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tachyondecay
I saw this on a library shelf and fell prey to their assertion that, having read The Shadow of the Wind, I should read this too. Blair’s review is spot-on when she says “the story begins promisingly” but then “the book soon begins to get quite silly and more and more plot holes and unanswered questions pop up”. The Prince of Mist suffers from being, ultimately, a story without a heart. Carlos Ruiz Zafón tries to create characters for the reader to care about, but the central conflict and antagonist are so nebulous and ill-defined that the story ultimately languishes in the liminal space between sinister childhood mystery and cautious fairy tale.
Max Carver’s family relocates to the oceanside to avoid the worst of the Second World War. They move into a house that stands out for its troubled history, and Max meets Roland, who likes to dive around a shipwreck with its own grisly story. Max finds nearby a garden of statues of circus performers—which would be creepy by itself, but the symbol on the gates of the garden is the same as the one on the sunken ship. Soon, Max and his sister and Roland find themselves in the middle of a fight against an old and powerful foe who is not willing to die.
It’s a terrifying, almost invigorating prospect. And Ruiz Zafón does almost nothing with it. Cain’s origins are never explored; he remains little more than a bogeyman with a good backstory. The end of the book, which involves a sacrifice so that everyone else can escape, passes so quickly, and without enough explanation, that the sacrifice lacks the significance it should have. I’m not averse to stories with dark or tragic endings, but they need to earn it.
Then there’s the incredibly contrived and unbelievable way in which Max’s parents leave him and Alicia alone for days on end. Max’s younger sister, Irina, falls down the stairs and enters a coma; so, his parents accompany her into town to the hospital, where they stay by her side, occasionally phoning Max and Alicia to check up on them. Um, what? Last time I checked, there are two of them. Couldn’t they take turns in shifts sitting by Irina and taking care of two thirds of their children? But no, instead they leave Max and Alicia alone to undergo this strange adventure all by themselves. Again, I’m not averse to the need to get the parents out of the way in this type of story so that the young protagonists can face evil on their own. But when it’s done in such an unbelievable manner, it pulls me out of the story.
The Prince of Mist is definitely more fantastical and magical in terms of content than either of Ruiz Zafón’s novels for adults that I’ve read. Yet those novels are by far superior and by far more magical works of literature. That this is Ruiz Zafón’s first published novel does not surprise me, but it doesn’t leave me inclined to be any more charitable to it.
Though its length precludes it wasting one’s time overly much, I still don’t recommend it. The Shadow of the Wind and others are definitely worth a try, but The Prince of Mist has very little to offer a reader, be they younger or older.
Max Carver’s family relocates to the oceanside to avoid the worst of the Second World War. They move into a house that stands out for its troubled history, and Max meets Roland, who likes to dive around a shipwreck with its own grisly story. Max finds nearby a garden of statues of circus performers—which would be creepy by itself, but the symbol on the gates of the garden is the same as the one on the sunken ship. Soon, Max and his sister and Roland find themselves in the middle of a fight against an old and powerful foe who is not willing to die.
It’s a terrifying, almost invigorating prospect. And Ruiz Zafón does almost nothing with it. Cain’s origins are never explored; he remains little more than a bogeyman with a good backstory. The end of the book, which involves a sacrifice so that everyone else can escape, passes so quickly, and without enough explanation, that the sacrifice lacks the significance it should have. I’m not averse to stories with dark or tragic endings, but they need to earn it.
Then there’s the incredibly contrived and unbelievable way in which Max’s parents leave him and Alicia alone for days on end. Max’s younger sister, Irina, falls down the stairs and enters a coma; so, his parents accompany her into town to the hospital, where they stay by her side, occasionally phoning Max and Alicia to check up on them. Um, what? Last time I checked, there are two of them. Couldn’t they take turns in shifts sitting by Irina and taking care of two thirds of their children? But no, instead they leave Max and Alicia alone to undergo this strange adventure all by themselves. Again, I’m not averse to the need to get the parents out of the way in this type of story so that the young protagonists can face evil on their own. But when it’s done in such an unbelievable manner, it pulls me out of the story.
The Prince of Mist is definitely more fantastical and magical in terms of content than either of Ruiz Zafón’s novels for adults that I’ve read. Yet those novels are by far superior and by far more magical works of literature. That this is Ruiz Zafón’s first published novel does not surprise me, but it doesn’t leave me inclined to be any more charitable to it.
Though its length precludes it wasting one’s time overly much, I still don’t recommend it. The Shadow of the Wind and others are definitely worth a try, but The Prince of Mist has very little to offer a reader, be they younger or older.
I reviewed the novels in this book separately: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile.
Didn’t much like “Witness for the Prosecution.” Christie is trying to be too clever—it’s a nice idea, and I suppose you could say it says interesting things about the justice system. But it doesn’t quite work.
Didn’t much like “Witness for the Prosecution.” Christie is trying to be too clever—it’s a nice idea, and I suppose you could say it says interesting things about the justice system. But it doesn’t quite work.
The universe is big. Mindbogglingly big. Our minds have trouble conceiving of the vastness of the universe, on either scales of time and space, or their unified presentation as spacetime. And the moment we think we might possibly be able to get used to this idea, it becomes apparent that the very foundations of our universe are small. So small, so tiny, that the energy required to probe these depths is nearly as impressively vast as the scale of the universe they conspire to create. This is The Quantum Universe that Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw want to explore with us.
Quantum mechanics is notorious among physicists and laypeople alike for appearing to be nonsensical and unintuitive (or at least counter-intuitive). The chapter titles of this book illustrate this line of thought: “Being in Two Places at Once,” “Everything That Can Happen Does Happen,” “Movement as an Illusion,” etc. But such ideas are fundamentally biased by our perspective as macro-sized beings. If we experienced the world at the quantum level, then quantum mechanics would seem quite normal. Since our larger world is based on the confluence of so many quantum-level events, the picture this builds up is so far removed from those quantum effects that we get a false sense of reality.
So Cox and Forshaw follow Heisenberg in establishing that
This is really difficult to accept. I know because I read a lot about physics and science, and I still picture a really tiny, featureless sphere when I picture an electron. But, of course, the whole idea of “picturing” an electron is the part that doesn’t make sense. Particles are not solid lumps of matter that happen to be really small. Particles are waves and waves are particles because both are descriptions of specific phenomena, often at a particular space and time in the universe.
Cox and Forshaw do a pretty good job, then, of deconstructing this false notion of particles. I also appreciate how they ground this deconstruction in the historical development of quantum mechanics. I knew the names, and had a vague idea of what the heavyweights behind quantum mechanics were known for—Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Rutherford and the structure of the atom, Dirac and antimatter, Schrödinger and the wave equation, etc. But Cox and Forshaw provide a more detailed context and chronology. They would describe, for instance, how Rutherford quickly realized the solar system model of the atom was wrong, or how Born or Dirac or Feynman would feed off each other’s discoveries very quickly. The 1920s was a really interesting time in the rapid development of quantum theory!
Starting around chapter 3, the book tries to explain these basic ideas in quantum theory to a reader who is assumed to have little scientific or mathematical background. Cox and Forshaw try to be reassuring, claiming that if someone is intimidated by the math, they can safely skip it. To their credit, although they refer to calculus and other higher math, the actual math they show is comprehensible to someone who took high school physics. Nevertheless, if you do skip the math … well, you’ll end up reading very little of what’s already a short book.
