June 22, 2007

woken furies

file under: books
tags: review , science fiction

the third novel in Richard K. Morgan's takeshi kovacs trilogy did not disappoint. kovacs (aka micky serendipity in this installment) is back in true form: ruthless, disaffected, unhappy, and yet strangely sympathetic.

spoilers to follow....i mean it.

...

kovacs is back on his home planet (Harlan's World), and man is he pissed. i mean, really pissed. a very specific group of individuals has raised his ire this time; it's not just his normal "kill anyone who looks at me sideways" sort of rage. this time, it's really personal. it takes awhile before we find out who, exactly, he is butchering ruthlessly and why. as it turns out, all of the high-level functionaries in a particular religion on Harlan's World are destined to reach the promised land a little sooner than expected...

this is just backdrop for a broader story arc where a fugitive Kovacs becomes involved with a group of mercenaries, one of whom (Sylvie) turns out to be carrying the soul of long-dead revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer inside her head. or not. it could just be a glitch in the matrix, a partial personality construct that got uploaded into some sophisticated mindware used by Sylvie and others like her for hardcore military command-and-control missions. whether or not it's the real Quellcrist is immaterial; her potential power as a symbol to reignite revolution on Harlan's World is enough to get everyone excited, despots and revolutionaries alike.

the leaders of Harlan's World decide that Sylvie needs to be procured to prevent revolution and its discontents. they learn that Kovacs is a part of the group running with her, and so decide to do something quite ingenious: they reincarnate a younger version of Kovacs to hunt him down and bring Sylvie to them. you see, it turns out that prior to the first book in the Kovacs series (see my previous entry on Altered Carbon), Harlan's leaders had managed to create an illegal copy of Kovacs and keep it on digital ice, just waiting for the day when a young, ruthless Envoy would come in handy. and what better occasion than the need to hunt down an older version of that same Envoy?

morgan explores at least three separate themes in Woken Furies: revolution, the role of religion in society, and the nature of identity. not your average topics for a sci-fi thriller. the exploration of revolution is interesting, that of religion is intensely biased (negatively, as you might expect), and that of identity the most interesting. it' all good stuff, but i'll only touch on the latter.

imagine you were a fugitive, and you were being hunted by a younger copy of yourself. can you outsmart yourself? are age and experience enough to outwit the same intellect? and what of the encounter between the two copies of you? the young copy looks at the old and judges: is that who i thought i would be? the older version looks at the youth through the distorting lens of memory; would he look with fondness or disdain? how do we reconcile our visions of ourselves, both looking forward and looking back? i thought morgan did a good job of exploring this conundrum, and the way our visions of our own futures often don't match the reality.

in summary, another great book by a gifted writer. it's thrilling, well-written science fiction with some sophisticated ideas. highly recommended.

Posted by docrpm on 06.22.07 at 6:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 18, 2007

broken angels and altered carbon

file under: books
tags: science fiction

it's been awhile since a science fiction author did something that surprised me (pleasantly, that is). i read a fair amount in the genre, but nothing has really raised my temperature much in the past few years...some enjoyable books, some duds, some disappointing sequels and prequels. my expectations have gradually been sliding down the gravity well of a deep and boring black hole.

richard k. morgan has lifted a weight from my sholders.

he just rocked my tiny sci-fi world. he made me foam at the mouth like a rabid star trek fan having a close encounter with patrick stewart. he renewed my faith in sci-fi as a viable genre, one that has something to offer beyond its vivid imaginations of time travel, hive-mind alien intelligences, and the occasional green woman doing the interplanetary horizontal mambo.

with his first two Takeshi Kovacs novels, altered carbon and broken angels, morgan has crafted incredibly entertaining stories that bear the hallmark of my favorite books – i was sad to finish them, yet satisfied with their resolution at the same time.

his central futuristic conceit in both novels revolves around the cortical stack, a small device planted at the base of your cortex and capable of storing one's mental state, one's life experiences, up to any given point in time. your consciousness and identity are tied to your stack, not your body (or sleeve as he calls it), so you can hop bodies and still be the same person. this simple idea provides rich soil for innovation, and he plants an array of curious seeds over the course of the novels.

morgan uses an interesting socio-political backdrop for his stories, one where corporations and the Protectorate, modernism and religion, greed and virtue, slug it out without clear winners and losers. in this landscape, he drops Kovacs, an ex-Envoy and a Quellist who follows the nihilistic and cynical political philosophy of the revolutionary Quell, a poet-warrior from his planet Harlan's World. he's a shattered anti-hero who slugs his way through one spirit-crushing episode after another. on one level, Kovacs seems admirable in that he fights for social and individual justice, deeply distrustful of corporate, government and military interests; on another, he's pretty much in it for himself. it's hard to rationalize his altruistic underlying motivations with his means (usually violent) and his feelings (usually detached to the point of inhumanity), and it's also hard to say whether you really like him. Kovacs is a bag full of contradictions in a world full of flawed people.

altered carbon is the first in morgan's trilogy of Kovacs novels. it's a cross between a hard-boiled detective novel and a cyberpunk dystopian nightmare (yes, i paraphrased from the book jacket). a few comparisons seem appropriate: gibson, dick, chandler. a friend seemed to think there was a resonance with iain m. banks, although that reference point isn't as obvious to me. regardless, morgan's prose crackles and pops, vividly painting a grim far-future earth where immortality is possible and murder is never quite what it seems. carbon is a crime thriller with Kovacs as unwilling gumshoe working for an arrogant Meth (short for Methuselah, i.e., people who have lived for a very, very long time across many sleeves). he is tasked with solving the central character's murder, and he has to do it sleeved in a body with an interesting past. in return, he gets a reward that he basically can't refuse. the plot twists and turns are far from obvious, with every step of the journey richly described, and they ultimately lead to a startling and explosive conclusion.

broken angels finds our friend Kovacs on Sanction IV playing mercenary soldier in a bloody uprising. mid-way through the conflict, he is presented with an interesting opportunity – to find a Martian artifact worth unimaginable sums. in the middle of a raging war, he partners with a band of re-sleeved special ops soldiers with financial backing from the Mandrake Cartel, a corporation who wants the artifact and will use Kovacs to get it. while there is still a detective story at the heart of angels, the backdrop of senseless war, betrayal, and greed overshadow the quest for great mysteries. the first novel is like reading about mister roger's neighborhood in comparison to the second...don't look for that warm, fuzzy feeling in this book (or, i suspect, in any of his books).

the last of the Kovacs novels is woken furies, which i look forward to reading. i've also just learned that he has a new novel forthcoming, set in the future, but in a different universe.

i wouldn't say richard morgan's novels are for everyone, but if you like hard-edged sci-fi with provocative ideas, noir sensibilties, and flawed heroes, then pick up Altered Carbon and let me know how you enjoy the ride.

