This novel is vast and sweeping but I found it ultimately unsatisfying. I liked the sci-fi aspects of the plot: Jesuits and scientists travel on a mission of goodwill to a newly discovered planet inhabited by two intelligent species. Jesuits supply $, scientists supply brains. The species turn out to be preying on each other, and the humans' interference is totally misread, resulting in the last surviving member of the expedition, a priest, being physically mutilated and repeatedly raped by the dominant species (by the aliens' account, this is not a bad thing; he requested he be treated as a "alien noun we had heard them using and thought meant visiting dignitary" but that actually means "i submit to being your slave, mutilate me and rape me to show me that you own me", so hey, he asked for it). The priest is eventually rescued and travels back to Earth, where the Jesuits force him to be their linguist. He's the only one who knows the alien languages; the Jesuits want to use him to gain economic power in the trade relationship.
Anyway the most of the novel is dedicated to Jesuit priesthood minutiae, memories of rape which the priest cannot get rid of, and attempts by the priest to get out of working with the aliens. He gets kidnapped and taken back to the planet by nefarious humans, but when he gets there (16 years later), it turns out that the final member of the original expedition is not dead but has been adopted by the lower species and fomenting revolution amongst them, and they've taken to arms and defeated the dominant species, killing enough of them that they cannot survive for more than a few generations before becoming hopelessly inbred.
Basically, 130 pages of rape memories, 130 pages of anguish about being kidnapped, 130 pages of theological nimmer-nammer, then 10 pages of "oh yeah, those 400 pages of exposition and plot you just finished? Never mind; the people who tortured him are dead and their descendants are doomed." Thank me for saving you several hours of reading.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Universe 14 / edited by Terry Carr/ 1984 / 182 pp
A collection of short sci-fi which I have read before (tragedy!). Nothing particularly remarkable. pat Murphy's Art in the War Zone is more poignant on the second read.
Best American Short Stories 2009/ edited by Alice Sebold/ 2009/ 314 pp
I love this series and was anxiously awaiting its newest edition. Alice Sebold's introduction is so positive and inspiring that I want to read more by her. Almost all the stories were outstanding, but my favorites were Daniel Alarcon; Steve De Jarnatt (heroin addict trapped in hurricane katrina!); Joseph Epstein; Eleanor Henderson; Ethan Rutherford.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Gate to Women's Country / Sheri S. Tepper / 1988 / 278pp
I read this first in 09 but it's a twist novel (as in, the whole story goes along, then in the last 40 pages you learn something intriguing about the society in which it is set which makes you want to re-read the whole thing looking for clues). So, on my clue expedition I discovered that Tepper isn't nearly as good a writer as she is a storyteller (or perhaps I do not have the encyclopedic knowledge of the Trojan War and related art which is a major theme in the book). There aren't enough clues to guess the twist in the book. She hints at it enough that you know something is up, but there's no way to gather enough info about the twist to learn the real secret.
The story, however, is wonderful. It is the future and society as we know it has destroyed the world, ridding it with radiation hotspots. A group of women have begun running daughtertowns (named "Mollyburg," Emmaville," etc.) and in these walled towns everyone is devoted to survival and knowledge; most of their poetry/art is pulled from Greek classic theatre, but they subvert all the tropes so that the women's sorrow is at the forefront (instead of men's heroic victories). All men-- except those willing to submit to women's rule as houseservants-- live in ultra-vicious "garrisons," supposedly in existence to guard the towns, but in reality the women are controlling everything, secretly. The method of this control is the twist so I haven't given away anything major here. The world she has created is internally consistent and you actually care about the people in her novel and kind of feel bad for them living in such a crap place. Despite the lack of twist-clues, it's an amazing novel.
The story, however, is wonderful. It is the future and society as we know it has destroyed the world, ridding it with radiation hotspots. A group of women have begun running daughtertowns (named "Mollyburg," Emmaville," etc.) and in these walled towns everyone is devoted to survival and knowledge; most of their poetry/art is pulled from Greek classic theatre, but they subvert all the tropes so that the women's sorrow is at the forefront (instead of men's heroic victories). All men-- except those willing to submit to women's rule as houseservants-- live in ultra-vicious "garrisons," supposedly in existence to guard the towns, but in reality the women are controlling everything, secretly. The method of this control is the twist so I haven't given away anything major here. The world she has created is internally consistent and you actually care about the people in her novel and kind of feel bad for them living in such a crap place. Despite the lack of twist-clues, it's an amazing novel.