I fear The Quantum Universe suffers from trying to have its cake and eat it as well. Cox and Forshaw are so invested in not having to explain complex-based trigonometry to a lay audience that they manage to invent an analogy even more complicated than this math! I pulled down my copy of The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell, really the best, to see how Stephen Hawking deals with this. He dodges it by just not discussing the math behind it (famously, of course, declaiming in his original introduction that each equation would apparently halve book sales). Yet somehow he manages to discuss the double-slit experiment, quantized electron orbits, and sum-over-histories just fine.
Buried deep in later chapters, Cox and Forshaw explain the difference between the Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations (though they don’t identify the former as such). And then they take a half-hearted stab and describing the Standard Model but acknowledge it’s going beyond the remit of the book. (Knocking on Heaven’s Door, although laden with a lot of other information and tangents, provides one of the most cogent explanations of the Standard Model I’ve read.)
It’s a shame, because in between the confusing analogies and inexorable unravelling, The Quantum Universe treats the subject of quantum mechanics with wit and a graceful touch. Cox and Forshaw write well together. There is a sense of humour to the descriptions, particularly when they take a stab at the intelligence of drum players (since Cox used to be in a rock band). Despite making assurances about being able to skip the math, they never patronize the reader. This could have been a brilliant introduction to quantum mechanics for the layperson. As it is, while it’s not a total trainwreck, I wouldn’t recommend starting here either.
Quantum mechanics is notorious among physicists and laypeople alike for appearing to be nonsensical and unintuitive (or at least counter-intuitive). The chapter titles of this book illustrate this line of thought: “Being in Two Places at Once,” “Everything That Can Happen Does Happen,” “Movement as an Illusion,” etc. But such ideas are fundamentally biased by our perspective as macro-sized beings. If we experienced the world at the quantum level, then quantum mechanics would seem quite normal. Since our larger world is based on the confluence of so many quantum-level events, the picture this builds up is so far removed from those quantum effects that we get a false sense of reality.
So Cox and Forshaw follow Heisenberg in establishing that
the job of quantum theory should be to predict directly observable things…. It should not be expected to provide some kind of satisfying mental picture for the internal workings of the atom, because this is not necessary and it may not even be possible.
This is really difficult to accept. I know because I read a lot about physics and science, and I still picture a really tiny, featureless sphere when I picture an electron. But, of course, the whole idea of “picturing” an electron is the part that doesn’t make sense. Particles are not solid lumps of matter that happen to be really small. Particles are waves and waves are particles because both are descriptions of specific phenomena, often at a particular space and time in the universe.
Cox and Forshaw do a pretty good job, then, of deconstructing this false notion of particles. I also appreciate how they ground this deconstruction in the historical development of quantum mechanics. I knew the names, and had a vague idea of what the heavyweights behind quantum mechanics were known for—Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Rutherford and the structure of the atom, Dirac and antimatter, Schrödinger and the wave equation, etc. But Cox and Forshaw provide a more detailed context and chronology. They would describe, for instance, how Rutherford quickly realized the solar system model of the atom was wrong, or how Born or Dirac or Feynman would feed off each other’s discoveries very quickly. The 1920s was a really interesting time in the rapid development of quantum theory!
Starting around chapter 3, the book tries to explain these basic ideas in quantum theory to a reader who is assumed to have little scientific or mathematical background. Cox and Forshaw try to be reassuring, claiming that if someone is intimidated by the math, they can safely skip it. To their credit, although they refer to calculus and other higher math, the actual math they show is comprehensible to someone who took high school physics. Nevertheless, if you do skip the math … well, you’ll end up reading very little of what’s already a short book.
I fear The Quantum Universe suffers from trying to have its cake and eat it as well. Cox and Forshaw are so invested in not having to explain complex-based trigonometry to a lay audience that they manage to invent an analogy even more complicated than this math! I pulled down my copy of The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell, really the best, to see how Stephen Hawking deals with this. He dodges it by just not discussing the math behind it (famously, of course, declaiming in his original introduction that each equation would apparently halve book sales). Yet somehow he manages to discuss the double-slit experiment, quantized electron orbits, and sum-over-histories just fine.
Buried deep in later chapters, Cox and Forshaw explain the difference between the Copenhagen and many-worlds interpretations (though they don’t identify the former as such). And then they take a half-hearted stab and describing the Standard Model but acknowledge it’s going beyond the remit of the book. (Knocking on Heaven’s Door, although laden with a lot of other information and tangents, provides one of the most cogent explanations of the Standard Model I’ve read.)
It’s a shame, because in between the confusing analogies and inexorable unravelling, The Quantum Universe treats the subject of quantum mechanics with wit and a graceful touch. Cox and Forshaw write well together. There is a sense of humour to the descriptions, particularly when they take a stab at the intelligence of drum players (since Cox used to be in a rock band). Despite making assurances about being able to skip the math, they never patronize the reader. This could have been a brilliant introduction to quantum mechanics for the layperson. As it is, while it’s not a total trainwreck, I wouldn’t recommend starting here either.
Shall we start by agreeing that Christopher Moore is a literary comedic genius? I’ve had some good times with him. Both Fool and Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art are amazing, laugh-out-loud funny. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal is hilarious and irreverent and the perfect gift to give your atheist or agnostic friends (or your theist friends, if they have the right sense of humour!). Everyone once in a while, though I hit on a Fluke….
That’s the problem with comedy: it’s really tough, and even comedic geniuses don’t get it right all the time.
Bloodsucking Fiends has a lot going for it. I considered, for a while, giving this book one star—but I can’t do that, ultimately, because there was definitely a time where I was enjoying this book, maybe more than I should have. (For those who have read it: the scenes with the Emperor are all priceless, and the scene where the Safeway crew boards the vampire’s boat and start blowing shit up is high-octane of a calibre I was not expecting in a book like this.) In particular, if you were looking for a more humorous take on the whole “becoming a vampire” plot, then Moore has you covered here.
But.
Jody and Thomas. I can’t even.
This is subtitled A Love Story, as are the sequels to this book (which I also have out from the library). The idea is that Jody, after becoming a vampire, looks for a man to cohabit with (and have sex with, if convenient) who can go out during the day, when she is asleep, and run errands. A sex-Renfield, if you will. (Oh God, now I’m envisioning all the Dracula/Renfield slash-fic I am not going to search for after finishing this review….)
Mr. C. Thomas Flood from Indiana has just moved to San Francisco to become the next Great American Writer. He hooks up with Jody by chance, sticks with her even after she confesses that she is a vampire, and quickly falls in love with her.
But I don’t really buy it, you know?
I can buy that Thomas thinks he’s in love with Jody, and that Jody feels co-dependent with Thomas. Moore paints Jody as the type of woman who feels that she “needs” a man, having lived with ten in the past five years. And I love that Moore doesn’t make this a head-over-heels, hit-by-Cupid’s-arrow type of romance—Jody and Thomas fight and argue and call each other names, and it’s all very realistic. (Except for the whole vampire thing, obviously.)
