Calendar 2012, a set on Flickr.
This year's set of photographs for my calendar (= my cheap and easy Christmas present). Not (quite) a stay-cation collection this time, but all UK.
Showing posts with label present. Show all posts
Showing posts with label present. Show all posts
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Saturday, 27 August 2011
A bit more Culture
It's been quite a while since Iain (M.) Banks last had an outing for (probably) his most famous creation, the Culture. But after a non-M. title that was patently science fiction, his book-writing cycle has definitively rolled back into M. territory with Surface Detail, novel number 8 in his Culture oeuvre (for those who're counting).
Opening with the murder, at his hands, of Y'breq, the indentured, and heavily tattooed, "companion" of the malevolent industrialist Veppers, the events of Surface Detail take place against the much grander backdrop of a "War in Heaven". For countless millennia, civilisations have constructed virtual realities in which to pleasurably immerse themselves, but a few have constructed virtual Hells in which punishment is meted out to those who are outcast, for whatever reason, by those societies. But the continued existence of these barbaric torture chambers is being challenged, and a virtual War is being bloodlessly fought to decide the outcome. But the War isn't going well for those who favour abolition and, contrary to the rules agreed upon by both sides, they are considering opening it out into a conflict in the real.
The Culture, who have grudgingly elected not to join the abolitionists, are watching the War from the sidelines with more than a passing interest. Their attention is focused by the unexpected resurrection of Y'breq in a distant Culture starship, and her unsurprising desire for revenge on Veppers, a player at the centre of the War. Meanwhile, Veppers is secretly finessing both sides in the War, promising to deliver destruction of the Hells to the abolitionists, and their continued secret operation to their owners. Alongside these (and other) strands in the real, several others play out in the virtual: academics Prin and Chay have hacked into their society's Hell in order to publicly expose its horrific purpose; meanwhile, Marshal Vatueil fights (and repeatedly dies) for the abolitionists through a series of radically different military campaigns.
As the Culture, as well as several other civilisations, become gradually aware of both Veppers' duplicity and of the plan to spread the War into the real, they are drawn into a quickly-evolving, and deadly, stream of events.
The first thing to say is that, as ever, this was a great read. I raced through its 600 pages, and more-or-less thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It's perhaps not quite as richly baroque a tale as his last Culture outing but, much as with that novel, it still manages to pleasingly embellish the Culture universe. So here we have a slew of new civilisations, Culture-level and below; a considerably fleshed out and detailed virtual plane of existence; and a vast, mothballed system of factories built by a now-absent elder civilisation. Some of these aspects have been touched on in earlier novels (or in Banks' A Few Notes on the Culture), but I certainly hadn't expected a deeper delve into virtual reality to do so via anything like simulated Hells and a "War in Heaven". Chay's journey through Hell stands out as particularly striking. Regular readers can be assured that Banks is still keeping his universe unpredictably fresh, quite a contrast with another blog regular (and Banks wannabe), Neal Asher, who seems, instead, be intent on tying up all of his universe's loose ends.
That said, it's difficult to discern any deep theme in this Culture novel. Previous books have dealt with more weighty issues that (as much as science fiction can) parallel some from our own world, but there's nothing here that seems to fulfil a similar role. Focusing on Y'breq's desire for simple revenge, the novel seems more straightforwardly personal. The portions that deal with wider politics either don't have analogues in our world (at least ones I can perceive), or are too weakly fleshed out for them to be taken seriously. On this latter point, I think Banks missed a trick a bit by so briefly dealing with the politics of the pro-Hell civilisations. That, I suspect, would have been worth pursuing for its parallels with contemporary religious societies (whether Islamic or Christian), and would be right up Banks' street as a card-carrying socialist atheist. But, surprisingly, it doesn't get nearly enough attention.
Also, I am getting a little tired of the degree of hyper-threading in Banks' Culture novels these days. While he's never really told things in an entirely linear or straightforward fashion (The Player of Games comes closest; Use of Weapons is where he uses threads best), his use of a large number of typically loosely connected strands is getting to the point where it over-stretches my memory. It still works here, but it can be quite troublesome remembering who, exactly, all of the strangely-named aliens are, and it's certainly getting difficult to keep track of all of the plot convolutions and political machinations. I certainly lost track of some of the more minor players this time around, and I certainly struggled working out the various allegiances by the end. Banks may just be trying to keep readers on their toes, or perhaps simply illustrating the real complexity of events, but at times I thought he was instead being wilfully obfuscating.
Another curious malaise is that, increasingly, Banks makes his visits to the Culture a little too flippant. In earlier novels, serious events occurred and were discussed seriously, if with dark humour, by serious characters. While this still occurs, I find the tone a lot more uneven. Particularly so with the Culture Minds, which are now often a bit too "blokey" for the kinds of characters that they are (= benevolent, god-like AIs). There were a few places in Surface Detail where I found Banks dawdling a little too close to the line that separates him from the likes of the aforementioned Asher. While it can be enjoyable to read, it mostly just comes across at Banks playing to the gallery, and undercuts any more interesting points that the novel is trying to make (which, being science fiction, it might not be).
There's also a couple of odd conclusions to the novel. The first has the Culture essentially engaging in revenge after steadfastly sticking throughout to its humanitarian position abhorring it. While the Culture has some form on retribution from earlier novels (Look To Windward closes spectacularly on this point), it's done with more purpose and justification than here. While Veppers is deeply unpleasant, and is responsible for quite a number of deaths (including, of course, Y'breq's), his crimes don't seem on quite the right scale. The second is Surface Detail's epilogue which, while pleasing (for reasons I won't go into), is a little bit too much of playing to the fanboys. I liked it, and in fact had suspected it, but I just thought it an unnecessary extra detail that felt like Banks was trying to appropriate some of the fame of a certain previous novel for this one. One of the more distinctive aspects of Banks is that, while revisiting the same universe, he has largely resisted the temptation to return to previously crowd-pleasing settings or characters - long may it continue.
Anyway, notwithstanding my criticisms, which serve mostly to quibble about Surface Detail's ranking in the Culture pantheon, I'd thoroughly recommend the novel to Banks fans. Not the best of introductions to the Culture, and certainly not the most significant of them, but a very enjoyable tale, solidly told.
The Culture, who have grudgingly elected not to join the abolitionists, are watching the War from the sidelines with more than a passing interest. Their attention is focused by the unexpected resurrection of Y'breq in a distant Culture starship, and her unsurprising desire for revenge on Veppers, a player at the centre of the War. Meanwhile, Veppers is secretly finessing both sides in the War, promising to deliver destruction of the Hells to the abolitionists, and their continued secret operation to their owners. Alongside these (and other) strands in the real, several others play out in the virtual: academics Prin and Chay have hacked into their society's Hell in order to publicly expose its horrific purpose; meanwhile, Marshal Vatueil fights (and repeatedly dies) for the abolitionists through a series of radically different military campaigns.
As the Culture, as well as several other civilisations, become gradually aware of both Veppers' duplicity and of the plan to spread the War into the real, they are drawn into a quickly-evolving, and deadly, stream of events.
The first thing to say is that, as ever, this was a great read. I raced through its 600 pages, and more-or-less thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It's perhaps not quite as richly baroque a tale as his last Culture outing but, much as with that novel, it still manages to pleasingly embellish the Culture universe. So here we have a slew of new civilisations, Culture-level and below; a considerably fleshed out and detailed virtual plane of existence; and a vast, mothballed system of factories built by a now-absent elder civilisation. Some of these aspects have been touched on in earlier novels (or in Banks' A Few Notes on the Culture), but I certainly hadn't expected a deeper delve into virtual reality to do so via anything like simulated Hells and a "War in Heaven". Chay's journey through Hell stands out as particularly striking. Regular readers can be assured that Banks is still keeping his universe unpredictably fresh, quite a contrast with another blog regular (and Banks wannabe), Neal Asher, who seems, instead, be intent on tying up all of his universe's loose ends.
That said, it's difficult to discern any deep theme in this Culture novel. Previous books have dealt with more weighty issues that (as much as science fiction can) parallel some from our own world, but there's nothing here that seems to fulfil a similar role. Focusing on Y'breq's desire for simple revenge, the novel seems more straightforwardly personal. The portions that deal with wider politics either don't have analogues in our world (at least ones I can perceive), or are too weakly fleshed out for them to be taken seriously. On this latter point, I think Banks missed a trick a bit by so briefly dealing with the politics of the pro-Hell civilisations. That, I suspect, would have been worth pursuing for its parallels with contemporary religious societies (whether Islamic or Christian), and would be right up Banks' street as a card-carrying socialist atheist. But, surprisingly, it doesn't get nearly enough attention.
Also, I am getting a little tired of the degree of hyper-threading in Banks' Culture novels these days. While he's never really told things in an entirely linear or straightforward fashion (The Player of Games comes closest; Use of Weapons is where he uses threads best), his use of a large number of typically loosely connected strands is getting to the point where it over-stretches my memory. It still works here, but it can be quite troublesome remembering who, exactly, all of the strangely-named aliens are, and it's certainly getting difficult to keep track of all of the plot convolutions and political machinations. I certainly lost track of some of the more minor players this time around, and I certainly struggled working out the various allegiances by the end. Banks may just be trying to keep readers on their toes, or perhaps simply illustrating the real complexity of events, but at times I thought he was instead being wilfully obfuscating.