Popular Music from Vittula / Mikael Niemi / 2003 / 237pp
This book was pretty OK, not as great as I expected given the number of awards it won according to the jacket copy. It's a pretty decent growing-up story, has some nice fantastical elements which make it work out well (a kid hides from his captors in an abandoned boiler, no one finds him for years, until he gets big enough to physically break apart the boiler and free himself-- nice adolescence allegory and advances the story in the novel as well!) and is pretty enjoyable. It's imbued with a wistfulness that makes it a little bit of a bummer overall, though.
Soy La Avon Lady and other stories / Lorraine Lopez / 2002 / 238 pp
Yet another connected-yet-not-connected short story collection. Lopez is a younger writer and it is refreshing to see a new take on some of these themes (the usual: love, life, duality/multiplicity of roles).
Monday, January 18, 2010
Stella Dallas / Olivia Higgins Prouty / pp240 / 1937 (?)
Don't have the book here so can't see the publication date. there as a movie version made in 1937 so i'll use that as a placeholder date. this book was great; like an edith wharton transplanted into the 1920s. stella dallas is a social climber who makes the ultimate sacrifice (in her eyes): marrying a man she loathes, in order to force her daughter to hate her, in order to force her daughter to have a life of priviledge, the likes of which stella always wanted for herself but that she was unable to construct. stella blames this on her family's lack of support of her dream of 'being somebody,' but Prouty shows us enough of stella's life that the reader may well question whether this is true. some especially telling scenes, like the description of the summer-house she built and her artful (perhaps-- or seen through?) habit of bringing every date back to the place and sitting in the exact, pre-calculated spot to look the most cunning, or her lack of understanding of the difference between company and good company in the case of the slimy Mr. Harris, lead me to believe that perhaps stella tried too hard; i can definitely feel sympathy for her outcast status and see echoes of my own behavior in her sometimes-painful attempts to ingratiate herself and her child into the lives of the aimless rich.
lots of great themes at play here: mother-daughter-stepmother, rejection/love, construct of one's self versus what others perceive, how social forces invade our lives and force us to shape our lives to fit them (and find ourselves in interesting places, where hate can be the ultimate expression of love). women struggling with liberation and feminism thrust upon them when they did not want it vs. the women who want to be liberated but cannot be; what is the nature of liberation (submittal to unknown expectations or fulfilling stated expectations?). it was pulpy and silly and flirty and lite, but when examined, has a lot more going on beneath the surface.
lots of great themes at play here: mother-daughter-stepmother, rejection/love, construct of one's self versus what others perceive, how social forces invade our lives and force us to shape our lives to fit them (and find ourselves in interesting places, where hate can be the ultimate expression of love). women struggling with liberation and feminism thrust upon them when they did not want it vs. the women who want to be liberated but cannot be; what is the nature of liberation (submittal to unknown expectations or fulfilling stated expectations?). it was pulpy and silly and flirty and lite, but when examined, has a lot more going on beneath the surface.
Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty / Greg Rucka et al / 2004 / pp116
um, a comic book. a good comic book, put here for completeness' sake. it's the first 2 issues of a comic book focused on 2 shifts of gotham city's police department (so it is set in batman's universe but only includes batman tangentially, when he interacts with the gotham police department). it's so embarrassingly nerdy. but i love it. it does underscore why i do not buy individual issues: if i only had one issue of gotham central at a time i would pass out from the anxiety of wanting to know what happens next.
The Ganymede Takeover/ Philip K Dick and Ray Nelson / 1967 / pp192
Another silly, crazy Dick joint. I phrased that because I like writing the phrase "dick joint."
