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defrogThe first book reports of 2016 are in. How do you like them apples?
Report from Planet Midnight by Nalo Hopkinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another selection from the PM Press Outspoken Authors series that also serves as my introduction to Nalo Hopkinson, whom I’d never head of before. That fact alone may lend credence to her criticism that the SF/F industry is dominated by straight white guys and thus is in need of a lot more diversity than it currently demonstrates. The title comes from a 2010 presentation at International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in which she tackles issues of race, racism and sexism in SF/F (and deploys some performance art to make her point) at least partly in reaction to RaceFail’09. That and the interview in which she expands on those issues – and discusses the role of Caribbean folklore in her work – are worth the price of admission. Hopkinson makes some really strong points on the nature of systemic racism in SF/F and elsewhere, why and how it needs to change, and why it’s not as scary or inconvenient as some fans and editors (i.e. mostly white guys) seem to think. Also included are two short stories – one is an updated Caribbean twist on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the other is an interesting take on the time-travel trope. This volume also hipped me to her bibliography up to 2013 – you can bet I’ll be keeping an eye out for her books.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve been a fan of Murakami for a long time, but his work can generally be broken into two categories: (1) stories where magic realism dominates the plot (see: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance Dance Dance) and (2) stories where magic realism plays a minor role or at best hovers offstage (see: Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart). I tend to prefer the former, but even the latter ones have something going for them. This one falls somewhere in between – railway station designer Tsukuru Tazaki is haunted by his past (and in his dreams) after being suddenly ostracized by a group of very close high-school friends with no explanation. Sixteen years later, his girlfriend encourages him to visit his friends one by one and resolve the situation. Some of the strangeness you expect from a Murakami novel is there, but it feels almost incidental to the main plot, which idles until Tanaki starts tracking down his former friends, after which it really kicks into gear. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a little disappointing in that some of the more interesting narrative episodes seem to dead-end, but it’s still pretty interesting overall.
Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Ernest Hemingway is one of those authors that gets namedropped a lot by authors I like, but I’ve only ever read one short story, “Hills Like White Elephants” (included in this collection), which was for a literature class that overanalyzed it to the point of sucking all the joy out of the story. I came across this for half-price and decided it was time to give Hemingway a proper try. And I’ve concluded that maybe Hemingway isn’t for me. There’s no doubt he was a brilliant writer whose economic prose cuts to the chase. The main problem is the subject matter – war, boxing and bullfighting are prominent themes here, but they don’t really interest me. A few stories here are admittedly great – “The Killers” was the big standout for me – but most of them didn’t really connect. I might still try one of his novels, if I see one that’s more up my street in terms of topic, but to be honest I’m not in any hurry.
CUNNING PLANS: Talks By Warren Ellis by Warren Ellis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This e-book collects transcripts of some of the talks that Ellis has given at various SF and futurist conferences over the past few years. Each one is an exploration of how science-fiction creators and fans should (or shouldn’t) be looking at The Future. Like a lot of his fictional work, it’s jam-packed with historical factoids, but in this case with the purpose of illustrating that you can’t understand the future without understanding both the past and the present. Ellis also makes the connection between the old world of superstition (ghosts, demons, magick, etc) and the new world of technology (i.e. iPads make us all wizards, at least by 18th-century standards). Despite the common thread, there’s little overlap between each piece, and what overlap there is doesn’t feel redundant. Like Ellis’ best work, it’s fascinating, thought-provoking and highly entertaining. If nothing else, Ellis makes a more solid case about the futility of predicting the future in 52 pages than Nassim Nicholas Taleb did in 500+ pages of The Black Swan.
Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is my second time reading Ambler, who is generally credited with bringing realism to spy novels in the 1930s. The premise: in 1937, British engineer Nicky Marlow accepts a job in fascist Italy at a Brit-owned manufacturing firm specializing in machines for shell production. Marlow soon finds himself being courted by mysterious men with secret (and opposing) agendas – and at least one of whom may be responsible for the death of Marlow’s predecessor. Similar to the hero in Ambler’s Epitaph For A Spy (the first Ambler book I read), Marlow is so infuriatingly naïve about his situation – and so easily offended at the slightest impropriety – that he’s a hard protagonist to like. At the same time, his character is partly drawn as a critique of arms manufacturers who treat war as just a business or a newspaper headline – Marlow is thrown into a situation intended to burst that bubble. In any case, Ambler tells a good tale, albeit at a slightly uneven pace. The only significant complaint I have is that the opening pages of Marlow’s narrative create a set-up that never meaningfully pays off – so much so that it seems superfluous. Luckily, there’s more than enough here to make up for it.
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve known about Harry Harrison for years, but I’ve never read him until now. As you may know, this novel was the basis for Soylent Green, but don’t let that be a spoiler – the famous twist was written for the film and doesn’t appear in the book. The general premise is the same: in the future (in this case, 1999), overpopulation has resulted in massive shortages of food, water and just about everything else. In New York City (pop. 35 million), detective Andy Rusch is pressured to solve the murder of a politically connected racketeer, but the investigation is really just a vehicle for the grim-meathook backdrop of an overcrowded NYC where people riot for food and water and live in abandoned ships and parking lots (except for the Rich And Powerful, as usual). In fact, the crime story often gets sidetracked to the point that it adds to the overall sense of futility of the situation, which Harrison conveys convincingly, even though certain details require a little suspension of disbelief. (Also, people from Taiwan generally speak Mandarin, not Cantonese.) Anyway, I liked this, and I can see why this is a dystopian classic (Soylent Green’s role in pop culture notwithstanding). I’ll be looking for some more of Harrison’s work.
