Obsolete Your Idols

People had been telling me about but not exactly recommending M. John Harrison’s novel Light to me for a couple of years.  Having now read it, I think I can see why.  The story of this novel is very convenient, a sort of happy ending where everything fits a nice orderly pattern, but the construction of it aspires to concealing that pattern for as long as possible.  The setting is the near-past and the far future, and the central three human characters are depicted through a common lens of them making non-rational decisions which they then don’t attempt to rationalize to themselves or anyone else.  It revolves around a very large maguffin, indeed.  A strange place in space where every technology you try, works.

I found it a frustrating book.  Other people told me it was frustrating to read but they were talking about the prose style which is somewhat experimental. The language and constructs were much more accessible than those of some writers I’ve enjoyed (Robert Anton Wilson, William S. Burroughs, Samuel Delaney, Michael Moorcock, Jack Kerouac, James Joyce) and not really an impedance.   The thing which frustrated me about this story is how obliquely the author tries to tell it.  It’s a story I could express to you in thirty words.

The one thing I would like to champion about this book is the future setting.  I do like the idea of a place and time where radical physical form changes are trivial, computation is no longer a scarce commodity for anyone, intersystem travel is rapid and virtual reality addiction commonplace.  All of that is a fun setting to read about for me.

But to have half of the characters consolidated, the grand design revealed to be a trick all along, and the implausible actions of the characters not given some kind of an explanation, left me looking for the rest of this story.  There are fun bits and funny bits and there are sad bits and moving bits in this book.  But on the whole I can’t say I liked it.

Who might like this book

• fans of space opera
• fans of experimental writing, more poem in places than prose
• fans of Brin’s Uplift stories who want something in that vein

Who might not like this book

• people who hate omnipotent alien tampering ala Q of Star Trek: The Next Generation
• people who hate unreliable narrators who won’t even justify their actions to themselves

One of my co-workers handed me a pair of books by Jack McDevitt after having asked me a couple times if I’d read his stuff.  I hadn’t and now I have, at least one of them, Polaris.  So what is Polaris?  It’s a locked space ship mystery.

More to the point, it’s a story about a group of people who disappear out in space but leave behind a functional ship.  Years later some personal items taken from that ship are going to be auctioned off and come into the possession of Alex Benedict, an antiquities dealer, and Chase Kolpath, his lovely assistant.  I gather there’s an earlier book by McDevitt with these two characters but I didn’t feel lost or very confused without having read it.  (There was a moment when a character, Jacob, is speaking and I didn’t realize yet that that’s the name of their house AI; just a tip if you find yourself similarly confused).

The two have a relationship a touch reminiscent of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin if Nero Wolfe were reticent and Archie Goodwin was a spicy spaceship pilot.  This story is like one of the Boy’s SF Adventure stories I read as a kid (YA Heinlein, say) if the active protagonist were female and the nominal male lead were distant and obsessive.  There’s plenty of science flavoring to this tale, with interesting futuristic technology and resourceful juryrigging by Chase.  There is a fair amount of macking on and by Chase but it didn’t divert from the narrative or diminish her capabilities.  Chase Kolpath is badass.  Alex Benedict is truly a fortunate employer.

In the end, I only had one qualm with the answer to the mystery and that is because I felt feinted without cause by one of the scenes along about chapter eighteen.  It seemed to me to undermine one of the needed pieces of the ending.  Even after a re-reading of that scene I still felt tricked, but I can forgive that because the whole rest of it hangs together so well.  You get to figure the mystery out along with the characters and it’s a joy to watch them do so.  This is one of the most solidly put together stories I’ve read in a long time.  Highly enjoyable, strong female protagonist, some nice scenes possible only in science fiction.

Who might like this book

• People who are looking for sf with more than bimbo females, flat-personality rugged-jawed mouthpieces-for-ideas males and hand wavey plot resolutions
• People who like tightly woven mystery plots
• People who are or are likely to become trapped in a decaying orbit with quasars

Who might not like this book

• People who like lurid future sex scenes
• People who think girls are dumb
• People who are sensitive about the money they spend on antiques

I read Commune 2000 AD by Mack Reynolds.  No Powells link to the story because they don’t seem to have ever stocked it.  This is the third book of his I’ve read (others being Ability Quotient and Lagrange Five).  I’m starting to get a feel for how a Mack Reynolds story unfolds and this one is a solid story in that range.