Anyway, it's silly-serious in a racist, painful way (the leader of the world's resistance is Percy X, a "Neeg-part.") The suffix "-part" is used throughout the book to demarcate a place, person, or partisan group; no explanation is given. I suppose it has something to do with schizophrenia, which, BTW, is rampant in this book. I imagine Nelson being brought in to do his best to put out the fires of crazy. Despite the odd word choices, the story is really great (telepathic worms which systematically enslave races across the galaxy arrive; we join about 3/4s of the way thru their conquest of Earth and witness the heroic resistance, attempted subversion by humans trying to secure their own personal glory; eventual triumph of the humans, but it doesn't matter) like most Dick books, set in a believable future Earth. Curiously my ability to see Dick's worlds as socially accurate has increased with the move to california.
Anyway, it's silly-serious in a racist, painful way (the leader of the world's resistance is Percy X, a "Neeg-part.") The suffix "-part" is used throughout the book to demarcate a place, person, or partisan group; no explanation is given. I suppose it has something to do with schizophrenia, which, BTW, is rampant in this book. I imagine Nelson being brought in to do his best to put out the fires of crazy. Despite the odd word choices, the story is really great (telepathic worms which systematically enslave races across the galaxy arrive; we join about 3/4s of the way thru their conquest of Earth and witness the heroic resistance, attempted subversion by humans trying to secure their own personal glory; eventual triumph of the humans, but it doesn't matter) like most Dick books, set in a believable future Earth. Curiously my ability to see Dick's worlds as socially accurate has increased with the move to california.
Honeymoon: Stories / Joan Gerber / 1985 / pp126
Another linked collection of stories about a woman in her late 20s. Probably would have appreciated it more if I hadn't just read "Rough Translations" which is essentially the same. These feel older than 1985. Confusingly there's a few not-connected stories set inbetween the connected stories, with similarly grouped characters (woman-man/husband/boyfriend-child). There was always a sharp air of disappointment in these. They made me sad and wistful-- i felt bad for the woman in the stories.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Down in the Black Gang and others: a story collection / Philip Jose Farmer/ 1971 / pp215
This scifi collection showcases some interesting stories from Farmer. Although not stated, most of the stories have a religious bent to them. I give these 2 interpretations: the generous one is that he was influenced/interested in the changes in american religious life in this time; the less generous one is that these are the stories that sold. Interestingly, Farmer is credited as the first author to bring sex into scifi, so it might also be that he liked to push boundaries, and writing about Jesus being reincarnated into a never-dying, never-changing, not-heaven, not-hell, not-purgatory place-- just like everyone else in the world-- is an easy way to do this ("Riverworld").
"A Few Miles" has a convict-turned-monk accidentally impregnated with a fetus of a zoo animal on the day he is assigned to minister to a far-off earth colony; instead of ministering, he's sent to the animal's planet to live among the animals and birth the child, and the "scientists" he works with use his placement as a covert anthropological expedition. He ends up 1. teaching the animals to talk, but to the frustration of the scientists, he teaches them the easier, almost incomprehensible slang of the day; 2. giving them theology. "The Blasphemers" features a young man who believes that his world's religion is bunk. He gathers a group together to (he thinks) bravely stand up to the leaders, only to learn that he's right and because he has discovered this, he is on the fast track to the priesthood.
"A Few Miles" has a convict-turned-monk accidentally impregnated with a fetus of a zoo animal on the day he is assigned to minister to a far-off earth colony; instead of ministering, he's sent to the animal's planet to live among the animals and birth the child, and the "scientists" he works with use his placement as a covert anthropological expedition. He ends up 1. teaching the animals to talk, but to the frustration of the scientists, he teaches them the easier, almost incomprehensible slang of the day; 2. giving them theology. "The Blasphemers" features a young man who believes that his world's religion is bunk. He gathers a group together to (he thinks) bravely stand up to the leaders, only to learn that he's right and because he has discovered this, he is on the fast track to the priesthood.