I find Jody’s characterization hugely problematic, though. There is nothing wrong, a priori, with portraying a woman who serially enters dysfunctional relationships. That’s all part of diverse portrayals of women in fiction. Unfortunately, that only works if you have diverse portrayals of women in your story (I think there are three named women characters in this book, and it only technically passes the Bechdel Test because Jody talks to her mom). And it only works if your characters are multi-dimensional.
I was hoping that, amid the standard Moore silliness of the plot, Bloodsucking Fiends would be a story about Jody’s personal growth. Moore starts off by showing us a woman who doesn’t have a lot going for her, who has a really bad day by being assaulted and transformed into a vampire, and who subsequently decides to make lemons out of lemonade. And on one level, this does actually happen. The ending of the story affirms Jody’s desire to embrace her newfound vampiric powers, to learn more about them, and to make the most of this life.
So I just wish Moore hadn’t ruined what might have been a great thing by falling back on clichéd jokes, like, “I could stand to lose five pounds.” We get it: women are obsessed with their weight! Hah-hah, very funny. I’ll pencil in a laugh sometime next week.
This sense of cliché looms ominously over most of the book. Jody is a walking cliché. Thomas’ situation—growing up in Indiana and being suspected of homosexuality because he has intellectual tendencies—is so cliché. It’s as if Moore assembled a checklist of the most overused tropes, then proceeded to work his way down the list—maybe alphabetically? Boy, those Asian people—aren’t they funny? And people who can’t read and hide it—hilarious! What about sales clerks—they sure are jerks, right? This might be comedy, but it is lazy comedy, thoughtless comedy—in other words, bad comedy.
I know Moore is capable of, well, more. You can’t write two novels parodying Shakespeare to the level that Moore has without actually reading and understanding Shakespeare. And while Moore’s portrayal of women doesn’t receive highest marks, I’ve seen him do better than how he does in Bloodsucking Fiends.
Oh, but the whole part where Thomas literally fridges Jody? Then does it again by bronzing her? That’s not funny, Moore, and it’s not endearing. It’s terrifying and sick, and it doesn’t show that Thomas “loves” Jody, just that he’s obsessed with her and willing to imprison her rather than let her go. We have names and prisons for those sorts of people.
I’m going to try the next book, because Moore has earned a lot of credit with me. But if Thomas pulls anything like that again, I’m out of here. I have better things to do with my time than watch an insecure guy try to stop his vampire ladyfriend from leaving her in progressively creepier and rapier ways.
That’s the problem with comedy: it’s really tough, and even comedic geniuses don’t get it right all the time.
Bloodsucking Fiends has a lot going for it. I considered, for a while, giving this book one star—but I can’t do that, ultimately, because there was definitely a time where I was enjoying this book, maybe more than I should have. (For those who have read it: the scenes with the Emperor are all priceless, and the scene where the Safeway crew boards the vampire’s boat and start blowing shit up is high-octane of a calibre I was not expecting in a book like this.) In particular, if you were looking for a more humorous take on the whole “becoming a vampire” plot, then Moore has you covered here.
But.
Jody and Thomas. I can’t even.
This is subtitled A Love Story, as are the sequels to this book (which I also have out from the library). The idea is that Jody, after becoming a vampire, looks for a man to cohabit with (and have sex with, if convenient) who can go out during the day, when she is asleep, and run errands. A sex-Renfield, if you will. (Oh God, now I’m envisioning all the Dracula/Renfield slash-fic I am not going to search for after finishing this review….)
Mr. C. Thomas Flood from Indiana has just moved to San Francisco to become the next Great American Writer. He hooks up with Jody by chance, sticks with her even after she confesses that she is a vampire, and quickly falls in love with her.
But I don’t really buy it, you know?
I can buy that Thomas thinks he’s in love with Jody, and that Jody feels co-dependent with Thomas. Moore paints Jody as the type of woman who feels that she “needs” a man, having lived with ten in the past five years. And I love that Moore doesn’t make this a head-over-heels, hit-by-Cupid’s-arrow type of romance—Jody and Thomas fight and argue and call each other names, and it’s all very realistic. (Except for the whole vampire thing, obviously.)
I find Jody’s characterization hugely problematic, though. There is nothing wrong, a priori, with portraying a woman who serially enters dysfunctional relationships. That’s all part of diverse portrayals of women in fiction. Unfortunately, that only works if you have diverse portrayals of women in your story (I think there are three named women characters in this book, and it only technically passes the Bechdel Test because Jody talks to her mom). And it only works if your characters are multi-dimensional.
I was hoping that, amid the standard Moore silliness of the plot, Bloodsucking Fiends would be a story about Jody’s personal growth. Moore starts off by showing us a woman who doesn’t have a lot going for her, who has a really bad day by being assaulted and transformed into a vampire, and who subsequently decides to make lemons out of lemonade. And on one level, this does actually happen. The ending of the story affirms Jody’s desire to embrace her newfound vampiric powers, to learn more about them, and to make the most of this life.
So I just wish Moore hadn’t ruined what might have been a great thing by falling back on clichéd jokes, like, “I could stand to lose five pounds.” We get it: women are obsessed with their weight! Hah-hah, very funny. I’ll pencil in a laugh sometime next week.
This sense of cliché looms ominously over most of the book. Jody is a walking cliché. Thomas’ situation—growing up in Indiana and being suspected of homosexuality because he has intellectual tendencies—is so cliché. It’s as if Moore assembled a checklist of the most overused tropes, then proceeded to work his way down the list—maybe alphabetically? Boy, those Asian people—aren’t they funny? And people who can’t read and hide it—hilarious! What about sales clerks—they sure are jerks, right? This might be comedy, but it is lazy comedy, thoughtless comedy—in other words, bad comedy.
I know Moore is capable of, well, more. You can’t write two novels parodying Shakespeare to the level that Moore has without actually reading and understanding Shakespeare. And while Moore’s portrayal of women doesn’t receive highest marks, I’ve seen him do better than how he does in Bloodsucking Fiends.
Oh, but the whole part where Thomas literally fridges Jody? Then does it again by bronzing her? That’s not funny, Moore, and it’s not endearing. It’s terrifying and sick, and it doesn’t show that Thomas “loves” Jody, just that he’s obsessed with her and willing to imprison her rather than let her go. We have names and prisons for those sorts of people.
I’m going to try the next book, because Moore has earned a lot of credit with me. But if Thomas pulls anything like that again, I’m out of here. I have better things to do with my time than watch an insecure guy try to stop his vampire ladyfriend from leaving her in progressively creepier and rapier ways.
Neuromancer remains one of the most influential science-fiction books I’ve read. It’s the kind of book that influenced me even before I had read it by influencing books and TV shows and movies that I then read or watched. However, it’s not William Gibson’s imagination of cyberspace that sticks with me. Rather, it’s his vision of a future dominated by corporations, one where governments are atrophied entities and one’s life and prosperity are dependent upon feudal loyalties to these transnational mega-corporations. Whereas the initial cyberpunk renderings of cyberspace and virtual reality seem very quaint thirty years on, corporate statehood remains a viable and fearsome proposition.
Life Inc is a non-fiction exploration of the power that corporations have and the means by which they hold onto power and gain more. Douglas Rushkoff looks at the historical antecedents of the modern corporation, exploring how corporatist philosophies developed out of old-style mercantilism. From there, he factors in the rise of individualism in the twentieth-century. Ultimately, he aims to show how corporations are alternatively self-reinforcing and, occasionally, self-defeating, but how our short-sightedness has allowed them to gain more power than they should have.
