Walking on the Moon

Warren Ellis has a nice touch with turning an idea into a narrative, transforming it from a polished distant monument into a gritty habitation.  In Normal he takes the idea that thinking to hard about the future will make you crazy.  Literally.

None of the characters from Normal are immortal – they are largely ideas or themes mounted on lively tropes – but the combination makes for a spicy mix.  One gets the feeling that Ellis has laid them down with enough telling detail to make them stand out, but enough room for an actor or comic artist to form them into memorable characters.  As a reader, you can fill in those details, but it’s almost more interesting to see where the gaps are.

Normal was also distributed in an unusual manner. Well for 2016, 1916 still saw some serialized novels. Normal came out in 4 installments spaced a week apart – a serialized novella. It worked well for me. I enjoy many of Ellis’s novellas, and I think he can use the length well.  The weekly reminders to have a look at what he’s done were welcome, and each section had a payoff.  I would absolutely do it again with Ellis, and I’d be curious to see someone else try the mechanism.

Overall, I found Normal  to be snappy and thought-provoking.  Recommended.

I really enjoyed Ken MacLeod’s Corporation Wars: Dissidence. MacLeod is a talented writer with interesting ideas and enough technical depth to clear the hurdles to suspension of disbelief.  That’s a real accomplishment when the world he’s creating includes multi-timescale simulation of AI’s that are at war with robots on the edge of self-awareness.  This is a book set in a world that literally has no humans embodied in flesh and blood in it.  It’s well done.

Beyond the ideas, the plot is sprightly, twisty, and engaging. One never loses track of who’s doing what to whom, whether at the timescales of diplomatic deception and betrayal or tactical battlefield action.  Beyond that, MacLeod turns many a fine phrase.

I both enjoyed reading Dissidence and admired the  significant craft and creativity that went into it.  Among other things, I’m surprised just how much computer science background an SF author can pretty blithely assume their audience has or can acquire.

That said, I think it never reaches the escape velocity to break out from good to great.  That’s no sin in my book.  This is genuinely a pleasure to read and the ideas are worth chewing on. But I feel like I’ll have forgotten it in a few years.  I’ll check in on his other work, though.  It seems like great is a matter of time and chemistry for him.

Recommended.

Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station provides an excuse to date myself without making use of Carbon-14. Reading it reminded me of Robert Lynn Asprin’s Thieves’ World. Thieves’ World began a series of fantasy short story collections from science fiction and fantasy authors. The conceit was that the authors agreed to share the world in which they created a loosely collaborative story. The result was something between an incredibly well written telling of a role playing campaign and fan fiction. Characters and focus came and went as did themes; the quality varied – or probably my appreciation of the writing did so.

I’m not addressing this in a scholarly way. It was the first time I saw that kind of experiment, and I found it engaging.

Central Station has something of the feel of creating a shared world. Tidhar introduces cast of interesting characters who inhabit a rich melieu and have an interesting and open-ended adventure. The book feels not so much that it’s ripe for a sequel, but that the table has been set and we’re waiting for guests to arrive. I even have the same enthusiasm that I felt when reading Thieves’ World. Writers could tell more great stories with these characters in this place.

That may sound like faint praise. Let me heap some more distinct praise on it.

Tidhar builds a world and creates characters that embody the feeling of community that forms in successful melting pots. He creates a rich polyglot community informed by technology, but not based on it. Often writers focus on how technology changes human interaction, but Tidhar’s characters have seamlessly absorbed technology. That’s the way people really adopt it and it’s refreshing to see.

Central Station is also filled with small nods and Easter eggs to the SF community. It’s nothing like the density of Ready Player One, but rich enough to draw the connection between the fictional community and the real-world SF community as melting pots. It’s a nice way to make the point with a wink. The tonal connection to Thieves’ World may even be intentional – an Easter egg for me.

Central Station builds a fictional world in a way that rings true with some of the best of our world. Strongly Recommended.

Another essay collection from Michael Perry, author of Population: 485 and Truck: A Love Story. Most of what I said there is true about this collection as well. Perry is a solid writer at his worst, and brilliantly conjures small town community at his best.   He’s not often his worst in this collection.

