Derek
There are some really important questions asked—and theoretically answered—in this novel, but it has two serious problems.
It's slow...
I just don't buy the whole theory of “version control”. Philip has developed a causality violation device (“Don't call it a time machine!”). The scientists decide that it's like software version control: that if something is done with the CVD that causes a change in the timeline, then the timeline is “corrected” downstream, so that there is only ever one “reality”. Well, that's not how software version control works. The currently most popular, GIT, explicitly encourages forking, whereby one user may have one set of code, and another user has a quite different one, both based on the same original files. Nothing in Palmer's expression of time travel (oops!) suggests it should be any different. There's no violation of the quantum physics Many World's Interpretation, in which choices (or quantum fluctuations) create new forks in the multiverse.
Did I say it was slow?
I am so totally pissed. So pissed in fact that I swear I'm done with Linwood Barclay forever more.
First, he strained the coinkydink meter to its limits. We have four (possibly only three) unconnected major crime sprees in a town probably the size of Cabot Cove, Maine. We begin with an explosion at a drive-in movie, on its last night before its scheduled to close, in which four people die. Then, the main cop character is still trying to solve a couple of old murder cases, which are tied together (and are only possibly connected to the previous case). Then there's a kidnapping and attempted murder—totally unrelated—and finally another murder in which we know the culprit, but don't know if the culprit is ever going to be brought to justice.
The town's so huge they have two detectives, and one of those is brand new. And they have this much crime?
But the killer (see what I did there?) is that on the last page, we have the person who committed those two cold-case murders killing again. And then it ends!
That's the sort of shit I expect from self-published authors who don't know better (and almost invariably, they at least gave me that first book free, so at least I have no grounds for complaint that they conned me into purchasing half a book)
Steer clear of this book. Steer clear of Linwood Barclay. He's actually a really good author, but only a total shit would make you purchase a book that isn't self-contained (and now I'm guessing that I'd have already known that if I'd read the first of the series).
Burroughs would seem to be a misogynist and a racist, his science is awful (though I got the impression that that's more because he doesn't want the science to interfere with a good story—every now and then he seems downright prophetic) and he's predictable too.
And yet, I find these hugely entertaining! You have to read it with all critical faculties turned off (egg-laying women? with breasts? An atmosphere that will disappear in days if the ‘atmosphere plant' is turned off—and mysterious saboteurs who exist for no reason except to turn it off: we never find out why!) but if you can ignore all that, it's a fun romp.
Good whodunnit—which by my definition means, I didn't figure it out too soon, but I was given everything I needed to do so—but just far too complicated.
Decker only gets involved in the investigation because of a coincidence; he (unbelievably) convinces the FBI to look at the case; he spends all kinds of money he doesn't have to finish the investigation (when the FBI backs out).
In the end, I just wanted it over with.
Imagine a group of Israeli scientists discover a new universe and—most importantly—a way to enter it. Then imagine that a group of religious Jews decide that their best hope for a homeland for which they don't continuously have to fight is to enter that universe (you can guess how well that works).So far, the thesis isn't that different from Chabon's [b:The Yiddish Policemen's Union 16703 The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925449s/16703.jpg 95855] and, while the story was very good, just like Chabon's book, it's the commentary from the readers that floors me. So many critics, saying “this is fake Judaism”.If someone were to write a fiction about a European sailor, crossing oceans to claim lands for Christian Kings and Queens, and how Christianity became perverted in its zeal to bring the “true faith” (oh, wait, that's not fiction), nobody would object. But apparently Judaism is not subject to such perversion, or at least not permitted to be.
Here ends my quest to read all of the Hugo award winning novels.
It's a shame to end on such a disappointing note, but I can only imagine that going further would be worse, as I'm missing two more Vorkosigan novels (hated the first), one Uplift Saga (ditto), and something from Connie Willis (very hot and cold on that series, but more cold).
I understand that the Hugo is only a popularity contest, and that thousands of Fantasy fans attend WorldCon, but they only get to vote for SF, so in voting for Leiber many were probably voting for his great fantasy, but this?
An earth-sized planet suddenly pops out of hyperspace next door to our moon, and begins to eat it. OK, sounds interesting and novel...
But Leiber spends a third of the book just setting up the science for the whole scenario (very badly, at that! His physics is awful). The too many point-of-view characters all spend far too much time just moving from place to place, and we don't get even a hint of the reason for the sudden appearance of this planet until we're 80% of the way through the book.