Another curious malaise is that, increasingly, Banks makes his visits to the Culture a little too flippant. In earlier novels, serious events occurred and were discussed seriously, if with dark humour, by serious characters. While this still occurs, I find the tone a lot more uneven. Particularly so with the Culture Minds, which are now often a bit too "blokey" for the kinds of characters that they are (= benevolent, god-like AIs). There were a few places in Surface Detail where I found Banks dawdling a little too close to the line that separates him from the likes of the aforementioned Asher. While it can be enjoyable to read, it mostly just comes across at Banks playing to the gallery, and undercuts any more interesting points that the novel is trying to make (which, being science fiction, it might not be).
There's also a couple of odd conclusions to the novel. The first has the Culture essentially engaging in revenge after steadfastly sticking throughout to its humanitarian position abhorring it. While the Culture has some form on retribution from earlier novels (Look To Windward closes spectacularly on this point), it's done with more purpose and justification than here. While Veppers is deeply unpleasant, and is responsible for quite a number of deaths (including, of course, Y'breq's), his crimes don't seem on quite the right scale. The second is Surface Detail's epilogue which, while pleasing (for reasons I won't go into), is a little bit too much of playing to the fanboys. I liked it, and in fact had suspected it, but I just thought it an unnecessary extra detail that felt like Banks was trying to appropriate some of the fame of a certain previous novel for this one. One of the more distinctive aspects of Banks is that, while revisiting the same universe, he has largely resisted the temptation to return to previously crowd-pleasing settings or characters - long may it continue.
Anyway, notwithstanding my criticisms, which serve mostly to quibble about Surface Detail's ranking in the Culture pantheon, I'd thoroughly recommend the novel to Banks fans. Not the best of introductions to the Culture, and certainly not the most significant of them, but a very enjoyable tale, solidly told.
Saturday, 9 July 2011
The Lacuna
Largely because of the adulatory awe in which I hold her, I've been holding off reading Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, The Lacuna, which I actually received as a present from C at the end of 2009. Partly because its subject matter (of which, more below) didn't immediately grab me; partly because in my last post about her, I feared her work may peaked; and partly because I didn't want to exhaust her repertoire yet again. Irrational reasons for sure, but enough to stall me for a good while.
Beginning with a portion from an abandoned autobiography by a (fictional) historical novelist, Harrison Shepherd, The Lacuna is a chronological collage of diary entries, personal letters and newspaper clippings drawn from the life of the writer. Organised by his stenographer, Mrs. Violet Brown, and published 50 years after his disappearance, in part from material that he had ordered her to destroy, the book follows Shepherd's life as he travels back and forth between Mexico and the United States between the late 1920s and the 1950s.
His early years are somewhat itinerant, as he is trailed around an exotically tropical Mexico by a mother in thrall to her own heart's desires. Here, he first encounters the famous (and communist) painter Diego Rivera, and is drawn into Rivera's household because of his skill in preparing the plaster used in the painter's renowned frescos. This introduces him to Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he begins a lifelong friendship, and who encourages his own budding artistic interests. But as Rivera's fame spreads it draws him away to big-paying clients in the US, and Shepherd finds himself unemployed.
Before long he, too, is drawn to the US where his emotionally-distant father puts him through private school. Among other events, there Shepherd becomes a spectator to the brutal crushing of the Bonus Army, a Depression-era protest, by the authorities. Returning again to Mexico, he renews his friendship with Kahlo and Rivera, and becomes part of their household as a cook. Another guest of the artists is the noted revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, on the run from Stalin's tyrannical repression in Russia, and for whom Shepherd becomes secretary, and later a friend. But the persecution by Stalin's agents, which ultimately proves fatal, as well as Trotsky's ill-judged affair with Kahlo, makes for disruptive living, and before long Shepherd washes back up in the US.
There, after being denied a combat role in WW2 because of his "sexual indifference to the female of the species", he lands himself a government job moving valuable artwork during the conflict. He also finally begins work as a historical novelist, drawing on his knowledge of Mexico to craft swashbuckling novels that weave subversive modern themes into tales about the destruction of pre-Columbian civilisations. The success of these works, eagerly communicated with Kahlo, draws undesired attention, including a coterie of female fans eager to get to know this mysterious bachelor better. But this is the time of HUAC, and his public profile, and Red-tinged past, bring him to the attention of more significant figures. Though he acquits himself well in his appearance before HUAC, Shepherd's career is mortally wounded, and he finds both his friends and his publisher deserting him. Escaping the US with Mrs. Brown, he returns to Mexico and to a favoured coastal locale from his youth, where, in a seeming swimming accident, he finally disappears from view.
Oops. I wasn't intending traipsing through the entire plot of the novel there. But it does have a lot of back-and-forthing that makes summarising it in a few lines difficult. Particularly for someone obsessive about getting things down "right". And especially in a novel that stacks so much (political, artistic, historical) onto its plate. Anyway, The Lacuna is a difficult book to give a straight opinion of. Though it only really follows the life of a single character, Harrison Shepherd is something of a Zelig-like figure whose personal history is richly populated with fairly significant events in, and figures from, the 20th century. As such, there's a lot going on, and while some sections of the novel may not entirely appeal, it's difficult to not find something enjoyable or interesting within its pages.
It's certainly Kingsolver's most overtly political book. Previous novels have had America's less admirable actions in Central America and Africa as distant backdrops, but here Kingsolver puts real historical figures and ideas front of stage, and isn't in the least afraid to cast a favourable light on those that are viewed negatively by the establishment and large fractions of the public. So, we have quite an impassioned defence of Trotsky and the flavour of communism that he favoured, together with a critical take on Stalin's brutal and dictatorial communism, and one that isn't slow to point out that America's friends/enemies in one decade easily flip to enemies/friends in another depending upon what's currently most expedient. It helps, of course, that I largely share her view of history and ideology on these points.
Strangely, though the ideas in the novel are made more concrete by attaching them to the real historical figures with which they are associated, I found that this didn't work in its favour. For me, this made the novel too obviously didactic. Ordinarily in novels, fictional stand-ins for both real characters and situations are used, and the novelist can more gently slip thoughts into the reader's head. And, hitherto, this is exactly what Kingsolver has done in her earlier novels. But here the reader is left in no doubt in either the subjects that Kingsolver is addressing, or her opinions of them. I don't think this is necessarily a lesser approach, but it doesn't work as well for me.
Of course, by putting everything front and centre, the novel does have the advantage of leaving the reader in no doubt about Kingsolver's views of America's treatment of popular socialism. She is clearly, and justifiably, angry about the unyielding demonisation of socialist ideas in 20th century America, and about the deeply repellent consequences of unthinking support for such efforts as HUAC. As such, it's clear that one of the aims of The Lacuna is to get her readers to actually stop, think and re-evaluate socialism and other marginalised ideas, rather than simply lazily misremember them as their Red Scare caricatures. Along the way, she's careful to separate ideology from history, so she's no apologist for how socialism panned out in the Soviet Union, and through dramatising the Bonus Army is keen to remind readers of America's own socialist movements. Overall, it's an interesting message for an American novelist to try to sell in the US!
One aspect of the novel that I never got a definitive handle on was what the "lacuna" of the title actually refers to. It could be interpreted (or misinterpreted) in a number of quite different ways. For instance, the way in which Shepherd, though he is at the centre of the novel, largely eludes understanding. We largely see things through his eyes, but he preserves a degree of transparency throughout the novel. Alternatively, it could refer to the lacuna in our collective memory of socialism's role as a progressive force in 20th century politics. In the present day, socialism has been tightly bound to the evils of the Soviet Union and simply thrown over the side into the depths of history. The idea that it may represent, and at times did represent, a progressive force for good is largely viewed incredulously. Another more straightforward interpretation is merely that it's the literal lacuna into which Shepherd finally disappears. Most likely, all of these interpretations have something to them, but I'm still curious and would be interested to hear other theories.
By way of a passing observation, The Lacuna reminded me of William Boyd's not-dissimilar 20th century novel, Any Human Heart. That, too, followed a novelist character through his life, and inveigled him into being a participant or witness to major events. It's also interesting to contrast the two novels. While Kingsolver's novel is a patchwork of diary entries, newspaper clippings and an aborted biography, Boyd constrains his novel to the diary format, and uses this to (convincingly) convey the changing voice of the narrator throughout his life. A more significant departure is that Boyd's novel is largely apolitical (though favourable towards progressive movements), and instead focuses on the personal life of its narrator, Logan Mountstuart. As noted above, Shepherd's personal life is very much secondary to the political waters that carry it through the 20th century. I suspect that trying to tackle both the personal and the political in the same novel, at least to the degree that both of these novels have, is liable to end in a pompous, over-extended failure that satisfies no-one.