If I had read this back when I first heard about it in 2009, then I probably would have been more impressed. Since then my feelings about capitalism have changed. Whereas before I was more optimistic about the ability for regulation to rein in the excesses of capitalism, I’ve since become more radical. Now I view capitalism as an inherently unethical system that reinforces inequity, so let’s burn it all down. Rushkoff doesn’t go quite so far—he acknowledges that regulation is unlikely to be effective, at least by itself; but he isn’t in a rush to reimagine our entire system. About as far as he’ll go towards that radical end of the spectrum is to point out that we shouldn’t suffer from tunnel vision. Just because we currently have a centralized currency doesn’t mean we must always have one, for example.
As far as economic arguments go, Life Inc is a little bit all over the place. Rushkoff seems split over a chronological or thematic organization to his argument … so he kind of goes for both. Each chapter is loosely based around a theme, and then from there he delivers a historical perspective on that theme. In some cases this works fine—the first chapter, for example, is very informative. In other cases it can be confusing or repetitive. The book is also extremely American in its perspective and tone. I mean, that’s to be expected—but it’s always amusing, as a Canadian, reading an American’s writing and seeing very plainly the biases that inform it. Even as Rushkoff talks about how people too easily assume that this is the way it has to be, he’s making assumptions based on an American society that has laboured under the myth of the American Dream for over two hundred years.
The book is front-loaded, generally proceeding downhill towards its resolution with ever-dimininshing returns. The last two chapters, in particular, I skimmed. After dedicating a great deal of time to discussing how corporations, and in particular the self-help industry, target people by singling them out as individuals, Rushkoff ironically does the same: “I believe it can. And more important, you can.” And then there’s this gem:
Oh, I get it. Power of positive thinking … wait a minute. That sounds awfully similar to the Secret or those other self-help scams you were talking about earlier, Douglas.
Critiquing capitalism is easy. Coming up with solutions is hard. And to be fair, some of these community-minded solutions that Rushkoff includes are probably worthwhile ventures. But again, so much here assumes a kind of homogeneous, middle-class, white privilege in the reader: “You are an upper-middle class white guy with a university degree and a steady but not amazing income. You might be married or about to get married, and you want to make your community a slightly less corporatized place.”
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is very little fire to this book, because like it or not, Rushkoff has benefitted a great deal from the way our society is currently set up. That’s one of the largest differences between a book written by a member of the dominant group and a book written by someone who has experienced more oppression—both books can be accurate critiques, but one is going to be more dry and academic and the other will necessarily have more passion. Rushkoff delivers a lot of fact and a lot of opinion, but it’s the same kind of opinion I largely have on these things: opinion formed from careful and reasoned judgement and study rather than lived experience. While that doesn’t make our opinions less valuable, I think sometimes it makes them less interesting.
So like I said, if I had read this in 2009, I’d be all over Life Inc. If you are just getting started in questioning capitalism or corporatism, Rushkoff is going to walk you through it. And this is such an important issue. So you could do much worse here.
Nevertheless, there’s just so much that this book isn’t that it could have been. While there are plenty of gems, accurate criticisms, and interesting historical tidbits, you have to wade through a lot that isn’t so interesting to get to them. Life Inc reminded me of all the many reasons I’m not fond of corporatism, and it gave me some fresh perspective on some of the reasons corporations are as powerful as they are today. But it’s a long way from becoming any kind of bible on the subject.
Life Inc is a non-fiction exploration of the power that corporations have and the means by which they hold onto power and gain more. Douglas Rushkoff looks at the historical antecedents of the modern corporation, exploring how corporatist philosophies developed out of old-style mercantilism. From there, he factors in the rise of individualism in the twentieth-century. Ultimately, he aims to show how corporations are alternatively self-reinforcing and, occasionally, self-defeating, but how our short-sightedness has allowed them to gain more power than they should have.
If I had read this back when I first heard about it in 2009, then I probably would have been more impressed. Since then my feelings about capitalism have changed. Whereas before I was more optimistic about the ability for regulation to rein in the excesses of capitalism, I’ve since become more radical. Now I view capitalism as an inherently unethical system that reinforces inequity, so let’s burn it all down. Rushkoff doesn’t go quite so far—he acknowledges that regulation is unlikely to be effective, at least by itself; but he isn’t in a rush to reimagine our entire system. About as far as he’ll go towards that radical end of the spectrum is to point out that we shouldn’t suffer from tunnel vision. Just because we currently have a centralized currency doesn’t mean we must always have one, for example.
As far as economic arguments go, Life Inc is a little bit all over the place. Rushkoff seems split over a chronological or thematic organization to his argument … so he kind of goes for both. Each chapter is loosely based around a theme, and then from there he delivers a historical perspective on that theme. In some cases this works fine—the first chapter, for example, is very informative. In other cases it can be confusing or repetitive. The book is also extremely American in its perspective and tone. I mean, that’s to be expected—but it’s always amusing, as a Canadian, reading an American’s writing and seeing very plainly the biases that inform it. Even as Rushkoff talks about how people too easily assume that this is the way it has to be, he’s making assumptions based on an American society that has laboured under the myth of the American Dream for over two hundred years.
The book is front-loaded, generally proceeding downhill towards its resolution with ever-dimininshing returns. The last two chapters, in particular, I skimmed. After dedicating a great deal of time to discussing how corporations, and in particular the self-help industry, target people by singling them out as individuals, Rushkoff ironically does the same: “I believe it can. And more important, you can.” And then there’s this gem:
Likewise, each tiny choice we make to take back our world leads to a long chain of positive effects.
Oh, I get it. Power of positive thinking … wait a minute. That sounds awfully similar to the Secret or those other self-help scams you were talking about earlier, Douglas.
Critiquing capitalism is easy. Coming up with solutions is hard. And to be fair, some of these community-minded solutions that Rushkoff includes are probably worthwhile ventures. But again, so much here assumes a kind of homogeneous, middle-class, white privilege in the reader: “You are an upper-middle class white guy with a university degree and a steady but not amazing income. You might be married or about to get married, and you want to make your community a slightly less corporatized place.”
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is very little fire to this book, because like it or not, Rushkoff has benefitted a great deal from the way our society is currently set up. That’s one of the largest differences between a book written by a member of the dominant group and a book written by someone who has experienced more oppression—both books can be accurate critiques, but one is going to be more dry and academic and the other will necessarily have more passion. Rushkoff delivers a lot of fact and a lot of opinion, but it’s the same kind of opinion I largely have on these things: opinion formed from careful and reasoned judgement and study rather than lived experience. While that doesn’t make our opinions less valuable, I think sometimes it makes them less interesting.
So like I said, if I had read this in 2009, I’d be all over Life Inc. If you are just getting started in questioning capitalism or corporatism, Rushkoff is going to walk you through it. And this is such an important issue. So you could do much worse here.
Nevertheless, there’s just so much that this book isn’t that it could have been. While there are plenty of gems, accurate criticisms, and interesting historical tidbits, you have to wade through a lot that isn’t so interesting to get to them. Life Inc reminded me of all the many reasons I’m not fond of corporatism, and it gave me some fresh perspective on some of the reasons corporations are as powerful as they are today. But it’s a long way from becoming any kind of bible on the subject.