Posted by docrpm on 04.18.07 at 8:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 1, 2007

house harkonnen

file under: books
tags: review , science fiction

House Harkonnen is book number two in the House trilogy by brian herbert and kevin j. anderson. it continues where House Atreides left off.

when i reviewed the first installment of this series, i was excited and energetic, thrilled at the possibility of a never-ending stream of engaging books set in the Dune universe. sadly, i can't summon the same enthusiasm after reading House Harkonnen.

i won't bother with the same in-depth synopsis i provided for House Atreides. Harkonnen does provide some interesting back story on several characters, but falls short, in this reader's opinion, when it comes to providing true insight into character development and motivation. the harkonnens seem mindlessly malevolent; some are stupid, some are smart, but they're mostly evil (aside from peace-minded abulurd harkonnen who winds up in utter ruin at the hands of beast rabban). the atreides are just and wise, but occasionally misstep. and everyone else (the bene gesserit, the bene tleilax, count fenring, blah blah blah) has plans within plans, plots within plots, clichees within clichees.

i am a big fan of space opera, and the Dune series has provided that for many years, but this novel felt like space soap opera, and a dull one at that. as i read the book, i just kept waiting for something to happen, something that didn't feel too predictable or formulaic. this is not to say that the book is without incident — things happen. they just seem to happen without much dramatic tension or import. everything just felt like a big setup for something else, like foreplay for a climax that has already come (i.e., with the original Dune series). the first Atreides book didn't feel this way.

maybe i'm being too harsh. i probably am. even so, i'll keep reading. there's something comforting about visiting the Dune universe, and i'll probably keep going back for the rest of my days, through one book or another.

Posted by docrpm on 01.01.07 at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 26, 2006

engine summer

file under: books

i've now read two books by john crowley: engine summer and Aegypt. crowley is a favorite of my close friend ryan...he bought me most of crowley's books as a gift, which was nice, given that they are mostly hard to find or out of print.

crowley's books are not easy to read (if these two are any example). he makes no effort to provide a cushion for the reader, to help them on their journey through the world he creates. instead, he seems to relish dislocation and opaque prose. i've read other authors who do the same (Gene Wolfe and Iain Banks being two notable examples), but crowley seems to have his own gig.

engine summer is a post-apocalyptic tale, one where the future is not exactly bright, but then again, not entirely dark. in fact, for some time in the novel, you're not even sure it's the future (an approach that reminded me very much of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series).

despite the dislocation, he weaves a very compelling tale, one that creates a plausible future told with a somewhat foreign voice from that future. it may take you half way to reach the crest of the first hill of the rollercoaster, but i'd venture that once you reach that point, the rest is downhill, and you reach the end with a sense of exhilaration and happiness.

Posted by docrpm on 08.26.06 at 12:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 31, 2006

cloud atlas

file under: books

cloud atlas is everything i hoped it would be and more. if i had mr. mitchell's literary genius, i just might be able to do it justice. given the actual state of things, that's not going to happen. if you don't trust me, read any of a hundred glowing reviews.

let me begin by saying that i have been a fan of david mitchell ever since ghostwritten, his first novel. in that book, he did something that captivated and inspired (even if it fell just a tad short for some). he picked up on a theme that has fascinated me for years – connectedness: the invisible connections between people, places, events. history chronicles some of them, but most are relegated to the entropic scrap heap of the universe. he wrote a novel that connected the dots; it was still arresting, even if the lines were dotted.

cloud atlas picks up that thread and weaves a dark tapestry, one that alternately depresses, amuses and enthralls.

<some minor spoilers follow>

...

cloud atlas further plumbs the theme of connectedness, through six semi-linked narratives that span perhaps 400 years, from the late 1800s through to an unspecified, post-apocalyptic future. how he tells these stories is the great narrative conceit of this novel. it is an accordion, with stories that unfold through the first half of the novel, only to be completed in the second in reverse order.

each story is interesting in its own right, although the degree to which the characters are sympathetic varies significantly. one of the stories even appears to be metafictional, but one is never quite sure. the thing i found so amazing was his voice: he imbued his wildly divergent characters with life, simultaneously spanning genres, from high-seas adventure to gritty, dystopian science fiction. i have only read two authors who can span genres in this way (martin amis and iain banks), and i daresay they don't do it quite as well as mitchell (blasphemy, this is, as an avowed fan of both of the aforementioned writers).

all of this is grand achievement, and yet mitchell does more.

his collection of tales contains a central theme, one that stitches his threads together. he tells a morality tale without unduly clubbing us over the head with the lessons he wants to teach. he takes a look at human history, finds us wanting, finds us weak. and yet, at the last moment of the novel, he brings us back from the brink to say – wait, it doesn't have to be this way.

some books you finish, put down, and never think of again. other books hit the bin with force after completion. and yet a third category of books live with you forever, the kind that bring a fierce melancholy at their completion, a yearning for more. cloud atlas brought me to the brink of tears when i finished it...tears of joy at the hope it imagined, tears of sadness that its tale was told.