Overall, to wrap things up, an excellent read. But (and debasing things somewhat) much as with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Kingsolver's earlier works cast a long and deep shadow over this one. The Lacuna is more significant than Kingsolver's earliest novels, but it's never going to be easy for her future works to stand proud of The Poisonwood Bible. But I'll still definitely be looking out for them!
His early years are somewhat itinerant, as he is trailed around an exotically tropical Mexico by a mother in thrall to her own heart's desires. Here, he first encounters the famous (and communist) painter Diego Rivera, and is drawn into Rivera's household because of his skill in preparing the plaster used in the painter's renowned frescos. This introduces him to Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he begins a lifelong friendship, and who encourages his own budding artistic interests. But as Rivera's fame spreads it draws him away to big-paying clients in the US, and Shepherd finds himself unemployed.
Before long he, too, is drawn to the US where his emotionally-distant father puts him through private school. Among other events, there Shepherd becomes a spectator to the brutal crushing of the Bonus Army, a Depression-era protest, by the authorities. Returning again to Mexico, he renews his friendship with Kahlo and Rivera, and becomes part of their household as a cook. Another guest of the artists is the noted revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, on the run from Stalin's tyrannical repression in Russia, and for whom Shepherd becomes secretary, and later a friend. But the persecution by Stalin's agents, which ultimately proves fatal, as well as Trotsky's ill-judged affair with Kahlo, makes for disruptive living, and before long Shepherd washes back up in the US.
There, after being denied a combat role in WW2 because of his "sexual indifference to the female of the species", he lands himself a government job moving valuable artwork during the conflict. He also finally begins work as a historical novelist, drawing on his knowledge of Mexico to craft swashbuckling novels that weave subversive modern themes into tales about the destruction of pre-Columbian civilisations. The success of these works, eagerly communicated with Kahlo, draws undesired attention, including a coterie of female fans eager to get to know this mysterious bachelor better. But this is the time of HUAC, and his public profile, and Red-tinged past, bring him to the attention of more significant figures. Though he acquits himself well in his appearance before HUAC, Shepherd's career is mortally wounded, and he finds both his friends and his publisher deserting him. Escaping the US with Mrs. Brown, he returns to Mexico and to a favoured coastal locale from his youth, where, in a seeming swimming accident, he finally disappears from view.
Oops. I wasn't intending traipsing through the entire plot of the novel there. But it does have a lot of back-and-forthing that makes summarising it in a few lines difficult. Particularly for someone obsessive about getting things down "right". And especially in a novel that stacks so much (political, artistic, historical) onto its plate. Anyway, The Lacuna is a difficult book to give a straight opinion of. Though it only really follows the life of a single character, Harrison Shepherd is something of a Zelig-like figure whose personal history is richly populated with fairly significant events in, and figures from, the 20th century. As such, there's a lot going on, and while some sections of the novel may not entirely appeal, it's difficult to not find something enjoyable or interesting within its pages.
It's certainly Kingsolver's most overtly political book. Previous novels have had America's less admirable actions in Central America and Africa as distant backdrops, but here Kingsolver puts real historical figures and ideas front of stage, and isn't in the least afraid to cast a favourable light on those that are viewed negatively by the establishment and large fractions of the public. So, we have quite an impassioned defence of Trotsky and the flavour of communism that he favoured, together with a critical take on Stalin's brutal and dictatorial communism, and one that isn't slow to point out that America's friends/enemies in one decade easily flip to enemies/friends in another depending upon what's currently most expedient. It helps, of course, that I largely share her view of history and ideology on these points.
Strangely, though the ideas in the novel are made more concrete by attaching them to the real historical figures with which they are associated, I found that this didn't work in its favour. For me, this made the novel too obviously didactic. Ordinarily in novels, fictional stand-ins for both real characters and situations are used, and the novelist can more gently slip thoughts into the reader's head. And, hitherto, this is exactly what Kingsolver has done in her earlier novels. But here the reader is left in no doubt in either the subjects that Kingsolver is addressing, or her opinions of them. I don't think this is necessarily a lesser approach, but it doesn't work as well for me.
Of course, by putting everything front and centre, the novel does have the advantage of leaving the reader in no doubt about Kingsolver's views of America's treatment of popular socialism. She is clearly, and justifiably, angry about the unyielding demonisation of socialist ideas in 20th century America, and about the deeply repellent consequences of unthinking support for such efforts as HUAC. As such, it's clear that one of the aims of The Lacuna is to get her readers to actually stop, think and re-evaluate socialism and other marginalised ideas, rather than simply lazily misremember them as their Red Scare caricatures. Along the way, she's careful to separate ideology from history, so she's no apologist for how socialism panned out in the Soviet Union, and through dramatising the Bonus Army is keen to remind readers of America's own socialist movements. Overall, it's an interesting message for an American novelist to try to sell in the US!
One aspect of the novel that I never got a definitive handle on was what the "lacuna" of the title actually refers to. It could be interpreted (or misinterpreted) in a number of quite different ways. For instance, the way in which Shepherd, though he is at the centre of the novel, largely eludes understanding. We largely see things through his eyes, but he preserves a degree of transparency throughout the novel. Alternatively, it could refer to the lacuna in our collective memory of socialism's role as a progressive force in 20th century politics. In the present day, socialism has been tightly bound to the evils of the Soviet Union and simply thrown over the side into the depths of history. The idea that it may represent, and at times did represent, a progressive force for good is largely viewed incredulously. Another more straightforward interpretation is merely that it's the literal lacuna into which Shepherd finally disappears. Most likely, all of these interpretations have something to them, but I'm still curious and would be interested to hear other theories.
By way of a passing observation, The Lacuna reminded me of William Boyd's not-dissimilar 20th century novel, Any Human Heart. That, too, followed a novelist character through his life, and inveigled him into being a participant or witness to major events. It's also interesting to contrast the two novels. While Kingsolver's novel is a patchwork of diary entries, newspaper clippings and an aborted biography, Boyd constrains his novel to the diary format, and uses this to (convincingly) convey the changing voice of the narrator throughout his life. A more significant departure is that Boyd's novel is largely apolitical (though favourable towards progressive movements), and instead focuses on the personal life of its narrator, Logan Mountstuart. As noted above, Shepherd's personal life is very much secondary to the political waters that carry it through the 20th century. I suspect that trying to tackle both the personal and the political in the same novel, at least to the degree that both of these novels have, is liable to end in a pompous, over-extended failure that satisfies no-one.
Overall, to wrap things up, an excellent read. But (and debasing things somewhat) much as with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Kingsolver's earlier works cast a long and deep shadow over this one. The Lacuna is more significant than Kingsolver's earliest novels, but it's never going to be easy for her future works to stand proud of The Poisonwood Bible. But I'll still definitely be looking out for them!
Monday, 21 February 2011
Tales from a favourite city
Not long before I moved to England and started at the University of Warwick, I spent about a week in San Francisco. It was at the end of a spell working in Los Angeles, and I was taken there (and back!) by one of my best friends. As my experience of Californian cities up to that point was largely the sprawling mess that is LA, I had a great time (though I will always love LA). Nestled around the Bay, SF was much more clearly a city to my mind, with a well-defined centre, and an easy-going ambience that largely eluded its southerly sister. Having enjoyed my visit so much, and facing down the barrel of a dismal English winter, I was overjoyed when a new drama set in SF started on TV. As well as reminding me of somewhere dear to my heart, Tales of the City pleasingly warmed the cockles of my liberal heart, with its humane stories of (usually) nice people who just so happened to be diverse in the sexual preferences department.
So, flash forward to the present day, I was rather pleased to pull Armistead Maupin's latest installment in his long-running series out of my Christmas stocking. But would Mary Ann in Autumn be able to stand up to the rose-tinted nostalgia I have for the now-distant TV series?
Set shortly after the 2008 Presidential Election, the novel is structured into four strands that follow the characters of Mary Ann, the straight heroine of the original novel and TV series; Ben, the husband of Mary Ann's old friend (and fellow TotC alumnus) Mouse; Jake, an employee of Mouse and housemate of TotC's now-elderly Mrs. Madrigal, who is preparing to be transgendered to a man; and Shawna, Mary Ann's long-abandoned step-daughter, now a sex-blogger living in San Francisco.
Fleeing her disintegrating marriage, Mary Ann has returned to San Francisco to visit Mouse, her oldest friend, to whom she reveals a recent diagnosis of uterine cancer. Rallying to her aid, Mouse fixes her up with a local lesbian surgeon, while Ben acquaints her with facebook. Unexpectedly taking a shine to it, Mary Ann is pleased to encounter both old friends and fans of her east coast TV work. However, one fan, Fogbound One, appears to know secrets from her past that she had long buried. Distracted by Mouse and Ben, and by her treatment, Mary Ann ignores this interloper, but his interest in her provokes some climactic revelations.
In parallel, Ben is gradually adjusting to married life with Mouse, against the backdrop of California's striking down of gay marriage. Though initially jealous of the close relationship between Mouse and Mary Ann, he gradually warms to her and her dramatics. His regular outings with his dog also introduce him to an old loner, Cliff, with whom he gradually forges a bond, but whose personal tragedies trigger a rapid distancing by Ben.
