Consider Phlebas

Consider Phlebas – Iain M. Banks; Orbit 2008

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks was first published in 1987 and is the author’s first science fiction novel.  It’s title comes from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.  It has, since then, been generally accepted as being “space opera.”  It is also the first in Banks’ Culture series of novels. I read the 2008 Orbit edition.

I really liked much of this book, but I also didn’t like some things about it.  First of all, I felt the first three chapters were interesting and I was a little unsure of who was doing what why – but it was full of action.  I, therefore, expected the novel to be more of the same.  But then it seemed that whole chunk was over suddenly and now we were reading a new, but similar, story. (The chapters introducing the Clean Air Turbulence.)  I felt that we had left the first storyline a little behind, but that was okay because this new “story” aboard the Clean Air Turbulence was interesting.  The main character gets to stay aboard this “Free Mercenary/Trade” ship if he wins a fight.  Okay, I’m invested in the main character – go Horza! Win the fight!

Then there are chapters wherein the pirate ship attempts a mission.  They are severely under-geared for this event and the mission fails. I actually did not really like this section because I was not sure what we were supposed to glean from it besides meeting characters.  Nevertheless, the pirates try again – the captain has a new mission for his crew.  They are going to the Orbital Vavatch – a ringworld.  And having read Niven’s Ringworld, I was all good with this sort of construct.  This was actually interesting for awhile, but ends poorly for many characters.

Insert new storyline:  Horza survives and ends up on island of crazy cannibal weirdos.  This is the part of the book that lots of reviewers like to comment on.  It has a lot of graphic imagery, but it is definitely creative and well, I hate to say it again, but it was interesting.  Next section:  the Damage game.  This part is a good example of something I disliked about this novel. There is a lot of build up to certain things.  However, the events seem to fall flat a bit.  The Damage game was probably my favorite section of the book.  Banks explains it well, gives us motives and concepts, and makes the whole thing seem really exciting.  And there’s a lot of elements here that make it unique and creative.  But overall, there’s something missing from it.  There’s something missing that would take it from good to great.  The trippy-LSD parts with Horza and his experience as a “changer” is different – especially the vague connection between him and Kraiklyn.

Horza’s adventures continue. We’re headed back to Schar’s World to capture the Mind.  I am not entirely sure why we are after the Mind – except in the very general sense of the war between the Idirans and the Culture.  Throughout the novel, we are given little interludes wherein we meet the Mind.  These interludes are somewhat tedious and somewhat interesting.  Sometimes they seem rambling and at other times, they seem to be really good at showing us the Mind.  I’m rather torn on whether these are well written or not.  Anyway, this last chunk of the novel is very action-oriented, except, really the last sixty pages, or so, is all build up for a very speedy ending.

The ending comes quickly, I guess I cared about the characters sufficiently, but I was not really upset or affected by anything that happened. There were several elements that were kind of just thrown in there to make it seem like small detailed twists. For example, Yalson’s pregnancy – I don’t really see how that’s anything other than the author trying to force a little plot twist.  The Idiran Xoxarle is a decent enemy, I suppose, but I really feel that he is there (this late in the novel) to finally give us some sense of the other major group in the war – the Idirans.  Up until meeting him, the Idirans are introduced via Horza’s thoughts about them.  But my biggest complaint was that for the whole last chunk of the book – the Mind – which was this amorphous entity with deep thoughts – now is reduced to a non-entity object.  It is incongruous.  I wanted another “interlude” regarding the Mind.

I really didn’t care for most of the chapters with Fal ‘Ngeestra.  I think they are there to get us to understand The Culture.  Which they did.  But also, the chapters seemed rambling and somewhat tangential.  I don’t know.  They served their purpose, but I guess I just didn’t really care for them.  Nevertheless, I really liked the drone. All readers seem to like the drone. (Personally, I think we all think of C3-PO from Star Wars and Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)

I liked this novel – though I seem to be complaining a bit about it.  I really did enjoy it, even if it isn’t the greatest science fiction novel ever.  I liked a lot of what Banks did.  I liked the Culture concepts, the Idiran concepts, the Mind, etc.  I enjoyed a lot of the action scenes and the galaxy they are in.  The characters grow on the reader – but when Banks kills them off, it’s quick and to the point and we move on quickly.  I wanted to get to know more about several characters, but it didn’t happen, which was a little disappointing.  Fans of space opera will enjoy this novel.  I want to give it 3.5 stars, but I think I’m going to go with 3 stars.  Honestly, if you twist my arm on days that start with S or T, maybe I’ll give it 4 stars. If I tilt my head left, 3 stars, but if I tilt it right, then I give the novel 4 stars. This is a tough book for me to rate.  There’s a lot of good and some not-so-good.  Nevertheless, I definitely want to read more of Banks’ Culture series.

3 stars

Rynn’s World

Rynn’s World – Steve Parker; Black Library; 2010

I am a Warhammer 40k addict. I don’t expect you to be.  But I love me some space marine vs. ork battles, ships lost in the warp, xenos screams of hate, and prayers to the Emperor.  Of the Warhammer 40k novels, the Space Marine Battles seem to be a little lower on the “literature” scale than, say, the Horus Heresy stuff.  But none of it, really, is high-class stuff. And I am perfectly okay with that.

Rynn’s World is pure fluff.  It’s full of action scenes, space marines lumbering around in their armor, the rather one-track-mindedness of characters, the repetitive storytelling style that reminds you orks are bad and space marines are good, etc.  And I love it. It’s like brain candy.  All you have to do is turn the page and you do not need to analyze, discuss the levels of meta-fiction, or worry about the symbolic meaning of anything. You just read while the space marines just shoot. It’s glorious science fiction pulp.

This is the first Space Marines Battles novel released by Black Library. Rynn’s World was written by Steve Parker and released in 2010.  Parker is actually a pretty cool dude – he lives in Japan and is a beefy bodybuilder.  He is into environmental concerns and he isn’t just an iron head.  He has not yet written dozens of books, but this one was a decent read for the genre.  I hope he writes more.

