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I was ambivalent about the gimmick of basing the history around the journey of Descartes' bones. How interesting could it be? Much to my delight, Russell Shorto managed to surprise me. While this book isn't quite the "historical detective story" it advertises, it does contain some detective work. I was fascinated by the way various people treated Descartes' remains, particularly the skull. For most of the owners of the skull, the object was one of mythical connotations: this was the man who started it all, the thinker who had rejected Aristotelianism, created analytical geometry, founded the scientific method. Shorto can't resist pointing out the irony of the near-religious reverence with which Descartes' skull has been treated. No matter how much we enslave ourselves to reason, we can't help but at times be oh so very human.
And, as humans are wont to do, we like to debate! Bones aside, the meat of this book is in the development of European society (especially French society) after Descartes' death. His legacy lives on in the form of Cartesianism, which influences the French revolutionaries toward the secularization of France. In effect, Descartes laid the groundwork for the secular Europe that exists today and defined the difference between the French Revolution and the one across the Atlantic in America. What I found particularly interesting was the way in which Descartes has, one way or the other, been made a paragon by the power of the day.
Shorto spends a good deal of time discussing the disposition of Descartes' bones before, during, and following the French Revolution. In so doing, he presents a side of the Revolution I hadn't yet seen. I learned about the Revolution mostly from a grade 12 history class and a little from [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1222897284s/656.jpg|4912783]. The dates and events are easy enough to learn, but it's difficult to grasp the shift in social attitude occurring at the time. It's not just that people began wanting to give their consent to the government. The Revolutionaries embraced Cartesianism and even atheism (actually more its cousin, deism) in their attempts to weaken the power of the Catholic Church and of the monarchy. And I like that, while he does mention the Reign of Terror, Shorto focuses on some of the other unsavoury parts of the Revolution. Shorto makes me cringe with despair as he talks of looting and vandalism of symbols of the monarchy and religious establishments. I'm not Catholic, but I find the idea of looting a church reprehensible. But for the Revolutionaries, this was all sanctioned by the new order, in which atheism and reason held dominion.
Descartes, then, was a symbolic father figure of the Revolutionary movement. After all, Cartesianism's dualism poses a problem when it comes to something like the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist and transubstantiation. But wait a moment! Both before and after the Revolution, when the Catholic Church holds sway in France, Cartesians portray Descartes as a devout Catholic who reaffirms God's role in the universe. The former queen of Sweden, Christina, claims he had a hand in her conversion to Catholicism. Which of these two men was the real Descartes? Was he a rabid atheist, as his opponents often charged? Or was he a pious man, intending only to further the glory of God?
The answer is, of course, "both and neither." Shorto explores the myriad posthumous interpretations and portrayals of Descartes with a vim that I found both entertaining and informative. Several famous scientists become involved in attempts to authenticate Descartes' skull. By relating these episodes to the scientific and social developments of the time, Shorto creates a scaffold for the scientific progress of the eighteenth century. In 1861, Pierre-Paul Broca and Louis-Pierre Gratiolet debate whether or not the size and mass of one's brain is an indicator of intelligence—bigger being better, naturally. Broca says yes, pointing to some doctored data that reeks of confirmation bias. Gratiolet says no, and holds up Descartes' skull as an example of an intelligent man with a relatively small cranium. Although authenticated forty years prior by the Academy of Sciences, the skull's true identity is questioned again as Broca claims that its size, then, necessarily makes it a fake. The fact that the Museum of Natural History in Paris even has the skull is forgotten until 1912, and then another flurry authentication ensues.
What this teaches us, then, is that society has a very short memory. France easily forgot that it had possession of Descartes' skull, losing it in the minutiae of collecting and the chaos of flood damage repair. Descartes' skull has been authenticated several times throughout history, since each successive time the past authentications were called into question or just forgotten about in general. And this is true of scientific and philosophical concepts as well: Broca and Gall's ideas of a physical or genetic basis to race and intelligence have been thoroughly discredited, but the theories are advanced under different names, slightly tweaked, once every couple of decades. There will always be advocates of other positions—sceptics, in fact, and that's fine. One of the prices for becoming mainstream is that the controversial new philosophy becomes part of the establishment, and the philosophy that it usurps can always try to come back as a contrarian alternative.
I'm spending a lot of time talking about Descartes, his bones, and history and not much time reviewing the actual book. That's because Descartes' Bones accomplishes what good non-fiction should: it excites me about its subject matter, makes me enthusiastic and interested in discussing it with other people. Naturally, this gets me strange looks from coworkers and friends as I spontaneously begin talking about Cartesian philosophy. I don't mind. And if I restricted myself to talking purely about how Shorto presents Descartes' effect on history, this review would be short. And boring.
One danger of investing myself so much in the subject matter, however, is a loss of objectivity when it comes to judging the book itself. There's a part of me that's itching to give Descartes' Bones five stars; that's the same part in all of us that wakes up when we watch a funny YouTube video and instantly forward it to everyone we know: the OMG-this-is-awesome reflex. I try to avoid that and give the books I read a sobre second thought before sending my review out into the world. I'd love to give Descartes' Bones five stars, but it really only deserves four, in my opinion.
Shorto, while a good storyteller, isn't always the clearest of historians. The narrative tends to meander, loop back on itself, and emphasize facts I don't find very important, almost as if Shorto feels the need to remind us that Descartes was buried in Sweden (Sweden, I say!). And while I love that there's a chapter that applies Descartes to modern events, it is too short and too non-specific for my liking. Maybe this is because such a chapter probably deserves a book on its own (those interested may want to take a look at Susan Jacoby's [b:The Age of American Unreason|1822711|The Age of American Unreason|Susan Jacoby|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1188838347s/1822711.jpg|3037927] for an American treatment of similar subject matter). Shorto too often fails to properly connect all of the points he's making; as grand a goal as "a skeletal history of the conflict between faith and reason" may be, he doesn't quite synthesize everything into a single thesis.
My complaints, however, are minor and mostly addressed with some good editing. The core of this book is pure, enjoyable discourse. The name "Descartes" may strike terror into the hearts of the uninitiated and conjure up images of a lengthy treatise on Cartesian philosophy and mathematics. Rest assured, Descartes' Bones is accessible to everyone. Shorto explains what one needs to know about Cartesianism, and the bibliography at the back contains a wealth of recommendations for further reading. This is a book that will fit many people: it's perfect as a coffee table read, because it's intelligent without being pedantic; however, for more serious intellectuals, it's a fine gateway into the greater world of Cartesianism (I say this as someone who has yet to actually read Descartes, so I'm speaking from personal experience here).
Although steeped in philosophy and science, this is primarily a history. Such polymath books are always a treat for me, something with which I like to reward myself after a long string of mediocre pulp novels or a particularly difficult, if fulfilling, classic. Why do I like popular science/history so much? Many of these books retrace the same ground over and over—this time it's the Enlightenment—each author inflicting his or her pet grand unified theory as to the causal relationship among the various events of that time period. It's true that this can get repetitive, but it can also be fun to look at the same events from different perspectives.
In the case of Descartes' Bones, there is no dying that René Descartes played a major role in jolting Western Europe out of the Middle Ages and setting it on the path to the Enlightenment. As a mathematician, I revere Descartes for his contributions to mathematics; we owe him for things as big as Cartesian coordinates and as small as writing exponents as superscripts (3*3 = 3^2). As an amateur philosopher, it's impossible to talk about Western philosophy without looking at Cartesianism. Descartes was audacious and vain in the development and promotion of his philosophy, but he was also effective at encouraging Europeans to begin looking toward scepticism and reason as foundations of study rather than received wisdom and faith.
Descartes' Bones reminds us that, while we can't reduce the events of history to the actions of a single person, one person's actions can and have reverberated through history, setting off new ideas centuries later. We may not be Cartesians, but we are a product of Cartesianism's impact on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Therefore, if one had to pick a single person around whom to weave the story of the French revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, I can think of no one better than Descartes.
And, as humans are wont to do, we like to debate! Bones aside, the meat of this book is in the development of European society (especially French society) after Descartes' death. His legacy lives on in the form of Cartesianism, which influences the French revolutionaries toward the secularization of France. In effect, Descartes laid the groundwork for the secular Europe that exists today and defined the difference between the French Revolution and the one across the Atlantic in America. What I found particularly interesting was the way in which Descartes has, one way or the other, been made a paragon by the power of the day.
Shorto spends a good deal of time discussing the disposition of Descartes' bones before, during, and following the French Revolution. In so doing, he presents a side of the Revolution I hadn't yet seen. I learned about the Revolution mostly from a grade 12 history class and a little from [b:War and Peace|656|War and Peace|Leo Tolstoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1222897284s/656.jpg|4912783]. The dates and events are easy enough to learn, but it's difficult to grasp the shift in social attitude occurring at the time. It's not just that people began wanting to give their consent to the government. The Revolutionaries embraced Cartesianism and even atheism (actually more its cousin, deism) in their attempts to weaken the power of the Catholic Church and of the monarchy. And I like that, while he does mention the Reign of Terror, Shorto focuses on some of the other unsavoury parts of the Revolution. Shorto makes me cringe with despair as he talks of looting and vandalism of symbols of the monarchy and religious establishments. I'm not Catholic, but I find the idea of looting a church reprehensible. But for the Revolutionaries, this was all sanctioned by the new order, in which atheism and reason held dominion.
Descartes, then, was a symbolic father figure of the Revolutionary movement. After all, Cartesianism's dualism poses a problem when it comes to something like the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist and transubstantiation. But wait a moment! Both before and after the Revolution, when the Catholic Church holds sway in France, Cartesians portray Descartes as a devout Catholic who reaffirms God's role in the universe. The former queen of Sweden, Christina, claims he had a hand in her conversion to Catholicism. Which of these two men was the real Descartes? Was he a rabid atheist, as his opponents often charged? Or was he a pious man, intending only to further the glory of God?
