seeing integrated nano-tech, corporate clones and ubiquitous surveillance. We also get a couple of soft scifi stories, of which my favorite is Yurek Rutz. In particular, I appreciated in the authors introduction the acknowledgement that it is difficult to both write short form as well as to read it (you must get the entire world defined within a couple pages) and his brief background about when and why he wrote each story.
Read
Friday, March 20, 2015
J
Howard Jacobson
I usually enjoy novels that have won a prize. This was a Man Booker finalist, so I had hopes. While the details are never spelled out, it is essentially the story of life in a rural European town some years after World War II. The result of the war is unclear, but the effect is the suppression of Jews and Jewishness along with the Balkanization of all ethnic groups. So every little small town is an isolationist, homogenous group. Add to this mix a Jewish protagonist, and a mysterious Jewish underground working to insure the continuation of the Jewish line without upsetting the repressive/precarious balance of the status quo. I can see how this is potentially interesting, but I was not engaged by the writing. The story was too cliche and did not provide any new insight to a post war mentality in Europe. I expect that by creating this alternate history fictional word, Jacobson will be presenting me with an intellectually stimulating point of view or new way of thinking about the specific Jewish trauma in the post war environment or the general cultural/sociological trends that lead to isolation and eventually genocide for any minority. I got neither.
Skip
I usually enjoy novels that have won a prize. This was a Man Booker finalist, so I had hopes. While the details are never spelled out, it is essentially the story of life in a rural European town some years after World War II. The result of the war is unclear, but the effect is the suppression of Jews and Jewishness along with the Balkanization of all ethnic groups. So every little small town is an isolationist, homogenous group. Add to this mix a Jewish protagonist, and a mysterious Jewish underground working to insure the continuation of the Jewish line without upsetting the repressive/precarious balance of the status quo. I can see how this is potentially interesting, but I was not engaged by the writing. The story was too cliche and did not provide any new insight to a post war mentality in Europe. I expect that by creating this alternate history fictional word, Jacobson will be presenting me with an intellectually stimulating point of view or new way of thinking about the specific Jewish trauma in the post war environment or the general cultural/sociological trends that lead to isolation and eventually genocide for any minority. I got neither.
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