Finally, near the end we think that the characters have managed at least a little self-realization. And when both guys discover that they've lost the girl, Don (who was married to her) tells Paul, "I think you always loved her more than I did." He's just admitted to being a narcissist, and marrying Margo just so that Paul couldn't, and Paul brushes it off with “you have to love yourself before you can love somebody else.” Get a grip, Paul! Sure, that's true as far as it goes, but some people have to learn to love themselves less!
A sort of blend of [b:The Trigger 117844 The Trigger Arthur C. Clarke https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1223645380s/117844.jpg 113446], [b:1632 16967 1632 (Assiti Shards, #1) Eric Flint https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391233659s/16967.jpg 1172297] and ... well, every post-apocalyptic novel ever written, which is the problem. Despite the initial premise that explosives and electricity no longer work, there's not actually anything new in the plot. Extra points though for hiding musical references. I only caught “Piano Man” and Stan Rogers' “Night Guard”, but I bet there were more.
Having just finished the hugly disappointing [b: The Vor Game 68483 The Vor Game (Vorkosigan Saga, #6) Lois McMaster Bujold http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1322571824s/68483.jpg 1129239] in my quest to read all the Hugo winners, this was a welcome breath of fresh air. It was controversial in its day (but probably not so much now), with its polyandrous and polygynous (why does my computer's dictionary accept the former, but not the latter?) family relationships, people who have sex for fun, and a female lead who enjoys male companionship but doesn't need it. Apparently, it rubbed some readers the wrong way that in a quest story set in a post-apocalyptic—and sometimes still radioactive—world, our “Mad Max” character is not only not a fighter but a healer. Personally, I loved the fact that while she carries a belt knife, it never even occurs to her to use it against an attacker. McIntyre is, by background, a biologist, so even though her method of using snakes to cure disease was pure fantasy at the time, it was grounded in solid science. Unlike so much older SF, what was then fantasy only seems more plausible now, not less.
Vegetarian fare. That is, there's no meat to it.It's entertaining, but there are so many ghosts in this machine that it needs an exorcist. I was going to say that Miles Vorkosigan is the biggest Mary Sue ever. But he's not, because he doesn't have talent, he just has more luck than anybody else in the universe!Now I face a quandary. I'm reading the Hugo winners. There are two more books in the series for which she's won Hugos! I have the same problem with [a:Connie Willis 14032 Connie Willis https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1199238234p2/14032.jpg]. [b:To Say Nothing of the Dog 77773 To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2) Connie Willis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469410460s/77773.jpg 696] was excellent; [b:Doomsday Book 24983 Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #1) Connie Willis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403972500s/24983.jpg 2439628] and [b:All Clear 7519231 All Clear (All Clear, #2) Connie Willis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320549311s/7519231.jpg 9735628] were unreadable: so do I read [b:Blackout 6506307 Blackout (All Clear, #1) Connie Willis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433715206s/6506307.jpg 6697901], which also won a Hugo. I should have stuck to awards that weren't just popularity contests...
Vaguely interesting, but far too long.
I just couldn't believe the whole setup. Even assuming a feeling of collective guilt over the holocaust, why would any government permit a Jewish (substitute the minority of your choice here) settlement on its territory with an explicit termination date! So, sixty years in, you suddenly have a large number of people, who you don't consider citizens or even resident aliens, and you plan to deport them? Where? OK, I get that it has similarities to the current situation in the West Bank, but that all started with other countries (via the League of Nations) deciding the future of Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman empire. They had no interests of their own in the area.
While governments are certainly prone to ignoring issues that won't come back to bite them in their own mandate, they are far less likely to deliberately create a problem that is guaranteed to bite their grandchildren.
That aside, the mystery was pretty good. Though the sudden (and brief) appearance of the Mad Dentist was ... odd.
A quarter-star extra for teaching me about Mount Edgecumbe. Mount Edgcumbe (in Cornwall, fewer ‘e's), for which it is named, is the view from my office across Plymouth Sound. There's no actual Mount (barely even a hill) at Mount Edgcumbe, so it only seems fair that the name be reused for a real mountain (though, I suppose, it doesn't seem so fair to the Tlingit who'd already given it a perfectly good name).
I used to think my memory was reliable. Then I tried to apologize to my younger brother for an act that had bothered me for decades. It probably wasn't actually the worst thing I ever did to him, and I was young enough that it should have been forgivable but still it had nagged at me. I would have been 6 or 7 and he was two years younger. In my memory, I broke the living room window. I convinced him to take the blame, because at his age he wouldn't get in any trouble. I was right; he didn't. But that hardly makes it right. Anyway, in my thirties, I apologized. And Chris said, “but you didn't break that window. I did.”