The answer is, of course, "both and neither." Shorto explores the myriad posthumous interpretations and portrayals of Descartes with a vim that I found both entertaining and informative. Several famous scientists become involved in attempts to authenticate Descartes' skull. By relating these episodes to the scientific and social developments of the time, Shorto creates a scaffold for the scientific progress of the eighteenth century. In 1861, Pierre-Paul Broca and Louis-Pierre Gratiolet debate whether or not the size and mass of one's brain is an indicator of intelligence—bigger being better, naturally. Broca says yes, pointing to some doctored data that reeks of confirmation bias. Gratiolet says no, and holds up Descartes' skull as an example of an intelligent man with a relatively small cranium. Although authenticated forty years prior by the Academy of Sciences, the skull's true identity is questioned again as Broca claims that its size, then, necessarily makes it a fake. The fact that the Museum of Natural History in Paris even has the skull is forgotten until 1912, and then another flurry authentication ensues.
What this teaches us, then, is that society has a very short memory. France easily forgot that it had possession of Descartes' skull, losing it in the minutiae of collecting and the chaos of flood damage repair. Descartes' skull has been authenticated several times throughout history, since each successive time the past authentications were called into question or just forgotten about in general. And this is true of scientific and philosophical concepts as well: Broca and Gall's ideas of a physical or genetic basis to race and intelligence have been thoroughly discredited, but the theories are advanced under different names, slightly tweaked, once every couple of decades. There will always be advocates of other positions—sceptics, in fact, and that's fine. One of the prices for becoming mainstream is that the controversial new philosophy becomes part of the establishment, and the philosophy that it usurps can always try to come back as a contrarian alternative.
I'm spending a lot of time talking about Descartes, his bones, and history and not much time reviewing the actual book. That's because Descartes' Bones accomplishes what good non-fiction should: it excites me about its subject matter, makes me enthusiastic and interested in discussing it with other people. Naturally, this gets me strange looks from coworkers and friends as I spontaneously begin talking about Cartesian philosophy. I don't mind. And if I restricted myself to talking purely about how Shorto presents Descartes' effect on history, this review would be short. And boring.
One danger of investing myself so much in the subject matter, however, is a loss of objectivity when it comes to judging the book itself. There's a part of me that's itching to give Descartes' Bones five stars; that's the same part in all of us that wakes up when we watch a funny YouTube video and instantly forward it to everyone we know: the OMG-this-is-awesome reflex. I try to avoid that and give the books I read a sobre second thought before sending my review out into the world. I'd love to give Descartes' Bones five stars, but it really only deserves four, in my opinion.
Shorto, while a good storyteller, isn't always the clearest of historians. The narrative tends to meander, loop back on itself, and emphasize facts I don't find very important, almost as if Shorto feels the need to remind us that Descartes was buried in Sweden (Sweden, I say!). And while I love that there's a chapter that applies Descartes to modern events, it is too short and too non-specific for my liking. Maybe this is because such a chapter probably deserves a book on its own (those interested may want to take a look at Susan Jacoby's [b:The Age of American Unreason|1822711|The Age of American Unreason|Susan Jacoby|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1188838347s/1822711.jpg|3037927] for an American treatment of similar subject matter). Shorto too often fails to properly connect all of the points he's making; as grand a goal as "a skeletal history of the conflict between faith and reason" may be, he doesn't quite synthesize everything into a single thesis.
My complaints, however, are minor and mostly addressed with some good editing. The core of this book is pure, enjoyable discourse. The name "Descartes" may strike terror into the hearts of the uninitiated and conjure up images of a lengthy treatise on Cartesian philosophy and mathematics. Rest assured, Descartes' Bones is accessible to everyone. Shorto explains what one needs to know about Cartesianism, and the bibliography at the back contains a wealth of recommendations for further reading. This is a book that will fit many people: it's perfect as a coffee table read, because it's intelligent without being pedantic; however, for more serious intellectuals, it's a fine gateway into the greater world of Cartesianism (I say this as someone who has yet to actually read Descartes, so I'm speaking from personal experience here).
Although steeped in philosophy and science, this is primarily a history. Such polymath books are always a treat for me, something with which I like to reward myself after a long string of mediocre pulp novels or a particularly difficult, if fulfilling, classic. Why do I like popular science/history so much? Many of these books retrace the same ground over and over—this time it's the Enlightenment—each author inflicting his or her pet grand unified theory as to the causal relationship among the various events of that time period. It's true that this can get repetitive, but it can also be fun to look at the same events from different perspectives.
In the case of Descartes' Bones, there is no dying that René Descartes played a major role in jolting Western Europe out of the Middle Ages and setting it on the path to the Enlightenment. As a mathematician, I revere Descartes for his contributions to mathematics; we owe him for things as big as Cartesian coordinates and as small as writing exponents as superscripts (3*3 = 3^2). As an amateur philosopher, it's impossible to talk about Western philosophy without looking at Cartesianism. Descartes was audacious and vain in the development and promotion of his philosophy, but he was also effective at encouraging Europeans to begin looking toward scepticism and reason as foundations of study rather than received wisdom and faith.
Descartes' Bones reminds us that, while we can't reduce the events of history to the actions of a single person, one person's actions can and have reverberated through history, setting off new ideas centuries later. We may not be Cartesians, but we are a product of Cartesianism's impact on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Therefore, if one had to pick a single person around whom to weave the story of the French revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, I can think of no one better than Descartes.
Christian mythology is a rich source of fiction. It's a great deal of fun to re-interpret mythology and add a new twist, a new perspective. This isn't a new trend either; it's been going on since there was a Christianity to mythologize. Few figures have drawn as much attention as the Devil, also known as Satan, Lucifer, What Have You. In the Bible, he is a serpent and a trickster. Milton made him sympathetic (although I suspect he was copying the Rolling Stones). Although Dante's Inferno from the Divine Comedy is more about Dante's journey through Hell than it is about the Devil, the same idea applies: it's one man's interpretation of a mythology that has shaped entire societies.
Now we have Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's take on Inferno—a re-interpretation of a re-interpretation of Christian mythology (at least, the Hell part). Niven and Pournelle (I'm going to call them N&P from hereon if that's fine; I don't know which wrote more of if that's applicable here, so I'll laud and lament them collectively) draw heavily from their source material. However, you don't need to have read the original before tackling this Inferno. I haven't yet tackled the Divine Comedy, but I'm aware of enough of the basic plot to see the parallels here: a writer dies and finds himself in Hell. He ventures deeper and deeper into Hell's concentric circles, each one featuring punishments for different types of sinners. The narrator receives a guide—in Dante's case, Virgil; in Carpenter's, Benito Mussolini. The goal of this journey is an escape from Hell found at its very centre. The ending of the book, as well as in some of its particulars, differs from the original. This is more a work "inspired by" Dante's than a straight "updated" version.
The Hell of N&P's Inferno is one of horrors and punishments that seem just but, as Carpenter puts it, "much too late." At first, Carpenter can't believe he's in Hell. As a science fiction writer and an agnostic, Carpenter tries to rationalize Hell. He calls it "Infernoland," a sadistic amusement park created by advanced humans or aliens. As he goes deeper into this setting, however, he encounters stranger and more unsettling sights that call this theory into question. The problem is not that Carpenter is unable to believe in God (and thus in Hell) but that he can't reconcile a God with a "private torture chamber" with the largely benevolent God depicted in Christianity. In fact, any Inferno is somewhat of a deconstruction of the Christian mythos, since attempts to depict the nature of punishments in Hell inevitably evoke this sort of reaction: why would God do this? By the end of the book, Carpenter believes he has arrived at an answer, one that requires him to stay in Hell and help others escape while Mussolini goes on to the next stage (presumably Purgatory).
N&P break the monotony of Carpenter and Mussolini's relationship with several transitory characters, including Billy the Kidd, an astronaut named Jeremy Corbett, and for a moment, Jesse James. As much as the idea is a good one, I have to question the choice of companions. Really, Billy the Kidd? Maybe I'm just a bag o' no fun, but these people aren't examples of what I'd call interesting historical personages (now Mussolini is definitely on that list). And these companions are with the main characters for such a short time that it's hard to develop any attachment to them. Just as I begin to warm up to Corbett, N&P pull him back to his place in Hell, leaving Carpenter and Mussolini alone once again. Almost all the characters save these two are underdeveloped, more one-liner jokes ("What are you in for?") than actual people.
My problem with the bureaucratic episode is similar. I loved the parody of bureaucracy—I love parodies of bureaucracy in general, and N&P include a good one here. It's just too short (although maybe this is necessary in order to keep such parodies fresh and funny). All of these short sketches of punishments in Hell give Carpenter the opportunity to reflect on his past life, but without much of an idea of Carpenter's life, there's very little in the way of pathos.
In addition to the bureaucracy parody, there are plenty of lighter moments in Inferno. N&P make plenty of references to popular science fiction authors at the time, delivering tips of the hat or vaguely disguised mockery to Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, etc. Carpenter as a character and his entire Infernoland theory is as much a comment on the cult of science fiction as it is a deconstruction of Christian Hell. A good deal of what we know about Carpenter we learn from how he describes his relationship with his fans. He feels like he's a more approachable, more open author than some of the more prestigious authors who are winning Hugos and, like Asimov, publishing far more in a year than he'll output in a lifetime. As Carpenter speculates about the fantastic mechanisms that must operate Infernoland, we get the idea that he clings to this theory long past its expiry not because he genuinely believes in it because it's all he has. He has spent so long being just a science fiction writer, with few if any other attachments, that science fiction is all he has left of any sense of "normal" (and Infernoland is certainly not normal).
Inferno is at times very much a piece of genre fiction, almost meta in the way Carpenter interjects with his interpretation of Hell. It has elements of both satire and seriousness in it, but in this instance they don't mesh satisfactorily. Part of me really liked it, but overall I feel . . . underwhelmed. This is a usually a sign that a book has lots of little good ideas (like Benito Mussolini as the guide to Hell) but never really coheres.