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When I heard that Felicia Day had a book coming out, my knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk) reaction was, “Isn’t she a little young to be writing memoirs?” The word connotes a sharing of memories as one surveys one’s entire life. A memoir, to mee, is something that people write at the end of their careers; Day doesn’t seem anywhere near the end of her career.
But I think that’s the whole point of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). It’s about how Day has achieved all that she has by short-circuiting the traditional processes. If you pardon me for talking about the end of the book at the beginning of the review: her points in the last chapter are very valid. The web, social media, and online video are a disruptive force in the entertainment industry. I probably wouldn’t know who Day is, aside from being “one of the potentials from season 7 of Buffy,” except that she chose to delve into the world of Internet video-making, and she made videos I like.
In her introduction (there, I’m back at the beginning—happy now?), Day says she prefers the term “situationally recognizable” over “internet famous,” because the latter category is more for the viral sensations. I understand that. Regardless, both terms carry with them an important truth of the digital age: fame is no longer a universal signifier. This is probably the most disruptive aspect of social media and web video on the entertainment industry, even more so than the ability to Kickstart a project or distribute media in the blink of an eye. Time was, studios made actors famous. They would pick the actor, elevate them to some kind of stardom, and that actor would be a Celebrity. Everyone would know who they are, even if one didn’t exactly like or admire the actor. Fame was to be a household name; that was the mark of the entertainment industrial complex’s hold on Western media.
Then along comes YouTube, and suddenly you’ve got people who are famous within subcultures and completely unknown to everyone else. As Day says, she is a rockstar at cons but just another unremarkable, if slightly awkward-looking, woman in a Lancaster Build-a-Bear: “situationally recognizable.” Similarly, I can list a dozen well-known YouTubers, Twitter users, or other situationally recognize people whom I follow and enjoy but who are entirely unknown to some of my close friends. The explosion and proliferation of information means that it is nearly impossible to become a household name. Such a status is still only within the purview of the entertainment industrial complex—and only then through achieving a kind of mainstream lowest-common-denominator appeal that seems to get blander with each passing year. (Reboot? No? What about a “gritty reboot,” will you watch it then?)
Day’s descriptions of her childhood are fun and funny, both in the “little chuckle to myself” and the “laugh out loud” kind of way. There will hopefully be at least something you can identify with. Her story about how her mom practically forced her into making out with an online friend is hilarious. And I quite liked the chapter about getting her college degrees and how she worked her ass off to ace group theory, of all things, as a summer course, because she couldn’t deal with not getting a perfect GPA. As someone who really enjoyed doing well in school, and now as a teacher who is trying, slowly, to get rid of grades as much as possible, I really sympathize with her perspectives, both past and present.
But the book really comes into its own when Day talks about her move to Los Angeles, her struggle getting acting work, and her addiction to World of Warcraft. As someone who really started paying attention to Day after finding The Guild (and I tried but cannot for the life of me remember where I first heard about it), I was fascinated to read more about its inception in her own words. I knew that much of The Guild’s story was inspired by her own experiences, but I wasn’t sure how much of Codex’s story was autobiographical. Day is quite candid in talking about her addiction to WoW and how it affected the rest of her life.
Similarly, I wasn’t expecting to be interested in the chapter on conventions (because I’m not interested in going to a convention, ever), only to be surprised by Day sharing her perspective on meeting fans. Suddenly I found myself on the other side of the interaction, if you know what I mean.
It’s so easy for us to interact more directly with celebrities, thanks to social media like Twitter. Even those these interactions are often more direct, they are still mediated. We don’t share everything with everyone. In the book, Day discusses how the stress of running Geek & Sundry was affecting her relationships even while she put on the happy face to make videos. The connection that Twitter gives us, and its ability to let people share anything, makes it easy to forget that what we see is not all there is.
So that’s why we have memoirs. It’s one thing to tweet that you’re feeling down on a particular day, but if your job is to make funny Internet videos, you’re going to suck it up and make funny videos, damn it, even if you’re depressed. As a fan of The Guild, I had no awareness of the financial pressures Day and her co-producers were under trying to get a second season shot. I was just incredibly enthusiastic about the idea there would be a second season. And I loyally navigated the harsh, Zune-branding–infested world that was the Xbox Video marketplace to download the new episodes the day they were released. I didn’t necessarily think Day and The Guild had “sold out” in their deal with Xbox—but I don’t think I understood how a second season literally couldn’t have been made without Xbox’s combination of funding and a hands-off approach.
Day’s last chapter before the conclusion focuses on GamerGate. I remember reading the blog post in question where she describes how, for the first time, she didn’t feel like she would automatically belong to this group defined only under the label of “gamer,” and how that was an indescribably sad feeling. What I didn’t know about until reading this book, however, was the aftermath—Wil Wheaton having to phone Day to tell her to disable commenting because people were posting her address (among other vitriol). I mean, I knew it happened, but I didn’t have the context of Day’s emotional reaction.
Because when it comes down to it, all we know about people online is what they share. (This is also true, to an extent, about people offline, just to a different degree.) With her memoir, Day shares a bit more, in a different way, from a slightly different angle—it’s a “behind the scenes” look, if you will, with the result of giving her public persona a dimension that she didn’t previously have. (I assume she’s already at least four-dimensional, with the power to travel in time, so I guess that makes her fifth-dimensional now?)
Also, I loved her analogy of the absurdity of GamerGate abuse through knitting fanatics:
(I can personally vouch that I have never had such an experience among my fellow knitters—but that might be male privilege at work, I don’t know.)
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is a fascinating memoir, and contrary to my sarcastic initial reaction, entirely appropriately-timed. It says something about the power of books that even in this digitally-obsessed age they’re still a useful way of sharing more about yourself. I loved learning more about Day’s life. I hope this inspires girls who consider themselves geeks and gamers and counteracts the poisonous trolls telling them they are posers, fakers, or generally unwelcome online. More broadly, I hope it inspires people in general who want to create, to share what they can do, to reach an audience. I suppose that is the measure of a memoir, right—whether, in the telling of the story, it can have an impact.
But I think that’s the whole point of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). It’s about how Day has achieved all that she has by short-circuiting the traditional processes. If you pardon me for talking about the end of the book at the beginning of the review: her points in the last chapter are very valid. The web, social media, and online video are a disruptive force in the entertainment industry. I probably wouldn’t know who Day is, aside from being “one of the potentials from season 7 of Buffy,” except that she chose to delve into the world of Internet video-making, and she made videos I like.
In her introduction (there, I’m back at the beginning—happy now?), Day says she prefers the term “situationally recognizable” over “internet famous,” because the latter category is more for the viral sensations. I understand that. Regardless, both terms carry with them an important truth of the digital age: fame is no longer a universal signifier. This is probably the most disruptive aspect of social media and web video on the entertainment industry, even more so than the ability to Kickstart a project or distribute media in the blink of an eye. Time was, studios made actors famous. They would pick the actor, elevate them to some kind of stardom, and that actor would be a Celebrity. Everyone would know who they are, even if one didn’t exactly like or admire the actor. Fame was to be a household name; that was the mark of the entertainment industrial complex’s hold on Western media.