Rough Translations/ Molly Giles/ 1985 / pp135
I picked this up b/c the author won a Flannery O'Connor award and I was hoping for some good ole southern gothicness (fingers crossed, maybe this one will have a deformed cousin with a terrible secret living in the milk shed) or at least stories with wry, awful, twists of truth. I was disappointed on the first count but Giles really hit it out of the park with "observations/truth about what it is like to be a woman in her late 20s." Her voice is clear and her characters are consistently aching for completeness, and looking for it wherever they've found it before-- in the arms of their lover, their children, or the bottom of a glass. Old Soul, The Planter Box, and Peril are my favorites but all are worth a read.
Tierra: contemporary stories from New Mexico/ Edited by Rudolfo Anaya/ 1989
An OK collection of short stories; I didn't rally complete this one, either, as one story is only in Spanish and while I tried mightily to understand it, my lack of knowledge of any tenses besides present and future perfect really made it impossible to construct any meaning from it. It suffered a bit from the New Mexico-centrism: e.g., selecting a mediocre story from a good writer due to the locale of the story-- yes, I'm calling you out, Mr. Anaya, for including your own "Iliana" instead of a better one-- or stories not having any thematic elements to link them into a collection beyond being written by a person who is from New Mexico. I did enjoy Robert Granat's story and surprisingly I liked the Tony Hillerman story, too.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
New Dimensions 1 / edited by Robert Silverberg / 1971
A short story collection that includes another Ursula K Le Guin HAIN story. BAH!
Other than that it was mostly satisfying: pretentious "smart" 70's sci-fi. Perfectly acceptable plane reading.
Standouts: The Trouble with the past by Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein; The Power of Time by Josephine Saxton; The sliced-crosswise only-on-tuesday world by Philip Jose Farmer.
Other than that it was mostly satisfying: pretentious "smart" 70's sci-fi. Perfectly acceptable plane reading.
Standouts: The Trouble with the past by Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein; The Power of Time by Josephine Saxton; The sliced-crosswise only-on-tuesday world by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Acid House / Irvine Welsh / 1994
1. I didn't really finish this book because I skipped a few stories that were all in impenetrable brogue (? that's probably the wrong name-for-this-accent) like "You in the family wey again, ah asked, concentrating oan getting a nudge oan the bandit. A set ay grapes. That'll dae me." The hell? It probably hurt me in the end as these stories are all interconnected, although there are a few standalone stories (or at least I couldn't fit them into a cohesive storyline; that might be changed on a re-read).
2. No quotation marks, lack of pronouns, slang. Ouch.
3. Some funny bits, lots of (legal and illegal) drug use. I am amazed by his characters' fortitudes and ability to do. drugs. all. the. time. I suspect I should have known from seeing he wrote Trainspotting, but the thousands of dollars these kids would have been spending, it just boggles the mind.
4. Even when he writes from another characters' perspective it comes out sounding like Brian, the main character in most of the stories.
2. No quotation marks, lack of pronouns, slang. Ouch.
3. Some funny bits, lots of (legal and illegal) drug use. I am amazed by his characters' fortitudes and ability to do. drugs. all. the. time. I suspect I should have known from seeing he wrote Trainspotting, but the thousands of dollars these kids would have been spending, it just boggles the mind.
4. Even when he writes from another characters' perspective it comes out sounding like Brian, the main character in most of the stories.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Adulthood Rites Octavia Butler, 1988
This is a sequel to Dawn, a middling novel from Butler, and is the second in the Xenogenesis trilogy.
It's kinda gross because it's essentially a story about aliens, Oankali, who have these crazy tentacles all over their bodies-- but as we learn in this novel (and I am not giving anything important away)-- they have actually modified themselves from their preferred giant armored caterpillar form in order to be more acceptable to humans. So they picked a human shape with tentacles coming out from/instead of sensory organs, body hair, and excretory organs. OK!
The Human/Oankali colonies established on Earth at the end of Dawn are revisited in 60 years. There's not much alien sex in this book which is a relief and a change from Dawn. There's conflict between the humans who are not sympathizing/interbreeding with the Oankali and those who are, and Akin, a human/Oankali leads the real humans to terraform Mars. The story will be continued in the next novel but I likely won't stick around for it.
It was vaguely interesting in that it continued the lives of Lilith and Nikanji (stars of Dawn, respectively mother and Oankali ungendered parent to Akin) who I had liked in the prior book, although Butler continues to kill off or maim characters willy-nilly.