Now we have Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's take on Inferno—a re-interpretation of a re-interpretation of Christian mythology (at least, the Hell part). Niven and Pournelle (I'm going to call them N&P from hereon if that's fine; I don't know which wrote more of if that's applicable here, so I'll laud and lament them collectively) draw heavily from their source material. However, you don't need to have read the original before tackling this Inferno. I haven't yet tackled the Divine Comedy, but I'm aware of enough of the basic plot to see the parallels here: a writer dies and finds himself in Hell. He ventures deeper and deeper into Hell's concentric circles, each one featuring punishments for different types of sinners. The narrator receives a guide—in Dante's case, Virgil; in Carpenter's, Benito Mussolini. The goal of this journey is an escape from Hell found at its very centre. The ending of the book, as well as in some of its particulars, differs from the original. This is more a work "inspired by" Dante's than a straight "updated" version.
The Hell of N&P's Inferno is one of horrors and punishments that seem just but, as Carpenter puts it, "much too late." At first, Carpenter can't believe he's in Hell. As a science fiction writer and an agnostic, Carpenter tries to rationalize Hell. He calls it "Infernoland," a sadistic amusement park created by advanced humans or aliens. As he goes deeper into this setting, however, he encounters stranger and more unsettling sights that call this theory into question. The problem is not that Carpenter is unable to believe in God (and thus in Hell) but that he can't reconcile a God with a "private torture chamber" with the largely benevolent God depicted in Christianity. In fact, any Inferno is somewhat of a deconstruction of the Christian mythos, since attempts to depict the nature of punishments in Hell inevitably evoke this sort of reaction: why would God do this? By the end of the book, Carpenter believes he has arrived at an answer, one that requires him to stay in Hell and help others escape while Mussolini goes on to the next stage (presumably Purgatory).
N&P break the monotony of Carpenter and Mussolini's relationship with several transitory characters, including Billy the Kidd, an astronaut named Jeremy Corbett, and for a moment, Jesse James. As much as the idea is a good one, I have to question the choice of companions. Really, Billy the Kidd? Maybe I'm just a bag o' no fun, but these people aren't examples of what I'd call interesting historical personages (now Mussolini is definitely on that list). And these companions are with the main characters for such a short time that it's hard to develop any attachment to them. Just as I begin to warm up to Corbett, N&P pull him back to his place in Hell, leaving Carpenter and Mussolini alone once again. Almost all the characters save these two are underdeveloped, more one-liner jokes ("What are you in for?") than actual people.
My problem with the bureaucratic episode is similar. I loved the parody of bureaucracy—I love parodies of bureaucracy in general, and N&P include a good one here. It's just too short (although maybe this is necessary in order to keep such parodies fresh and funny). All of these short sketches of punishments in Hell give Carpenter the opportunity to reflect on his past life, but without much of an idea of Carpenter's life, there's very little in the way of pathos.
In addition to the bureaucracy parody, there are plenty of lighter moments in Inferno. N&P make plenty of references to popular science fiction authors at the time, delivering tips of the hat or vaguely disguised mockery to Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, etc. Carpenter as a character and his entire Infernoland theory is as much a comment on the cult of science fiction as it is a deconstruction of Christian Hell. A good deal of what we know about Carpenter we learn from how he describes his relationship with his fans. He feels like he's a more approachable, more open author than some of the more prestigious authors who are winning Hugos and, like Asimov, publishing far more in a year than he'll output in a lifetime. As Carpenter speculates about the fantastic mechanisms that must operate Infernoland, we get the idea that he clings to this theory long past its expiry not because he genuinely believes in it because it's all he has. He has spent so long being just a science fiction writer, with few if any other attachments, that science fiction is all he has left of any sense of "normal" (and Infernoland is certainly not normal).
Inferno is at times very much a piece of genre fiction, almost meta in the way Carpenter interjects with his interpretation of Hell. It has elements of both satire and seriousness in it, but in this instance they don't mesh satisfactorily. Part of me really liked it, but overall I feel . . . underwhelmed. This is a usually a sign that a book has lots of little good ideas (like Benito Mussolini as the guide to Hell) but never really coheres.
With Inferno fresh in my mind, I set off to read Escape from Hell, the book that initially attracted my attention. I genuinely enjoyed a good deal of Escape from Hell. However, it never strays far enough from the original book's premise to escape Inferno's shadow.
I like [a:Sylvia Plath|4379|Sylvia Plath|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1188476749p2/4379.jpg] as Carpenter's companion better than Benito, just because she's a better companion. I'm not sure how well Niven & Pournelle (henceforth known as N&P) portrayed her, nor do I really care. Unfortunately, while she was an interesting conversationalist, that's all she really was. She's there to listen to Carpenter theorize aloud about the purpose of Hell, its functioning, and the rules operating on this plane of existence.
Now that Carpenter has discarded his "Infernoland" theory and believes this is Hell, regardless of what God has to do with it, he's on a mission to discover if everyone has a chance to escape. As much as I liked his musing about "the rules," a lot of it felt repetitive and redundant. Worse still, some of the really interesting stuff is never fully explained. Why are these suicide bombers allowed to run around blowing people up? Do they really disappear forever when they explode—unlike their victims, who reconstitute elsewhere in Hell—or do they also recover? I'm not asking for answers to the "big" questions, such as "Is there a God?" and "What's his plan for all these souls in Hell?" I just want answers to some of this minor ones.
I did enjoy the further look at the bureaucratic aspects of Hell (if you read my Inferno review, you'll know I asked for more of that!). N&P use Vatican II as an excuse to revamp how Hell deals with souls and even what sort of souls end up in Hell. This is a neat way to integrate a real life event as a plot device to shake up the rules of the world they've created.
Carpenter encounters far more people in this book than he does in Inferno, and more of them are people we know. I'm ambivalent about this. On one hand, I like the inclusion of famous people in Hell (although sometimes I disagree with where N&P placed them among the various punishments). On the other hand, the sheer volume of characters borders on overwhelming. It's sort of like a television series trying too hard to bring in well-known guest stars to boost its ratings. Did we really need to briefly run into people like Anna Nicole Smith or Kenneth Lay? N&P don't adequately use the people they include to make any sort of point, so it's just more fluff in a book with a dangerously over-stretched plot as it is.
The plot, in case you're wondering, is that Carpenter's going to gather more people and help them leave Hell. He wants to know that everyone can try, if they're ready. However, he keeps on meeting people who don't want to escape, or people who can't escape yet. The former really annoyed me. If it's Hell, shouldn't it be bad enough that you'd do anything to leave? If you're really enjoying that time in the boiling pitch, exactly why is it considered a punishment?
Again, more questions than answers. Escape from Hell is just as easy a read as Inferno and expands somewhat on the original book's premise. However, it lacks the close parallels to Dante's journey, as well as the sense of revealed mystery that Inferno had—there's plenty of mystery here, but little enough gets revealed. On the whole, I liked Inferno better, because from a technical perspective it's a smoother work. Escape from Hell is interesting but patchy.
I like [a:Sylvia Plath|4379|Sylvia Plath|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1188476749p2/4379.jpg] as Carpenter's companion better than Benito, just because she's a better companion. I'm not sure how well Niven & Pournelle (henceforth known as N&P) portrayed her, nor do I really care. Unfortunately, while she was an interesting conversationalist, that's all she really was. She's there to listen to Carpenter theorize aloud about the purpose of Hell, its functioning, and the rules operating on this plane of existence.
Now that Carpenter has discarded his "Infernoland" theory and believes this is Hell, regardless of what God has to do with it, he's on a mission to discover if everyone has a chance to escape. As much as I liked his musing about "the rules," a lot of it felt repetitive and redundant. Worse still, some of the really interesting stuff is never fully explained. Why are these suicide bombers allowed to run around blowing people up? Do they really disappear forever when they explode—unlike their victims, who reconstitute elsewhere in Hell—or do they also recover? I'm not asking for answers to the "big" questions, such as "Is there a God?" and "What's his plan for all these souls in Hell?" I just want answers to some of this minor ones.
I did enjoy the further look at the bureaucratic aspects of Hell (if you read my Inferno review, you'll know I asked for more of that!). N&P use Vatican II as an excuse to revamp how Hell deals with souls and even what sort of souls end up in Hell. This is a neat way to integrate a real life event as a plot device to shake up the rules of the world they've created.
Carpenter encounters far more people in this book than he does in Inferno, and more of them are people we know. I'm ambivalent about this. On one hand, I like the inclusion of famous people in Hell (although sometimes I disagree with where N&P placed them among the various punishments). On the other hand, the sheer volume of characters borders on overwhelming. It's sort of like a television series trying too hard to bring in well-known guest stars to boost its ratings. Did we really need to briefly run into people like Anna Nicole Smith or Kenneth Lay? N&P don't adequately use the people they include to make any sort of point, so it's just more fluff in a book with a dangerously over-stretched plot as it is.
The plot, in case you're wondering, is that Carpenter's going to gather more people and help them leave Hell. He wants to know that everyone can try, if they're ready. However, he keeps on meeting people who don't want to escape, or people who can't escape yet. The former really annoyed me. If it's Hell, shouldn't it be bad enough that you'd do anything to leave? If you're really enjoying that time in the boiling pitch, exactly why is it considered a punishment?
Again, more questions than answers. Escape from Hell is just as easy a read as Inferno and expands somewhat on the original book's premise. However, it lacks the close parallels to Dante's journey, as well as the sense of revealed mystery that Inferno had—there's plenty of mystery here, but little enough gets revealed. On the whole, I liked Inferno better, because from a technical perspective it's a smoother work. Escape from Hell is interesting but patchy.
I'm not sure what attracted me to The Sealed Letter. It's a book that exists in that intersection among historical fiction, fiction "based on a true story," and relationship drama fuelled by larger issues of gender and individualism, the sort of book that can appeal to so many people yet go unnoticed because it looks "too historical" or "too much non-fiction" or "too romantic." When I started reading The Sealed Letter, I hoped for something good but didn't expect anything great. I was pleasantly surprised.