Then along comes YouTube, and suddenly you’ve got people who are famous within subcultures and completely unknown to everyone else. As Day says, she is a rockstar at cons but just another unremarkable, if slightly awkward-looking, woman in a Lancaster Build-a-Bear: “situationally recognizable.” Similarly, I can list a dozen well-known YouTubers, Twitter users, or other situationally recognize people whom I follow and enjoy but who are entirely unknown to some of my close friends. The explosion and proliferation of information means that it is nearly impossible to become a household name. Such a status is still only within the purview of the entertainment industrial complex—and only then through achieving a kind of mainstream lowest-common-denominator appeal that seems to get blander with each passing year. (Reboot? No? What about a “gritty reboot,” will you watch it then?)
Day’s descriptions of her childhood are fun and funny, both in the “little chuckle to myself” and the “laugh out loud” kind of way. There will hopefully be at least something you can identify with. Her story about how her mom practically forced her into making out with an online friend is hilarious. And I quite liked the chapter about getting her college degrees and how she worked her ass off to ace group theory, of all things, as a summer course, because she couldn’t deal with not getting a perfect GPA. As someone who really enjoyed doing well in school, and now as a teacher who is trying, slowly, to get rid of grades as much as possible, I really sympathize with her perspectives, both past and present.
But the book really comes into its own when Day talks about her move to Los Angeles, her struggle getting acting work, and her addiction to World of Warcraft. As someone who really started paying attention to Day after finding The Guild (and I tried but cannot for the life of me remember where I first heard about it), I was fascinated to read more about its inception in her own words. I knew that much of The Guild’s story was inspired by her own experiences, but I wasn’t sure how much of Codex’s story was autobiographical. Day is quite candid in talking about her addiction to WoW and how it affected the rest of her life.
Similarly, I wasn’t expecting to be interested in the chapter on conventions (because I’m not interested in going to a convention, ever), only to be surprised by Day sharing her perspective on meeting fans. Suddenly I found myself on the other side of the interaction, if you know what I mean.
It’s so easy for us to interact more directly with celebrities, thanks to social media like Twitter. Even those these interactions are often more direct, they are still mediated. We don’t share everything with everyone. In the book, Day discusses how the stress of running Geek & Sundry was affecting her relationships even while she put on the happy face to make videos. The connection that Twitter gives us, and its ability to let people share anything, makes it easy to forget that what we see is not all there is.
So that’s why we have memoirs. It’s one thing to tweet that you’re feeling down on a particular day, but if your job is to make funny Internet videos, you’re going to suck it up and make funny videos, damn it, even if you’re depressed. As a fan of The Guild, I had no awareness of the financial pressures Day and her co-producers were under trying to get a second season shot. I was just incredibly enthusiastic about the idea there would be a second season. And I loyally navigated the harsh, Zune-branding–infested world that was the Xbox Video marketplace to download the new episodes the day they were released. I didn’t necessarily think Day and The Guild had “sold out” in their deal with Xbox—but I don’t think I understood how a second season literally couldn’t have been made without Xbox’s combination of funding and a hands-off approach.
Day’s last chapter before the conclusion focuses on GamerGate. I remember reading the blog post in question where she describes how, for the first time, she didn’t feel like she would automatically belong to this group defined only under the label of “gamer,” and how that was an indescribably sad feeling. What I didn’t know about until reading this book, however, was the aftermath—Wil Wheaton having to phone Day to tell her to disable commenting because people were posting her address (among other vitriol). I mean, I knew it happened, but I didn’t have the context of Day’s emotional reaction.
Because when it comes down to it, all we know about people online is what they share. (This is also true, to an extent, about people offline, just to a different degree.) With her memoir, Day shares a bit more, in a different way, from a slightly different angle—it’s a “behind the scenes” look, if you will, with the result of giving her public persona a dimension that she didn’t previously have. (I assume she’s already at least four-dimensional, with the power to travel in time, so I guess that makes her fifth-dimensional now?)
Also, I loved her analogy of the absurdity of GamerGate abuse through knitting fanatics:
You don’t generally see hard-core knitters reply to someone who says, “Knitting is cool, but the needles could be made from more environmentally sustainable wood,” with “Oh no you don’t, idiot. My knitting is perfect the way it is, don’t you DARE try to change it. You’re obviously a fake. What’s the diameter of that yarn? Don’t know? Go die in a fire!”
(I can personally vouch that I have never had such an experience among my fellow knitters—but that might be male privilege at work, I don’t know.)
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is a fascinating memoir, and contrary to my sarcastic initial reaction, entirely appropriately-timed. It says something about the power of books that even in this digitally-obsessed age they’re still a useful way of sharing more about yourself. I loved learning more about Day’s life. I hope this inspires girls who consider themselves geeks and gamers and counteracts the poisonous trolls telling them they are posers, fakers, or generally unwelcome online. More broadly, I hope it inspires people in general who want to create, to share what they can do, to reach an audience. I suppose that is the measure of a memoir, right—whether, in the telling of the story, it can have an impact.
What do you want in life? Power? Money? Being really, really, really good looking like Derek Zoolander? Or maybe just a roof over your head?
There are plenty of great stories about orphans and farm boys and farm girls and dragons who grow up to save the world. We call these adventures epic because of their scope. But there are also great stories on a smaller scale. The Chef’s Apprentice aims to be one of these: Luciano is a Venetian street urchin lucky enough to be plucked from the streets and given a job in Chef Ferrero’s kitchens. Ferrero is the doge’s chef. He’s also a member of a secret society of master chefs that safeguards forbidden knowledge, waiting for a time when humanity is more enlightened and accepting of different ideas. Luciano really just wants a roof over his head. But thanks to the chef, he starts to learn how to think for himself, how to question authority, and ultimately how to be a better, stronger person.
This book starts off very strongly, but there are also signs of trouble from the beginning. Elle Newmark makes an endearing character in Luciano. He’s young and naïve despite his time on the streets. He’s easily manipulated, but he’s sympathetic even when making stupid mistakes. There’s nothing surprising about this book, from Marco’s actions to the way the whole Francesca romance ends. But Newmark at least makes the experience an enjoyable one.
So for the first hundred pages or so, I was having a good time. I liked the descriptions of the food and the activities in the kitchen. I liked Luciano’s reflections of what he was learning and why he was doing things. I wasn’t so enamoured with Newmark’s tendency to jump around in time—infodumping, for example, a whole bunch of information about the chef’s past, imparted to us by the older Luciano narrating this book.
There’s an awkwardness, then, to the writing, that the book never manages to escape. It’s not just the pacing or the narrative style. The characters tend to be two-dimensional. As I made it past the half-way point, the plot concerning “the book” started to envelop Luciano’s story of personal growth. I just wasn’t as interested in a little conspiracy thriller within my historical fiction, despite the delightful promise in the opening scene in which Luciano describes the doge’s murder of a peasant.
I feel like Newmark constantly comes close to making interesting observations about sixteenth-century Europe and then veers off at the last moment. In her portrayal of Luciano, Marco, and Domingo she reminds us that we exist in a very privileged time in human society. High rates of literacy and easy-to-print books mean that most people have levels of knowledge far beyond what the average European could dream of in Luciano’s time. The sheer vista of knowledge available to me with the Internet at my fingertips is staggering when you juxtapose it with the narrow experience Luciano might have available to him before his adventures with the chef.
