Walking on the Moon

I read an interview with Neal Stephenson where he mentioned that he can make a living as a writer because he writes things people like to read.  That sounds kind of vacuous, but there’s a point in there.  Almost without exception, when I read something by Stephenson, I enjoy the experience cover to cover.

Snow Crash is extremely well regarded among geeks and science fiction folks in general, but I’m always a little leery when approaching a book with so much buzz about it.  I’ve been disappointed by a lot of cyberpunk in the past, and having a protagonist who is a hacker/network guy is always dicey for me.

I shouldn’t have worried.  Even though I came into the book a little standoffish, Stephenson grabbed me pretty quickly and pulled me into his world.  Cryptonomicon is more nearly believable, but the feel of the hackers and others in this world is right.  It reminded me a little of Charles Stross’s Halting State in that the hackerish parts of the world felt right even if the details were unfamiliar.  Stross’s details are unfamiliar because he’s taking the reader to a near future Scotland.  Stephenson is taking us much further into satire and fiction, with the contrast and volume high.

One of the best things about Stephenson is that even when he’s got the throttle all the way open and the speakers blaring, he’s in control of his narrative and his characters.  The trip is a lot of fun, but there are things to contemplate as they go by.  And is you don’t like what just went by, something else will be along in a second.

Snow Crash is a lot of fun, and rewarding as well.

Strongly Recommended.

I really haven’t read very much Philip K. Dick.  I did read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep a few years ago, and was a little dazed by the thing.  I’ve also read some of his short stories, which I found less impressive.  My recent 3 for 2 run at Barnes and Noble gave me a good excuse to try another Dick work, The Man in the High Castle.

Castle is both an enjoyable yarn, and a really effective piece of writing.  It’s an alternate history in which the US lost WWII and is under joint occupation by Germany and Japan. Unlike many of the alternate histories, the focus here isn’t on the details of how such a loss came to be, but more about the emotional and cultural impacts.  It’s simple premise is remarkably well executed, despite the many times I’ve seen it done.

Dick’s America is eerie, filled with the logical changes brought about by such an occupation, without overstating details.  I understand Dick is not widely praised for his memorable characters, and I think that criticism is well founded in the sense that none of these characters transcend the story as a Falstaff or even a James Bond.  However as entities in service to the overall story, they are simple and effective, advancing plot and underlining themes without shouting out each other or the overall narrative.  They’re believable but never outsized.

If the well-crafted alternative history were not enough Castle also presents us with the problem of the mysterious author and his strangely powerful and perceptive book about what might be the real history of the war.  It keeps everything that little bit more off kilter to have this almost mystical entity out there, as well as being something of a plot mover in itself.

Overall the book is a masterpiece of tone and implication, rather than of straightforward plot and character.  The plot and character are not neglected, but the small doubts and allusions to the world we know from the world we don’t add to the disorientation and paranoia of the work.

Strongly recommended.

Yeah, reading The Year of the Flood kicked off something of an Atwood run for me.  I actually found The Handmaid’s Tale in the buy 2 get 1 free bin at my local Barnes and Noble, so I grabbed it.  I’m always good for a classic by an author I like.

The Handmaid’s Tale showcases two of my favorite superpowers that Margaret Atwood has: her ability to extrapolate societies by believably turning up the gain on today’s society and the ability to create people in those societies who think, react, and generally behave like real people.  The first is a necessity in writing speculative fiction worth reading and the second makes reading the speculation a joy not a chore.

If one wants to pick nits in the plot mechanics, one can, on sober reflection, succeed at that game.  But the characters are so wholeheartedly invested in the world that it seems in poor taste to do so.  Just as good actors can create a suspension of disbelief, so can Atwood’s characters.

The characters do play symbolic roles, and the aspects of society are exaggerated to make a point.  But the points are all well worth consideration, and the symbols all speak with the voices of our friends.  The total effect is powerful and thought-provoking in a way that few works are.

Strongly recommended.

After reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, I needed to go back and read the first book in the series in the hopes of having some blanks filled in as well as seeing how the characters from the second book fit in the first.

I enjoyed the Oryx and Crake, even knowing the broad outlines of how it came out.  While I was looking for the appearance of the characters from Flood, I was really surprised by how tangential their involvement was here.  This was a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it makes each book a more distinct experience; on the other it heightened the feeling that these few characters more than represented the whole society, but completely were the whole society.  The same feeling of an unrealistically cramped world was here.

