Laith

This is my second foray into “published” fan fiction and I feel short-changed. The description seemed right up my alley but I am realizing that the sort of people who write fan fiction really love getting lost in the weeds. I read the omnibus 2200 page epub not realizing that this series was broken up into smaller more digestible releases, so this is a review of the series as a whole. It hardly matters since this is basically all one story. The arcs aren't really distinct from each other, and this whole story takes place in the same timeframe as The Sorcerer's Stone.

This is a Rationalist take on Harry Potter. What that means in practice is that Harry in this series is a child prodigy raised by a muggle professor, and as such is highly educated and possesses an adult understanding of the world around him. His behavior, personality, and thought process are significantly divergent from the original work. We largely follow the plot and setup of The Sorcerer's Stone but there are minor differences in the setup alongside the largescale changes to characters.

There is a lot of the scientific method, a lot of decision theory, and a lot of ethical debate and philosophy in this book. This story is written by a self-taught but by all accounts legitimate scientist/researcher who is using Harry Potter as a medium to talk about his area of expertise. This author is not a novelist and you can tell. This book is really leaning hard on the framing and story beats of the original while at the same time actively dismantling that structure. The parts where he is making up a “brand new story” are interesting but are lacking when it comes to prose and polish. His story beats are logical and easy to follow but lack any of the punch and drama that come with OG HP.

The draw here is seeing how a “smart” Harry would have dealt with the challenges he faced at age 11. He makes different choices with his friends, he reads into the power structure of the wizarding world early on, and he is constantly trying to introduce science and the scientific method into the magic system. Watching Harry pick apart problems and plots in two or three chapters that were sustained throughout the entire original series is pretty satisfying in its own way. There's also a Sagan-esque quality to this whole thing; Harry introduces and applies various models of logical and rationalist thought/problem-solving. Through hypotheticals and examples, there's a real effort made to explain the rationalist worldview and philosophy. What is best about this book is the logical reordering of events. Despite how bogged down this fic is, it does stick to its own rules and maintains consistency as events play out - though it does cheat a little with small details and tweaks to the setup (For example: Draco's mom is presumed dead for much of this story and it does factor into his motivations and decision making)

There are hiccups. Science and reason don't map onto the Harry Potter universe very well, a lot of Rowling's world is just silly nonsense at its core. Taking the rationalist approach means that everything needs to be logically consistent and explained, but the world of Harry Potter is intrinsically irrational. Thanks to that incongruity there is way more hypothesis and speculation in this book than there needs to be. Maybe some readers liked the conjecture and structure that was added to the magic system here (because I will admit the lack of structure did bother me in the original) but I did not and it choked the pacing something fierce.

I finished this work only to see the complete version of events. All things told I didn't like this series, and a lot of it has to do with this version of Harry (honestly I didn't like any of the altered cast, but it all flows from this Harry). He seriously lacks the charm of the original; this oddly aged-up Harry man/child thing that is the main character really put me off. He got on my nerves from the outset; the way this Harry speaks to people early on is so unnatural and condescending. What really got my goat was his multi-person inner dialogue and his “mysterious dark side” alter-personality, the whole thing reads like bad manga to me. The further the story goes the more “Eighth Grader Syndrome” gets injected into his personality and I think by the halfway point I'd totally written him off and considered dropping the novel. There is an explanation provided by the story, Harry's scar horcrux imprints a part of Voldemort's personality rather than merely establishing a psychic link like in the original. It's a plausible explanation for this whole telling of events but man is it lame. I'm not trying to be a weeb by calling this out either, there is a distinct and unwelcome anime/anime-trope slant to this whole thing and it spoiled any sort of atmosphere or tonal consistency for me.

This is HP nerdcore and if you aren't a serious head then I recommend skipping this one. If you want to know what happens do yourself a favor and read the Wikipedia summary instead.

TL;DR: “smart” Harry Potter, an 11-year-old boy genius uses the powers of science and rational thinking to speed run the plot of the original series. This is a quality rewrite but it is also nerdy, dense, and stilted.