Rynn’s world is about the homeworld of the Space Marines chapter, the Crimson Fists.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, let me oversimplify:  there are dozens of “chapters” of space marines.  Each chapter has their “thing.”  This particular chapter wears power armor where their gauntlets are mechanized and “powered” – and crimson red in color.  There you have the basics.  It was fun to read about this chapter because they are one of the more famous ones.  However, they certainly take a real hit in this novel – their homeworld is attacked by a gigantic warforce of Orks. Orks are green and brown skinned monsters who like to slay and who also have a fondness for motor bikes.

Pedro Kantor is the chapter master of the Crimson Fists.  This means, basically, he’s the general in charge.  We follow, more or less, him through the battle.  Therefore, we are privy to his hopes, worries, fears, and decision-making.  Not only does he have to deal with ork invaders, but the welfare of the human citizens of the planet also weighs heavily on his shoulders.  This sets up a sort of moral dilemma – his official protocols dictate that he serves the Emperor first, particularly in battle by destroying xenos bad guys.  So, how does Kantor deal with also having to play something of the rescue/protector role regarding humans?

And then, there is the whole drama with his friend, the lower-ranked captain Alessio Cortez. Cortez is a fiery, aggressive character who is an excellent space marine, but who gets impatient a lot.  Cortez rarely sees the bigger picture, so to speak. Kantor has to balance being Cortez’ friend and being his chapter master.  Some of this storyline is also developed early on when a scout endangers space marines by failing to strictly obey protocol.  Discipline and obedience are the buzzwords here.  Anyway, the good part of all of this is that the novel does actually have some subplots and does touch, however briefly, onto some interesting moral questions.

Nevertheless, this novel is about space marines going to battle against orks.  It may seem juvenile or pedestrian to some readers – but I wasn’t expecting anything more than some good old bolt gun explosions, ork war cries, and descriptions of azure power armor.  The joy of reading anything WH40k is that orks get smashed. Ork smashing is good and good for you.  I’m giving this novel three stars – because it is exactly what it purports to be and met all expectations.  Granted, we won’t be reading this in English Lit – but on the other hand – we don’t want to be. We’d actually rather be donning our power armor and firing up the lasguns!

3 stars

Boneshaker

Boneshaker – Cherie Priest; TOR; 2009

I finally finished Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker.  It seems like everyone on the planet has already read the novel.  It’s the first in the Clockwork Century series by Priest; the series is already on it’s fifth novel.  Anyway, Boneshaker was published in 2009 by TOR.  It won a lot of acclaim. Specifically:  a Locus Award and was nominated for a Hugo (2010).  A lot of people really liked the cover art as well, which was done by Jon Foster.

This book has a lot going for it.  First of all, it has some very strong female characters. By “strong,” I mean the typical sense:  not wilting flowers, pro-active, heroines.  The entire novel is built around two things:  (1.) the act of Leviticus Blue in building a “bone-shaking drill” by which he commits a robbery; and (2.) the relationship between a mother and her teenaged son (i.e. Briar and Ezekiel Wilkes).    It works well as a first book in a series – but also works completely well as a standalone novel.  There really is no necessity to read beyond this book – in terms of storyline closure.

This is steampunk, I am told.  Probably because there is toxic gas and gas masks.  Also, because they utilize airships and rifles.  However, there is also a smattering of neat inventions, the background of a gold rush, and the American Civil War.  Granted, this is still an alternate reality – things may have the same names (Civil War, Klondike), but they are not the exact same as in our history books.

I like the concept of an artificial walled-city built to keep the toxins in. I like the added bonus of people using the toxins as a type of addictive drug – doesn’t that just seem exactly how people would do it?  One thing I am undecided about is the zombies.  Did there have to be zombies? Did zombies add to or take away from the story? Rotters, if you will.  I am not sure. I am really not fond of the zombie-craze of the last few years. Sure, I’ve seen some Walking Dead episodes. And I don’t hide from stuff with zombies in it, but I do not really go seeking out zombie-stories or whatever.  So, I am not sure about this aspect of the novel.

One thing I had a difficult time with was the movement and description within the walled city. I don’t know if Priest is not good at describing complex, multi-leveled things or if I was just not paying attention, but I could never really grasp in my imagination what was going on with the setting.  Up, down, in the dark, old elevators, stairways, tunnels – this is all reasonable for the storyline, but I could not really picture any of it.

Finally, as a last complaint, well. . . . I found the book a little boring in parts. There were parts where I felt it was dragging and I lost interest. Maybe it was the zombies – or the toxic gas.  The book starts off excitingly and ends semi-predictably, but the middle did not hold my focus.  This is not to say that the writing style was bad.  Somehow, I just got bored in the middle. All in all, though, it is a fairly fast read and Priest does have a different “voice” as opposed to what I have read recently.  In other words, she has a unique voice that comes through her writing.

I’ll probably eventually read the next novel in the series.

3 stars

Big Planet

Big Planet by Jack Vance; Ace & TOR

I finished Big Planet by Jack Vance tonight.  January is Vintage Science Fiction month – as sponsored and encouraged by Little Red Reviewer on her blog.  This is the second Vance novel I have read.  Big Planet was first published in 1957 by Avalon/Ace.   The novel had some revisions and whatnot and was re-released in 1978.  The copy that I read was the TOR 1989 edition.  I took an actual photo (with my phone) of my two copies – the Ace 1967 and the TOR 1989.  I owned the Ace and then found the TOR for only $2 so decided to use that as my “reading copy.”  The cover art for the Ace is by Ed Emshwiller (very famous) and the TOR art is by David Hardy.  Since it’s Vintage Science Fiction month, I thought I’d read this novel because it’s quite vintage and well known.

Overall, this is a rather ridiculous novel.  It does show it’s age.  There are a couple of interesting moments, but overall it’s nothing fantastic.  I say this having read the novel in 2013.  I don’t know how this read to someone in 1960, let’s say.   The main complaints are as follows:  characters are flat and empty, viewpoint regarding women is decidedly not feminist, and the story reads like an extended Star Trek “away team mission.”