Posted by docrpm on 07.31.06 at 7:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

the unconsoled

file under: books

the unconsoled is only the second book i've read by kazuo ishiguro. the first of his that i read, remains of the day, still stands as one of my top ten books of all time. i wish i could say the same about this effort.

while stylistically flawless with pitch-perfect prose, the story left me uninspired. my first and foremost complaint was length – did the novel have to be so long? i felt like things hardly changed after the first 100 pages, and yet i had to slog through 400 more. i kept expecting some light to pull me out of the darkness, but it never came.

i won't bother with a synopsis. you can find it on amazon.

the thing that i still wonder is, what was ishiguro's point? why did he write this novel? to illustrate the endless self-absorption of people? to illustrate how our best efforts at self-effacing politeness are ultimately selfish and destructive? each of the characters of this story toil through life with only their own interests at heart. they seem soulless and charmless, with few redemptive qualities.

i just don't know. i barely finished the book, and was so relieved when i did. i will read him again, but it's going to be hard to do it without severe skepticism.

Posted by docrpm on 07.31.06 at 7:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

July 1, 2006

look to windward

file under: books

iain banks has a universe inside his head. probably more than one. who knows. at the very least, he has one with a multi-species civilization called the Culture, comprised of a few trillion people living a few tens of thousands of years down the road. they're spread across the galaxy, and when not pursuing their wildest dreams (since poverty, money, disease, and internecine conflict have all been eradicated), they are engaged in a vast philanthropic effort to help those civilizations who aren't quite as, shall we say, well off.

he's written a number of things involving the Culture:

• the state of the art (collected short stories and a novella)
• consider phlebas
• use of weapons
• player of games
• excession
• inversions (apparently only vaguely Culture-related)
• look to windward

the last ostensible book in his Culture novels is look to windward, and it's a fitting finish to a remarkable series, especially given that the first Culture novel was consider phlebas, both of which refer to a few lines from Eliot's Waste Land:

Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

[NOTE: i will make no attempt to analyze the philosophical underpinnings of The Waste Land, Banks' works, and the connection between them – i leave this task to far braver (and perhaps more presumptuous) souls.]

and now, my review (and possible spoilers) follow...

...

in the Banks spectrum of writing, from experimental and opaque to expository and transparent, look to windward (hereafter referred to as LTW) falls toward the latter end of the spectrum. at its heart, it's a story of revenge, of the bloodlust hatched by violence (civil war, in this particular case).

as i mentioned, the Culture like to think of themselves as helping other "less-advanced" species. through their Contact and Special Circumstances groups, they interact with other species, often attempting positive (if covert) interventions aimed at the betterment of said species. their moral high-ground is often muddy, though, and Banks takes an ambivalent view towards their erstwhile philanthropy. LTW is a solid example of philanthropy gone horribly wrong; in their attempts to help a species called the Chelgrians, they inadvertently trigger a vast civil war that results in the deaths of millions. oops. so, what do they do? why, they go in, stop the war, and try to fix things, of course! make reparations, as it were, for their missteps.

major spoilers coming...i'm not kidding here, people.

while some Chelgrians are vaguely understanding about the whole thing, a splinter group decides to exact their revenge in true eye-for-an-eye spirit: one Culture citizen for every Chelgrian killed. without this retribution, those lost Chelgrian souls are trapped in a literal limbo, unable to enter the known (manufactured?) heaven created by the Chelgrians and facilitated by Soulkeepers implanted in the minds of all Chelgrians. how are they going to manage genocide on this scale? obvious: tap a superior species for some help, get a spy to infiltrate the Culture, have him go to one of their vast Orbitals, and then use a mind-triggered displacement device to put wormhole-opening warheads inside the AI that controls all Orbital systems.

yeah...it's quite a story. and i didn't even mention the odd interludes in interstellar space with these encapsulated air-worlds filled with intelligent gas-bag ecosystems that have been around for billions of years. one has to wonder if the scotch helps him dream this stuff up. in any case, the novel is a great read, leads to a satisfying conclusion, and rounds out the Culture novels quite nicely (in this reader's opinion).

...

aside from the raw power of his imagination, Banks uses the Culture as a means to explore a possible future state of humanity, and to comment indirectly on contemporary society. he's Scottish with pretty liberal politics; it's pretty easy to imagine him thinking of the Culture as a reasonable future analog to the current state of American hegemony and morally superior attitudes. regardless, he manages to say some pretty interesting things about the world, our values, how we spend our lives, how we relate to other people.

at the end of the day, he's just a fantastic storyteller. i'm not sure whether he would want to get into the symbolism of his novels, or the possible political statements he's making. it just seems like he's having fun writing, and as a reader, i always do, too (except maybe for feersum endjinn – sorry, mr. banks, couldn't really get into that one).

Posted by docrpm on 07.01.06 at 4:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 10, 2006

a place so foreign

file under: books

cory doctorow is one of my heroes. he's basically everything to which a nerdy, liberal-minded, dot-com-era, wanna-be writer could aspire: blog trailblazer, digital freedom fighter, non-fiction author, and multiple award-winning sci-fi writer extraordinaire. as if his accomplishments weren't enough, he also seems to be a really nice guy.

i'm not gay, and i already have a fiancee, but cory, will you marry me?

but seriously folks. cory doctorow is a really, really good writer. don't take it from me. take it from bruce sterling. or the people who come up with hugo nominations. or the people who gave him the john w. campbell award. they all know a lot more about what qualifies as good writing than i probably ever will.

i'm foaming at the mouth, and i've only read 2.5 of his 6 books (two books are waiting patiently on the shelf, along with many other neglected volumes). a place so foreign and eight more is my latest doctorow conquest, and it was immensely satisfying.

the thing i like most about cory doctorow's writing is that it defies simple description. most people dismiss science fiction without a second thought; space-opera for the silicon-obsessed, they say; literary fluff; romance novels for geeks. these people have not read anything worth reading. among other writers (wolfe, herbert, banks, bear, asimov, to name a few), they have not read cory doctorow.