What a weird short story, I mean even for Le Guin this is strange, but I oddly wish there was more. Nine Lives is about a clone who has to bear the pain of becoming an individual, originally one of ten, an accident happens on a far flung planet that leaves him the sole survivor.

This is really off beat from Le Guin's other work SF work, this might be the hardest SF i've read by this author. It's also thematically distinct, more an exploration of man and individuality than it is an observation of an alien species or culture.

It's excellently written to boot, some fantastic imagery and character work in such a short piece.

Beyond Apollo is the starting point for most people when it comes to Malzberg, it's probably his most widely read novel. Told from the perspective of Harry Evans, the sole survivor of a failed two man mission to Venus, Beyond Apollo is a recounting of those events. The heart of the story is about the death of the Captain of the mission, the How and the Why- Was he insane? Was it an accident? Was it self defense? The story is re-told endlessly, the details differing with each re-telling. What results is something fragmentary, the story-telling kaleidoscopic and generally not plot driven, the narrator is possibly (probably) insane and we are strapped along for the ride.

Like most of the Malzberg I've read there is no real resolution. It's never made clear if Harry is the killer, in fact nothing is ever made obvious other than the fact that he is the sole returning member of the mission. Whether it was aliens or murder or self defense, or even if the captain never really existed at all (or if Harry is himself the captain) remain as possibilities by the end. Many of these re-tellings come in the form of interrogations by Forrest (a psychiatrist) about the “truth” of the trip, but also in the form of dream conversations. Harry is obviously scarred by his experience, and is either unwilling or unable to tell us the truth of the experience. The truth itself a subject of meta-textual gamesmanship as Harry and the Captain play a game while on the voyage in which only the telling of absolute truth will make one a winner.

There's also the Malzbergian hallmark of sexual neurosis and ineptitude. A lot of the story seemingly focuses itself on Harry's perceived lack of sexual prowess, and his obsession with the Captain's sex life and virility. There's a distinctly gay undercurrent/slant to everything, Harry's sexual dysfunction is painstakingly detailed as chapters vacillate between moments of sexual disappointment with his wife, his impotence as a result of his training, and his hypersexual observations of the Captain. It's a little much- but I can't say that it doesn't serve the story, as it's used to flesh out Harry's character and psychosis and underpins the satire.

That's right, on-top of all of that this novel is a satire critiquing the space program- something fairly unique in the bounds of SF, where mankind's grasping of the stars is typically glorified. If there's one real continuous narrative thread in this book it's the distinct anti-space stance that the developments take. To borrow the words of the novel the space program is painted as a hyper-masculine system that makes machines out of men, explicitly stated during sex with his wife: "We have been geared for efficiency. I begin to fuck her like a proper astronaut." The message seeming that the American obsession with space is ultimately pointless and masturbatory. I cannot fail to note that this was published in 1972, the year which marked the cancellation of the Apollo program, and one of two books about astronauts that Malzberg published after being asked to resign as the editor of the Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin in 1969 because of a critical editorial he wrote about the NASA space program.

I think the primary appeal of the novel is coming in its form and prose. I've never read anything formulated quite like this, it's a stand out among the other new-wave giants. This novel is fragmentary and experimental, with a plot that never resolves- something heavily postmodern and inventive in its approach. This book can be a disconcerting and tedious exercise to read, it's definitely not for everyone, and while I typically like inventive structures the lack of resolution is something I didn't much care for. I'm also decidedly in the NASA-good camp so I didn't much relish him shitting all over the space program. That said, I can see genius at work here, and I can appreciate the immense talent on display even if the book didn't cater to my particular tastes.

A group of interstellar travelers, ordinary people, find themselves stranded after their starship suffers a warp-drive malfunction and disintegrates way off course. The scant survivors are stranded on a barren planet with no hope of rescue; equipped with dwindling resources and no sure method of obtaining more, the survivors band together to overcome the odds and tame the vast wilderness for future generations. All but one survivor, that is. The narrator has done the math: if thirst doesn't kill them, hunger will, and if hunger doesn't kill them, then in a few generations, inbreeding will; they are doomed. The narrator decides she'd rather die with dignity, opting to flee from the others as it becomes increasingly clear that they intend for her to carry out the mission of populating the planet whether she wants to or not.