Still, there is plenty to enjoy in Oryx and Crake.  The same large issues shape a world populated by real characters.  This is a world we may yet see, right through to its end.  Though there will probably be more people in it.

Recommended.

If you haven’t read any of Joseph Ellis’s history writing, but think you might like it, Founding Brothers is a good book to try.  It’s shorter than his biographies of Adams, Jefferson, or Washington, but showcases his techniques and insights well.

Ellis has an eye for the illuminating historical moment that focuses attention on a figure’s strengths and weaknesses, and can use that moment as a jumping off point to lead the reader through the tangle of history that brought them to it.  It’s an interesting and effective technique.  Brothers showcases it to good effect.

His scholarship and writing bring the facts of the situation to the reader clearly, and his informed speculation breathes life into the proceedings.  He makes an excellent tour guide to the early days of America.

Recommended.

The Year of the Flood relates events in Oryx and Crake from a different perspective. This is a tricky bit of business.  Both books are near-future works of science fiction relating a societal collapse, so being able to get two books out of the same sequence requires the world to be sufficiently rich that there are two compelling viewpoints from which to view the events.  Even when that’s the case, the writer is still presented with the problem of creating two sets of interesting characters.  Fortunately, the writer in question is Margaret Atwood, so this all goes pretty well.

Atwood’s strengths and weaknesses are all on display here.  The world is extrapolated from today’s world in ways that expose the underlying ideals, ideas, and ideologies that shape it.  Characters are iconic, but with enough life in them that they aren’t just tokens to be moved through some intellectual bingo game.  On the down side, the iconography and some Dickensean coincidences make the world seem small.  The ideas are all big, but the cast seems small.

A large focus of Flood is the hybrid Christian/Environmental Fundamentalist cult, God’s Gardeners.  Atwood does a great job showing how the ideas underlying such a belief system could come to be, how individuals could get drawn into it, and how one would practically run such a thing.  It’s an eye opening set of ideas, put forth in a diverting narrative.

Strongly Recommended.

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City is a strange piece of alchemy.  It’s a history of two basically distinct occurrences in Chicago in the late nineteenth century – the Chicago World’s Fair and the emergence of America’s first serial killer.  Either one of these is a pretty fascinating topic, and Larson writes well enough to make either hypnotizing. It’s very difficult to understand how he makes the two accompany each other so well, especially when the narratives basically never touch.

Each side of the coin is well researched and presented accessibly, and the events are particularly diverting.  The World’s Fair was a major event in Chicago’s history – not to mention the world’s.  A broad cast of characters brought a series of wonders to the eyes of the world, and as with any undertaking of that scale, the stories of how the magic happened is at least as diverting as what happened.

On the other side, Larson details the ruthless murders of tens of women by a man who seems to have killed simply for the enjoyment of doing so.  He also defrauded a series of people to finance his murder spree, but doesn’t seem to have been motivated primarily by material gain.  The story is gripping and detailed.

These are two great stories to tell, and in Larson’s capable hands I’d be delighted to read either one.  What really amazes me is how well they compliment each other.  Larson tells each in parallel, with a few chapters or sections of one story giving way to the other.  Because the two don’t interact Larson can choose how to pace them.  I was continually surprised by how often I’d come to a switch between one storyline or the other and be initially perturbed at being interrupted only to get sucked back into the other almost immediately.  To tell one history that well is impressive; to weave two together is amazing.

Strongly recommended.

David Cross’s I Drink For A Reason is a collection of short essays that cover a wide range of topics with a humorous tone.  That describes a lot of books, and the execution completely determines the quality of the reading experience.  For me, this was not a great experience, but not awful either.

Cross has an acerbic delivery of some reasonable thinking, but nothing the left me with lasting impressions.  I take that back, I thought his essay on breaking up was something special.  Everything else was diverting enough, but fairly light.  An enjoyable book to spend some time with , but pretty insubstantial.

I know I said I was moving these, but I had forgotten one more book I read last year, Wil Wheaton’s Memories of the Future. I’ve put up a short review on Bell, Book, and Candle.

Some long overdue reviews up on Bell, Book and Candle.  Specifically reviews of The Last Founding Father and Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  These will be the last reviews posted to BBC directly.  Further reviews, including all the stuff I’ve read this year to date, will be blogged directly.  So you have that to look forward to.