It's kinda gross because it's essentially a story about aliens, Oankali, who have these crazy tentacles all over their bodies-- but as we learn in this novel (and I am not giving anything important away)-- they have actually modified themselves from their preferred giant armored caterpillar form in order to be more acceptable to humans. So they picked a human shape with tentacles coming out from/instead of sensory organs, body hair, and excretory organs. OK!
The Human/Oankali colonies established on Earth at the end of Dawn are revisited in 60 years. There's not much alien sex in this book which is a relief and a change from Dawn. There's conflict between the humans who are not sympathizing/interbreeding with the Oankali and those who are, and Akin, a human/Oankali leads the real humans to terraform Mars. The story will be continued in the next novel but I likely won't stick around for it.
It was vaguely interesting in that it continued the lives of Lilith and Nikanji (stars of Dawn, respectively mother and Oankali ungendered parent to Akin) who I had liked in the prior book, although Butler continues to kill off or maim characters willy-nilly.
The Telling Ursula K. Le Guin 2000
Another damned "Hainish/Ekumen" novel from Le Guin. This story trope bothers me because every time I start one of these, I get about 40 pages in and I'm starting to enjoy the book. She's created another world full of realistic, multi-dimensional characters. Then she starts with the danged Ekumen and the fall of Terra and I'm now about 90 pages in- it's a 264 page book with big type, so this is not a huge investment- but I'm following the seductive and mysterious story so I don't really want to stop.
If you haven't read any Ekumen/Hain stories: the Hains are the most boring race of beings in the universe. Starting millions of years ago, they dedicated their race to visiting planets across the universe, making contact and trading with the few civilizations they found, gene-enhanced the animals and plants they found on other worlds, leaving bacteria on barren worlds to become life; then they started coming back to planets previously visited to observe the civilizations they created; these observers are Hains or other races, sent as members of the unreligion/religion, the Ekumen. The Ekumen observers copy what they can and bring back unbiased reports on the planets' culture. These observations almost always end with unauthorized sharing of technology with a observed race, and eventual destabilization in the civilization and destruction of native culture.
Terra--politically recognizable as projection of Earth around 2060- is of course a Hain project and guess what? We look like the Hains a lot more than the other aliens. Yay us. However, much of the tension in the Ekumen/Hain books involves Terran people working for the Ekumen, being asked to proselytize to (likely) Hain-enhanced humanoid people on other worlds in order to destroy/protect the native culture.
Anyway, back to The Telling. The characters go on being compelling and eventually the secret gets revealed, but the ambiguity in the denouement isn't nearly as exciting as she wishes it were. I can't tell if this book is supposed to have a sequel or not. I hope I do not stumble across one because I will feel compelled to get it to find out what happens to the characters.
If you haven't read any Ekumen/Hain stories: the Hains are the most boring race of beings in the universe. Starting millions of years ago, they dedicated their race to visiting planets across the universe, making contact and trading with the few civilizations they found, gene-enhanced the animals and plants they found on other worlds, leaving bacteria on barren worlds to become life; then they started coming back to planets previously visited to observe the civilizations they created; these observers are Hains or other races, sent as members of the unreligion/religion, the Ekumen. The Ekumen observers copy what they can and bring back unbiased reports on the planets' culture. These observations almost always end with unauthorized sharing of technology with a observed race, and eventual destabilization in the civilization and destruction of native culture.
Terra--politically recognizable as projection of Earth around 2060- is of course a Hain project and guess what? We look like the Hains a lot more than the other aliens. Yay us. However, much of the tension in the Ekumen/Hain books involves Terran people working for the Ekumen, being asked to proselytize to (likely) Hain-enhanced humanoid people on other worlds in order to destroy/protect the native culture.
Anyway, back to The Telling. The characters go on being compelling and eventually the secret gets revealed, but the ambiguity in the denouement isn't nearly as exciting as she wishes it were. I can't tell if this book is supposed to have a sequel or not. I hope I do not stumble across one because I will feel compelled to get it to find out what happens to the characters.
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