Meanwhile, Jake is awaiting the completion of his gender-reassignment surgery, and has begun living as a man. Meeting Jonah, an attractive Mormon missionary in town to support Prop. 8, Jake finds his interest piqued even as he is repelled by Jonah's religious homophobia. But despite this faith, the interest is not one way, and Jonah find himself attracted to Jake, though he remains deeply conflicted about his nature.
Also not long back in San Francisco, Shawna is casting around for material for her blog, and debating whether she should use her own experiences with her performance artist boyfriend, Otto. Accidentally crossing paths with a homeless woman, Shawna is intrigued by her grim humour but hopeless situation. Determined to find out more about her life, Shawna co-opts the assistance of Otto and tracks the woman, Leia, to a destitute and dangerous part of town. But Leia's lifestyle has fatally wounded her and Shawna finds herself watching on in the last chapter of the homeless woman's life. Still curious about how Leia's life turned this way, she investigates with what little information Leia was able to pass on before dying. This turns up an estranged husband and, ultimately, a hidden past that connects back to Mary Ann.
It's an interesting novel to rate, this one. I certainly enjoyed it, though largely because it was a like meeting up with an old friend. A lot of time has elapsed since the events of TofC, and the overlapping characters have been pretty busy. Mary Ann, for instance, seems to have had a number of marriages, though all child-less, as well as a career on television. So the novel served, to me at least, as a pleasurable catch-up for the events of the intervening 6 novels. I actually quite enjoyed hearing about what Mary Ann and Mouse had been doing, especially in such a condensed form.
In fact, that the novel includes so much history almost suggests that Maupin intends the novel to appeal to first-time visitors to Barbary Lane (or to delinquent visitors like myself who've been out of contact for decades). However, to anyone who's never seen the TV series, or who has never read any of the other novels, this book is liable to be an extremely dull read. Or possibly even an infuriating one, especially when the novel's climax stretches back to the events of the first novel. For me, this wasn't a problem at all, since my experience of the series is just that first book (and then only the TV version). But new readers are not likely to appreciate snatching only brief mentions of characters and events that they know nothing about but which are necessary to fully enjoy the novel.
There's also no escaping the fact that the novel is a pretty feather-light read. Though it has its dark moments, it's essentially a series of rather comfortable, and sometimes comforting, tales about old friends, juggling relationships and, well, changing gender. Which, as I've said already, I enjoyed. But it isn't anywhere near as ground-breaking as Maupin's first visit to Barbary Lane, which opened a window into the gay scene for those outside it (at least, it did for me). Of course, I don't suppose that it's meant to be, but the cultural significance of the first book does cast something of a long shadow.
Still, if nothing else, it's provided a spur to look back to the earlier book. I don't think I'm done with Mary Ann just yet.
So, flash forward to the present day, I was rather pleased to pull Armistead Maupin's latest installment in his long-running series out of my Christmas stocking. But would Mary Ann in Autumn be able to stand up to the rose-tinted nostalgia I have for the now-distant TV series?
Fleeing her disintegrating marriage, Mary Ann has returned to San Francisco to visit Mouse, her oldest friend, to whom she reveals a recent diagnosis of uterine cancer. Rallying to her aid, Mouse fixes her up with a local lesbian surgeon, while Ben acquaints her with facebook. Unexpectedly taking a shine to it, Mary Ann is pleased to encounter both old friends and fans of her east coast TV work. However, one fan, Fogbound One, appears to know secrets from her past that she had long buried. Distracted by Mouse and Ben, and by her treatment, Mary Ann ignores this interloper, but his interest in her provokes some climactic revelations.
In parallel, Ben is gradually adjusting to married life with Mouse, against the backdrop of California's striking down of gay marriage. Though initially jealous of the close relationship between Mouse and Mary Ann, he gradually warms to her and her dramatics. His regular outings with his dog also introduce him to an old loner, Cliff, with whom he gradually forges a bond, but whose personal tragedies trigger a rapid distancing by Ben.
Meanwhile, Jake is awaiting the completion of his gender-reassignment surgery, and has begun living as a man. Meeting Jonah, an attractive Mormon missionary in town to support Prop. 8, Jake finds his interest piqued even as he is repelled by Jonah's religious homophobia. But despite this faith, the interest is not one way, and Jonah find himself attracted to Jake, though he remains deeply conflicted about his nature.
Also not long back in San Francisco, Shawna is casting around for material for her blog, and debating whether she should use her own experiences with her performance artist boyfriend, Otto. Accidentally crossing paths with a homeless woman, Shawna is intrigued by her grim humour but hopeless situation. Determined to find out more about her life, Shawna co-opts the assistance of Otto and tracks the woman, Leia, to a destitute and dangerous part of town. But Leia's lifestyle has fatally wounded her and Shawna finds herself watching on in the last chapter of the homeless woman's life. Still curious about how Leia's life turned this way, she investigates with what little information Leia was able to pass on before dying. This turns up an estranged husband and, ultimately, a hidden past that connects back to Mary Ann.
It's an interesting novel to rate, this one. I certainly enjoyed it, though largely because it was a like meeting up with an old friend. A lot of time has elapsed since the events of TofC, and the overlapping characters have been pretty busy. Mary Ann, for instance, seems to have had a number of marriages, though all child-less, as well as a career on television. So the novel served, to me at least, as a pleasurable catch-up for the events of the intervening 6 novels. I actually quite enjoyed hearing about what Mary Ann and Mouse had been doing, especially in such a condensed form.
In fact, that the novel includes so much history almost suggests that Maupin intends the novel to appeal to first-time visitors to Barbary Lane (or to delinquent visitors like myself who've been out of contact for decades). However, to anyone who's never seen the TV series, or who has never read any of the other novels, this book is liable to be an extremely dull read. Or possibly even an infuriating one, especially when the novel's climax stretches back to the events of the first novel. For me, this wasn't a problem at all, since my experience of the series is just that first book (and then only the TV version). But new readers are not likely to appreciate snatching only brief mentions of characters and events that they know nothing about but which are necessary to fully enjoy the novel.
There's also no escaping the fact that the novel is a pretty feather-light read. Though it has its dark moments, it's essentially a series of rather comfortable, and sometimes comforting, tales about old friends, juggling relationships and, well, changing gender. Which, as I've said already, I enjoyed. But it isn't anywhere near as ground-breaking as Maupin's first visit to Barbary Lane, which opened a window into the gay scene for those outside it (at least, it did for me). Of course, I don't suppose that it's meant to be, but the cultural significance of the first book does cast something of a long shadow.
Still, if nothing else, it's provided a spur to look back to the earlier book. I don't think I'm done with Mary Ann just yet.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
From science to science fiction
There's a long, and frequently noble, tradition of scientists getting imaginative on the side and cranking out works of science fiction alongside their formal research. Some of the genre's most significant writers in the 20th century, such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, have done exactly this. And the tradition continues in the present day with authors such as Gregory Benford and (blog-favourite) Alastair Reynolds, and in the science journal Nature's Futures column.
Less well-remembered for his science fiction (at least by me), surprisingly so given his status as a scientist, is the Yorkshire-born astronomer and mathematician, Fred Hoyle. Known today largely for his pioneering work on nucleosynthesis and his dismissive christening of the "big bang", he also took time out to write science fiction, and C was kind enough to buy me one of his works, The Black Cloud, for my birthday. Curiously, although Hoyle's pronouncements on evolutionary biology feature as a recurring target in the books of Richard Dawkins, the latter is also a fan of his science fiction, and contributes an afterword to this edition.
Set in the then-future of 1964, the novel begins in California, where a graduate student looking for variable stars using successive photographic plates finds a patch of stars in the sky that simultaneously wink out. Further investigation using older plates of the same region of the sky finds that something is blotting out distant stars, and that this object is travelling towards our solar system. Meanwhile, over in Britain, an amateur astronomer looking at the outer planets finds them to be slightly displaced from their predicted orbits. After initial scepticism is dispelled by further observations, scientists calculate the position and size of the mass responsible, then contact their American colleagues to confirm its existence and nature.
Realising the enormous significance of their separate findings, the British and American scientists meet to consolidate their work and to forecast the path of this unidentified object through the solar system. Though their predictions are incomplete, they suggest that the Earth may be "blacked out" for a month as the diffuse "cloud" passes through the solar system. During this time, sunlight will be completely blocked, and temperatures will rise or fall dependent on the ambient temperature of the cloud. With only 18 months until the cloud passes by the Earth, both groups of scientists endeavour to persuade their respective governments of its significance, and the need to both improve observation of the cloud, and to put measures in place to save lives during the "blackout".
Aided by a scientifically literate government advisor, the British scientists are successful in their persuasive efforts, and a research centre-cum-shelter is established in Yorkshire. Here, further work refines the estimated path of the cloud, and determines its effects on the climate of the Earth. However, as the cloud continues to approach the Earth, its path deviates from that expected, and it appears to settle into orbit around the Sun. This causes significant, and deadly, consequences on Earth, with widespread crop failure and mass human mortality. Though the British scientists are baffled by the cloud's behaviour, they continue to study it and gradually refine their predictions of its future and, more importantly, that of the Earth.