Big Planet – a horribly heavy-handed name which states the obvious – is a planet that absorbed the diaspora of cultures from Earth; cultures that were exiled or unwilling to accept Government Rule.  After hundreds of years, the original “culture groups” that arrived on Big Planet spread out, intermingled, and developed.  Thus, the inhabitants are earth-like cultures, but yet they are scattered and have no singular ruling body governing them.  Instead, there is an Earth Enclave, which is presumably a base of some sort where Earth periodically sends commissions to interact with Big Planet and its cultures.  An embassy of sorts, I suppose.

The novel begins with a commission en route to Big Planet.  We meet the characters rapidly and without any finesse.  The ship is attacked (from within) and brought down far from its destination at Earth Enclave.  The survivors find themselves stranded in a village.  It is estimated that they are at least 40,000 miles from Earth Enclave.  Big Planet has many resources, but metal (ore) is not one of them.  Therefore, at least to start, the survivors are relatively wealthy.  However, without much further ado, they all agree to trek off to Earth Enclave.  This is obviously just to get the story moving forth – but let’s consider this further.  Stranded (after a crash landing) in a primitive culture 40,000 miles away from base, with very little in the way of supplies or implements, this group of eight fellas decides that it is a good idea to head out. And, interestingly, the main character, Claude Glystra just assumes command.  He suddenly becomes the leader of the band and not one of the others really even questions this.  We aren’t even given any background on Glystra to help with this.  Perhaps he is ex-military or something – but we get nothing to assist with the suddenness of his command-taking.

So the group sets off. And right away there is this tag-a-long girl who seems really naive and helpless.  Make that a count of nine.  But then not too long after, adventures begin because this group is attacked. Basically, its all a big plot to take down this commission by some dude named Charley Lysidder.  Lysidder employs armies, spies, and religious-types to help him recapture Glystra.  I highly doubt Glystra is really that big of a threat.  Why go to all this trouble? Even if this guy makes it 40,000 battling the natural and exotic perils, what can he possibly do then besides complain to Earth about Big Planet? Ultimately, Big Planet is really beyond the scope of Earth’s rule, anyway. And what does Glystra care?  A moral code is about the only reason he has to stop Lysidder, at first. Finally, a sense of revenge or personal justice plays in.  Basically, the whole premiss of the novel is a bit forced and stretched.

There is one interesting culture that we meet in the novel.  The Kirstendale city is maintained by an interesting populace.  They keep their wherewithal a secret and it takes Glystra awhile to piece it altogether. Nevertheless, it’s an opulent city full of manufactured intrigue and facade.  Ultimately, it would be interesting to investigate this city and expand this into a series of stories or something.  It’s about the only thing creative in the novel, to be honest.

Anyway, Glystra’s group’s numbers dwindle as they deal with threats and peril. Most of the time they are riding on six-legged beasts called zipangotes.  These are like dinosaur, horse, panther things.  They can be used to ride or as pack-animals.  Generally, the “nomadic” races use them to ride around on and raid and terrorize everyone else on the planet.  The other way the group travels is by monoline.  One of the things Vance does in this novel is periodically give us rather intense descriptions of mechanical things.  He uses fairly technical terms and describes them just as if one were seeing them with one’s own sight. Unfortunately, I was unable to really get a picture of any of these things in my mind. I don’t know if I wasn’t focused or if I just could not get the words sorted out. Anyway, Vance clearly had something in mind and tried to get us to understand these mechanical things, too. The monoline is like a trolley that ports people by sail and gravity by “air” across a huge stretch of land. Traders use it, too, and knowing this, the monoline gets attacked a lot by hostiles.

The ending was predictable and the villain was obnoxious and yucky.  I am glad I read the novel, because I love reading and I love science fiction.  However, there is not a whole lot in here that can be recommended to readers in 2013.  It’s a short read. Not very sweet.

3 stars

H. P. Lovecraft – Part One

I finally got around, prior to Thanksgiving, to picking up a Complete Fiction Works of H. P. Lovecraft.  And I am slowly working my way through the book.  The book comes in at around 1100 pages, so after reading to page 222, I decided I had better break the review(s) up into parts.  I don’t want to review in detail each and every piece in the book, but I think that there’s a lot that can be said and it needs to be partitioned like this.

My cat reading HPL

So far I have read (and the rating I gave each work):

• The Tomb – 4
• The Call of Cthulhu – 5
• Dagon – 3
• The White Ship -4
• The Doom that Came to Sarnath – 3
• The Statement of Randolph Carter – 3
• The Terrible Old Man – 4
• The Tree -2
• The Cats of Ulthar – 4
• The Temple – 3
• Celephais – 2
• From Beyond – 2
• Nyarlathotep – 3
• The Picture in the House – 3
• The Nameless City – 3
• Polaris – 3
• The Quest of Iranon – 4
• The Moon-Bog – 3
• The Outsider – 5
• The Other Gods – 3
• The Music of Erich Zann – 4
• Hypnos – 3
• What the Moon Brings – 1
• Azathoth – 1
• The Hound – 2

That equals 25 pieces from the book.  I skipped a few that I just was not interested in and did not have any desire to read whatsoever. I am not thrilled about skipping, but I just didn’t want to read some of the pieces – for whatever reason. Now, before reading any of these I was only familiar with H. P. Lovecraft in a very basic sense. I don’t really think I had read anything by him before, but this isn’t really something I would bet on. I’ve read a lot and who knows what I read in school?  Further, I haven’t read any secondary texts on HPL; so any conclusions or discoveries I came to were my own and not something I was looking for because I read it first in a critical analysis.