It’s the story of a future (the 2000 AD of the title) where the United States has gotten its act together enough to give (nearly) everyone a living wage though with it comes an almost total lack of privacy and a rather tightly yoked role in society.  That’s the surface, anyway.  Then, this being a Mack Reynolds book, we peel back layers, see some groovy people who are hip to the truth and clue in our protagonist.  This not being a Philip K. Dick story, the revelations don’t destroy the protagonist and all of the drug use is good clean fun used to enhance sex or being alive.

The payoff in this story is all in the Aftermath epilogue at the end but it’s a satisfying wrap on a relatively straightforward story.  Looking back on that future from eight years past it, I’m wistful for how bright the future looked from 1974.  The story is a curiosity and a pleasant read but probably not life changing.

People who might like this book

• Those with an appreciation for retro-futurism.
• Those who like to read politically oriented sf.
• Those looking for old ideas of what newness means

People who might not like this book

• Those who don’t like stereotypes of the early 1970s projected into the future.
• Those who trust implicitly the governors to govern wisely.
• Those who are anti-drug, anti-sex, anti-future, anti-fun.

This is the third Matt Ruff book I’ve read, Set This House in Order.  The subtitle of it is A Romance of Souls and that’s accurate.  The heroic protagonist is dealing with Multiple Personality Disorder so it’s a very little bit like some other such books you might have read, where the hero is sometimes at odds with themself.

The early and middle parts of the story mostly take place in the Pacific North West, in and around Seattle, which I enjoyed very much.  I’ve even been to some of the places mentioned by name.  The only real letdown for me in this story was that I was expecting much more of an explicitly fantastical or beyond reality element.  There wasn’t anything in here which I couldn’t hand-wave away as subject point of view, which is perhaps welcome news for people who hate genre fiction but love to read about people suffering.

There are some fun story twists as the story unfolds and some great thumbnail sketches of characters.  It also leaves a satisfying number of questions unanswered but resolves the major ones I was plagued by, so it’s very nearly ideal for my tastes in that way.

Who might like this book:

• People with alters living in their head
• People who love reading about Seattle
• Fans of cold case mysteries

Who might not like this book:

• People with alters living in their head
• People looking for a more clearly futuristic or fantastic story
• People who hate tricksy stories

Approximately fifteen years ago, several friends of mine told me I absolutely needed to read a book by John Steakley named Vampire$.  Then they told me I needed to read Armor, by the same author.

Maybe you’ve noticed, I’m kind of slow.  I’m a slow adopter of technology,  philosophies, mindsets and habits.  So I just now read Armor.  I’m not exactly sorry I waited, but I probably would have been just as happy to have read it 15 years ago.  Sorry, Aaron.  Sorry, Jim.  Sorry, Uriah.  You guys were right, I should have leapt at the chance.

Be that as it may, maybe you haven’t read Steakley, yet, either.  I’m here to tell you that you probably should, if you are looking for a certain kind of experience.  Do you like James Bond movies?  Die Hard movies?  Did you like Forever War at least as much if not more than Glory Road?  Then this book is for you.   It is one man’s story, launched into without any past, any sense of what drives him, in the brutal face of endless war.  It’s got bureaucratic SNAFUs, it’s got dark humor, it’s got graphic fight scenes.  Then in the second part, we get to see the rest of the world from another point of view, more fun, less brutal.  Then it all knots back together at the end.

It’s probably technically space opera, it’s combat fetishizing, and it moves at a high speed pace.

Who might like this book

• Fans of:
  • Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero
  • Resnick’s Santiago
  • The first Zelazny Amber book
  • The aforementioned movies and books I compared it to
• People looking for something fast to stuff in their pocket and take on a short plane flight
• Players of FPS games

Who might not like this book

• People who can’t read past typographical errors, the copy editor seemed to be asleep on this printing
• People who want a richly detailed background  and snort at testosterone blurred scenes
• Pacifists, romantics, deconstructionists, and faith-based intellects

I still haven’t read Vampire$, by the way.  But it’s on my shelves, now.