View all my reviews
The world is not enough,
This is dF
Report from Planet Midnight by Nalo HopkinsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another selection from the PM Press Outspoken Authors series that also serves as my introduction to Nalo Hopkinson, whom I’d never head of before. That fact alone may lend credence to her criticism that the SF/F industry is dominated by straight white guys and thus is in need of a lot more diversity than it currently demonstrates. The title comes from a 2010 presentation at International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in which she tackles issues of race, racism and sexism in SF/F (and deploys some performance art to make her point) at least partly in reaction to RaceFail’09. That and the interview in which she expands on those issues – and discusses the role of Caribbean folklore in her work – are worth the price of admission. Hopkinson makes some really strong points on the nature of systemic racism in SF/F and elsewhere, why and how it needs to change, and why it’s not as scary or inconvenient as some fans and editors (i.e. mostly white guys) seem to think. Also included are two short stories – one is an updated Caribbean twist on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the other is an interesting take on the time-travel trope. This volume also hipped me to her bibliography up to 2013 – you can bet I’ll be keeping an eye out for her books.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki MurakamiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve been a fan of Murakami for a long time, but his work can generally be broken into two categories: (1) stories where magic realism dominates the plot (see: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance Dance Dance) and (2) stories where magic realism plays a minor role or at best hovers offstage (see: Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart). I tend to prefer the former, but even the latter ones have something going for them. This one falls somewhere in between – railway station designer Tsukuru Tazaki is haunted by his past (and in his dreams) after being suddenly ostracized by a group of very close high-school friends with no explanation. Sixteen years later, his girlfriend encourages him to visit his friends one by one and resolve the situation. Some of the strangeness you expect from a Murakami novel is there, but it feels almost incidental to the main plot, which idles until Tanaki starts tracking down his former friends, after which it really kicks into gear. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a little disappointing in that some of the more interesting narrative episodes seem to dead-end, but it’s still pretty interesting overall.
Men Without Women by Ernest HemingwayMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Ernest Hemingway is one of those authors that gets namedropped a lot by authors I like, but I’ve only ever read one short story, “Hills Like White Elephants” (included in this collection), which was for a literature class that overanalyzed it to the point of sucking all the joy out of the story. I came across this for half-price and decided it was time to give Hemingway a proper try. And I’ve concluded that maybe Hemingway isn’t for me. There’s no doubt he was a brilliant writer whose economic prose cuts to the chase. The main problem is the subject matter – war, boxing and bullfighting are prominent themes here, but they don’t really interest me. A few stories here are admittedly great – “The Killers” was the big standout for me – but most of them didn’t really connect. I might still try one of his novels, if I see one that’s more up my street in terms of topic, but to be honest I’m not in any hurry.
CUNNING PLANS: Talks By Warren Ellis by Warren EllisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This e-book collects transcripts of some of the talks that Ellis has given at various SF and futurist conferences over the past few years. Each one is an exploration of how science-fiction creators and fans should (or shouldn’t) be looking at The Future. Like a lot of his fictional work, it’s jam-packed with historical factoids, but in this case with the purpose of illustrating that you can’t understand the future without understanding both the past and the present. Ellis also makes the connection between the old world of superstition (ghosts, demons, magick, etc) and the new world of technology (i.e. iPads make us all wizards, at least by 18th-century standards). Despite the common thread, there’s little overlap between each piece, and what overlap there is doesn’t feel redundant. Like Ellis’ best work, it’s fascinating, thought-provoking and highly entertaining. If nothing else, Ellis makes a more solid case about the futility of predicting the future in 52 pages than Nassim Nicholas Taleb did in 500+ pages of The Black Swan.
Cause for Alarm by Eric AmblerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is my second time reading Ambler, who is generally credited with bringing realism to spy novels in the 1930s. The premise: in 1937, British engineer Nicky Marlow accepts a job in fascist Italy at a Brit-owned manufacturing firm specializing in machines for shell production. Marlow soon finds himself being courted by mysterious men with secret (and opposing) agendas – and at least one of whom may be responsible for the death of Marlow’s predecessor. Similar to the hero in Ambler’s Epitaph For A Spy (the first Ambler book I read), Marlow is so infuriatingly naïve about his situation – and so easily offended at the slightest impropriety – that he’s a hard protagonist to like. At the same time, his character is partly drawn as a critique of arms manufacturers who treat war as just a business or a newspaper headline – Marlow is thrown into a situation intended to burst that bubble. In any case, Ambler tells a good tale, albeit at a slightly uneven pace. The only significant complaint I have is that the opening pages of Marlow’s narrative create a set-up that never meaningfully pays off – so much so that it seems superfluous. Luckily, there’s more than enough here to make up for it.
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry HarrisonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve known about Harry Harrison for years, but I’ve never read him until now. As you may know, this novel was the basis for Soylent Green, but don’t let that be a spoiler – the famous twist was written for the film and doesn’t appear in the book. The general premise is the same: in the future (in this case, 1999), overpopulation has resulted in massive shortages of food, water and just about everything else. In New York City (pop. 35 million), detective Andy Rusch is pressured to solve the murder of a politically connected racketeer, but the investigation is really just a vehicle for the grim-meathook backdrop of an overcrowded NYC where people riot for food and water and live in abandoned ships and parking lots (except for the Rich And Powerful, as usual). In fact, the crime story often gets sidetracked to the point that it adds to the overall sense of futility of the situation, which Harrison conveys convincingly, even though certain details require a little suspension of disbelief. (Also, people from Taiwan generally speak Mandarin, not Cantonese.) Anyway, I liked this, and I can see why this is a dystopian classic (Soylent Green’s role in pop culture notwithstanding). I’ll be looking for some more of Harrison’s work.
View all my reviews
The world is not enough,
This is dF