doctorow has created his own approach to science fiction, similiar in spirit to neal stephenson, but thankfully much shorter. he twists the contemporary with the fantastic, blends present and future, and creates a reality all his own, often one that pokes fun at ours. social commentary runs through most of his writing, but he never clubs you over the head with it. and did i forget to mention he's funny? lol.

a place so foreign and eight more contains nine short stories, as the title implies, and i'd say there's only one or two slight misses in the bunch. my favorites were: craphound; to market, to market - the rebranding of billy bailey; the super man and the bugout; and 0wnz0red. in each story, he did something i'd never seen or thought of. if there's one fault i might find, it's a lack of significant stylistic variation from story to story; these stories all feel like he wrote them, which is fine in the end (if you like how he writes).

he's no gene wolfe. he may not even be a neal stephenson. and that's good. what he does, i have not seen anyone else do. he's creating his own category, a la Billy Bailey, and from what i can tell, he's got the big brands all lined up...the best part of it is, he's not doing it for them. he's doing it for us.

Posted by docrpm on 04.10.06 at 6:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 12, 2006

the da vinci code

file under: books

i've been wanting to read the da vinci code for a long, long time. my general boycott of hardcover books has made this difficult; da vinci is only just being released in paperback, after about 400 years on the best-seller list. fortunately, i have wonderful friends like andrew, who, after reading the novel, rush over and drop it off on my doorstep (thank you, andrew!!!).

and now to my review...

...

the fact that this novel has been on best-seller lists since the dawn of time should be clear indication of a few things:

• it's fun and easy to read
• it's fun and easy to read
• it's fun and easy to read
• it's not great literature, but it's fun and easy to read

i finished the book in a little less than a week; with concerted effort, i could have tucked it under my belt in a few days. this is testament to its narrative drive and suspense. however, like most rollercoasters, the ride is over too soon, and while entertained, you're left feeling there should somehow be more.

brown has done something interesting: he's taken a rich and compelling subject, with thousands of years of history and mystery behind it, and then written a danielle steele novel using this subject as fertilizer. i'm being slightly unfair, but you get the idea.

it's an immensely enjoyable read....don't get me wrong. mr. brown knows how to set up a good story, how to create suspense, how to craft some intriguing puzzles, and how to keep the reader interested. he also manages to put forward some fairly controversial philosophical views on the nature of Christianity (at least, to this uneducated reader's mind).

i just wish he could write without sounding like he was giving a junior high-school lesson. the whole book smacks of being an educational tour of Christianity, Paris, and pagan religion, with Mr. Brown as your trusted guide. this was my biggest complaint (ham-fisted characterization and occasionally weak puzzles aside). so much of the time, i felt like he was paying too much attention to unimportant detail; it almost seemed like he was trying to prove that he is knowledgeable, which is relatively meaningless these days with the immense number of information resources at anyone's disposal.

but i'm nitpicking.... it's a great read, just not something to shelve next to your Nabokov, Eco or Amis.

Posted by docrpm on 02.12.06 at 1:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

November 29, 2005

dune : house atreides

file under: books

i've been a semi-rabid fan of Frank Herbert's Dune series for many years. actually, it's probably fair to say that i've only been a true fan for the past 2-3 years since i finished all of the first six books. those other years in between having read the original Dune and the rest don't count...

i don't actually remember what it was that sparked me to read the final five books a few years ago...i guess i just felt a sense of incompleteness after having read the first book (and having watched the movie) several times. the first book stands as one of the greatest science fiction novels of the 20th century, independent of the rest...maybe i held off reading the others thinking that they could never reach the level that Herbert had set with his first Dune novel. i was wrong, of course. the series as a whole has more impact and is much more impressive; awe-inspiring, even.

and then he died. and there were no more books for many years. and then, all of a sudden, his son published a prequel...

...

it was my sense of awe and admiration for the original series that led to my profound skepticism about brian herbert's prequel(s). when his first Dune prequel was released, it struck me as opportunistic; clearly, it was an effort to cash in on Dad's fame and fortune. what literary merit could come out of this kind of money-grubbing? none, i thought.

and so i let brian herbert (in conjunction with kevin j. anderson) write six books before i decided i could give them a try. the pair have penned the "House Trilogy" (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, House Corrino) and the "Legends" trilogy (The Butlerian Jihad, The Machine Crusade, The Battle of Corrin), each of which serves as a set of prequels in the Dune universe.

it's easy to imagine prequels that fail miserably in their attempts to recapture the glory of the original novels. after all, how could they not fail? how could anyone do what frank herbert did? how could anyone match the combination of philosophy, narrative drive, character development, and universe creation that herbert achieved?

well, somehow, i think that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson did a fantastic job (at least, with the first novel). they did it better than anyone else, obviously, since no one else even tried (or were granted the right to try). my skepticism was erased after reading Dune : House Atriedes, for the most part, and i look forward to reading the remaining five prequels.

<minor spoilers follow>

when i heard the title, i though the entire novel was going to be centered around House Atreides. i'm not sure why, because this makes little sense, given the way the Dune universe was developed (i.e., as a set of interlocking stories involving multiple major Houses, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, miscellanous dramatis personae on Arrakis, etc.). and so it went with herbert's prequel. in the course of House Atreides, multiple story arcs are pursued:

• House Atreides (under the rule of Duke Paulus Atreides, grandfather to Paul Atreides, hero of Dune)
• House Harkonnen (and the multiple plots it undertakes to try to screw just about everyone they possibly can)
• House Corrino (the Royal House on Planet Kaitain, and how rule evolves from Emperor Elrood to Emperor Shaddam IV)
• the Bene Gesserit (and the evolution of their breeding program for the Kwisatz Haderach)
• Duncan Idaho (and how he becomes attached to House Atreides)
• House Vernius and how it loses control of Ix
• the Bene Tleilax, their plot with the Emperor, and how they gain control of Ix
• Arrakis, and how it starts down the path towards ecological evolution under the guidance of Pardot Kynes (father of Liet)

as with the original series, you will need to keep track of many different characters spread across multiple geographies. Herbert and Anderson have tried to provide backstory for most of the personae that appear in the original novels (with a few notable exceptions, like Gurney Halleck). this is one of the things that i found particularly rewarding...when frank herbert wrote the original series, he provided a gaggle of characters with implied histories, but didn't provide the histories themselves. one had to accept allegiances and friendships on faith, rather than on experience. the prequel(s) fill in those gaps, illuminating the experiences that created the relationships that Dune takes for granted.

who will you see from the original Dune series in the first prequel?