After reading a few of the stories, the themes that HPL works with become rather obvious.  Dreams and sleep, the dead and tombs, water and sky (derivatively, fish and birds), and sound.  You would have to be a blind nincompoop not to figure out that HPL wrote much of his work from his dreams and that he is terrified of water – particularly large bodies of water.  Knowing just this much, it should be easy to see the challenge in putting HPL’s works into a specific genre.  I don’t really think it qualifies as science fiction (under my as-yet-unwritten definition).  It probably does qualify as fantasy, but perhaps it does have elements of horror.  The reason I placed fantasy ahead of horror is because the stories are not gore and vampires and such.  The whole edge of HPL’s “horror” is the concept of the unknown. And this is usually beyond reality – therefore, fantasy.  The term “weird” has been bandied around and I suppose that works as well as anything I could come up with.  All of this is to say that none of these works fit perfectly into some genre and anyone interested in science fiction, fantasy, or “weird” tales would enjoy some of HPL.

When I got the book, I could not help myself – I opened directly to The Call of Cthulhu and read it through – and loved it, naturally. And I came to the text without any preconceived notions or biases. I just read and enjoyed. However, enough has been said about that text the world over, so I do not really want to focus on it.  I want to actually select (of those 25 works) the ones I think that strong readers should read. In other words, the must-read HPL list that those who do not wish to read the whole of 1100 pages can look for and read. The second text I read was The Tomb – after I read it all I could say was “wow”.  I do not recommend The Tomb for everybody.  It is truly twisted and horror and scary. So, if you are really more into the fantasy and less into the horror – skip The Tomb. I still have lingering creepies from it. . . .

The key texts, I feel, are Dagon, The White Ship, and Polaris.  If you need to get the basics of HPL, these three works should be read because I think they contain in an obvious way the method HPL uses when dealing with his preferred concepts/topics.  Dagon is short but I think it is the genesis of the Cthulhu concept.  Like many of HPL’s works, the story is really a written narration in the first person of an adventure/experience. The story is “hastily scrawled pages” written under “appreciable mental strain.”  And this is all in the first paragraph.  Generally, this gets to be a familiar paradigm within HPL.

The second paragraph directly presents one of the main themes in HPL:  “It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific. . . “   Immediately, we are thrown into the story that the narrator is writing.  That’s actually one of the nice things about HPL; he does not waste time with telling us how we got wherever or showing us each little step.  Paragraph four starts: “The change happened whilst I slept.”   And this phrase (or something like it) frequently appears in HPL stories.  It presents the method by which HPL’s stories access the fantasy/weird concepts.  HPL often mentions some “change” or catalyst and it is frequently connected to sleep and/or dreams.

Anyway, the story itself is not really scary or horrific – especially not in 2012.  But it was written in 1917 and we knew a little less science back then. Now we have Wikipedia and I daresay humans have cataloged the globe.  In 1917, the unknown of the ocean was probably a fascinating and terrifying thing.  Anyway, the “thing” that happens to the narrator is not exactly horrific. A sea-creature rises to the surface and, basically, hugs and howls at an altar/statue. It’s kind of funny, actually. But the horror of the story is not the point – it’s that the reader can feel/touch/empathize with the narrator’s feeling of horror.  It’s not so much that readers should judge whether or not the scene was horrific in an attempt to validate the narrator’s madness, but rather the reader can understand the ordeal that the narrator is explaining.

Polaris is another key text of HPL’s.  There are three main themes that make this story important. HPL’s narrator accesses another reality – very much akin to something PKD would have done/written.  The narrator enters into the alternate reality via sleep/dreams, as one expects.  However, this little story is neat because after reading it, one can really see how the blurring of the line of demarcation between reality and supra-reality drives the story.  And this is the “weird” part of the work, which is done really well in Polaris.  Another theme HPL uses here is that of the sky. The title is, obviously, of the star Polaris. But throughout the text are peppered names of constellations etc. that demonstrates HPL’s interest in astronomy.

The last theme in Polaris is that of a frustrated, impotent helplessness.  This occurs in several ways, one of which is the narrator unable to accomplish his tasks in his dream and experiencing shame and sorrow for his inability to function as a watchman in his social group.  The second is that of the star Polaris itself, which the narrator tells us has been struggling to convey a message, but yet is only able to know that it had a message and nothing more.  This weird anthropomorphization of the star is trippy and the fact that the star struggles to give a message is a truly weird and paradigm-shifting concept.  Ultimately, the narrator (and therefore the reader) are left questioning – which is the dream world and which is the “real” world; very much like some of the efforts of PKD.  And once again, the horror is not graphic or ghastly, but it’s in the very unknown and weirdness that the narrator’s feelings of horror are presented.  This is actually a really good story- judging it on a conceptual scheme.

The last text that I want to mention briefly is The White Ship. Finally, we are given a story in which the main character (narrator) has a name:  Basil Elton.  He is the keeper of a lighthouse like his father and grandfather before him.  Straightaway in paragraph one HPL is telling us about majestic seas.  There are “far shores” and “deep waters of the sea” in the following paragraphs.  And at this point the reader should be familiar with HPL’s method.  Weird stuff happens under, at, on, near the sea.  Anyway, when there is a full moon, the White Ship glides up near the lighthouse. And it does this for a long time, until one night Basil notices there is a bearded and robed man on the deck of the ship.  And thus begins the weird. . . .

Basil walks out to the ship from the lighthouse via a bridge of moonbeams (who didn’t think of Thor and the Rainbow Bridge at this?).  The man welcomes him and they set sail. The ship goes to a variety of different places and the robed man is Basil’s guide (Cp. Virgil in Dante).  I think this story is HPL’s attempt at world-building; that is, cartography in a fantasy realm.  The story gets a little dull, but the descriptions and imagery are worth reading. Sometimes it seems a bit overwritten, but if you actually try to picture what HPL is describing, it’s quite vivid and a worthwhile read. I would love for some enterprising fantasy author (e.g. Brandon Sanderson or Steven Erikson) to flesh out and develop this world. It’s interesting and has a lot of potential. I want to spend more time exploring and so forth.