However, during routine probing of the cloud's density with radio waves, repeatable patterns of interference occur in which the cloud appears to "respond" by blocking signals. To the incredulity of his colleagues, the lead British scientist proposes that the cloud is intelligent, and attempts to communicate with it by broadcasting the contents of an encyclopaedia at it. To the surprise of most of the scientists, this elicits a response from the cloud, and a dialogue begins. Through this, the scientists learn of the cloud's ancient and distant origin, of it being just one of a vast number of similar intelligences, and of its surprise that something as dense and unpromising as a planet could produce and nurture intelligent life. As news of the cloud's nature spreads to other governments, several take military action against it for the calamity caused, launching nuclear weapons that, after a warning from the British scientists, are batted back toward their launch sites by the cloud. While this strains the relationship with the cloud, it comes to understand the alien division of authority on Earth.
Then, almost as swiftly as it arrived, the cloud announces that, contrary to its initial plan to orbit the Sun for years, it is to depart for another star. A distant "eureka!" moment by one of its fellow intelligences requires immediate investigation. However, in leaving, the cloud arranges for its passage to disrupt the Earth's climate as little as possible. The British scientists, stunned that they will now be unable to quiz the cloud on matters of science, scramble to obtain a primer from the cloud. However, the cloud warns them that its understanding of the universe is too sophisticated to convey easily or safely, and in pressing on, two of the scientific team, including its leader, succumb to the "overload" of information from the cloud. The novel concludes with a descendant of the scientific team passing on the subsequently suppressed knowledge of the cloud's intelligence, in the hope that later generations might try to contact it.
Whew, I seem to have gotten a bit carried away there, and have done the whole plotline for once. Anyway, was a giant of science also a giant of science fiction? Yes and no. Overall it's a pretty good yarn, told pretty well. For almost all of the book Hoyle does a great job gradually ramping up the story with logical and scientifically sensible steps forward. If there's a weakness, it's that the cloud's true nature is revealed really rather late in the novel, leaving this most important revelation relatively few pages to be covered in. While it means that Hoyle is able to conclude with the cloud's mysterious nature largely intact, the latter portion of the novel does seem a little rushed relative to the carefully-paced first two-thirds. Especially so given Hoyle's deus ex machina that sees the cloud suddenly decide to leave our solar system. This does make for a glimmer of an interesting insight into the activities of the cloud intelligences, but it also seems like a barefaced drive to wrap up the novel.
Another angle that's enjoyable is Hoyle's portrait of post-war science and the (exclusively male) scientists who populate it. Though things have changed since then, it's still a recognisable place to me, if a little more slowly-paced (and patronising to women). Hoyle also does a nice job of squeezing some science into the tale without the novel reading like it's artlessly plagiarised a textbook. So we get introductions to studying star variability, a stealthy primer on orbital mechanics and some rough-and-ready climatology as the cloud gradually approaches the Earth. There are also some really clever points made along the way like, for instance, when the idea of communicating with the cloud is first mooted. Some of the scientists rightly question whether they'll be able to translate its messages, but the lead scientist notes that, if the cloud is as intelligent as he supposes, it can easily make itself understood to them rather than the other way round.
Aspects that are more unexpected are how easily the scientists are able to set themselves up as an autonomous community that largely escapes government control. It may just be that I've read too many books, and seen too many films, in which the scientists are tightly reined-in by heavy-handed government authorities. And I didn't entirely buy the "brain overload" thread at the end of the novel. Something as intelligent as the cloud, an entity that quickly comes to understand humanity, would surely be able to give a dummy's guide to its scientific understanding rather than presenting it in one big chunk that melts brains. This felt like a cheesy "beyond the ken of man" moment from some 1950s B-movie.
One final point I can't let slip passed is the characterisation. It's not exactly a story that requires finely-detailed characters, but Hoyle's scientists are largely distinguishable from one another, even if they are cut a bit from the same "can-do-spirit" cloth. And he does fumble a bit with the non-scientist characters, who seem to be sketched in more as comic relief at times. His lead scientist, while painted as highly intelligent, isn't made particularly likeable. Hoyle seems happy to have someone the reader struggles a bit to empathise with. Another interesting thing, which is very much of its time, is the belief of the characters (= Hoyle) that humanity's future would best be served by a technocracy of intelligent (male) scientists. In part, this is conveyed passively by the novel, as the scientists amusingly "get one over" on the government when setting up their remote base. But the characters are occasionally more vocal in articulating this view, something that would seem very odd in this day and age. These days, I think that most scientists, while happy to point out endless government failures to pay attention, would baulk at the idea of putting themselves in power. While chastising them, I think scientists now better appreciate the difficulty that governments face in satisfying both scientific concerns and public interest.
Overall, it's easy to recommend the book. Both for its science fiction aspects, but also for how it portrays life in science in the 1950s. The latter I'd not expected Hoyle to make so interesting.
P.S. I forgot to note that, when the cloud explains its great age in the novel, Hoyle can't resist taking the opportunity to bash the big bang, then a relatively new idea but subsequently his lifelong bête noire. While I already knew of Hoyle's misgivings, it was still amusing to see him taking such a scientific pot shot in his first novel.
Less well-remembered for his science fiction (at least by me), surprisingly so given his status as a scientist, is the Yorkshire-born astronomer and mathematician, Fred Hoyle. Known today largely for his pioneering work on nucleosynthesis and his dismissive christening of the "big bang", he also took time out to write science fiction, and C was kind enough to buy me one of his works, The Black Cloud, for my birthday. Curiously, although Hoyle's pronouncements on evolutionary biology feature as a recurring target in the books of Richard Dawkins, the latter is also a fan of his science fiction, and contributes an afterword to this edition.
Realising the enormous significance of their separate findings, the British and American scientists meet to consolidate their work and to forecast the path of this unidentified object through the solar system. Though their predictions are incomplete, they suggest that the Earth may be "blacked out" for a month as the diffuse "cloud" passes through the solar system. During this time, sunlight will be completely blocked, and temperatures will rise or fall dependent on the ambient temperature of the cloud. With only 18 months until the cloud passes by the Earth, both groups of scientists endeavour to persuade their respective governments of its significance, and the need to both improve observation of the cloud, and to put measures in place to save lives during the "blackout".
Aided by a scientifically literate government advisor, the British scientists are successful in their persuasive efforts, and a research centre-cum-shelter is established in Yorkshire. Here, further work refines the estimated path of the cloud, and determines its effects on the climate of the Earth. However, as the cloud continues to approach the Earth, its path deviates from that expected, and it appears to settle into orbit around the Sun. This causes significant, and deadly, consequences on Earth, with widespread crop failure and mass human mortality. Though the British scientists are baffled by the cloud's behaviour, they continue to study it and gradually refine their predictions of its future and, more importantly, that of the Earth.
However, during routine probing of the cloud's density with radio waves, repeatable patterns of interference occur in which the cloud appears to "respond" by blocking signals. To the incredulity of his colleagues, the lead British scientist proposes that the cloud is intelligent, and attempts to communicate with it by broadcasting the contents of an encyclopaedia at it. To the surprise of most of the scientists, this elicits a response from the cloud, and a dialogue begins. Through this, the scientists learn of the cloud's ancient and distant origin, of it being just one of a vast number of similar intelligences, and of its surprise that something as dense and unpromising as a planet could produce and nurture intelligent life. As news of the cloud's nature spreads to other governments, several take military action against it for the calamity caused, launching nuclear weapons that, after a warning from the British scientists, are batted back toward their launch sites by the cloud. While this strains the relationship with the cloud, it comes to understand the alien division of authority on Earth.
Then, almost as swiftly as it arrived, the cloud announces that, contrary to its initial plan to orbit the Sun for years, it is to depart for another star. A distant "eureka!" moment by one of its fellow intelligences requires immediate investigation. However, in leaving, the cloud arranges for its passage to disrupt the Earth's climate as little as possible. The British scientists, stunned that they will now be unable to quiz the cloud on matters of science, scramble to obtain a primer from the cloud. However, the cloud warns them that its understanding of the universe is too sophisticated to convey easily or safely, and in pressing on, two of the scientific team, including its leader, succumb to the "overload" of information from the cloud. The novel concludes with a descendant of the scientific team passing on the subsequently suppressed knowledge of the cloud's intelligence, in the hope that later generations might try to contact it.
Whew, I seem to have gotten a bit carried away there, and have done the whole plotline for once. Anyway, was a giant of science also a giant of science fiction? Yes and no. Overall it's a pretty good yarn, told pretty well. For almost all of the book Hoyle does a great job gradually ramping up the story with logical and scientifically sensible steps forward. If there's a weakness, it's that the cloud's true nature is revealed really rather late in the novel, leaving this most important revelation relatively few pages to be covered in. While it means that Hoyle is able to conclude with the cloud's mysterious nature largely intact, the latter portion of the novel does seem a little rushed relative to the carefully-paced first two-thirds. Especially so given Hoyle's deus ex machina that sees the cloud suddenly decide to leave our solar system. This does make for a glimmer of an interesting insight into the activities of the cloud intelligences, but it also seems like a barefaced drive to wrap up the novel.