• Leto Atreides
• Thufir Hawat
• Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
• Rabban Harkonnen
• Piter DeVries
• Duncan Idaho
• Gaius Helen Mohiam
• Stilgar
• Pardot Liet Kynes (briefly, as a baby)
• Emperor Shaddam IV
• Hasimir Fenring

What didn't i like about this prequel? in summary, i guess i'd have to say that it felt like it demanded less of its audience. even though the plotlines sprawl, and the intrigues nest one within another, there was still a measure of explanation that wasn't present in the first series of novels. frank herbert didn't club you over the head with relationships and motivations and backstories. brian herbert and kevin j. anderson, on the other hand, do. they repeat things, three, four, five times, to make sure the reader gets it. this was completely unnecessary, although i'm sure very calculated to appeal to an audience that had not read the original Dune series.

the other thing that seemed missing was the level of philosophical insight present in the first series of novels. frank herbert not only created a world, but he provided commentary on the relgious, socio-political, and ecological structures that gave rise to this world. perhaps brian herbert could do nothing but adhere to the worldview that his father created, which makes his work seem less innovative on a philosophical level.

with all of these things said, i must say i enjoyed reading House Atreides. in fact, i kept going back to it, day after day, curious to find out what happened next. regardless of whether or not herbert lived up to the impossible standard set by his father, this to me was a viable metric for a good book: does it make you want to come back for more?

in the case of brian herbert and kevin j. anderson's Dune prequels, the answer is an unequivocal Yes.

Posted by docrpm on 11.29.05 at 7:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

October 2, 2005

chindi

file under: books

every once in awhile, i pick up a book by an author i don't know, based on either critical acclaim, a snazzy cover, or a whim. every once in awhile, i am pleasantly surprised by the book i've bought; it lives up to its praises and more, and i run out and buy everything this author has written. discoveries like this are like opening a secret doorway that leads to a mystical universe.

chindi was not one of these books.

i had seen jack mcDevitt's books around for awhile, had read the positive blurbs from all sorts of well-known publications (sci-fi and otherwise). the cover of chindi had stephen king (whom i like) claiming that mcDevitt is the logical heir to asimov and arthur c. clarke. maybe king was saying this about one of his other novels. based on this one book, i'd call mcDevitt the Dean Koontz of sci-fi.

the thing that makes this all the more disappointing was that i burned through the first half of chindi in one night. i don't recall the last time i did that. it started with a bang, did some unexpected things, set up a great mystery, and then fell flat. i spent the last half of the book waiting for something else to happen, and was rewarded by thin characterization, absolutely unbelievably stupid characters doing insanely stupid things over and over and over, and a climax about as exciting as watching family ties reruns.

the one other thing that really irked me was that this had been characterized as "hard science fiction," which says to me that the author does their best to get the science right. while mcDevitt does that in many cases, there are others where the suspension of disbelief required was far more than any reader should give. as one example, in one cliff-hangar situation, he has to expose one of his characters to deep-space vacuum for a few seconds without ANY protection. they come out of it with some broken blood vessels after their magic energy shield kicks back in. puhleeeeeze. if your lungs didn't explode, i bet about half the cells on the surface of your skin would flash freeze and burst.

did i mention that this book sucked?

to cleanse my palate, i had to start reading a Culture novel by Iain Banks that's been sitting on my shelf since i finished Consider Phlebas a few months back. if you want to read great sci-fi, read Iain Banks or Frank Herbert or Gene Wolfe. leave jack mcDevitt in the store at the airport.

Posted by docrpm on 10.02.05 at 9:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 24, 2005

strange & norrell

file under: books

i would like to take this opportunity to put forth a new term to describe a process related to the recent wave of overly large books in the science fiction / fantasy genre (yes, neal stephenson, i'm talking about you). i would define my new term as follows:

tome slog (v.t.): the act or process of wading through an excessively long book whose positive marketing and/or critical praise are seemingly decoupled from actual perceived narrative value (as measured by how many weeks it takes to get through the first several hundred pages of said tome, if this is even possible). the process usually involves an initial investment of time and energy, which is rewarded by a combination of many sound nights of sleep and progressively escalating levels of rage at editors who seem to be asleep at the keyboard. levels of impatience gradually increase until the slogger reaches the "point of no literary return," where a decision must be made — one either makes a leap of faith that precious hours spent with drooping eyelids will ultimately be rewarded, or one hurls the tome in the nearest dustbin with great force.

with susanna clarke's first novel, jonathan strange & mr. norrell, i was involved in a tome slog of epic proportions (so to speak). i made it through the first 300 pages, with moderate recompense, but not enough fuel to get me through the remaining 500 pages. her recent hugo award steeled my pursuit of the novel's end, and i must say i was rewarded quite handsomely.