Anyway, the ending is another appearance of the familiar dream theme that HPL uses.  Basil says: “…I went within the tower, I saw on the wall a calendar which still remained as when I had left it at the hour I sailed away.”  In other words, all these marvelous places the ship went and all the time Basil spent exploring was outside of time or he was dreaming – or both.  HPL’s usage of the dream/reality concept is really prevalent in the stories I read and I think by reading Dagon, The White Ship, and Polaris one can really get a grip on the tools HPL uses and how to navigate his writing.

Now, you may have noticed that I chose to comment on the texts that I felt were important key works and not on the ones that I liked the best.  The Terrible Old Man, The Cats of Ulthar, and The Quest of Iranon are actually my favorites in this batch of 25 stories.  I felt they were unique and heartfelt and resonated more with me than some of the other stories.  However, I recognize this is personal preference.  I still think these are great stories – but I think students of HPL need to be familiar with the stories I talked about, readers who want a good story should read both the three I mentioned and my favorites.

3 stars (the average for these 25 works)

Fulgrim

Fulgrim – Graham McNeill; Black Library

Fulgrim by Graham McNeill is the fifth novel in the Warhammer 40k Horus Heresy series.  It’s also the largest of the first five – running just over 500 pages.  It was published in 2007 and the cover artist was, again, Neil Roberts.  McNeill is the author of the second Horus Heresy novel as well as a few others in the Warhammer 40k collection.

The Warhammer 40k universe is one of my favorites. I am an absolute sucker for science fiction, fantasy, and battles of good versus evil. I like vast armies, huge dramatic storylines, and futuristic settings. A lot of “classy” readers probably would disdain most of Warhammer 40k because it isn’t great literature and is usually derivative of any number of archetypes in the genre.  However, I just love the universe and the characters and the stories.  It’s fun and interesting.  And yes, it is melodramatic.  And yes, in some books the writing is somewhat more juvenile or action-descriptive.  But it’s so much dang fun!

I’m obviously a science fiction fanatic.  And I love reading the classics of science fiction – good, quality, heady stuff for sure.  But really nothing is so deliciously engrossing as a Horus Heresy novel.  I am a big proponent of readers enjoying the books they are reading. If I am reading for entertainment, I want to be entertained.  There is also plenty of room for thought-provoking or challenging. Alter the paradigms, show the parallax, explore conceptual edifices – but let me still have my fun!

Fulgrim is not the best of the first five Horus Heresy novels. I do think in some places the story stalls and the characters chase their tails a bit.  In other words, yeah, this novel could have been whittled down to, say, 420 pages.   And while some novels desperately need to be chopped and halved, since this is Warhammer 40k and I am insanely in love with it, I do not really mind the stuffing.  The first two books of the series were awesome. Without a doubt.  Books four and five kind of circle back around to the events in book three – showing us the events from a different perspective, involving different characters, etc.  Some readers might not like this re-telling of events.  However, in both books, the storyline does move forward.  In Fulgrim, the last quarter of the book deals with the situation on Isstvan V – where the primarchs and their legions engaged in knowing, violent combat over the purpose and goal of the Great Crusade.

In the first half of the novel, the reader learns about the Primarch Fulgrim.  I like learning about each of the primarchs, though Fulgrim himself is not one I’m a real fan of.  He is so prissy and fancy.  He is still a formidable warrior, but his obsession with the concept of perfection and the appearance of his legion is obnoxious.  In other words, it’s easy to hate him and easy to see how he was pulled into the Horus Heresy. There are several neat things that the author does to this character to demonstrate the changes in him and how it affects the Emperor’s Children (his legion of space marines).  Most of them are interesting and reasonable grounding for the character’s actions.  Some are just a little flat or perhaps they are a little too obvious.

Fulgrim – the book and the character – develops from the author’s usage of concepts of aesthetics.  Art appreciation, perfection in art, working to create art, etc. Some of this might seem a bit silly to readers who want warfare in the distant future, but actually I was impressed that the author chose to utilize this stuff.  For example, I really do encourage any fans of the series to read William Blake’s The Book of Urizen either before or after reading Fulgrim.  It’s interesting and contextualizes. It’s also kind of fun to see Blake-ian concepts utilized in pulp science fiction!  I haven’t read The Book of Urizen since…. 1997?…. so I am actually looking forward to just flipping through that again.

Of note, Fulgrim contains some of the more “graphic” scenes in the series so far.  There are not any “bad words,” but the imagery can be a bit intense.  So, if you are really drawn into the book and have a good imagination, the latter half of the book has some scenes dealing with xenos/chaos forces that might be a bit ugly to imagine. The descriptions, though, do border slightly on the purple prose sort of structure in places.  It is not necessarily there for shock value – it does play into the plotline.  Either way, be advised to expect this. I liked elements of this section and disliked elements, as well. For example, there is something both really cool and really silly about the concept of auditory chaos, discordance, and atonal effects being used by/on space marines.

Overall, four stars – because I am a Warhammer 40k fan addict. Three stars if you are judging based on everything else. (Again, my blog, my prerogative!)

4 stars

October the First is Too Late

October the First is Too Late – Fred Hoyle; Fawcett-Crest, 1968.

October the First is Too Late by Fred Hoyle was first published in 1966.  The edition that I have is the Fawcett Crest 1968 edition. I do not know who the cover artist was – but this is one of my favorite pre-1980 science fiction book covers. Fred Hoyle is the British astronomer and mathematician (1915 – 2001) who was knighted in 1972.  Sir Hoyle was also one of the scientists who were outspoken regarding the “big bang” theory.

October the First is Too Late is not a good read by any standard. Really.  However, Hoyle warns us about this in the brief “To The Reader” paragraph at the beginning of the book. He writes:

The “science” in this book is mostly scaffolding for the story, story-telling in the traditional sense. However, the discussions of the significance of the time and of the meaning of consciousness are intended to be quite serious, as also the contents of chapter fourteen.