Emma Donoghue grounds her story in facts, incorporating fiction only when necessary (because the facts are not extant) or in order to compress time. Her methodology and some of the factual history of the book's events are all detailed in the Author's Note at the end of the book. One of the advantages to using real people and a real divorce case is that Donoghue automatically has a plot; she need only enliven the characters for us. And she has associations that she would otherwise need to falsify: she'd have to make up an intelligent but morally-conflicted Emily "Fido" Faithfull and make her a pivotal member of the Reform Firm.
The first few chapters are slow-going, unfortunately, and that may turn people away from the book before it begins to get good. There's a great deal of superficiality in the interactions between Fido and Helen Codrington. The purpose of this becomes clear later in the story, but at the beginning I found it dull. What I was waiting for was a real insight into the minds of these women and how they regarded their era. Although it takes awhile for Donoghue to unlock their psyches, she finally gets around to it.
What elevates The Sealed Letter above mediocrity is the three-dimensional way it portrays the people involved in this high-profile divorce. It is easy to set a divorce case in Victorian England in which the woman is the sympathetic character at the mercy of an uncaring husband. I found it hard to sympathize with Helen, who is both adulterous and manipulative, with sensibilities that radically change with her mood. Nevertheless, I understood her desire to remain a mother to her children (even if she was never very maternal) and repair the tear in her marriage that she—belatedly—realizes is her fault.
At the same time, Helen puts to shame Fido's Cause. She is a "fallen woman," an unfortunate counterexample to the claims of Fido's Reform Firm that women can be every bit as sensible and intelligent as men. As a result, Fido is torn between loyalty to her Cause and loyalty to her friend. She vacillates between an absolute adherence to one or the other as she tries to parse Helen's manipulation and deceit. There were times when Fido's changeable loyalties frustrated me, but I waited patiently for her to discover how unreliable Helen is.
And then there is Harry. Donoghue begins giving us insight into his mind toward the middle of the book, wherein he first suspects that Helen is having an affair and sets out to confirm or disprove this suspicion. Poor Harry is apparently clueless about his wife's adultery, and this discovery robs him of resolve and even, to some extent, reason. He becomes more reactionary, allowing his friends the Watsons, his brother, and his lawyers to manage the divorce case while he watches and participates with a sort of grim realization that there is no way to turn back the clock.
I come off as anti-Helen in my evaluation, and I do think she bears the majority of the blame—after all, she's the one who strayed. Yet my point is that Donoghue manages to portray all of the characters as sympathetic at times and at fault at other times. It's a realistic depiction of the difficulties of marriage and divorce (and life in general): nothing is clear cut, nothing is black and white, and there's always certain points where it's impossible to turn back.
The last theme echoes over and over again throughout the book. There's one quotation, which I can't locate at the moment, that aptly describes this idea. As she watches the divorce proceeding, Helen wonders if all this was an inevitable outcome of her dalliances with Mildmay and Anderson. She likens herself to a little boy pushing his toy soldier closer and closer to the edge just to see what would happen. I really enjoyed this underlying idea that we humans are prone to pushing ever so slightly too hard and bringing disaster upon ourselves.
The martial woes of the Codringtons takes place against the backdrop of Victorian society, and Fido's roles as an activist for women's rights is a key issue in The Sealed Letter. It's worth remarking on the ironic censure that Fido receives from other women in the Reform Firm, particularly the "equal above all others" woman Bettie Parkes. What I found most poignant, however, was the depth to which Fido sinks in the witness box to retract an affidavit she has signed. Fido essentially claims her "weakness as a woman" as her excuse for signing a statement to which she can attach no veracity. This makes her a hypocrite and hurts her Cause . . . yet it is so very true.
Which is not to say that all women are weak. No, what I mean is that Fido is right in claiming she was too weak-willed to refuse to sign the affidavit, too weak-willed to stand up to the illogical Helen Codrington. It's a character flaw—of the individual, not of the gender—that manifests over and over again, each time sending Fido down a darker, dimmer road as she tries to find some sense of equilibrium. Even as she contrasts two very distinct Victorian era women and their attitudes toward men and society, Donoghue reminds us that gender is only a part of who we are.
But what of the eponymous letter?! What's so special, so scandalous, that it remains sealed until the final chapter? Without going into too much detail, let me just say that this is more a MacGuffin than anything. It serves a minor purpose, but the book would have worked even with the letter removed, so don't spend too much time stressing over it as you read, OK?
Finally, I'd like to conclude by way of complaint about a formatting issue. What's up with the font used in this edition to render letters? It's nearly illegible; I had to squint and carefully linger over each cursive word in order to make it out. I don't mind when books use different fonts, even cursive fonts, to add a little flair—just make them readable!
The Sealed Letter delighted me with its detail and its characterization. Donoghue presents an actual divorce in 1864 England, setting it against the social issues of the time, and the end result is a success.
Emma Donoghue grounds her story in facts, incorporating fiction only when necessary (because the facts are not extant) or in order to compress time. Her methodology and some of the factual history of the book's events are all detailed in the Author's Note at the end of the book. One of the advantages to using real people and a real divorce case is that Donoghue automatically has a plot; she need only enliven the characters for us. And she has associations that she would otherwise need to falsify: she'd have to make up an intelligent but morally-conflicted Emily "Fido" Faithfull and make her a pivotal member of the Reform Firm.
The first few chapters are slow-going, unfortunately, and that may turn people away from the book before it begins to get good. There's a great deal of superficiality in the interactions between Fido and Helen Codrington. The purpose of this becomes clear later in the story, but at the beginning I found it dull. What I was waiting for was a real insight into the minds of these women and how they regarded their era. Although it takes awhile for Donoghue to unlock their psyches, she finally gets around to it.
What elevates The Sealed Letter above mediocrity is the three-dimensional way it portrays the people involved in this high-profile divorce. It is easy to set a divorce case in Victorian England in which the woman is the sympathetic character at the mercy of an uncaring husband. I found it hard to sympathize with Helen, who is both adulterous and manipulative, with sensibilities that radically change with her mood. Nevertheless, I understood her desire to remain a mother to her children (even if she was never very maternal) and repair the tear in her marriage that she—belatedly—realizes is her fault.
At the same time, Helen puts to shame Fido's Cause. She is a "fallen woman," an unfortunate counterexample to the claims of Fido's Reform Firm that women can be every bit as sensible and intelligent as men. As a result, Fido is torn between loyalty to her Cause and loyalty to her friend. She vacillates between an absolute adherence to one or the other as she tries to parse Helen's manipulation and deceit. There were times when Fido's changeable loyalties frustrated me, but I waited patiently for her to discover how unreliable Helen is.
And then there is Harry. Donoghue begins giving us insight into his mind toward the middle of the book, wherein he first suspects that Helen is having an affair and sets out to confirm or disprove this suspicion. Poor Harry is apparently clueless about his wife's adultery, and this discovery robs him of resolve and even, to some extent, reason. He becomes more reactionary, allowing his friends the Watsons, his brother, and his lawyers to manage the divorce case while he watches and participates with a sort of grim realization that there is no way to turn back the clock.
I come off as anti-Helen in my evaluation, and I do think she bears the majority of the blame—after all, she's the one who strayed. Yet my point is that Donoghue manages to portray all of the characters as sympathetic at times and at fault at other times. It's a realistic depiction of the difficulties of marriage and divorce (and life in general): nothing is clear cut, nothing is black and white, and there's always certain points where it's impossible to turn back.
The last theme echoes over and over again throughout the book. There's one quotation, which I can't locate at the moment, that aptly describes this idea. As she watches the divorce proceeding, Helen wonders if all this was an inevitable outcome of her dalliances with Mildmay and Anderson. She likens herself to a little boy pushing his toy soldier closer and closer to the edge just to see what would happen. I really enjoyed this underlying idea that we humans are prone to pushing ever so slightly too hard and bringing disaster upon ourselves.
The martial woes of the Codringtons takes place against the backdrop of Victorian society, and Fido's roles as an activist for women's rights is a key issue in The Sealed Letter. It's worth remarking on the ironic censure that Fido receives from other women in the Reform Firm, particularly the "equal above all others" woman Bettie Parkes. What I found most poignant, however, was the depth to which Fido sinks in the witness box to retract an affidavit she has signed. Fido essentially claims her "weakness as a woman" as her excuse for signing a statement to which she can attach no veracity. This makes her a hypocrite and hurts her Cause . . . yet it is so very true.
Which is not to say that all women are weak. No, what I mean is that Fido is right in claiming she was too weak-willed to refuse to sign the affidavit, too weak-willed to stand up to the illogical Helen Codrington. It's a character flaw—of the individual, not of the gender—that manifests over and over again, each time sending Fido down a darker, dimmer road as she tries to find some sense of equilibrium. Even as she contrasts two very distinct Victorian era women and their attitudes toward men and society, Donoghue reminds us that gender is only a part of who we are.
But what of the eponymous letter?! What's so special, so scandalous, that it remains sealed until the final chapter? Without going into too much detail, let me just say that this is more a MacGuffin than anything. It serves a minor purpose, but the book would have worked even with the letter removed, so don't spend too much time stressing over it as you read, OK?
Finally, I'd like to conclude by way of complaint about a formatting issue. What's up with the font used in this edition to render letters? It's nearly illegible; I had to squint and carefully linger over each cursive word in order to make it out. I don't mind when books use different fonts, even cursive fonts, to add a little flair—just make them readable!
The Sealed Letter delighted me with its detail and its characterization. Donoghue presents an actual divorce in 1864 England, setting it against the social issues of the time, and the end result is a success.
Somehow I managed to become trapped inside a world of streaming consciousness, present tense narrative that jumped from inelegant metaphor to inelegant metaphor. I barely made it out alive, swallowing almost fifty pages before declaring defeat and making a strategic retreat to the next book on my to-read shelf.
Thank goodness I got out in time!