...

i must say that i approached strange & norrell with a pretty healthy dose of skepticism – i had heard various reviews that made comparisons to jane austen and dickens. i never liked dickens. in fact, i loathed dickens. the summer i spent reading david copperfield was like literary purgatory (especially since i was 17 at the time). the victorian literary style always just struck me as endless boring narrative punctuated with bits that were only slightly less boring. while i could recognize their literary value, i never found these stories to be my cup of tea, as it were.

well, the comparisons were pretty accurate, with one major difference — eventaully, ms. clarke took off her granny shoes and picked up the pace. the 500 pages she spent constructing a quite believable world let to a fairly extended denouement that paid off in spades.

this is a book that can be seen on several levels. the most literal level is the fantasy tale of two magicians living in an alternate version of 18th century england. a layer deeper, and one can see the two primary characters (jonathan strange and mr. norrell) as being representative of two distinct world views that are often in conflict (one inward–looking and cautious, one brash and adventurous); one comparison that came to my mind was hesse's narcissus and goldmund, which cast two very different characters who ultimately wind up learning from and complementing each other. a third character (the raven king, aka john usklgass) is mostly seen reflected through history and the eyes of our two primary characters, but his presence is felt throughout. go one layer deeper, and one can imagine a political commentary, one that has politicians (and others) plodding along blindly with overinflated senses of self–importance, while all the while a greater force lives behind the world, one that people ignore or can't see or have forgotten.

ms. clarke paints a picture of a fantasy world that could very well be ours, if only we chose to look at things in a different way, or to look past a scientific worldview. her idea is not, by any means, original (see for example John Crowley's Aegypt sequence), but it is still compelling. it does what fantasy should do, in my opinion — it makes us think of other possibilities and wonder, "what if?"

i pray that she trims the next volume. i would cite neal stephenson as a cautionary tale; his raging success with cryptonomicon was followed by the baroque cycle, a bloated and self–indulgent 3000–page narrative spanning three volumes. genius notwithstanding, perhaps he felt like his success justified making unreasonable demands of his readers (see definition of tome slog above — his novel quicksilver first brought it to mind, a novel that didn't make it past the point of no literary return, i might add). not that either she or stephenson really need to care — they have reached the rarefied atmosphere of authors not struggling for a living.

ultimately, after enduring the tome slog, strange and norell captivated me, despite its victorian style and often tedious narrative. i believed in the world she created, and longed to see more of the return of magic to england, to witness the raven king take his due place in the world.

for more in–depth reviews, the interested reader is referred to:

• new york times review
• washington post review
• scifi.com review

Posted by docrpm on 08.24.05 at 9:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 21, 2005

incompleteness

file under: books

i haven't been documenting any of the books i've been reading. this is my first attempt at rectifying that oversight. the chronology will likely get a bit jumbled as i dig back through books i've read over the last few months, but that probably doesn't matter too much from your perspective. :-)

during my trip to palm springs, i read rebecca goldstein's biographical analysis of gödel and his proofs: incompleteness: the proof and paradox of kurt gödel. it was a fascinating and rewarding book, one that i would heartily recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in the philosophy of science or mathematics.

what follows is synopsis and review focused not on mathematics, but on some aspects of philosophy and gödel's life. my friend Chookyfuzzbang has already done an admirable job of reviewing the mathematics of gödel's proof (and other aspects of the book as well). the interested reader is referred there for a complementary review and analysis.

and so...here we go.

...

on gödel

kurt gödel is one of the most important mathematicians (and people) of the 20th century (and i suspect few would argue that he is the most influential logician since aristotle). it's also entirely likely that you've never heard of him (not that most people have heard of any mathematicians). his two most famous theorems transformed not only the world of mathematics, but probably the philosophy of science and of the human mind itself. his contribution to our world cannot be underestimated.

and yet his life and work are wrapped in two tremendous ironies: (1) one of the best logicians in the history of mankind died by his own hand as a result of paranoia and irrationality, and (2) his preeminently logical results were misinterpreted to support philosophical causes that he would have rejected. goldstein pens her book using these two points as central theses: the apparent contradiction between gödel's results and behavior, and the way his work was perverted to suit ends other than what he intended.

gödel's incompleteness theorems

in 1900, david hilbert enumerated ten challenges to the greatest mathematical minds of the world, the problems that needed to be solved. he did this with a great sense of conviction that a mathematician can solve any problem; he believed there was no ignoramibus (claim about which we remain ignorant).

gödel contributed enormously to two of the ten problems (cantor's continuum hypothesis and the consistency of arithmetic) and supposedly to a third (stated by Goldstein, although i can't locate a reference to gödel's other contribution). one very critical problem was to prove the consistency of the axioms of arithmetic (hilbert had already proven the consistency of geometry assuming the consistency of arithmetic, known as a proof of relative consistency).

gödel's incompleteness theorems effectively demolished the consistency problem (thus enraging hilbert and a lot of other people) — he proved that it is not possible to prove the consistency of arithmetic. he also did something quite astonishing: using the rules of mathematical logic, he managed to prove something larger than mathematics, which is why his proofs are often referred to as being metamathematical — they say something beyond math while still abiding by its most rigorous tenets. the seeming impossibility of this has caused many great thinkers to ponder and argue over gödel's results for the past 75 years.

the incompleteness theorems state the following (very roughly — i'm no mathematician):

1. in any finite axiomatic system strong enough to create rules for the natural numbers, there exist undecidable propositions (i.e., propositions that cannot be proven to be either true or false within the system).
2. a finite axiomatic system cannot be proven to be complete (i.e., logically consistent) within the rules of the system itself; one must appeal to a higher system to prove consistency.

with these two relatively terse statements (which he proved within the confines of mathematical logic), gödel managed to destroy an entire philosophy of mathematics, one that held that math was the ultimate ivory tower, a place immune to contradiction, paradox and inconsistency. while some people still debate this point (Wittgenstein certainly would, if he were still alive), the general consensus seems to be aligned with this notion of a paradigm shift.

for a longer overview and proof of the two incompleteness theorems, the interested reader is referred to Chookyfuzzbang's review of the proofs (using the language and symbolism of Goldstein's book). for more information, the ultra–interested reader is referred to the Wikipedia entry for gödel's theorems as a starting point for a broader analysis. (fwiw, i can neither confirm nor deny the validity of the opinion's expressed in the Wikipedia articles). two other books that are good references are gödel, escher, bach and infinity and the mind. goldstein also references several books she considers to be good, although i haven't had time to look at those.

platonism vs. positivism

gödel was an avowed mathematical platonist, one who believed in the existence of a higher objective truth beyond what we can necessarily experience or understand. einstein believed the same; this connection was probably a large part of the bond between them. as a wonderful side note, and one that testifies to gödel's brilliance, einstein was one of gödel's closest friends at the institute for advanced study. indeed, in his later years, einstein said that the main reason he went to his office at the institute was so that he could have the privilege of walking and speaking with gödel on the way to and from work. it's hard to imagine higher praise.

einstein stated his platonist beliefs as follows:

it is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence which is domainted by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.