Hoyle was a good scientist. He had good schooling, studied well, published actively.  Although his positions on major natural science arguments may have been unpopular, I like that he defended his position and stuck to it. Also, I want to mitigate some of his stubbornness because he was of an older generation of scientists that had to confront a great deal of speedy advances in technology and science. He was born a few years after my grandparents – and frankly, I cannot imagine them ever having adapted quickly or smoothly to the technology of even the 1950s, much less the 1990s.

This book is a first-person narrative, told to us by a musician. The musician is good friends with a Nobel Laureate named John Sinclair.  Because of this friendship, the musician gets involved in matters by association. For example, he meets the prime minister, he travels with the Navy, he hangs out with scientists, etc.  On his own, however, he is admittedly a bit unschooled in natural science and he does not really offer anything else other than musical skill.

And I appreciate Hoyle’s understanding of music.  Each chapter is subtitled with musical terminology; for example: fugue, tempo di minuetto, andante con moto, etc.  The main character is a pianist of some standing and throughout the book he plays the piano.  In fact, this is one of the more absurd moments in the book:  he drags a piano to Ancient Athens. A piano.

See, the world has shifted in such a way (something to do with a pseudo-beam of light a la PKD’s VALIS) that multiple points of time are existing in various places around the globe.  So, it is 1966 in Great Britain, but it is WWI in France and Germany. Russia is very nearly the end of the world – where the surface of the earth is nothing but hardened, featureless glass.  Greece is in the age of Pericles and North America is wilderness.  There’s the science fiction in the novel. It all starts because of a birthmark – which Hoyle does tie in to the conclusion – yet I can make no real sense of what he was trying to do with this little plot device.

But while this concept would be really cool to explore and in the hands of a good author would really be a heck of an adventure, Hoyle just plods along with our somewhat dreary and banal main character. Who brings a piano to ancient Greece?! Farcical!  So, instead of being a wicked time-space mashup, we get long-winded thoughts regarding music theory.  But it’s serious music theory – it helps if you are familiar with Schubert and Chopin.  And here when I say “familiar,” I mean you can actually recognize their work.  I liked Hoyle’s explanations of notes/tonality – it gave me more to think about. Music theory can be difficult to understand – because of the jargon. This explanation made me want to listen to Arnold Schoenberg and see what I hear after having read this novel.

At 160 pages, this should be a fast read. However, it was incredibly boring and absurd. Not a good absurd either.  It was pathetic at points in terms of novel/literature/fiction aspects.  Basically, if you are reading this for exciting science fiction – forget it, you will be completely and certainly disappointed. Maybe even annoyed.  However, if you want a semi-interesting read about music, this book might interest you.  I have to praise chapter twelve because it was, for me, the only interesting and exciting chapter in the novel.  It has a lot of interesting ideas and can conjure some fun images – if only this chapter were expanded and by a better author.

The chapter fourteen that Hoyle mentioned above depicts a very dismal and wretched human history that is doomed to repeat itself.  Apparently, humans are miserable and are meant to live in discord and violence.  We learn about the history of the earth and how cataclysmic human-initiated events devastate the earth and the animals (including humans). Eventually, the last chapters depict the “final humanity” which is resigned to it’s fate:  that of not even trying to learn from mistakes and avoid catastrophe, but willing to simply live until they are no more.  I read some dystopian stuff – but the last chapters in this book are probably some of the most dismal and despairing ever. So, it leaves the reader with a dismal feeling after having read a rather poor novel.

2 stars

They Shall Have Stars

They Shall Have Stars – James Blish; Avon 1966

They Shall Have Stars by James Blish was published in 1956.  The edition that I read was the Avon 1966 paperback copy. They Shall Have Stars is the first novel in the Cities in Flight collection by Blish.  The four “novels” were collected into one omnibus by Avon in 1970, which I also own.  The trickiest part of understanding this collection is that several of the “novels” are actually fix-up pieces that Blish originally published in the famous Astounding Science Fiction magazine. For example, from what I could dig up, there are two relevant issues of Astounding that relate to They Shall Have Stars.  The February 1952 issue and the May 1954 issue contain stories that eventually became this novel.

Blish wrote a short three-paragraph author’s note for the front of the Avon 1966 edition.   It’s actually really helpful if you are attempting to read Blish’s work or attempting to read Cities in Flight. He writes:

This first volume of Cities in Flight is a prologue to the work as a whole, and hence contains neither any flying cities nor any characters in common with the remaining three volumes.  Instead, it undertakes to show the circumstances under which the two fundamental inventions which made the Okie cities possible were discovered. . . . . We begin in 2018 A.D.. . . .  and the events here cover about two years.  There is a leap of several centuries before Cities in Flight proper begins, and thereafter the action is continuous through the remaining three volumes, all the way to 4004 A.D.

The writing of Cities in Flight occupied me, off and on, from 1948 to 1962, and like many such long projects, the order of composition of its parts wasn’t orderly at all, and was further complicated by the publishing history.

I think that is about as good as an explanation of the chronology of these novels as any.  And it’s authoritative because it’s direct from the author himself.  So, what we have learned so far is that, though this was not an actual novel at first, nor was it the first novel in the series published, you read this one first.

However, you may be disappointed.  (As we science fiction geeks usually are with prequels/prologues, etc.)  Since this particular novel takes place prior to the “big events” in the other novels (which I have not yet read), it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of action and events in the storyline.  This is why I wrestled with giving this novel 2 or 3 stars for it’s rating.  As a prologue, it deserves three full stars.  It does everything a prologue ought to do – including not running on and on longer than it should.  This novel does a solid job of providing the setting; it presents the scientific and political milieu for the year 2018, which sets up the rest of the Cities in Flight storyarc.  Published in the mid-1950s, we are also given an image of rampant McCarthyism and the Blish’s negative view of it.  I have always been rather hateful towards McCarthyism.  It’s, oddly, still alive and well even today and so I sympathize with Blish’s view.