Another angle that's enjoyable is Hoyle's portrait of post-war science and the (exclusively male) scientists who populate it. Though things have changed since then, it's still a recognisable place to me, if a little more slowly-paced (and patronising to women). Hoyle also does a nice job of squeezing some science into the tale without the novel reading like it's artlessly plagiarised a textbook. So we get introductions to studying star variability, a stealthy primer on orbital mechanics and some rough-and-ready climatology as the cloud gradually approaches the Earth. There are also some really clever points made along the way like, for instance, when the idea of communicating with the cloud is first mooted. Some of the scientists rightly question whether they'll be able to translate its messages, but the lead scientist notes that, if the cloud is as intelligent as he supposes, it can easily make itself understood to them rather than the other way round.
Aspects that are more unexpected are how easily the scientists are able to set themselves up as an autonomous community that largely escapes government control. It may just be that I've read too many books, and seen too many films, in which the scientists are tightly reined-in by heavy-handed government authorities. And I didn't entirely buy the "brain overload" thread at the end of the novel. Something as intelligent as the cloud, an entity that quickly comes to understand humanity, would surely be able to give a dummy's guide to its scientific understanding rather than presenting it in one big chunk that melts brains. This felt like a cheesy "beyond the ken of man" moment from some 1950s B-movie.
One final point I can't let slip passed is the characterisation. It's not exactly a story that requires finely-detailed characters, but Hoyle's scientists are largely distinguishable from one another, even if they are cut a bit from the same "can-do-spirit" cloth. And he does fumble a bit with the non-scientist characters, who seem to be sketched in more as comic relief at times. His lead scientist, while painted as highly intelligent, isn't made particularly likeable. Hoyle seems happy to have someone the reader struggles a bit to empathise with. Another interesting thing, which is very much of its time, is the belief of the characters (= Hoyle) that humanity's future would best be served by a technocracy of intelligent (male) scientists. In part, this is conveyed passively by the novel, as the scientists amusingly "get one over" on the government when setting up their remote base. But the characters are occasionally more vocal in articulating this view, something that would seem very odd in this day and age. These days, I think that most scientists, while happy to point out endless government failures to pay attention, would baulk at the idea of putting themselves in power. While chastising them, I think scientists now better appreciate the difficulty that governments face in satisfying both scientific concerns and public interest.
Overall, it's easy to recommend the book. Both for its science fiction aspects, but also for how it portrays life in science in the 1950s. The latter I'd not expected Hoyle to make so interesting.
P.S. I forgot to note that, when the cloud explains its great age in the novel, Hoyle can't resist taking the opportunity to bash the big bang, then a relatively new idea but subsequently his lifelong bête noire. While I already knew of Hoyle's misgivings, it was still amusing to see him taking such a scientific pot shot in his first novel.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
A new toy
One of my (many) birthday presents[*] last month was this little beauty ...
... A USB-powered microscope that alleges that it does 20X to 400X magnification. I've yet to work out quite what it means by this, or how best to use it, but I've already had some fun taking images with it. The selection below shows a few to-hand items that were in the immediate vicinity of our home PC ...
There are a few more images over at Flickr, and I'm looking forwards to having a further play with my new toy in the near future.
[*] Eagle-eyed viewers may spot a second present in this photograph: a cross-stitch version of Pushkin that C laboured lovingly on.
... A USB-powered microscope that alleges that it does 20X to 400X magnification. I've yet to work out quite what it means by this, or how best to use it, but I've already had some fun taking images with it. The selection below shows a few to-hand items that were in the immediate vicinity of our home PC ...
There are a few more images over at Flickr, and I'm looking forwards to having a further play with my new toy in the near future.
[*] Eagle-eyed viewers may spot a second present in this photograph: a cross-stitch version of Pushkin that C laboured lovingly on.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
No Revelations
It's 2011 now, but I've a stack of books to write-up from 2010. This is going to be a little cursory, but here goes anyway. First up is a short story collection from blog-favourite, Alastair Reynolds. Not from his Revelation Space series this time, but a series of stories from across his career, 1991 through to 2008, Zima Blue.
Unlike earlier collections, this one is largely made up of discrete stories that aren't united in a common universe, though there are a few that share the same future and a few characters. Considering that Reynolds is probably most famous for his interstellar Space Operas, most of the stories are rather surprisingly low-key, with some even taking place within a recognisable (and very British) near-future.
They range across hopeful post-apocalyptic yarns (Enola); Martian sloths (The Real Story); galactic journeys gone wrong (Beyond the Aquila Rift); explorations of many worlds in Wales (Signal to Noise); an investigation of space-time accompanied by an Elton John AI (Understanding Space and Time); and quantum immortality (Everlasting).
My favourite was the eponymous story, Zima Blue (obviously), which concerns a planetary-scale artist, Zima; the shade of blue that his work utilises; and how he gradually remembers the origin for this aesthetic preference. Which probably makes it sound ridiculous or seriously boring, but I felt that it had some real existential heart. It also pleasingly reminded me of the French artist, Yves Klein, whose rather vivid work we first came across in Barcelona (or was it Nice?), and who invented a particular shade of blue that features prominently in his work. I imagine that Reynolds must also be a fan.
Anyway, while there were one or two stories I was left scratching my head at the end of ("is that it?"), most were really quite good. As well as Zima Blue, I particularly liked Aquila Rift's premise of a routine space voyage gone vastly and terrifyingly wrong, and its introduction of an alien Samaritan picking up the pieces. Reynolds' "many worlds in Wales" tales were really nicely thought through too (a strange fusion between the corresponding works of Greg Egan and Iain Banks), though the Welsh setting made them seem rather mundane to me. It's probably true for other people too, but I tend to be aesthetically prejudiced against UK-set science fiction. It needs to be set somewhere "exciting" and "exotic", like Los Angeles ...
Overall, more solid fare from Reynolds. I'm already looking forwards to getting back to him before too long courtesy of a recent present from C: Terminal World.
They range across hopeful post-apocalyptic yarns (Enola); Martian sloths (The Real Story); galactic journeys gone wrong (Beyond the Aquila Rift); explorations of many worlds in Wales (Signal to Noise); an investigation of space-time accompanied by an Elton John AI (Understanding Space and Time); and quantum immortality (Everlasting).
My favourite was the eponymous story, Zima Blue (obviously), which concerns a planetary-scale artist, Zima; the shade of blue that his work utilises; and how he gradually remembers the origin for this aesthetic preference. Which probably makes it sound ridiculous or seriously boring, but I felt that it had some real existential heart. It also pleasingly reminded me of the French artist, Yves Klein, whose rather vivid work we first came across in Barcelona (or was it Nice?), and who invented a particular shade of blue that features prominently in his work. I imagine that Reynolds must also be a fan.
Anyway, while there were one or two stories I was left scratching my head at the end of ("is that it?"), most were really quite good. As well as Zima Blue, I particularly liked Aquila Rift's premise of a routine space voyage gone vastly and terrifyingly wrong, and its introduction of an alien Samaritan picking up the pieces. Reynolds' "many worlds in Wales" tales were really nicely thought through too (a strange fusion between the corresponding works of Greg Egan and Iain Banks), though the Welsh setting made them seem rather mundane to me. It's probably true for other people too, but I tend to be aesthetically prejudiced against UK-set science fiction. It needs to be set somewhere "exciting" and "exotic", like Los Angeles ...
Overall, more solid fare from Reynolds. I'm already looking forwards to getting back to him before too long courtesy of a recent present from C: Terminal World.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Disaster novel
Reflecting on the books that I've written up here (virtually everything I've read since 2007), I sometimes suspect that I give things the benefit of the doubt too much, since I seem to not dislike anything, and to find good parts in everything I've read. Too polite? Too unwilling to consciously concede that I've wasted many hours on a stinker? Anyway, on this occasion, going the other way has been made very easy for me, since today's book, Ark, is a disaster novel (in more than one sense) by the British science fiction writer Stephen Baxter.
Set in the near-future, the novel takes place amidst an Earth struggling with sea level rise of a degree unimagined by today's climate scientists. Reservoirs of water within the Earth's mantle have been breeched, and the Earth is steadily being swamped by an unceasing rise in seawater that shows no sign of abatement. Confronted by projections of the total loss of land, and straining as civilisation is dissipating in the face of mass migration and dwindling resources, the remnant of the US government takes over an originally clandestine project to allow a small population to escape the Earth aboard a generation ship. The novel follows a handful of characters who become directly or indirectly involved in this effort, some of whom make the journey from the Earth to two neighbouring stars. But along the way their commitment to the project is constantly assailed, and their humanity is eroded in the face of an unprecedented disaster that forces choices that are similarly unprecedented.
Where to start? The novel puts so many feet wrong, it's got to be a centipede. Firstly, in the opening pages it sets itself up some sort of murder mystery, giving the reader a victim, an array of suspects, and an investigator to sort things out. The novel then jumps backwards a number of years to introduce the suspects and how they've got to this position, but despite the passage of many pages barely touches the murder before -when it finally catches back up to the start of the novel- solving it in a flash. A flash of "who cares?" by this point, as it happens. This initial wrong-footing sets the novel up nicely for a litany of disappointments.