Ali Smith's writing style in this book is too jarring for me to get into the story and actually enjoy it. Reading this book took more effort than [b:The Name of the Rose|119073|The Name of the Rose|Umberto Eco|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1415375471s/119073.jpg|3138328] for significantly less return, and after nearly fifty pages, the story didn't seem to be going anywhere--which is actually an accomplishment, since at first glance there appears to be no story whatsoever.
Rather than adhering to established literary conventions, such as quotation marks to mark up dialogue, Smith has decided instead that everything should be presented in a stream of consciousness narrative in which Capital Letters make a frequent cameo and the word "substandard" reappears in awkward places. Now, I'm all for experimenting with the medium, as long as such experiments don't detract from the telling of the story itself, which is the case here. The thing about quotation marks is that they aren't just a stylistic innovation; they're actually functional devices. And I miss them.
I should have been suspicious from the cant of the reviews on the back: "Ali Smith is a true original", according to Joyce Carol Oates. Just how original I found out after the prologue.... Then "I love Ali Smith's work"--Jeanette Winterson, The Times. Well that's certainly ... informative--if only about Winterson's reading habits and not Smith's actual talent. Maggie O'Farrell is correct when she says that Smith is "a writer of incredible inventiveness, versatility and uniqueness", but I don't think I would agree with the intent behind that utterance. Lastly, the Independent must have been sent the wrong book by mistake, for it declared Smith "an extremely readable, easy-flowing writer and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around."
I wish that I could criticize the actual book itself more, but I put it down so early into the novel that it's hard to do so. I wish I could have finished it--I very seldom give up on a book, trying instead to keep an open mind and soldier on no matter how difficult it becomes. And that's the thing: there is a very fine line, more a one-dimensional edge, that separates genius voice from literary trainwreck. Douglas Coupland and Paul Quarrington have genius voice; Ali Smith has unfortunately landed on the trainwreck side of this divide--at least in my opinion.
Thank goodness I got out in time!
Ali Smith's writing style in this book is too jarring for me to get into the story and actually enjoy it. Reading this book took more effort than [b:The Name of the Rose|119073|The Name of the Rose|Umberto Eco|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1415375471s/119073.jpg|3138328] for significantly less return, and after nearly fifty pages, the story didn't seem to be going anywhere--which is actually an accomplishment, since at first glance there appears to be no story whatsoever.
Rather than adhering to established literary conventions, such as quotation marks to mark up dialogue, Smith has decided instead that everything should be presented in a stream of consciousness narrative in which Capital Letters make a frequent cameo and the word "substandard" reappears in awkward places. Now, I'm all for experimenting with the medium, as long as such experiments don't detract from the telling of the story itself, which is the case here. The thing about quotation marks is that they aren't just a stylistic innovation; they're actually functional devices. And I miss them.
I should have been suspicious from the cant of the reviews on the back: "Ali Smith is a true original", according to Joyce Carol Oates. Just how original I found out after the prologue.... Then "I love Ali Smith's work"--Jeanette Winterson, The Times. Well that's certainly ... informative--if only about Winterson's reading habits and not Smith's actual talent. Maggie O'Farrell is correct when she says that Smith is "a writer of incredible inventiveness, versatility and uniqueness", but I don't think I would agree with the intent behind that utterance. Lastly, the Independent must have been sent the wrong book by mistake, for it declared Smith "an extremely readable, easy-flowing writer and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around."
I wish that I could criticize the actual book itself more, but I put it down so early into the novel that it's hard to do so. I wish I could have finished it--I very seldom give up on a book, trying instead to keep an open mind and soldier on no matter how difficult it becomes. And that's the thing: there is a very fine line, more a one-dimensional edge, that separates genius voice from literary trainwreck. Douglas Coupland and Paul Quarrington have genius voice; Ali Smith has unfortunately landed on the trainwreck side of this divide--at least in my opinion.
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The success of The Dispossessed lies in Le Guin's presentation of two distinct visions of utopia. Each feels that the other is an aberration. Both are superior to the contemporary government of Earth, which at this stage has just barely managed to avoid destroying Earth's biome. Yet both are dysfunctional, have strayed from whatever utopian ideals may have founded them. They are not failed experiments, but they are not entirely successful either—owing to human nature—and Le Guin shows us the best and worth of both, all the while commenting on humanity and present-day social organization.
On Anarres, society is anarchistic and government no longer exists. Yet administrative work must be done, and the institutions in place to do that work have become more bureaucratic with each generation. Those who seek power over others will find positions in social structures, even if such structures aren't explicitly authoritarian, that allows them to assume that power. While the system of non-government on Anarres works well some of the time, the harsh climate of the moon makes it difficult to eke out a living some years, resulting in a hungry, weary population.
On Urras, there are a few different models of government. Most prominently featured is the capitalist A-Io, and there's also mention of the authoritarian Thu and the war-torn dictatorship of Benbili. Shevek visits A-Io, where Urrasti are "profiteers" who exist only to make money and revel in their superiority over others—or at least, that's what Anarresti learn in school. The truth is, as usual, far more complex. In fact, A-Io is a heavily class-based society, one in which women are relegated to the role of decorative, carefree wife and the lower classes toil ceaselessly to support the elite intellectuals and businessmen. Social mobility is nearly non-existent, and A-Io is just as closed-minded about change and new ideas as Anarres (and this may be the only thing they have in common).
My descriptions over-simplify, of course. Le Guin manages to make both nations seem viable, but it's clear that neither are ideal places to live. There is no utopia, Le Guin proclaims. This is the common theme of utopian literature, of course, but The Dispossessed stands out because it's discrediting two visions of utopia. And each has different flaws, different vulnerabilities. On Anarres, society the pressure on the individual to conform with social norms replaces laws. The danger of this, however, is that it stifles the very foundation of Anarresti society: "we didn't come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine." On Urras, we see classical forms of government with classical flaws: the individual becomes subordinate to the State and the Economy, slave to the twin whips of Authority and Profit. Despite these obvious flaws, however, it's clear that these are visions of utopia. And that's where it really gets interesting.
Through the Terran ambassador, Keng, Le Guin expresses her fears of what Earth may become if humanity doesn't wake up and change how it's behaving. The Terra in The Dispossessed is functional, but only just. Keng refers to the planet Urras as "Paradise" because it still has green space and its people have some form of choice, even if it isn't perfect. She sees Anarresti society as desirable in theory but no longer attainable in practice:
This conversation occurs toward the end of the book, by which time Le Guin, through the eyes of Shevek, has us convinced that both Anarres and Urras have pretty undesirable societies. And here is a Terran expressing her admiration for both—one which she envies and the other which she considers just so far beyond her reach it's no longer relevant. What may be Hell for one person is Paradise for another.
These notions of subjectivity and cycling, the idea that Anarres is Shevek's present, perhaps Urras' future, and Earth's past, are linked to the physics that Le Guin explores in other parts of the novel. Shevek seeks a grand unified theory, one which reconciles "Sequency" (cause and effect) and "Simultaneity" (laws of relativity) and allows for such marvels as faster-than-light travel. While he doesn't quite get that, it does lead to the reification of the ansible, which allows people to communicate instantaneously across several light-years. Before I look at the implications of Shevek's research, however, I want to examine this theory of time in closer detail.
Shevek's theory about time is central to any reading of The Dispossessed, as it influences his outlook on life. We get a sense of this from the repetition of a common idea. Here are two quotations that demonstrate this, first from when Shevek meets his eventual partner, Takver:
and then from the end of chapter 10, when Shevek and Takver reunite after four years of postings on opposite sides of Anarres:
The point is pretty clear, thanks to Le Guin's writing. I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing frustrating evenings when I look back on the day's events and think about how much time I wasted not doing anything productive. Shevek would advise me to take that in stride: everything that happens, has happened, and has formed part of your life, part of who you are. The acceptance of this inevitability may seem deterministic. Shevek admits, later in the book, that such thinking is inherent in Simultaneity, and that one reason for his search for a grand unified theory is to keep the Simultaneity without the need for determinism. Accepting the inevitability of the past is still necessary, but it makes it all the more important to strive for a better future.
And that's why Shevek wants everyone to have his theory, wants everyone—Terran, Hainish, Urrasti, Anarresti—to be able to construct an ansible. Because communication is one of the most necessary and most worthwhile activities. Freedom of speech is paramount, and Le Guin makes a strong case for open source information and academic freedom. As a student and academic, these themes are close to home for me. I empathized with Shevek has he ran up against the walls of bureaucracy and reactionary thought on Anarres and corporatism and capitalism on Urras. Ideas, especially scientific knowledge, should belong to no one person, corporation, or country. They should belong to the species at large. However, freedom of speech is not something that flourishes untended, like a conifer in a boreal forest. It must be constantly maintained.
Le Guin demonstrates this in a very creative way, through the Anarresti language. Pravic is artificially constructed, mostly by computer. Even Anarresti names are all 5- or 6-letter names assigned by computer. There is only one Shevek at any given time, and the names themselves are gender-neutral, which helps contribute toward the gender equality we see on Anarres. If language shapes our perception of reality, then the use of an artificially-constructed language is the ultimate shaping of reality.
There are more themes in The Dispossessed than I could do justice to in such a brief discussion, so I'll only briefly touch on gender relations and political allegory. In the case of the former, the distinction seems obvious at first: women and men are social equals on Anarres; on Urras, at least in A-Io, women are considered inferior. As Shevek learns during his visit, however, A-Ioan women don't see themselves that way; they think they run the men! While I envy the equality we see on Anarres and condemn the attitudes of Urrasti men toward women, again Le Guin reminds us that the situation is never as clear cut as we want it to be.
The political allegory is very transparent but still relevant even thirty years after publication. Analogues for the U.S. and Russia are hostile toward each other but do not openly invade the other's country. Rather, they fight proxy wars in other countries. This is the face of warfare in the late twentieth-century, still the face of warfare in many senses, although guerrilla warfare and terrorism are beginning to get an edge. Through Shevek, the traveller from another utopia, Le Guin can express her scorn for war, for the military, for the unnecessary aggression and conflict she sees in her contemporary world.