This is the dystopian aspect in the novel.  There is a very clear-cut distinction made between The West and The Soviets.  This is all apropos of the 1950s. But what is surprising and refreshing is that while Blish utilizes this obnoxious us/them dichotomy, he also chooses to simply step outside of it.  This is how, in the novel, McCarthyism (represented by the character MacHinery) is defeated.  The novel tells us that The Soviets (knowingly or unknowingly) have defeated The West – not by overcoming them in military struggle, but by gradually developing the zeitgeist of The West into one similar to The Soviets. i.e. secretive, stagnant, repressive, and full of witch-hunting. There is a lot of identity/alterity philosophy combined with political ideology inherent in this idea that would be great for someone to make a thesis out of.  Blish doesn’t really preach at us at all, though. He just tells us this is what has happened and we calmly step on outside of this paradigm with him.

On Jupiter the reader is treated to the “hard science” of the science fiction side of this prologue story.  There are mathematical equations here. Chemistry diagrams depicting molecular structure.  There’s not a lot of them – but there they are, and Blish makes it seem like he really actually tried to make all of this believable and realistic.  In fact, one of the best things about this novel is the utilization of the scientific properties of ice.  Yes, ice – the frozen state of water, so to speak.  Did you know that ice actually has about fifteen stages of solidity determined by temperature and/or pressure? I feel like I knew some of this in a very vague way – but since I read this novel, my imagination is having a blast thinking about ice.  Anyway, because the phases are relative to pressure/temperature – Blish explores ice on the planet Jupiter, which has crazy temperatures and pressure that can challenge scientists.

Because that is the other really big idea being put forth in this novel.  The state of scientific inquiry under an era of Soviet-ideology/McCarthyism/1950s.  One character (a respected scientist) says that the scientific method no longer works.  Several characters wrestle, throughout the novel, with the problem of whether or not the “really big science experiments/projects” are a thing of the past and are no longer feasible or important.  Where does humanity stand with regard to “gigantic research projects”?  Some of this is political in nature, some of it is economic. Some of it is just plain biological – humans do not live long enough to bother with the gigantic project. So, this novel plays with some of these questions and presents a few tentative, subtle responses.

However, throughout this review, you’ll notice I have not talked about the characters or the action or the events in the novel. Because, really, there is not anything worth saying. While this novel is an excellent prologue, it is clearly a prologue that is solely designed to set up the rest of Cities in Flight.  Nothing really happens in this novel.  The reader will have a strong sense of the story never getting started, never going anywhere, and wondering if there really is a story in there at all.  At the end of the novel – there are some cool ideas and this is obviously an introduction to a future humanity.  So that is why it gets two stars for a rating as novel qua novel.  Ultimately, that’s what I have to give as the final rating, too, since I review novels here – not prologues.

2 stars

Rogue Moon

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrus; Avon; 1974

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys was published in 1960.  It was nominated for the 1961 Hugo Award – but lost to A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller jr.  Generally, it seems I do not rate award-winning science fiction books very highly.  I do wonder if this is because I subconsciously expect awesomeness and therefore raise the bar unconsciously when reading them.  I know some people might suggest that some of these novels are “dated” and that’s why I don’t “like” them, but that’s not the case.  I have no problem with novels being “dated.”  I have had this on my to-be-read list for a trillion billion years and I even started it and made it to page 60.  Then I got aggravated with it and chucked it aside for months and months. Finally, I picked it up again.

I was most interested in the novel not because it was a Hugo nominee, but because of the author.  Budrys is a Lithuanian-American.  This is significant to me. Also, this past year I have been reading a lot of Eastern European writers. For example, Bulgakov, Goncharov, Nabokov, Lem, et al.  I have another novel by Budrys that I intend to read – the fact that I did not love this novel did not put me off of the author, but I can’t say that I was not disappointed with Rogue Moon.

I love the science fiction concept and idea that Budrys wants the story to tell.  I want to have a 400-page novel about it and have it be really good.  However, that seems to be the smallest part of this book, oddly enough. Instead, the novel is filled with the two-dimensional characters who are incredibly egotistical and who like to make speeches in each others’ presence.  There are about four major characters in the novel.  The main two are the daredevil macho man named Al Barker and the sullen scientist Edward Hawks.  Many pages of the book take place at Barker’s mansion. I absolutely abhor all of these scenes and they are what made me drop the book in the first place.

Seriously, what happens is that these egotistical 2D characters lounge around the pool and the house grating on each others nerves and having temper tantrums.  Barker’s girlfriend, Claire Pack, hangs out there.  Much of the novel purports to explore her psychoses – and, as a reader, I disliked her immediately.  She’s wretched.  Now, I know that these scenes are supposed to be some sort of psychological exploration of these characters in the context that they are not the average, normal members of mass society. They are all “screwy” in their own way – so it is supposed to be interesting to see how they interact with each other and what their perspectives are on various topics.  That’s what’s supposed to happen. Instead, I felt like I was at a really hideous pool party wherein only self-centered, immature wackos were invited. Their musings on topics is painful.

The main topic is the concept of man qua man.  What is a man? And further, what is it for a man to die – what is the death of a man?  This is really the whole point of the science fiction in the novel. Sure, the plot is somewhat about a large alien artefact found on the Moon. People enter and explore it, but are inevitably killed for violating the unknown alien rules in force within the structure. But this whole (and really cool) science fiction item is kept very vague and is only a plot device so that the characters can do self-discovery and ruminate on death.

“The thing is, the universe is dying! Bit by bit over the countless billions of years it’s slowly happening. It’s all running down. Some day it’ll stop.  Only one thing in the entire universe grows fuller, and richer, and forces its way uphill. Intelligence – human lives – we’re the only things there are that don’t obey the universal law. . . . But our minds, there’s the precious thing; there’s the phenomenon that has nothing to do with time and space except to use them – to describe to itself the lives our bodies live in the physical Universe.” – pg. 167

That is the best quote, I think, in the novel.  Don’t think that the novel is full of such insight. Sometimes, what seems profundity is really just navel-gazing.  And while the rumination on what man is and how he dies in the universe can be philosophical, I really wanted the science to be there. I wanted to learn about the item on the moon. I wanted to be creeped out by alien technology and to read the scientific insights into how the artefact works.  I wanted to see the humans discover, learn, and conquer.  Instead, I am not entirely sure that they characters even conquer themselves. Maybe a little. I don’t know. The psychological aspects of people who are not the norm do not make good survey samples.