Another great misstep is how Baxter handles the technological innovation that allows the interstellar journey that makes up a big chunk of the book. After much angst among (cardboard) characters about how infeasible such a voyage is, one character makes a fatuous observation about FTL travel that makes almost no sense (something about spacetime "bubbles"?), only for another "genius" character to pick it up and, again in a flash, suddenly come up with a barely explained solution. The absurdity of Baxter's writing here is revealed in all its glory when, in devising a method for getting the spaceship off Earth, he resorts to a lengthy exposition of a technology that really has been investigated, Project Orion. Cue much shoe-horning in of author research - on a subject that actually is genuinely interesting. Coming from an author venerated for "hard science fiction", this glossing over of a core aspect seems plain lazy.
The biggest crimes committed by Baxter lie with the characters that populate the novel. For one, they're largely the implausibly over-qualified scientist-leaders that have despoiled lesser science fiction novels for decades (cf. Ender's Game). And as the novel progresses they become both progressively more implausible while simultaneously less and less likeable. In part, taking the premise of the novel seriously for a moment, this is to be expected given the situation that they're thrown into, one could possibly even make the case that it's realistic. But the evolution of the characters felt pretty inexpert to me, with far too many eyebrow-raising daddy-issues being bandied about by Baxter. While, yes, I think it's important (and realistic!) that science fiction takes strong female characters seriously, Baxter's efforts here aren't doing the genre many favours.
In some respects, this aspect of Ark is a bit of throwback to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke started bludgeoning emotional responses and motivations into their otherwise two-dimensional characters. This wasn't a bad idea in principle, since science fiction is widely, and usually rightly, chastised for the lack of development of characters that appear in it. Largely this isn't a problem, or shouldn't be, since the point of science fiction is usually to explore technological "what-if" situations rather than dwell on the inner lives of characters. However, even so, as practised by the likes of Clarke, this approach led to the worst novels in his career, and managed to even turn epics such as Rendezvous with Rama (see also here) into awful soap opera-esque nonsense. As it happens, Baxter collaborated with Clarke on three books shortly before the latter's death. I haven't read them (nor am ever likely to now), but if they stick to the pattern of other late-period collaborative novels by Clarke, this might explain a lot about Ark.
One of the most annoying aspects of this débâcle of a novel is that I used to really like Baxter. Years ago he had a series of stories and novels based around the Xeelee, an alien civilisation vastly more advanced than humanity. Though they appear uninterested in humans, and never even formally reveal themselves to them, they are nonetheless perceived as a threat, and fought with for countless millennia. Eventually, humans finally work out that the disinterest shown by the Xeelee towards them is because they are actually engaged in a battle for the survival of the universe, one far more important than the petty territorial squabbles mounted by humanity. As a science fiction-clad metaphor for the cosmic indifference of the universe for people, the Xeelee rocked. So reading Ark has been a gravely disappointing experience for me, and one that'll likely keep him off my book shelves for good.
Where to start? The novel puts so many feet wrong, it's got to be a centipede. Firstly, in the opening pages it sets itself up some sort of murder mystery, giving the reader a victim, an array of suspects, and an investigator to sort things out. The novel then jumps backwards a number of years to introduce the suspects and how they've got to this position, but despite the passage of many pages barely touches the murder before -when it finally catches back up to the start of the novel- solving it in a flash. A flash of "who cares?" by this point, as it happens. This initial wrong-footing sets the novel up nicely for a litany of disappointments.
Another great misstep is how Baxter handles the technological innovation that allows the interstellar journey that makes up a big chunk of the book. After much angst among (cardboard) characters about how infeasible such a voyage is, one character makes a fatuous observation about FTL travel that makes almost no sense (something about spacetime "bubbles"?), only for another "genius" character to pick it up and, again in a flash, suddenly come up with a barely explained solution. The absurdity of Baxter's writing here is revealed in all its glory when, in devising a method for getting the spaceship off Earth, he resorts to a lengthy exposition of a technology that really has been investigated, Project Orion. Cue much shoe-horning in of author research - on a subject that actually is genuinely interesting. Coming from an author venerated for "hard science fiction", this glossing over of a core aspect seems plain lazy.
The biggest crimes committed by Baxter lie with the characters that populate the novel. For one, they're largely the implausibly over-qualified scientist-leaders that have despoiled lesser science fiction novels for decades (cf. Ender's Game). And as the novel progresses they become both progressively more implausible while simultaneously less and less likeable. In part, taking the premise of the novel seriously for a moment, this is to be expected given the situation that they're thrown into, one could possibly even make the case that it's realistic. But the evolution of the characters felt pretty inexpert to me, with far too many eyebrow-raising daddy-issues being bandied about by Baxter. While, yes, I think it's important (and realistic!) that science fiction takes strong female characters seriously, Baxter's efforts here aren't doing the genre many favours.
In some respects, this aspect of Ark is a bit of throwback to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke started bludgeoning emotional responses and motivations into their otherwise two-dimensional characters. This wasn't a bad idea in principle, since science fiction is widely, and usually rightly, chastised for the lack of development of characters that appear in it. Largely this isn't a problem, or shouldn't be, since the point of science fiction is usually to explore technological "what-if" situations rather than dwell on the inner lives of characters. However, even so, as practised by the likes of Clarke, this approach led to the worst novels in his career, and managed to even turn epics such as Rendezvous with Rama (see also here) into awful soap opera-esque nonsense. As it happens, Baxter collaborated with Clarke on three books shortly before the latter's death. I haven't read them (nor am ever likely to now), but if they stick to the pattern of other late-period collaborative novels by Clarke, this might explain a lot about Ark.
One of the most annoying aspects of this débâcle of a novel is that I used to really like Baxter. Years ago he had a series of stories and novels based around the Xeelee, an alien civilisation vastly more advanced than humanity. Though they appear uninterested in humans, and never even formally reveal themselves to them, they are nonetheless perceived as a threat, and fought with for countless millennia. Eventually, humans finally work out that the disinterest shown by the Xeelee towards them is because they are actually engaged in a battle for the survival of the universe, one far more important than the petty territorial squabbles mounted by humanity. As a science fiction-clad metaphor for the cosmic indifference of the universe for people, the Xeelee rocked. So reading Ark has been a gravely disappointing experience for me, and one that'll likely keep him off my book shelves for good.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Grand Theft Jungle
I'm back in game-reviewing mode with another birthday present, the Africa-set FPS Far Cry 2 (FC2), an ostensible sequel to the 2004 shooter Far Cry. There, the player took on enhanced mutant soldiers in a beautifully-rendered tropical paradise; here, the player takes on a task involving a failed state and blood diamonds, subjects more familiar from the evening news than from science fiction.
Set within a war-torn African state on the verge of complete collapse, FC2 sends the player to catch up with, and then eliminate, an arms dealer known as the Jackal. By supplying both sides in the conflict with weapons, the Jackal has greatly displeased the player's employers, who just want to get on with the job of bleeding the country dry. However, the player's first catch of the day is malaria, which leaves him incapacitated and defenceless in his hotel room. Fortunately, the Jackal is mysteriously at hand to medicate the player, and save him from an ongoing (and curiously simultaneous) gun battle in the town, before disappearing off once more.
Back on his feet, but still needing the occasional dose of anti-malarial drugs, the player finds himself between two opposing paramilitary factions, both eager to eliminate the other and take the spoils of the country, oil and blood diamonds, for themselves. Along with a number of other foreign national NPCs, who can be buddied up with, the player then takes the role of a mercenary, ultimately working for both sides on a succession of missions. These usually involve a long journey, by road or river, through hostile territory (= the whole game map), followed by an intense period of combat during which something, or someone, is stolen, destroyed or assassinated. The reward for mission completion is payment in blood diamonds, which can then be used to buy better weapons, equipment and training. Missions need not be followed to the letter, and the player's buddies frequently interject alternative completion pathways that net better rewards and strengthen buddy "history".
Alongside missions for the warring factions, the player can also undertake slightly more humanitarian tasks, such as transporting passports to innocent bystanders trying to flee the country, and helping a journalist recover incriminating audio recordings of the Jackal. Needless to say, there are also GTA-style assassination missions handed out by a mysterious stranger at the end of a phone line, though these pay in diamonds rather than malaria medicine or hearty thanks. And, along the way, the Jackal occasionally drops in on the player to offer advice or help. Odd behaviour indeed for someone the player is supposed to be "taking care of", but then the Jackal isn't quite what he appears, and he needs someone fresh off the plane to help him achieve his goals against an army of parasitic mercs.
First of all, the woefully misnamed FC2 (which has nothing whatsoever to do with Far Cry) is a lot of fun to play, and I really enjoyed the time I spent shooting my way through its various obstacles. However, the developers of FC2 have fallen into the classic trap of focusing on technical aspects of the game and neglecting the story till the last minute. In terms of how it looks, sounds and "feels", the African setting of FC2 is beautifully well-realised, with great jungle, savannah and desert settings, and impressive attention to detail on architecture and interiors. The combat dynamics are similarly well-honed, with (relatively) smart enemies that fight, track and ambush the player convincingly, and with the novel addition of fast-spreading fire that opens up unique battlefield opportunities. All these bits are great, but the realism that they bring evaporates when they're practically crippled by the story that's bolted onto them.