And central to all these themes, all these many entwined points of light, is Shevek. He's just this guy, you know? Trying to do the right thing. He's got a woman he loves, two daughters he loves, and a cause in which he believes. He has a choice: do nothing, or do something, anything, even if it's dangerous . . . just to spark some change. He chooses the latter, and that makes him more than just a mouthpiece or an ideologue. Shevek is a hero. Not a gun-toting, smart-mouthed, badass action hero. Just a hero. And that is enough.
For such a small, compact book, The Dispossessed is a political and social force to be reckoned with. This is a novel that can be read in a day or two, as I did, but it's something that needs a lifetime of thought. Every so often, a book comes along and shakes me up, surprising me with is verisimilitude. It reminds me that this light, bound work of paper in my hand has the ability to profoundly influence people, including myself. The Dispossessed is what a book should strive to be, more than just words on a page, but the encapsulation of ideas sublimely expressed.
Read it.
On Anarres, society is anarchistic and government no longer exists. Yet administrative work must be done, and the institutions in place to do that work have become more bureaucratic with each generation. Those who seek power over others will find positions in social structures, even if such structures aren't explicitly authoritarian, that allows them to assume that power. While the system of non-government on Anarres works well some of the time, the harsh climate of the moon makes it difficult to eke out a living some years, resulting in a hungry, weary population.
On Urras, there are a few different models of government. Most prominently featured is the capitalist A-Io, and there's also mention of the authoritarian Thu and the war-torn dictatorship of Benbili. Shevek visits A-Io, where Urrasti are "profiteers" who exist only to make money and revel in their superiority over others—or at least, that's what Anarresti learn in school. The truth is, as usual, far more complex. In fact, A-Io is a heavily class-based society, one in which women are relegated to the role of decorative, carefree wife and the lower classes toil ceaselessly to support the elite intellectuals and businessmen. Social mobility is nearly non-existent, and A-Io is just as closed-minded about change and new ideas as Anarres (and this may be the only thing they have in common).
My descriptions over-simplify, of course. Le Guin manages to make both nations seem viable, but it's clear that neither are ideal places to live. There is no utopia, Le Guin proclaims. This is the common theme of utopian literature, of course, but The Dispossessed stands out because it's discrediting two visions of utopia. And each has different flaws, different vulnerabilities. On Anarres, society the pressure on the individual to conform with social norms replaces laws. The danger of this, however, is that it stifles the very foundation of Anarresti society: "we didn't come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we're no better than a machine." On Urras, we see classical forms of government with classical flaws: the individual becomes subordinate to the State and the Economy, slave to the twin whips of Authority and Profit. Despite these obvious flaws, however, it's clear that these are visions of utopia. And that's where it really gets interesting.
Through the Terran ambassador, Keng, Le Guin expresses her fears of what Earth may become if humanity doesn't wake up and change how it's behaving. The Terra in The Dispossessed is functional, but only just. Keng refers to the planet Urras as "Paradise" because it still has green space and its people have some form of choice, even if it isn't perfect. She sees Anarresti society as desirable in theory but no longer attainable in practice:
"My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed our world first. There are no forests left on my Earth. The air is grey, the sky is grey, it is always hot. It is habitable, it is still habitable, but not as this world is. . . . We failed as a species, as a social species. . . . We can only look at this splendid world, this vital society, this Urras, this Paradise, from the outside. We are capable only of admiring it, and maybe envying it a little. Not very much."
"Then Anarres, as you heard me speak of it—what would Anarres mean to you, Keng?"
"Nothing. Nothing, Shevek. We forfeited our chance for Anarres centuries ago, before it ever came into being."
This conversation occurs toward the end of the book, by which time Le Guin, through the eyes of Shevek, has us convinced that both Anarres and Urras have pretty undesirable societies. And here is a Terran expressing her admiration for both—one which she envies and the other which she considers just so far beyond her reach it's no longer relevant. What may be Hell for one person is Paradise for another.
These notions of subjectivity and cycling, the idea that Anarres is Shevek's present, perhaps Urras' future, and Earth's past, are linked to the physics that Le Guin explores in other parts of the novel. Shevek seeks a grand unified theory, one which reconciles "Sequency" (cause and effect) and "Simultaneity" (laws of relativity) and allows for such marvels as faster-than-light travel. While he doesn't quite get that, it does lead to the reification of the ansible, which allows people to communicate instantaneously across several light-years. Before I look at the implications of Shevek's research, however, I want to examine this theory of time in closer detail.
Shevek's theory about time is central to any reading of The Dispossessed, as it influences his outlook on life. We get a sense of this from the repetition of a common idea. Here are two quotations that demonstrate this, first from when Shevek meets his eventual partner, Takver:
It is now clear to Shevek, and he would have thought it folly to think otherwise, that his wretched years in this city had all been part of his present great happiness, because they had led up to it, prepared him for it. Everything that had happened to him was part of what was happening to him now. Takver saw no such obscure concatenations of effect/cause/effect, but then she was not a temporal physicist. She saw time naively as a road laid out. You walked ahead, and you got somewhere. If you were lucky, you got somewhere worth getting to.
and then from the end of chapter 10, when Shevek and Takver reunite after four years of postings on opposite sides of Anarres:
So, looking back on the last four years, Shevek saw them not as wasted, but as part of the edifice that he and Takver were building with their lives. The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
The point is pretty clear, thanks to Le Guin's writing. I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing frustrating evenings when I look back on the day's events and think about how much time I wasted not doing anything productive. Shevek would advise me to take that in stride: everything that happens, has happened, and has formed part of your life, part of who you are. The acceptance of this inevitability may seem deterministic. Shevek admits, later in the book, that such thinking is inherent in Simultaneity, and that one reason for his search for a grand unified theory is to keep the Simultaneity without the need for determinism. Accepting the inevitability of the past is still necessary, but it makes it all the more important to strive for a better future.
And that's why Shevek wants everyone to have his theory, wants everyone—Terran, Hainish, Urrasti, Anarresti—to be able to construct an ansible. Because communication is one of the most necessary and most worthwhile activities. Freedom of speech is paramount, and Le Guin makes a strong case for open source information and academic freedom. As a student and academic, these themes are close to home for me. I empathized with Shevek has he ran up against the walls of bureaucracy and reactionary thought on Anarres and corporatism and capitalism on Urras. Ideas, especially scientific knowledge, should belong to no one person, corporation, or country. They should belong to the species at large. However, freedom of speech is not something that flourishes untended, like a conifer in a boreal forest. It must be constantly maintained.
Le Guin demonstrates this in a very creative way, through the Anarresti language. Pravic is artificially constructed, mostly by computer. Even Anarresti names are all 5- or 6-letter names assigned by computer. There is only one Shevek at any given time, and the names themselves are gender-neutral, which helps contribute toward the gender equality we see on Anarres. If language shapes our perception of reality, then the use of an artificially-constructed language is the ultimate shaping of reality.
There are more themes in The Dispossessed than I could do justice to in such a brief discussion, so I'll only briefly touch on gender relations and political allegory. In the case of the former, the distinction seems obvious at first: women and men are social equals on Anarres; on Urras, at least in A-Io, women are considered inferior. As Shevek learns during his visit, however, A-Ioan women don't see themselves that way; they think they run the men! While I envy the equality we see on Anarres and condemn the attitudes of Urrasti men toward women, again Le Guin reminds us that the situation is never as clear cut as we want it to be.
The political allegory is very transparent but still relevant even thirty years after publication. Analogues for the U.S. and Russia are hostile toward each other but do not openly invade the other's country. Rather, they fight proxy wars in other countries. This is the face of warfare in the late twentieth-century, still the face of warfare in many senses, although guerrilla warfare and terrorism are beginning to get an edge. Through Shevek, the traveller from another utopia, Le Guin can express her scorn for war, for the military, for the unnecessary aggression and conflict she sees in her contemporary world.
And central to all these themes, all these many entwined points of light, is Shevek. He's just this guy, you know? Trying to do the right thing. He's got a woman he loves, two daughters he loves, and a cause in which he believes. He has a choice: do nothing, or do something, anything, even if it's dangerous . . . just to spark some change. He chooses the latter, and that makes him more than just a mouthpiece or an ideologue. Shevek is a hero. Not a gun-toting, smart-mouthed, badass action hero. Just a hero. And that is enough.
For such a small, compact book, The Dispossessed is a political and social force to be reckoned with. This is a novel that can be read in a day or two, as I did, but it's something that needs a lifetime of thought. Every so often, a book comes along and shakes me up, surprising me with is verisimilitude. It reminds me that this light, bound work of paper in my hand has the ability to profoundly influence people, including myself. The Dispossessed is what a book should strive to be, more than just words on a page, but the encapsulation of ideas sublimely expressed.
Read it.
Some books you can describe with a single sentence. This is one of them: "Vampires kicking Nazi ass." I mean really, how can that possibly go wrong?
That's a rhetorical question. It can't. Still, actual execution can range from mediocre to eye-gougingly awesome. While Sarah Jane Stratford's The Midnight Guardian slides fluidly along this continuum, it's closer to the latter than the former, if only because of it's breathtaking characters (that's a pun). As far as the "kicking ass" parts go, they're too few and too far between, strung out along a plot that doesn't achieve lift-off.
Of course, the world has never been the same since a certain book featuring unconventional vampires. Stratford's vampires are a sensible concoction of various conventional interpretations. I like how crosses don't affect vampires who were Jewish in life, little details like that. They have the usual overdrive sex urges that seem to plague the undead like bad hangovers, but other than that, they are tolerable mythical creatures. And, passionate relationships aside, they are interesting people. Well, some of them.
Stratford tells the story in a non-linear manner. The "main" plot takes place in August 1940, with Brigit on a train escorting the children of a vampire hunter to safety in London. Interspersed are chapters two years prior, with Brigit and her millennial cohort in Germany just before the start of the war, as well as episodes from Brigit's past, including her "making" and when she "makes" her love, Eamon. I actually found this structure counterproductive to my comprehension of the story, but it's an excellent way of educating us about Brigit's life.