So, I totally get this story. But I'm not sure I can come to the same conclusion Chiang, or at least Chiang's narrator, comes to. Then again, I'm not sure I can't!
Yeah, memory it seems is a total fabrication, and in the case of the characters in this story it seems to have been a harmful fabrication, but they got over it. Sure, there are situations worse than theirs, where the harm is irreparable, but it seems to me that there will be at least as many situations where objectively knowing the “truth” is harmful. As in the story of the Tiv, where one group of elders has one memory, the other a different one: one group is going to be harmed by the “facts”, no matter what happens. Surely Sabe is right that coming to a consensus between themselves is a better solution.
Anyway, my brother's gone now, and I'm glad I had the chance to apologize: even if it's possible there was nothing to apologize for.
Excellent.
Coben totally gets the concept of the “whodunnit”. He gives you the clues, but I was just barely developing a theory when it finally resolved. I knew one the guilty parties, but had guessed that they were more central than they were. I never did work out the rest
Eleven (I think) novels in, Coben is not slacking off on the Bolitar series.
Sharing the 1966 Nebula award with [book: Dune], it inevitably invites comparison, and often comes up lacking, but they're entirely different kinds of books.
[book: This Immortal] doesn't have the scope and grandiosity of Dune, but it also doesn't have the immense flaws of Dune. It's a far simpler novel, and its simplicity is its strength. The characters are a collection of archetypes, because as with almost all of Zelazny's novels, he's reworking ancient myths, but they're well-formed even in the brief strokes permitted in such a short novel.
I've decided not to reread Dune as I get less out of it with each rereading. As with most myths, This Immortal provides more with each retelling.
This is a powerful book, with a lot of important things to say about society. But why does it have to be so slow and boring? Shevek, the most brilliant physicist on two worlds, lives on the world of Anarres, one of a pair of twin planets/moons. Anarres was originally colonized from its sister planet Urras by anarchists who rebelled against the capitalist/autocratic societies of Urras. Initially, the people of Anarres do quite well at building their communal/anarchic society. They've left everything behind on Urras, not just their possessions but even their language, so there's nothing for anybody to covet. But of course by Shevek's time (150 years later, iirc), the normal human condition has reared its ugly head. If you have nothing physical to possess, then you have to own what's in your—and others'—heads. So Shevek's equivalent to a “faculty advisor” steals his ideas and makes himself the lead author on Shevek's papers. Exactly the sort of thing any modern PhD student understands.Shevek is an outsider. He's considered an “egoist” by first his teachers and then his colleagues, because he actually thinks for himself. When he first imagines Zeno's paradox by himself, his teacher can't believe that he actually came up with it independently, but assumes that he's read it and then claimed it as his own idea. Shevek, on the other hand, is absolutely the antithesis of an egoist—he wants to know what book this idea was in!But the people of Anarres aren't interested in his physics, so he travels to Urras. It's not forbidden; but it's not done. Of course, Shevek does it anyway. Once there, he's seduced by the fact that the people (at least the ones he meets) of Urras really do want his physics. When he meets Atro, with whom he's corresponded for decades, Shevek says “So many years we have written letters, destroyed each others theories!” and Atro says “You were always the better destroyer.” This is the heart of the scientific method, and it seems to Shevek that he's finally found a place where science can be conducted without ego. Of course he's wrong...I was at one point really revolted by the story telling. Shevek gets drunk for the first time in his life and tries to rape a woman. The very idea that the problem is alcohol, and not the man, makes me gag, but that's the way it's told. “It was not only poor Vea who had betrayed him. It was not only the alcohol that he had tried to vomit up.” OFGS! The heart of civilization is that we have to be responsible for our own actions. Yes, alcohol lowers inhibition. But if it takes so little to lower your inhibition to rape, then you need to refrain from drinking. I can accept that Shevek had no idea this could happen, but even after the fact neither the character nor the author seem to be willing to blame Shevek, only the victim and the booze. In the end, Le Guin makes a good case that neither capitalism nor communism is sufficient for a society (but leaves us with the impression that somehow the Terran and Hainish societies have surpassed both, without telling us how) but as [b: The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388229638s/18423.jpg 817527] is a very tentative approach to feminism, this is a very tentative approach to an improved basis of economics.And it's so slow!