— A. Einstein

gödel stated his beliefs in somewhat less poetic terms when discussing the implications of transfinite set theory (a fascinating field in and of itself, and closely related in spirit to the paradoxes that gödel explored):

the objects of transfinite set theory...clearly do not belong to the physical world and even their direct connection with physical experience is very loose....

but despite their remoteness, we do have something like a perception also of the objects of set theory, as is seen from the fact that axioms force themselves upon us as being true. i don't see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, i.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception, which induces us to build up physical theories and to expect that future sense perceptions will agree with them, and moreover, to believe that a question not decidable now has meaning and may be decided in the future. the set–theoretical paradoxes are hardly any more troublesome for mathematics than deceptions of the sense are for physics.

— k. gödel

gödel and einstein both believed that there was an objective truth out there, whether or not we could fully understand it. this is the essence of platonism, and the reason why einstein always had issues with quantum mechanics. indeed, people often threw gödel, einstein, and heisenberg into the same camp (incompleteness, relativity, and uncertainty, respectively — a holy trinity of ambiguity), but heisenberg was philosophically opposed to the other two men. gödel and einstein are probably still churning in their graves when people think there is a logical connection between heisenberg's work (seminal in the field of quantum mechanics) and their own.

heisenberg would fall into the camp of logical positivism. the logical positivists asserted, basically, that man is the measure of all things; empirical experience is the metric for verifying truth. anything beyond the realm of experience is essentially meaningless. the one exception is the class of mathematical tautologies that are true by definition. a concise statement of logical positivism would sounds something like this:

we shall maintain that no statement which refers to a "reality" transcending the limits of all possible sense experience can possibly have literal signficance; from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense.

— Alfred Jules Ayer (member of the Vienna Circle)

the amazing thing is that gödel spent some of his most productive years in the company of vocal, unapologetic logical positivists, people whose basic philosophy was quite opposed to his own. and yet he said nothing to disagree with their point of view.

the vienna circle, wittgenstein, and our buddy kurt

gödel spent a bit of time with a bunch of folks who called themselves the vienna circle, a loose collective of thinkers from vienna who went on to influence a large number of other prominent intellectuals in europe and elsewhere. as i said before, the core of their thinking centered on logical positivism.

gödel apparently attended many of their weekly meetings, but despite the fact that his beliefs were basically in opposition with theirs, he rarely dissented openly. and so some later assumed that his theorems were aligned with the notions of logical positivism; goldstein's basic argument is that they were not, and her case is pretty strong. one of the strongest points of this case is the relationship between the vienna circle's philosophy, wittgenstein, and gödel.

for me, wittgenstein was one of those philosophers i always wanted to read, but somehow never did. he seemed like a philosophy rockstar, and i had a lot of respect for him before reading goldstein's book (assuming that his stature in the world of philosophy was unimpeachable, for some bizarre reason). of course, i knew little about him or his philosophy, but he always seemed one of those thinkers that people put up on a pedestal and genuflected before, repeatedly muttering "i'm not worthy" a la wayne's world. now, i'm not so sure. in fact, he seems like an arrogant jerk based on the several anecdotes goldstein puts forth.

[aside: shortly after reading incompleteness, i read an essay titled on bullshit, in which a quote from wittgenstein is related that was also used in goldstein's book. i thought it was a really odd coincidence to come across this quote twice in the space of a week.]

the logical positivists put wittgenstein on that pedestal i mentioned, but he only rarely chose to attend their meetings. many times, when he did, he would stand facing the wall quoting inflammatory indian poetry while people tried to talk with him. they thought he was god, and in a bit of literal irony, it seems he thought they were bugs.

wittgenstein seems to have espoused a lot of the traits of logical positivism, although he firmly denied he was a positivist. it was the last statement of his Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus that Wittgenstein felt set him apart from them:

7. Of what we cannot speak we must remain silent.

— L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus

apparently, the vienna circle mistook this to mean Wittgenstein's requisite silence hides nothing at all, whereas he probably meant that this requisite silence hides the most important things.

the primary reason i bring this up is that Wittgenstein had a profound dislike for both the positivists and gödel's theorems. he felt that gödel's theorems should be described as logische Kunstücken (logical conjuring tricks):

my task is not to talk about gödel's proof, for example. But to by–pass it.

— L. Wittgenstein

and yet he did not bypass it. he talked about it repeatedly in his own works, because he felt he needed to dismantle it, to show "that its meaning is at odds with its intent." (Goldstein, p. 190) the irony is that, viewed in a certain light, wittgenstein's proposition 7 regarding the unsayability of certain things, was in its own way a form of linguistic incompleteness: we cannot speak the unspeakable truths, but they exist.

gödel, for his part, seems to have had little or no interest or patience for wittgenstein. he wrote a letter to abraham robinson, a young mathematical logician, in which he remarked that wittgenstein's comments on gödel's proofs consitututed a "completely trivial and uninteresting misinterpretation" of his results. as an interesting addendum, it appears that turing had the same disdain for wittgenstein, ultimately, and wound up proving things that had great affinity with gödel's work.

misunderstandings of gödel have meaning

gödel did very little himself to disabuse people of notions about his theorems incompatible with his own beliefs. wittgenstein is only one example. goldstein cites a number of others, both past and present, who interpret gödel's results inappropriately. it seems he was reticent to openly disagree with people unless he could prove his point of view with some degree of rigor and certitude.

the fact that some of the greatest minds of the last century seemed to argue endlessly over the precise meaning (or meaninglessness) of gödel's results implies to me their importance. indeed, if you take wittgenstein's proposition 7 in conjunction with gödel's theorems, maybe we can't even discuss their real meaning or importance within the confines of the linguistic system in which we try to express ourselves.