The short essays are from his stint as an emcee at the Tent Show Radio performances, so they’re constrained to be short and pithy.  He’s not the center of attention at the Radio Show.  That suits his style well, and none of the pieces feel forced to me.  It does limit how much he says on any one thing at a time, though.

Overall, good fun.  Recommended.

I think Amir Alexander’s Infinitesimal is better in principle than in execution.  However the principle is so good that it’s worth reading anyway.

The topic Alexander is exploring here is how the society of the 1500’s and 1600’s reacted to the fundamental ideas in geometry that became the basis for Netwon’s and Leibnitz’s calculus.  The mathematical ideas are compelling in their own right, but Alexander wisely focuses on their effect on thinking outside mathematics.  The result makes the forces driving philosophy and religion of these eras clearer and more vivid.

Infinitesimal shows us why the institutions of the day had any interest at all in an obscure mathematical movement and why that interest ebbed and flowed.  It’s quite fascinating to see the combinations of personality and politics that caused the interest.  I hadn’t realized the reach and vividness of the ideas until I explained what I’d learned from the book to a friend.  Quite powerful and surprising ideas.

There are some problems.  The book’s longer than it needs to be, partially because the chapters are somewhat repetitive and not so well integrated as one would hope.  I got the impression that they were individually composed and that the editing process was compartmentalized in such a way that the considerable overlap wasn’t spotted.  The resulting book is satisfying enough in the small and repetitive in the large.  Many parts benefit from skimming.

Overall an interesting discussion of a fascinating topic. Recommended.

I recently read Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth for the first time.  This is the first time I’ve read it in prose, from a Dover Thrift edition on Google Play.  It claims to be unabridged, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the edition it’s reprinting were abridged.  It feels short-winded  compared to the version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea I read a few years ago.  I also read a Classics Illustrated adaptation years and years ago that I recollected as I went along.

For me, reading Verne is to get a glimpse at the beginnings of hard SF.  I feel like I getting an excellent lesson in the science of the day sweetened with an adventure story.  As an older reader who loves science, history, and writing that sweetener is hardly necessary, but much appreciated.  I appreciate the story from the perspective of seeing the craft with which the science and story are woven, not because of breathless anticipation of the resolution.

Surveying the science is rewarding as well.  Most of Journey is showing off the state of paleontology.  It’s very interesting to see what’s stood the test of time there and what hasn’t.  I also appreciate the extent to which Verne shows how this is a field of argumentation from limited evidence.  There are only so many fossils and the hunters get prestige out of both the finds and the theories.  Verne’s protagonists are active participants in those arguments and reap the practical benefits of success in them.  That’s as important to understanding scientific progress as the dry descriptions of the scientific method are.  That’s a great bit of medicine to wash down with a two-fisted adventure story.

Recommended, if a bit dry and tame to modern ears.

I have been trying to reconnect with major league baseball (MLB)for a while.  Baseball is  my kind of spectator sport.  It’s essentially an excuse to sit in the stands and have a few beverages and jaw about the game.  That game is paced to encourage speculation about strategy, rumination on the history, and statistical analysis of any aspect of it.  Perfect for me.

Lately, though, I’ve been noticing that there’s lots of little stuff that’s just understood about the game that I missed out on as a casual fan.  I’ve been looking for a primer that I can use to fill some of those gaps.  Something like David Benjamin’s The Joy of Sumo, but for baseball.  Zack Hample’s Watching Baseball Smarter is a cut at it.

Hample’s a hardcore fan who comes at the game from interesting angles.  He’s also published a blog and book about the best ways to freely acquire baseballs used in games.  For example, those works describe the best places and techniques for catching foul balls (I think).  He’s not just a collector, though; he’s a student of the game and enthusiast.

The good thing about Smarter is that it covers a lot of ground without getting too deep into any one thing.  That’s its limitation as well.  Hample writes intelligently about everything from the basics of fielding and positions to the statistics fans quote most often.  The stats description shows how the depth is set.  Baseball is undergoing a revolution as amateur and professional analysts are mining MLB’s vast troves of data looking to understand and predict the game better.  Smarter recognizes this without attempting to lead the fan/reader too deep into that area.  I came away with a clear impression that there’s more to know and a good description of the most commonly used stats (as in the ones an announcer would mention).