By far the most interesting parts of the book are the episodes of Brigit's past. I loved watching her transformation from human to vampire and her effort to come to terms with the implications of immortality. Stratford's vampires are still very human in the sense that they are not evil fiends. Sure, they kill people and suck blood. But they don't hurt children (who are unpalatable) and still have very human passions—for culture, particularly books and music. Nevertheless, Brigit's life as a vampire is manifestly different from her life as a human, and the difference is jarring at times. She has to confront her mixed feelings for her maker, who's a well-meaning but obtuse idiot. When she turns into a vampire a man whom she believes she's destined to love, he's not grateful at first, and the years slip by as they work things out. There's a certain sense of destiny to the relationship that I kind of had to ignore, but individually they're both interesting people.
The whole "vampires trying to sabotage the war" plot? Not so much. I enjoyed the chapters in 1938 in which Brigit, Mors, et al. attempt to infiltrate the ranks of the Third Reich. Stratford's depictions of wartime Germany, the attitudes of Germans toward Hitler and the Nazis, and the behaviour of the Nazis themselves are all wonderful. And it's fun watching how vampires would practise espionage. As we approach 1940, however, my interest begins to dissipate. I don't follow how Leon's children are "precious cargo that marks the only hope of salvaging their mission" (from the cover copy). Sure, it's great that Brigit is being all compassionate and risking herself to get them out of Germany, but what do they have to do with her mission?
That mission was doomed from the start, of course, and it only seems to derail and deteriorate as the book goes on. I suppose that's the problem with a premise like "vampires go to stop Hitler's war machine". Unless one wants to stray into alternate history territory, clearly the vampires can't succeed in preventing war, nor can they just go in and kill Hitler any time before April 30, 1945. That alone isn't a problem—"how will they fail?" can be just as exciting, even more so, than "will they fail?" But Stratford can't maintain my interest while Brigit is on the train. There's a nosey sergeant and a suspicious doctor who's actually a vampire hunter. All Brigit can do is complain that she's too exposed to properly eat, so she feels weak.
The climactic battle takes place on a peer, where Brigit is about to get on board a ferry to Britain with the children but is confronted by the doctor/hunter. Brigit gets the children she's protecting onto the ferry by having Eamon use his music, powered by their love, to create a smokey hand that pulls the children over the water separating the boat from the peer. And that, sadly, broke my suspension of disbelief.
Despite that last damning bit of criticism, I did enjoy The Midnight Guardian, and I'll recommend it to some of my friends who like supernatural fiction. Its plot could use some work; as this is a debut novel, I'll be interested to see if Stratford's writing improves with subsequent Millennial efforts.
That's a rhetorical question. It can't. Still, actual execution can range from mediocre to eye-gougingly awesome. While Sarah Jane Stratford's The Midnight Guardian slides fluidly along this continuum, it's closer to the latter than the former, if only because of it's breathtaking characters (that's a pun). As far as the "kicking ass" parts go, they're too few and too far between, strung out along a plot that doesn't achieve lift-off.
Of course, the world has never been the same since a certain book featuring unconventional vampires. Stratford's vampires are a sensible concoction of various conventional interpretations. I like how crosses don't affect vampires who were Jewish in life, little details like that. They have the usual overdrive sex urges that seem to plague the undead like bad hangovers, but other than that, they are tolerable mythical creatures. And, passionate relationships aside, they are interesting people. Well, some of them.
Stratford tells the story in a non-linear manner. The "main" plot takes place in August 1940, with Brigit on a train escorting the children of a vampire hunter to safety in London. Interspersed are chapters two years prior, with Brigit and her millennial cohort in Germany just before the start of the war, as well as episodes from Brigit's past, including her "making" and when she "makes" her love, Eamon. I actually found this structure counterproductive to my comprehension of the story, but it's an excellent way of educating us about Brigit's life.
By far the most interesting parts of the book are the episodes of Brigit's past. I loved watching her transformation from human to vampire and her effort to come to terms with the implications of immortality. Stratford's vampires are still very human in the sense that they are not evil fiends. Sure, they kill people and suck blood. But they don't hurt children (who are unpalatable) and still have very human passions—for culture, particularly books and music. Nevertheless, Brigit's life as a vampire is manifestly different from her life as a human, and the difference is jarring at times. She has to confront her mixed feelings for her maker, who's a well-meaning but obtuse idiot. When she turns into a vampire a man whom she believes she's destined to love, he's not grateful at first, and the years slip by as they work things out. There's a certain sense of destiny to the relationship that I kind of had to ignore, but individually they're both interesting people.
The whole "vampires trying to sabotage the war" plot? Not so much. I enjoyed the chapters in 1938 in which Brigit, Mors, et al. attempt to infiltrate the ranks of the Third Reich. Stratford's depictions of wartime Germany, the attitudes of Germans toward Hitler and the Nazis, and the behaviour of the Nazis themselves are all wonderful. And it's fun watching how vampires would practise espionage. As we approach 1940, however, my interest begins to dissipate. I don't follow how Leon's children are "precious cargo that marks the only hope of salvaging their mission" (from the cover copy). Sure, it's great that Brigit is being all compassionate and risking herself to get them out of Germany, but what do they have to do with her mission?
That mission was doomed from the start, of course, and it only seems to derail and deteriorate as the book goes on. I suppose that's the problem with a premise like "vampires go to stop Hitler's war machine". Unless one wants to stray into alternate history territory, clearly the vampires can't succeed in preventing war, nor can they just go in and kill Hitler any time before April 30, 1945. That alone isn't a problem—"how will they fail?" can be just as exciting, even more so, than "will they fail?" But Stratford can't maintain my interest while Brigit is on the train. There's a nosey sergeant and a suspicious doctor who's actually a vampire hunter. All Brigit can do is complain that she's too exposed to properly eat, so she feels weak.
The climactic battle takes place on a peer, where Brigit is about to get on board a ferry to Britain with the children but is confronted by the doctor/hunter. Brigit gets the children she's protecting onto the ferry by having Eamon use his music, powered by their love, to create a smokey hand that pulls the children over the water separating the boat from the peer. And that, sadly, broke my suspension of disbelief.
Despite that last damning bit of criticism, I did enjoy The Midnight Guardian, and I'll recommend it to some of my friends who like supernatural fiction. Its plot could use some work; as this is a debut novel, I'll be interested to see if Stratford's writing improves with subsequent Millennial efforts.
I do not believe in free will. But more on that later.
Flashforward is in every way what you'd expect from a story about glimpsing the future. It raises questions about free will, determinism, and the nature of consciousness and time itself. However, Robert J. Sawyer has gone one step further and added to that a humbling sense of moral responsibility. The flashforwards are a global event experienced by all of humanity, but were caused by a human experiment and ended up causing, in turn, damage and extensive loss of life.
I suspect that Flashforward will always have special significance for me. Firstly, it was written in 1999 but set in 2009. Sawyer makes several guesses about future facts, products, and fashions, many of which turn out inaccurate ("no on under thirty wears blue jeans anymore" and the "Windows 2009 three dimensional desktop" are my favourites). If you take a step back, it's kind of meta, in a way. Sawyer's writing a book about seeing the future that's set in the future, so he's essentially envisioning the future in order to do this. And since we didn't experience a flashforward to 2009 ten years ago, he has an excuse for getting some of the details wrong. Secondly, Flashforward features a real life particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN that was supposed to be fully operational this year.
Various setbacks mean that the LHC, while it has conducted some proton collisions and is officially the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, hasn't yet conducted the experiments designed to detect the Higgs boson. However, that is one of the primary reasons for constructing the LHC, and Sawyer gets that part of the science right. It's far better than a certain book's abuse of creative license. By no means does this mean that the LHC's lead nuclei collisions will cause a flashforward, so don't grab your protest signs just yet. . . .
Indeed, one reason I so admire Sawyer's work is his ability to incorporate real, cutting-edge physics into his stories in a believable manner. And I appreciate his attempts to educate his readers about physics. It's books like Flashforward that make physics accessible, and so they should be commended. Of course, such books run the risk of becoming too didactic, and unfortunately, there are moments in Flashforward where the plot grinds to a noticeable halt as Sawyer explains physics, using his characters as flimsy mouthpieces for various theories.
Ultimately, the book never does make up its mind about what sort of universe we occupy. We just get theories. Which, I suppose, is fair enough—we'll probably never know the answer in reality. Still, one of the benefits of fiction is that it can be more certain than reality. Sawyer presents the "block universe" eternalist model as the "accepted" model of the flow of time by physics, when it isn't the consensus, but then goes and demonstrates that the future is not fixed by killing off a character who's supposed to be alive during the flashforwards. That is, unquestionably, the central aspect of this premise, and I'm not sure Flashforward deals with it adequately.
Me? I don't believe we have free will, but I don't think the universe is deterministic either. Rather, my consciousness is, at its most fundamental level, the result of interactions among subatomic particles, which obey probabilistic models of quantum mechanics. So the universe is random, as is my consciousness, but my thoughts and behaviour are just the result of this randomness. Not that it matters; for all practical purposes, we need the illusion of free will since there's no way to predict the future, as the future is not fixed.
If you can forgive the book for its somewhat heavyhanded but indecisive approach to the physics behind the plot, then you're in for a treat for most of the story. There's genuine and worthy conflict in here, beneath the layers of exposition. Lloyd Simcoe and his fiancée have to decide whether to go through with their marriage even though his flashforward shows him married to another woman. Lloyd's partner, Theo, is distraught that he had no flashforward, and when he learns he's going to be killed mere days before the events depicted in the flashforwards, he sets off on an investigation into his yet-uncommitted murder. Everyone begins to realize that they're in danger of putting the present on hold because of what they saw (or didn't see) in the future.
This is corroborated by the twenty-one year jump at the end of the book, taking us to the year seen in the original flashforwards. And it's this part of the book, more so even than the heavy exposition earlier on, that I suspect will rankle people. Sawyer begins to summarize the events of the lives of the characters in the twenty-one years since we saw them, and it's tedious. It's as if he spent the entire novel building up to this point but had no idea how to end it properly, so the last part feels hastily written and tacked on to the end as an afterthought. I'm sure that's not the case, but the fact that it reads as such is bad enough.