There's no way to get around it, this is an unpleasant book to read. I'll be upfront, whether you find some enjoyment in this will hinge entirely on how much you buy into the premise and the prose because it's unlike most other books I've read. We Who Are About To is delivered as a transcript of an audio diary, with all the weird punctuation, ramblings, and cut off thoughts that go along with such an idea. It's not comfortable to be locked into the perspective of a suicidal pessimist who by the end of the novel is/is going insane. Opinions are generally split, some people hate it and others think it's a work of genius that plays by its own rules- I'm not sure which camp I personally fall into because I while didn't hate the prose I do agree that it's a bit boring and difficult to read. But I give it a pass because so much of what's "wrong" with the book is clearly by design.

We're going to get into spoiler territory now. Because I buried the lede, while our narrator flees the group seeking to survive on rations and eventually transition to death in her own time she is not left unmolested. The surviving men of the group track her down, aiming to impregnate her on their return so they can begin their colonization attempt. She resists, brutally murdering her pursuers and returning to the camp where she kills the remaining survivors, her fellow women and a 12 year old child. Left alone she begins to lose her grasp on sanity, suffering hallucinations she is haunted by her victims and specters of her past. Weak from hunger she kills herself, the final line "well it's time".

It's odd to characterize a Novella as a slow burn, but that's what this is. It's a slow, cold, burn- and a lot of that has to do with the narration, how seemingly detached her perspective is from the present moment. Given the narrative device (the transcription of an audio diary) at nearly all times it is a story told from hindsight- it lends a reflective element and psychological edge to even the most horrifically violent moments. Initially told with only a slight delay between event and transcription there is a significant shift towards the midpoint where most of the story is being back-filled, given color by the time that has passed since the narrator committed herself to the project of dying.

So much of the second half of the book is devoted to the ennui the Narrator experiences, to her and to the reader it is torturous to get through. This is of course by design, while this is not the first book to explore boredom as torture it is one of the few (if not the only) that turns into a slog to prove its own point. It's really quite bleak by the end and as we're increasingly left alone with the narrator and her thoughts you can't help but to ruminate on the hopeless realities at play. Whether it's the narrator philosophizing with her past self or reflecting on the morals of her actions, you get a visceral sense of their absolute desolation by the time you reach the final page.

This is hailed as "Feminist Science Fiction" and I get that label, but I more so saw this as a reflection on this genre and these types of stranded/colony stories writ large. I think it's totally a matter of time and progress that I don't find this all that feminist, to me the narrator's desire for bodily autonomy and outright refusal to be raped/impregnated is more of a cut and dry "you shouldn't do that to people AND of course she gets to make that decision" sort of thing; that probably wasn't the prevailing sensibility in 1975- particularly within the conventions of Sci Fi. More-so I saw this as commentary on the types of books in this genre that would largely forgive the delusion of the group, the manifest destiny impulse that causes them to shed their civilized clothes and rush in beastly and feudalistic directions. If you asked me what I found most feminist about the book id say it's Russ' outlook on the point of living and reproducing, the break from the mainstream view that the reason we exist is to reproduce, because that's patently not the point of living to the narrator. She views reproduction as a means to perpetuate and mend our present mode of civilization, that to reproduce means choosing to continue life as it is it; if that life is not worth living, neither is reproduction.

I think this is a worthy if difficult read, difficult because of the style but also because of the content. It will leave you grappling with quite a bit or it may put you off entirely. It came highly recommended to me, so despite rather liking it, I thought I would love it and I didn't.

I think this book has been around long enough to have a reputation that precedes it. In fact, the only thing I knew about 2666 was its reputation for quality among contemporary literary works. It absolutely lives up to that reputation, this book is challenging and ambitious; sprawling in scope and content, and I'm not just talking page count. This is a novel that overwhelms you, basically guaranteeing itself a reread before it's even finished.