the logic of illogic

gödel starved himself to death. he died on january 14, 1978 and was buried on january 19, 1978 (my 9th birthday, oddly enough).

over the course of his life, he experienced a number of nervous collapses and episodes of depression. during the final years of his life, especially after the death of his closest friend einstein, he descended into complete paranoia. he became convinced that people were trying to poison him, which ultimately led to his avoidance of food. he manufactured elaborate (and logical) persecution fantasies, taking logic to its illogical extreme (which is apparently not uncommon for paranoid delusional behavior).

it is a profoundly sad and ironic end to a profoundly important life. goldstein's work sheds interesting light on the puzzle, inside a box, hidden in a maze that was kurt gödel's life and philosophy. i also believe she shows quite well how ideas, even those couched in the rigor of mathematics, can be misinterpreted to suit many ends.

Posted by docrpm on 06.21.05 at 11:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 14, 2005

i am legend

file under: books

richard matheson wrote this collection of stories in 1954; the title is that of the main novella in the volume. i didn't read all of the stories, but 'i am legend' was enough to convince me of mr. matheson's talents as an author.

...

it turns out that matheson is about as prolific as writers get, although he may be best known for his work on screenplays for TV and film. notably, he wrote a classic Star Trek episode ("The Enemy Within") and my favorite Twilight Zone episode of all time ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starring William Shatner as a man faced with a demon on the wing of his airplane, one that no one else believes is there).

who knew. i certainly didn't. thanks to ryan and andrew for making me aware of his stuff.

but i digress.

'i am legend' is a great vampire story, one not written in the typical gothic horror vein of anne rice et al (note: i read and enjoyed the vampire chronicles, so don't flame me for any perceived slight to ms. rice). it's a great story because the vampires are only a backdrop to the personal psychological hell experienced by the protagonist of the story. matheson writes with a spare yet affecting style, one that sucked me right in (so to speak).

if you're interested in a good novella, one that's a bit scary, read 'i am legend' and ask yourself, "what would i do?"

Posted by docrpm on 03.14.05 at 11:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 3, 2005

use of weapons

file under: books

ryan hoguet and i are starting on an odyssey through iain banks' culture novels. this is the first we chose to read.

...

not many (sane) people can say they've created universes. a certain class of science fiction (and fantasy) authors can; iain banks is one of them (gene wolfe, frank herbert, and jrr tolkien are others). not only can mr. banks claim to have created a universe; he can also point to a shelf of critically-acclaimed literary fiction. no small feat.

banks' science fiction universe focuses on The Culture and the exploits of various beings within it (human, tentacled, and otherwise). imagine human society in the far, far future, throw in a few assumptions about social, political, and philosophical systems, add some AI and alien civilizations, mix, and presto – The Culture. i've just done mr. banks a horrible disservice by simplifying his richly imagined society in this way; please read his description for a more complete perspective (see A Few Notes on the Culture, rec.arts.sf.written, 1994).

as far as i know, banks has written the following novels that involve The Culture:

• the state of the art
• consider phlebas
• use of wepons
• the player of games
• feersum endjinn
• against a dark background
• excessions
• look to windward

at present, i've only read excessions and use of weapons. each is entertaining in its own right, but they're quite different. consider phlebas and player of games are next (although elaine seems to think i should "take a break" from reading so much sci-fi; this is akin to telling a crack addict to just put down the pipe, please, and have some food).

...

i won't go into a detailed review of use of weapons, you can find lots of reviews on amazon.co.uk if you're interested. i did want to share a few things, however.

use of weapons (UOW) is one of the more unusual science fiction novels i've read. the book unfolds across multiple timelines with occasionally confusing transitions, all of which come together at the end in a coherent way (for me, at least – your mileage may vary). the writing style is closer to that of his literary fiction than it is to what i would call traditional sci-fi narrative (i.e., plot-driven writing that's fairly devoid of figurative prose).

banks, like the best science fiction authors, writes great stories with complex characters immune to quick description. cheradenine zakalwe, the protagonist (?) of UOW, is a man with so much history (both remembered and forgotten) that neither he nor we know who he is or what he'll do. his many pasts, made possible by The Culture, have almost allowed him to lead multiple lives in a sense, each of which he tries to rationalize with his fractured sense of self. by the end of the book, his actions seem self-consistent, though, in a maddeningly human way. or do they? i'll leave that to you to discover. :-)

...

in the novels of The Culture, science and technological advancement are the pistons and gasoline for the cars that banks' characters drive. his far-future universe is an important device for setting context, and for composing operas on scales to baffle our tiny minds. at the end, though, what i like about his books is that humanity, and the dirty, exciting, chaotic lives we lead, never seem to play second fiddle to FTL travel and energy grids.

NOTE: apparently, there is some thought that the mythology of Halo (yes, the game) is inspired by The Culture novels. check out this collection of Halo / Culture connections.

Posted by docrpm on 01.03.05 at 5:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 8, 2004

the believer

file under: books

i have almost never read a magazine cover to cover. in fact, i have envied those who could find periodicals that would inspire such attention, such devotion, such a willingness to let go of the precious seconds of one's life to flip from glossy page to glossy page.

after all these years of thinking it wasn't possible, i've reached the periodical promised land.

the believer is a magazine filled with writing that makes me want to write, with oddities that make me scratch my head and smile, and with compelling interviews of often unknown, yet fascinating, people. porn for literati, in other words.

so if you're interested in offbeat literary criticism, wickedly good writing, and more stuff from the people who brought you McSweeneys, check it out.

[final plug - it also has no advertisements and uses groovy four-color printing on non-glossy paper. it makes me froth at the mouth, it's so good.]

[final, final comment - this is not a paid advertisement. it is an unpaid, completely apolitical although possibly biased, endorsement.]

Posted by docrpm on 02.08.04 at 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)