Placed in context like this, the necessity for the chef’s philosophical teachings become more clear. Normally I eat this type of stuff up in a novel; I loves me my didactic fiction. And The Chef’s Apprentice isn’t bad in this respect. Nevertheless, Newmark just doesn’t quite excite me in the way similar philosophical novels have. There just isn’t much detail here. Newmark acknowledges that she plays a little fast-and-loose with the historical record (real pope, fake doges, etc.), and that’s fine. But when it comes to the philosophy behind it all, the message seems to boil down to, “Christianity is bunk; think for yourself.” And while I don’t disagree, there are more elegant ways to make that argument.
The Chef’s Apprentice did not live up to my expectations. But hey, those expectations didn’t actually materialize until I started reading—so there’s that. The book is really good at first, and the fact it doesn’t pay off as much as I had hoped is a disappointment but not a deal-breaker per se. I could be persuaded to read another Newmark novel at some point, but this novel in particular isn’t going to leave much of a mark.
There are plenty of great stories about orphans and farm boys and farm girls and dragons who grow up to save the world. We call these adventures epic because of their scope. But there are also great stories on a smaller scale. The Chef’s Apprentice aims to be one of these: Luciano is a Venetian street urchin lucky enough to be plucked from the streets and given a job in Chef Ferrero’s kitchens. Ferrero is the doge’s chef. He’s also a member of a secret society of master chefs that safeguards forbidden knowledge, waiting for a time when humanity is more enlightened and accepting of different ideas. Luciano really just wants a roof over his head. But thanks to the chef, he starts to learn how to think for himself, how to question authority, and ultimately how to be a better, stronger person.
This book starts off very strongly, but there are also signs of trouble from the beginning. Elle Newmark makes an endearing character in Luciano. He’s young and naïve despite his time on the streets. He’s easily manipulated, but he’s sympathetic even when making stupid mistakes. There’s nothing surprising about this book, from Marco’s actions to the way the whole Francesca romance ends. But Newmark at least makes the experience an enjoyable one.
So for the first hundred pages or so, I was having a good time. I liked the descriptions of the food and the activities in the kitchen. I liked Luciano’s reflections of what he was learning and why he was doing things. I wasn’t so enamoured with Newmark’s tendency to jump around in time—infodumping, for example, a whole bunch of information about the chef’s past, imparted to us by the older Luciano narrating this book.
There’s an awkwardness, then, to the writing, that the book never manages to escape. It’s not just the pacing or the narrative style. The characters tend to be two-dimensional. As I made it past the half-way point, the plot concerning “the book” started to envelop Luciano’s story of personal growth. I just wasn’t as interested in a little conspiracy thriller within my historical fiction, despite the delightful promise in the opening scene in which Luciano describes the doge’s murder of a peasant.
I feel like Newmark constantly comes close to making interesting observations about sixteenth-century Europe and then veers off at the last moment. In her portrayal of Luciano, Marco, and Domingo she reminds us that we exist in a very privileged time in human society. High rates of literacy and easy-to-print books mean that most people have levels of knowledge far beyond what the average European could dream of in Luciano’s time. The sheer vista of knowledge available to me with the Internet at my fingertips is staggering when you juxtapose it with the narrow experience Luciano might have available to him before his adventures with the chef.
Placed in context like this, the necessity for the chef’s philosophical teachings become more clear. Normally I eat this type of stuff up in a novel; I loves me my didactic fiction. And The Chef’s Apprentice isn’t bad in this respect. Nevertheless, Newmark just doesn’t quite excite me in the way similar philosophical novels have. There just isn’t much detail here. Newmark acknowledges that she plays a little fast-and-loose with the historical record (real pope, fake doges, etc.), and that’s fine. But when it comes to the philosophy behind it all, the message seems to boil down to, “Christianity is bunk; think for yourself.” And while I don’t disagree, there are more elegant ways to make that argument.
The Chef’s Apprentice did not live up to my expectations. But hey, those expectations didn’t actually materialize until I started reading—so there’s that. The book is really good at first, and the fact it doesn’t pay off as much as I had hoped is a disappointment but not a deal-breaker per se. I could be persuaded to read another Newmark novel at some point, but this novel in particular isn’t going to leave much of a mark.
One of those books that picks you up and takes you on a journey. I was ambivalent about it at first, but I quickly became enthusiastic. Reynolds' style allows for an ease of exposition: in a couple of sentences, he can give you an idea of the nature of several different civilizations without going too in depth. This skill allows him to construct the epic scope required for a space opera of this nature.
And epic it is indeed. Spanning millions of years, House of Suns deals with space travel in a refreshing light. Most science fiction revolves around a method of superluminal travel. This is necessary in order to tell a story in a comprehensible length of time (it's not necessary to tell a story, as many authors demonstrate). Reynolds combines a number of hard SF concepts (cloning, sleeper travel/stasis, memory alteration, etc.) while avoiding the whiz-bang action of superluminal travel. This requires a great deal of relativistic action (literally), and it's at this point that the science part of the book may be difficult for some readers to comprehend. Chances are if you enjoy reading hard SF, however, it's because you enjoy things like relativity!
For me, some of the scariest concepts involve memory and the nature of self. The main characters are two of one thousand clones of a single human woman who lived (in the time the main story is set) approximately six million years ago in an expansive human empire. Yet these clones have been genetically tweaked to have different personalities and characteristics (to the point of having different genders). They are explorers, reunited after circumnavigating the galaxy in order to share the knowledge they've collected. It's an interesting concept. The idea that you can map someone's mind, download his or her memories and duplicate the consciousness--the self--is scary. It's been discussed over and over in SF, of course (I particularly enjoyed [a:Robert J. Sawyer|25883|Robert J. Sawyer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224975910p2/25883.jpg]'s [b:Mindscan|580196|Mindscan|Robert J. Sawyer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175978627s/580196.jpg|567098]). Reynolds wields this concept masterfully, because many of the main characters are actually radically divergent copies of one original person. It just gets weirder from there.
I figured out who the traitor was before the traitor was unmasked. That doesn't stop the enjoyment of the plot. Unfortunately, the last act of the book did let me down somewhat. I am hoping this is the first in a new series, because otherwise the ending is postmodernly ambiguous. It's hopeful but nihilistic at the same time--working in comsological time can do that to humans, as the main characters observe. Our consciousnesses are not built to function for millions of consecutive years (which is why the main characters have only lived for several thousand subjective years, biologically possible thanks to technology, while entering "abeyance" during extended space travel). The implications of events in the book mean that even if you take the ending to mean that our protagonists have ultimately succeeded, it's possible that the people they were trying to save no longer even exist.
The last act of the book does slow down and get more predictable, although one part did give me a delicious sensation at the end, when we learn the true reason for the Absence. It's clever.
Well worth the read if you're into hard SF!
And epic it is indeed. Spanning millions of years, House of Suns deals with space travel in a refreshing light. Most science fiction revolves around a method of superluminal travel. This is necessary in order to tell a story in a comprehensible length of time (it's not necessary to tell a story, as many authors demonstrate). Reynolds combines a number of hard SF concepts (cloning, sleeper travel/stasis, memory alteration, etc.) while avoiding the whiz-bang action of superluminal travel. This requires a great deal of relativistic action (literally), and it's at this point that the science part of the book may be difficult for some readers to comprehend. Chances are if you enjoy reading hard SF, however, it's because you enjoy things like relativity!