To be fair, the story tries to reach beyond the clichés that are the de facto standard in gaming. For instance, rather than posit (cf. Just Cause) a morally unambiguous "black hat" for the player to hunt down and "terminate with extreme prejudice", FC2's target-cum-antagonist saves the player's life at the start of the game, and pops up from time to time in a manner that suggests (in the clunkiest manner possible) that perhaps he's wearing a grey hat. This isn't a bad premise for a game (and something like it is what I'd hoped Just Cause would try for), but it's more or less the whole of the story. The rest of the game is simply a series of unconnected missions and events that, while a lot of fun, are completely incoherent.
While I began the game worrying about the consequences of my actions (cf. the sublime Fallout 3), it quickly became clear that, beyond the end of the current mission, there were none. Further, if I didn't complete the requested theft / armed assault / assassination, I'd simply not see the rest of the game. That was a tolerable mechanic in earlier games (GTA IV being about the last of them), but now it makes for an air of non-realism that can't be offset by immaculately realistic game physics. Similarly, the lack of any friendly faces in FC2. While the player ostensibly works for one (or other; or both) of the two factions, this seemingly counts for nothing in the game, where every checkpoint or patrol encountered immediately starts shooting. This is explained away in dialogue as a consequence of your missions being covert, but I recognise lazy game mechanics when I see them. Friendly AI is more difficult to write than its hostile equivalent, so the developers have simply avoided including any.
Games like Half-Life 2 dodge the problem of moral complexity by dropping the player into a storyline where it's completely credible that almost everyone you meet is a black hat, so the possibility of moral choice is avoided. Here, the designers aspire to creating a morally intriguing story, but then immediately forget about this while they create a game in which everyone wants to kill you regardless of your actions, and in which the game doesn't care two hoots how you clear the next checkpoint (i.e. killing everyone, or not). The net result of this is that neither the game nor the player have any investment in how things play out morally. Which leaves the loftier ambitions that FC2's writers clearly had for the narrative twisting in the wind. Even GTA IV, for all its forcing of the player's hands, included a large numbers of bystanders that the player could either deliberately mow down (with consequences), be indifferent toward or drive carefully around.
Whew. All that said, I return to my initial point that I generally enjoyed FC2. If one ignores the storyline, there's a lot of fun to be had with the various, and varied, missions. As already mentioned above, combat is pretty good here, though I did find that, on the normal setting and with a few good guns, I was more than a match for my enemies. Certainly, the difficulty of missions could usually be significantly decreased through the possession of both a sniper rifle and some distance from enemy mercenaries. But against enemies with good AI, and the really neat inclusion of spreading fire, combat (somewhat) offsets my complaints above.
I also really liked some of FC2's little touches like the impromptu battlefield surgery the player performs on himself, the occasional malarial meltdowns and the fact that my player character, unusually for a FPS, actually had a body attached to his viewpoint. And, to return to another earlier point, I absolutely loved the African setting. Aesthetically, it's top-notch, and really very beautiful in places (unlike, say, Fallout 3's ruined Washington DC); and it's also quite a welcome change for a games developer to attempt a quasi-realistic developing world setting. It doesn't come close to making the most of this because of its narrative limitations, but it's definitely at least one step in a more interesting direction for FPS.
Overall, pity the game that follows in the long shadow of Fallout 3.
Overall, pity the game that follows in the long shadow of Fallout 3.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Not Batman
Safe to say, this is a pretty unusual entry both for this blog and in the pantheon of graphic novels.
Logicomix, written by two Greek academics, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou (plus two graphic artists), is a strange and original exploration of logic and its history in the first half of the 20th century (apparently the "logicist period"). The novel is fractured across three distinct strands: a long, and periodically interrupted, present-day discussion between the authors about logic; a lecture delivered in the USA by the logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell at the outbreak of World War II; and a biographical narrative of Russell's life, both professional and personal, that in part forms the subject of this lecture. While this sounds rather complex, it provides a framework for introducing and exploring the nature of logic, its promise of providing a unifying foundation for science and rationality, and its ultimate limitations. While Russell is not responsible for logic's greatest leaps (which, in fact, dash his hopes), his faith in its power and his efforts to promote it make him a key midwife to its evolution, as well as an appropriate choice for narrator. As the novel unfolds, the early gains by the likes of Russell, his collaborator, Alfred North Whitehead, and the members of the Vienna Circle (among others) give way to the wrecking ball of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kurt Gödel's damning incompleteness theorems.
You've got to take your hat off to the authors of this volume. It brings a whole load of serious, serious thought to a medium where, traditionally, the deepest thought is that perhaps, just perhaps, Batman has ambiguous morality.[1] And it does so while still being a pretty easy read, and one that uses cross-linking narrative strands and trendy post-modern self-referencing to dodge potentially dry, stodgy point-making. Personally, I didn't learn an awful lot that I wasn't already (partially) aware of, but I don't think I'm the ideal audience. While the authors hail from academia, they're keen that such an important subject is communicated as widely as possible. And I think they'll generally be pretty successful given this novel.
Where the novel doesn't quite succeed is in making Russell serve as his own biographer from his 1939 lecture. This seemed unnecessary to me, since the (somewhat post-modern) discussion between the authors could have quite happily served the same job. And the portentousness of the timing is never quite realised or justified. I can only assume that beginning the novel with a direct reference to WWII is somehow supposed to either shed light on our own time, or to someone conjure a compare-and-contrast between rationality and senseless violence. Or something. If I'd been the authors, I'd definitely have either ditched this strand or been a lot more explicit about what its relevance was. Oh, and I might have soft-pedalled on the Greek Tragedy sections as well.
But, all that said, a pretty unique and engaging stab at something new. Consider my hat doffed.
[1] I'm saying this like I'm some sort of expert on graphic novels. I'm not - I've only read a handful in total, and while I like to think that I've chosen well and that they weren't brain-dead, they do include Aliens vs. Predator.
Logicomix, written by two Greek academics, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou (plus two graphic artists), is a strange and original exploration of logic and its history in the first half of the 20th century (apparently the "logicist period"). The novel is fractured across three distinct strands: a long, and periodically interrupted, present-day discussion between the authors about logic; a lecture delivered in the USA by the logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell at the outbreak of World War II; and a biographical narrative of Russell's life, both professional and personal, that in part forms the subject of this lecture. While this sounds rather complex, it provides a framework for introducing and exploring the nature of logic, its promise of providing a unifying foundation for science and rationality, and its ultimate limitations. While Russell is not responsible for logic's greatest leaps (which, in fact, dash his hopes), his faith in its power and his efforts to promote it make him a key midwife to its evolution, as well as an appropriate choice for narrator. As the novel unfolds, the early gains by the likes of Russell, his collaborator, Alfred North Whitehead, and the members of the Vienna Circle (among others) give way to the wrecking ball of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kurt Gödel's damning incompleteness theorems.You've got to take your hat off to the authors of this volume. It brings a whole load of serious, serious thought to a medium where, traditionally, the deepest thought is that perhaps, just perhaps, Batman has ambiguous morality.[1] And it does so while still being a pretty easy read, and one that uses cross-linking narrative strands and trendy post-modern self-referencing to dodge potentially dry, stodgy point-making. Personally, I didn't learn an awful lot that I wasn't already (partially) aware of, but I don't think I'm the ideal audience. While the authors hail from academia, they're keen that such an important subject is communicated as widely as possible. And I think they'll generally be pretty successful given this novel.
Where the novel doesn't quite succeed is in making Russell serve as his own biographer from his 1939 lecture. This seemed unnecessary to me, since the (somewhat post-modern) discussion between the authors could have quite happily served the same job. And the portentousness of the timing is never quite realised or justified. I can only assume that beginning the novel with a direct reference to WWII is somehow supposed to either shed light on our own time, or to someone conjure a compare-and-contrast between rationality and senseless violence. Or something. If I'd been the authors, I'd definitely have either ditched this strand or been a lot more explicit about what its relevance was. Oh, and I might have soft-pedalled on the Greek Tragedy sections as well.
But, all that said, a pretty unique and engaging stab at something new. Consider my hat doffed.
[1] I'm saying this like I'm some sort of expert on graphic novels. I'm not - I've only read a handful in total, and while I like to think that I've chosen well and that they weren't brain-dead, they do include Aliens vs. Predator.
Friday, 25 December 2009
Christmas creativity
I'm completely useless at making anything myself by hand. Fortunately, the magic of the internet means that, as long as I can turn something into a digital file, someone else can turn it into a physical item for me. So, this year I've tried to knock up a couple of presents for C this way.
First up, her favourite novel as a Penguin-style mug ...
Next, ripping off the local artist Tina Bird Wallbridge to make a stylised map of our local neighbourhood ...
First up, her favourite novel as a Penguin-style mug ...
Next, ripping off the local artist Tina Bird Wallbridge to make a stylised map of our local neighbourhood ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