Overall, the novel is simply not what I expected.  There are sections that are tedious and wretched.  There are times when I feel the characters are preachy.  In the end, I think that people who enjoyed this novel did so because they liked the light pseudo-philosophy running through it – and not the science fiction elements.  However, the philosophy itself just isn’t enough for me to give this novel any good marks. The two stars is a gift. I just think it’s better than the 1 star books I’ve read.

2 stars

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick; Mariner Books

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said was first published in 1974 and is the fifth PKD novel that I have read.  Once again, it’s difficult to rate a PKD novel – I want to give it either two or four stars:  so I am giving it three.  This novel was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1974, a Hugo in 1975, and it won the John W. Campbell award in 1975.  Although it was published in 1974, I think that PKD wrote it in 1970.  Regardless, this is one of PKD’s later works.   Based on the five books that I have now read, I think that I prefer PKD’s earlier material.

Like all PKD novels, there is not a lot of background or information on the setting.  It’s the future and the main character is a “six.”   A six is a category of genetically-bred, advanced human.  Why or how is not really relevant to the story and I feel like PKD, as an author, was leaving this option open for himself.  If the other aspects of the novel did not work out so well, he could always find a way to work in the “six” aspect.   Anyway, the main character is Jason Taverner and he is a famous talk-show/variety show host.

Taverner leaves the studio one night alongside his sometimes-squeeze and fellow “six,”  Heather Hart.  As they banter about how old they feel, what the mass public is like, and where they should go, Taverner gets a phone call from a demanding former lover. Taverner detours his vehicle to visit the girl.  They argue and the girl attacks Taverner using some sort of poisonous, parasitic life-form.

The next day, Taverner gains consciousness and finds himself in a seedy hotel in a dreary, low-income part of town. Through some trial and error he discovers, to his horror, that nobody knows who he is, he has disappeared from the TV listings as a celebrity, and his preliminary attempt to obtain any official identification fails.

I am typically against giving away spoilers or surprises and in PKD novels it seems like one really never knows what will happen next. So, I do not want to tell much more of the storyline itself.  The first thing I would like to complain about, however, is that Jason Taverner is not a loveable character.  I really do not know if PKD does this on purpose or not, but I rarely (never?) find his characters to be even likeable. Taverner is pompous, abrupt, and he treats women poorly. Frankly, I have begun to suspect that PKD himself was some degree of a misogynist.

But then, I consider the women that Taverner associates with and I do wonder if maybe they are just not very nice people at all. Heather Hart is probably the best of the bunch and there are a bunch in the novel.  First there is Kathy Nelson – totally insane and unchaste and often creepy.  This is one of the first people that meets the newly-forgotten Jason Taverner. Then he runs off to Ruth Rae’s apartment.  Ruth Rae is an “old friend” and lover that he knew might remember him. Rae lives in a Vegas apartment and she has been married over fifty times. They spend the night and day having sex and getting high.  Rae reminisces about the past, which irritates Taverner.  Taverner at several points is verbally cruel to her, and eventually his presence there allows the police to raid the building and gets them both arrested and dragged to LA.

There are two other women that Taverner meets and uses and is mean toward.  One of these woman is Alys Buckman, the hypersexual and drug-addicted sister of the Police General Felix Buckman.  Felix is monitoring Taverner’s case with the police department.  Felix is another character that I really do not like at all.  After Taverner is hauled in to the precinct and released, Alys finds him and brings him to her house.

Now, if you cannot tell from what I have already written here, I’ll say it explicitly:  this novel is the most “adult” of the novels that I have read by PKD.  When I say adult, I do not mean that it’s porn or that there are graphic descriptions. I am just saying that there are drugs galore, everyone seems hypersexual, and no one in the novel is a particularly good person. These are not nice people and they do some not-nice things.  Hence, I cannot recommend this book to everyone.  Or, actually, the audience is more limited than usual. I do not think that there are many books that everyone can read. But this one is the most limited of all the PKD books I have read.

The ending of the book was good and bad. I am impressed that there was one – an epilogue, in fact, where PKD bothers to write a page or two about how it all turns out.  I often feel the ending of PKD novels are not really his best writing. I think he likes to leave a lot of questions and make the reader feel creeped out.  However, this one has an ending and an epilogue – except I dislike the ending. The whole novel was explained away quickly through the mouth of the coroner to the police general.  And I am not sure that the explanation is not a quick cop-out ending by PKD.

The first half of the book spun its wheels a lot and did not really go anywhere. I kept waiting for the action and thrill of UBIK or Eye in the Sky, but got none of that. I was waiting for something, instead the book spun its wheels with the main character moving from girl to girl to girl.  The second half was shocking at points (the relationship between Felix and Alys), but I do think PKD has done and could do better.  So, there are no likeable characters, there are some icky and shocking elements in the story, and the beginning is slow while the ending is a letdown. Overall, I cannot give this more than three stars. Maybe it’s actually 2.5……

Finally, in 1978 PKD supposedly wrote this article/speech titled “How To Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.”  It’s actually quite lengthy. At points it is witty and insightful, at other times, I swear I want to call bullshit! on PKD.  Is PKD lying? Is he crazy?  I think that’s sort of the point of what he was doing:  making us ask those questions.  However, after reading this novel, I recommend readers to look at that essay because it really has a lot of explanation about PKD’s novel topics. And some good quotes:

I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions.

In the writing of Flow My Tears, back in 1970, there was one unusual event which I realized at the time was not ordinary, was not a part of the regular writing process. I had a dream one night, an especially vivid dream. And when I awoke I found myself under the compulsion—the absolute necessity—of getting the dream into the text of the novel precisely as I had dreamed it. In getting the dream exactly right, I had to do eleven drafts of the final part of the manuscript, until I was satisfied.

3 stars