For me, some of the scariest concepts involve memory and the nature of self. The main characters are two of one thousand clones of a single human woman who lived (in the time the main story is set) approximately six million years ago in an expansive human empire. Yet these clones have been genetically tweaked to have different personalities and characteristics (to the point of having different genders). They are explorers, reunited after circumnavigating the galaxy in order to share the knowledge they've collected. It's an interesting concept. The idea that you can map someone's mind, download his or her memories and duplicate the consciousness--the self--is scary. It's been discussed over and over in SF, of course (I particularly enjoyed [a:Robert J. Sawyer|25883|Robert J. Sawyer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224975910p2/25883.jpg]'s [b:Mindscan|580196|Mindscan|Robert J. Sawyer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175978627s/580196.jpg|567098]). Reynolds wields this concept masterfully, because many of the main characters are actually radically divergent copies of one original person. It just gets weirder from there.
I figured out who the traitor was before the traitor was unmasked. That doesn't stop the enjoyment of the plot. Unfortunately, the last act of the book did let me down somewhat. I am hoping this is the first in a new series, because otherwise the ending is postmodernly ambiguous. It's hopeful but nihilistic at the same time--working in comsological time can do that to humans, as the main characters observe. Our consciousnesses are not built to function for millions of consecutive years (which is why the main characters have only lived for several thousand subjective years, biologically possible thanks to technology, while entering "abeyance" during extended space travel). The implications of events in the book mean that even if you take the ending to mean that our protagonists have ultimately succeeded, it's possible that the people they were trying to save no longer even exist.
The last act of the book does slow down and get more predictable, although one part did give me a delicious sensation at the end, when we learn the true reason for the Absence. It's clever.
Well worth the read if you're into hard SF!
I am just as surprised as you are that I’m reading another Doctor Who novel! As I explained when I reviewed Engines of War, media tie-ins are not my thing. Especially for something as iconic as Doctor Who, I need the actors to pull off that characterization. Maybe I should check out the audio plays—I think I would genuinely enjoy those. So what compelled me to pick this up when I spied it in the library stacks? It has been a while since I read anything by Stephen Baxter—his hard SF novels fascinated me as an adolescent, but his flat characterization started to bore me as I grew older. I was curious, then, to see what a Doctor Who story as told by Baxter would bring.
The Wheel of Ice is a Second Doctor story with Jamie and Zoe as companions. The TARDIS takes them to the rings of Saturn, slightly in our future, where humans are preparing to mine the moon Mnemosyme for its abnormally rich deposits of bernalium. The TARDIS has detected a “relative continuum displacement zone” and refuses to take off until the Doctor does something about it. But that means navigating the politics of interstellar profit lines and trying to communicate with a billions-year-old, failing artificial intelligence with tremendous guilt. Oh, and Jamie goes skiing or something.
I love the atmosphere of this story. It definitely feels Doctor Whoish, and it feels Second Doctory, with his penchant for history, science, and generally trying to avoid authority figures as much as possible. There are plenty of subplots and underlying themes about social organization, surveillance states, corporations overreaching themselves, etc.; this is as socially conscious as any other Doctor Who story. And even the threat is that most classic of Doctor Who monsters: an alien being that just wants to go home.
Alas, The Wheel of Ice does not serve up an equally enthralling story. The plot feels like one of those TV serials that got stretched for four twenty-minute episodes when it could have been two (and in the Second Doctor’s day they still sometimes even did six, yikes!). There’s a lot of aimless gadding about and repetitive trips to Mnemosyme; in general, the pacing just feels off. I am also disappointed by the portrayal of the human antagonist, Florian Hart, who transforms from a thorn in the side to a megalomaniac with very little prompting. Doctor Who is at its worst when its human villains are cartoonish, and having a more nuanced antagonist would have done a lot for this book.
One thing that intrigues me about this book: it’s very odd reading a Second Doctor story written in the present day compared to watching a Second Doctor story from the 1960s. The Doctors and their adventures are as much a product of the times as they are a product of the actors and writers involved. Baxter is inevitably influenced by twenty-first century events and ideas, such as the Internet, that shade and otherwise nudge this story into dimensions not necessarily seen in contemporary Second Doctor stories. I do not have the requisite experience in reading tie-ins to know, but I’d be curious if anyone has ever taken a closer look at this phenomenon—that is, has anyone done an analysis comparing contemporary stories with stories written about a previous Doctor decades afterwards?
Largely unremarkable, The Wheel of Ice was a welcome distraction—a cold, wet, March “beach read” if you will. I don’t regret suppressing my urge, as it came up next off my to-read shelf, to put it on the pile of books to return to the library without even cracking the cover. But it’s not how I like to experience my Doctor Who, and I suspect that even regular readers of these novels won’t find this one particular energizing or unique.
The Wheel of Ice is a Second Doctor story with Jamie and Zoe as companions. The TARDIS takes them to the rings of Saturn, slightly in our future, where humans are preparing to mine the moon Mnemosyme for its abnormally rich deposits of bernalium. The TARDIS has detected a “relative continuum displacement zone” and refuses to take off until the Doctor does something about it. But that means navigating the politics of interstellar profit lines and trying to communicate with a billions-year-old, failing artificial intelligence with tremendous guilt. Oh, and Jamie goes skiing or something.
I love the atmosphere of this story. It definitely feels Doctor Whoish, and it feels Second Doctory, with his penchant for history, science, and generally trying to avoid authority figures as much as possible. There are plenty of subplots and underlying themes about social organization, surveillance states, corporations overreaching themselves, etc.; this is as socially conscious as any other Doctor Who story. And even the threat is that most classic of Doctor Who monsters: an alien being that just wants to go home.
Alas, The Wheel of Ice does not serve up an equally enthralling story. The plot feels like one of those TV serials that got stretched for four twenty-minute episodes when it could have been two (and in the Second Doctor’s day they still sometimes even did six, yikes!). There’s a lot of aimless gadding about and repetitive trips to Mnemosyme; in general, the pacing just feels off. I am also disappointed by the portrayal of the human antagonist, Florian Hart, who transforms from a thorn in the side to a megalomaniac with very little prompting. Doctor Who is at its worst when its human villains are cartoonish, and having a more nuanced antagonist would have done a lot for this book.
One thing that intrigues me about this book: it’s very odd reading a Second Doctor story written in the present day compared to watching a Second Doctor story from the 1960s. The Doctors and their adventures are as much a product of the times as they are a product of the actors and writers involved. Baxter is inevitably influenced by twenty-first century events and ideas, such as the Internet, that shade and otherwise nudge this story into dimensions not necessarily seen in contemporary Second Doctor stories. I do not have the requisite experience in reading tie-ins to know, but I’d be curious if anyone has ever taken a closer look at this phenomenon—that is, has anyone done an analysis comparing contemporary stories with stories written about a previous Doctor decades afterwards?
Largely unremarkable, The Wheel of Ice was a welcome distraction—a cold, wet, March “beach read” if you will. I don’t regret suppressing my urge, as it came up next off my to-read shelf, to put it on the pile of books to return to the library without even cracking the cover. But it’s not how I like to experience my Doctor Who, and I suspect that even regular readers of these novels won’t find this one particular energizing or unique.