Of course, the broad coverage means that there are areas one would like to know more about that get short shrift.  I expect that there are areas I want to delve into that were completely unmentioned.  I don’t think of that as a terrible shortcoming. I came in with knowledge and ideas of what I want to know more about.  More importantly, Hample’s focuses largely match my own.  Overall I both enjoyed Smarter and learned some things.

Recommended.

There are people who will assert that Mary Sue characters are solely the product of female writers.  These people have never read a Stainless Steel Rat novel.  Harry Harrison’s Slippery Jim DiGriz only fails to fit the bill by being older.

I hadn’t read a Stainless Steel Rat novel since I was in high school, but I remembered them rather warmly. I did remember that I stopped reading them after a few because they had become formulaic. I was right.  Even with a couple decades of time off, the formula is pretty easy to spot.

It’s a shame that Harrison’s execution leaves me so cold.  There are a few fun ideas running around in here, including the basis of the series.  The idea is that in the future as authority gets more repressive and effective, criminals must similarly become more ruthless and effective to continue their trade.  The insights that we’ll always have rule-breakers and that evolution improves everything are well taken, as is the To Catch A Thief conceit that some criminals – like DiGriz – will use their skills to help society.

But, like I say, the execution leaves much to be desired.  DiGriz and his family of hyper-competent criminals are never challenged by any of the plot twists.  None of the main characters experiences the slightest self-doubt or concern about taking on a planet of corrupt officials.  No one ever breaks a sweat or really slows down to do anything but compliment DiGriz.  The rest of the family are machines, right down to having no agency.

Worse than simply being lazy writing, it undermines the main premise.  Everyone outside the DiGriz family is so ineffectual that the very idea that society bred a super-criminal is unbelievable.  If these guys are all DiGriz has to go up against, he’d never develop the super-competency that he needs.

There are a couple nice set pieces in here.  DiGriz is an atheist with a code against killing.  Harrison supports those positions simply and clearly, and it’s a welcome change from today’s bloody action heroes.  Still, overall I can’t recommend the Rat.

I hope Daniel Handler made a huge amount of money on those Lemony Snicket books, so he can continue breaking my heart with the projects he publishes under his own name.

Why We Broke Up shares a lot of setup with and many of the merits of The Basic Eight. Both capture and breathe life into the vulnerability and rush of adolescence.  Handler’s recreation of being in love and being in study hall both resound with authenticity.

To its considerable benefit, Why We Broke Up is more intimate and personal than The Basic Eight. Everyone in Why We Broke Up has real depth and motivation.  No one is a symbol or a plot device.  Or just those things.  Everyone has irredeemably bad moments and inexplicably selfless ones.  Everyone has best and worst times, and no one gets away with being words on paper.

Its a deep trifle and a moving read.

Strongly recommended.

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks is a sprawling, intricate novel constructed of well-crafted parts.   It is literally broken into sections that are broken up further into individual narrative bits – usually a day’s events – that interconnect to form the decades-spanning whole.  The sectioning is clear and explicit. Mitchell seems to be pointing out the parts that make up the whole.  At the same time, the whole is economical and sleek, though it didn’t feel that way as I read it.  It felt like it meandered in places – pleasantly – but on reflection there was no wasted prose.

Each section covers a different age of the world and a character. Most are told from different character’s points of view. Mitchell does an excellent job making each novelette stand on its own.  They all have a strong sense of place and time.  Each seems its own self contained work.  In addition to the strong location and point of view, each is tonally and thematically complete unto itself.  They feel like individual novels, but also link together in terms of plot and larger themes and tones.  It’s an impressive effect, this holographic fractal structure.

Bone Clocks has a significant fantasy component, complete with magic and secret societies that are largely unseen by mortals.Mitchell is such a good writer that these elements often seem unnecessary.  Several times I noticed that I preferred to escape the escapism parts and get back to the characters’ day-to-day lives. One of the characters running away from home and breaking her heart felt more important than the brushes with a secret society that led to. Mitchell’s literary skills are on vivid display there, making the prosaic more engaging than the magical.

The magic is key to the literary power and vice versa, though.  I think Clocks is ultimately more engaging and interesting for its inclusion.

Overall Clocks is a vast clockwork of ideas, passions, and interconnections that is well worth exploring and chewing on over time.

Strongly Recommended.