Consequently, I didn't find the ending satisfactory; it almost cheats all of the suspense created by the first flashforward by skipping over the climax and going straight to the resolution. There's a little bit of a posthuman, entropic perspective jammed into the last chapters that I found incongruous with the rest of the story.
There's a lot to like about Flashforward. Sawyer writes with a very wry tone, including tongue-in-cheek stories about what people saw in their flashforward that pertains to real-world companies and events. And it makes you think more about physics and philosophy and the implication of the search for scientific progress. Still, as I focused on for most of the review, Flashforward has serious flaws. Sawyer has done much better, so I don't recommend this as a first book to anyone new to his work. For Sawyer fans, it's probably a "must read", but it won't be "most memorable".
Flashforward is in every way what you'd expect from a story about glimpsing the future. It raises questions about free will, determinism, and the nature of consciousness and time itself. However, Robert J. Sawyer has gone one step further and added to that a humbling sense of moral responsibility. The flashforwards are a global event experienced by all of humanity, but were caused by a human experiment and ended up causing, in turn, damage and extensive loss of life.
I suspect that Flashforward will always have special significance for me. Firstly, it was written in 1999 but set in 2009. Sawyer makes several guesses about future facts, products, and fashions, many of which turn out inaccurate ("no on under thirty wears blue jeans anymore" and the "Windows 2009 three dimensional desktop" are my favourites). If you take a step back, it's kind of meta, in a way. Sawyer's writing a book about seeing the future that's set in the future, so he's essentially envisioning the future in order to do this. And since we didn't experience a flashforward to 2009 ten years ago, he has an excuse for getting some of the details wrong. Secondly, Flashforward features a real life particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN that was supposed to be fully operational this year.
Various setbacks mean that the LHC, while it has conducted some proton collisions and is officially the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, hasn't yet conducted the experiments designed to detect the Higgs boson. However, that is one of the primary reasons for constructing the LHC, and Sawyer gets that part of the science right. It's far better than a certain book's abuse of creative license. By no means does this mean that the LHC's lead nuclei collisions will cause a flashforward, so don't grab your protest signs just yet. . . .
Indeed, one reason I so admire Sawyer's work is his ability to incorporate real, cutting-edge physics into his stories in a believable manner. And I appreciate his attempts to educate his readers about physics. It's books like Flashforward that make physics accessible, and so they should be commended. Of course, such books run the risk of becoming too didactic, and unfortunately, there are moments in Flashforward where the plot grinds to a noticeable halt as Sawyer explains physics, using his characters as flimsy mouthpieces for various theories.
Ultimately, the book never does make up its mind about what sort of universe we occupy. We just get theories. Which, I suppose, is fair enough—we'll probably never know the answer in reality. Still, one of the benefits of fiction is that it can be more certain than reality. Sawyer presents the "block universe" eternalist model as the "accepted" model of the flow of time by physics, when it isn't the consensus, but then goes and demonstrates that the future is not fixed by killing off a character who's supposed to be alive during the flashforwards. That is, unquestionably, the central aspect of this premise, and I'm not sure Flashforward deals with it adequately.
Me? I don't believe we have free will, but I don't think the universe is deterministic either. Rather, my consciousness is, at its most fundamental level, the result of interactions among subatomic particles, which obey probabilistic models of quantum mechanics. So the universe is random, as is my consciousness, but my thoughts and behaviour are just the result of this randomness. Not that it matters; for all practical purposes, we need the illusion of free will since there's no way to predict the future, as the future is not fixed.
If you can forgive the book for its somewhat heavyhanded but indecisive approach to the physics behind the plot, then you're in for a treat for most of the story. There's genuine and worthy conflict in here, beneath the layers of exposition. Lloyd Simcoe and his fiancée have to decide whether to go through with their marriage even though his flashforward shows him married to another woman. Lloyd's partner, Theo, is distraught that he had no flashforward, and when he learns he's going to be killed mere days before the events depicted in the flashforwards, he sets off on an investigation into his yet-uncommitted murder. Everyone begins to realize that they're in danger of putting the present on hold because of what they saw (or didn't see) in the future.
This is corroborated by the twenty-one year jump at the end of the book, taking us to the year seen in the original flashforwards. And it's this part of the book, more so even than the heavy exposition earlier on, that I suspect will rankle people. Sawyer begins to summarize the events of the lives of the characters in the twenty-one years since we saw them, and it's tedious. It's as if he spent the entire novel building up to this point but had no idea how to end it properly, so the last part feels hastily written and tacked on to the end as an afterthought. I'm sure that's not the case, but the fact that it reads as such is bad enough.
Consequently, I didn't find the ending satisfactory; it almost cheats all of the suspense created by the first flashforward by skipping over the climax and going straight to the resolution. There's a little bit of a posthuman, entropic perspective jammed into the last chapters that I found incongruous with the rest of the story.
There's a lot to like about Flashforward. Sawyer writes with a very wry tone, including tongue-in-cheek stories about what people saw in their flashforward that pertains to real-world companies and events. And it makes you think more about physics and philosophy and the implication of the search for scientific progress. Still, as I focused on for most of the review, Flashforward has serious flaws. Sawyer has done much better, so I don't recommend this as a first book to anyone new to his work. For Sawyer fans, it's probably a "must read", but it won't be "most memorable".
This is my second Christopher Moore novel, the first being Fool. I'm still getting a handle on Moore's style and how to gauge him, but I don't think I'm off when I say that Fluke is not one of his better works. Sure, it has that distinctive sense of zaniness that any Moore fan comes to expect; you won't be disappointed if you read this book. Yet neither the story nor the characters are as entertaining as Fool's. The jokes are there, but they're less cohesive; they're funny moments that fail to form up into a single, hilarious book.
Not sure how to review this one. It's not as deliciously quotable as Fool was, so I can't just string together a bunch of quotations, call them witty, and try to pass that off as a review. Nope, I actually have to talk about the plot. You have been warned.
The plot of Fluke develops slowly, giving you time to grow accustomed to the persnickety research team and its supporting cast. It doesn't really jumpstart until Nate gets swallowed by a whale (literally), at which point the whale semen hits the Zodiac raft and the story goes into overdrive. There's a definite need for suspension of disbelief, as Moore strays over the boundary of improbable to implausible. But it's hard not to be seduced by the mystery Moore manifests. Who built the whale ships? Are the whale-men a result of natural evolution, or were they created by someone or something? What's up with the requests for pastrami on rye? Will Nate hook up with Amy?
The actual answers to most of those questions didn't live up to my expectations. Nate's life post-swallowing is confusing, ill-explained, and not all that funny. There are some interesting ideas thrown about relating to genes, memes, and evolution, but even these are far from well-developed. The quality of Fluke is heavily weighted to the beginning of the book, for it's there that Moore creates a very real (if not realistic), well-established world of characters and relationships.
The latter part of the book is still funny, but everything feels underdeveloped, rushed toward an artificial ending. For instance, Nate and Amy develop a relationship but face an obstacle in their relative ages and Amy's unique condition. Normally, starcrossed lovers is a tragedy . . . but I didn't really care. The blasé, lackadaisical attitude that makes Moore such a good humourist doesn't, in this case, lend itself well to character development and pathos. Nate just resorts to drinking or the casual nihilistic embrace of sleep once too often for me to care about what happens to him.
I'm not sure what it takes to wake up one day and decide to write a novel about cetacean biology. Fluke's premise is somewhat inspired and original. There are certainly predictable aspects of this book (I figured out what Amy's role was long before it's revealed), but the plot has enough twists to keep you guessing. Pastrami sandwiches that seem like throwaway lines become pivotal. Big mysteries turn out to have small answers. It may be a cliché, but nothing is what it seems in Fluke, and there is much hilarity to be had.
Not sure how to review this one. It's not as deliciously quotable as Fool was, so I can't just string together a bunch of quotations, call them witty, and try to pass that off as a review. Nope, I actually have to talk about the plot. You have been warned.
The plot of Fluke develops slowly, giving you time to grow accustomed to the persnickety research team and its supporting cast. It doesn't really jumpstart until Nate gets swallowed by a whale (literally), at which point the whale semen hits the Zodiac raft and the story goes into overdrive. There's a definite need for suspension of disbelief, as Moore strays over the boundary of improbable to implausible. But it's hard not to be seduced by the mystery Moore manifests. Who built the whale ships? Are the whale-men a result of natural evolution, or were they created by someone or something? What's up with the requests for pastrami on rye? Will Nate hook up with Amy?
The actual answers to most of those questions didn't live up to my expectations. Nate's life post-swallowing is confusing, ill-explained, and not all that funny. There are some interesting ideas thrown about relating to genes, memes, and evolution, but even these are far from well-developed. The quality of Fluke is heavily weighted to the beginning of the book, for it's there that Moore creates a very real (if not realistic), well-established world of characters and relationships.
The latter part of the book is still funny, but everything feels underdeveloped, rushed toward an artificial ending. For instance, Nate and Amy develop a relationship but face an obstacle in their relative ages and Amy's unique condition. Normally, starcrossed lovers is a tragedy . . . but I didn't really care. The blasé, lackadaisical attitude that makes Moore such a good humourist doesn't, in this case, lend itself well to character development and pathos. Nate just resorts to drinking or the casual nihilistic embrace of sleep once too often for me to care about what happens to him.
I'm not sure what it takes to wake up one day and decide to write a novel about cetacean biology. Fluke's premise is somewhat inspired and original. There are certainly predictable aspects of this book (I figured out what Amy's role was long before it's revealed), but the plot has enough twists to keep you guessing. Pastrami sandwiches that seem like throwaway lines become pivotal. Big mysteries turn out to have small answers. It may be a cliché, but nothing is what it seems in Fluke, and there is much hilarity to be had.