It's a challenge just to explain what the book is about, because unlike a standard novel which delivers one linear plot, this story is fragmentary. 2666 is broken up into 5 distinct parts, which surround a series of unsolved murders in the city of Santa Teresa (a facsimile of Ciudad Juárez). The city is a nexus that draws to itself literary critics, sportswriter journalists, convicts, and dreamers; these stories of murder and mystery run tangential to the search for a reclusive German novelist, Benno Von Archimboldi (a reference to B. Traven, which is worth a Google). These parts are not genre writing, do not expect to read anything at all like a mystery novel, the mystery is the novel itself.

Those are just the broad strokes, each part tells an independent story, and it's the shared details of those minor stories which inform the larger narrative. When I first cracked this open, my intent was to review each piece independently, in keeping with the Author's last will. But that's not how something like this works. 2666 is the sum of its parts, and structured unlike anything else I've ever read. The pieces fit together however you want to puzzle it- but there are only enough pieces to give the impression of the image on the box.

This is an ambitious project, and if you're anything like me, you'll rip through the first three parts of this book grasping for anything resembling a meta-narrative to connect them. Then you'll read the fourth part, the part about the crimes, which was the literary equivalent of spending the day inside a war memorial or a holocaust museum, only for the fifth part to drag you through the horror of the Eastern front of WW2. It’s only once you're beaten down and exhausted, your expectations of what a book could be completely shattered, that Bolaño finally releases those last, crucial details to tie it all together. And then you realize that you've spent the last month reading almost a thousand pages, driven on almost solely by the brilliance of the prose and your own increasingly ravenous curiosity.

That's four paragraphs just on premise and structure alone, and we haven't even touched on prose or theme or the context of the author's life-are you starting to see the problem when it comes to reviewing this? It's a Masterpiece, like one for the canon and not just hyperbole, you could write 10,000 words on it and not even come close to paying it justice! Look at the other reviews, others have tried! This book is a deep sea of ideas and philosophy and perspective and metatextual commentary; these ideas serve as Bolaño's mark on the field of literature. I find it telling that it's only within the book itself that I can find the words to describe both the spirit and the enormity of its contents.

"Vulture of my Prometheus self or Prometheus of my Vulture self, [...] You may say that literature doesn't consist solely of masterpieces, but rather is populated by so called minor works. I believed that, too. Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wild-flowers. I was wrong. There's actually no such thing as a minor work. [...] Every minor work has a secret author and every secret author is, by definition, a writer of masterpieces [...] There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself I mean, [...] His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!"

I won't gush any further, because this book is not perfect. If you've skipped straight to the cons, then let me summarize the reading experience: exhausting and overwhelming. As novel as the structure is, and as successful as Bolaño is in delivering the narrative in spite of it, there are long stretches of the book where the reader is completely in the dark and subjected to the vicissitude of his trains of thought. If you're, someone who needs a constant sense of narrative progression, you are going to hate this book. If you are someone who cannot stand it when authors go off on long tangents that weave in and out of dialogue, you are going to hate this book. It's as simple as that.

You may also get the sense that the book is unfinished, and that's because by norms of publishing it is. Bolaño was racing the reaper by the end of the writing process, with the book only receiving one round of editing and feedback before his passing, and the posthumous release. There are gaps in quality and gaps in the narrative, but it's not clear if the final product was delivered by design or simply the clock's final result. This is my first Bolaño novel, so I can't really weigh in, people with more grounding in his body of work generally agree that what we got is very close to that hypothetical final draft.

It doesn't escape me that I've been complimenting the prose in a translation, so I must give a nod to Natasha Wimmer, I've read enough poor translations to recognize quality when I see it. While I obviously cannot compare the translation to the original, for the prose to contain so much of the author's voice and so little of the translator's interpretation speaks volumes.

For me 2666 sits up there with Moby Dick, a reading experience that I had all but forgotten until 2666 reminded me. I can recall how difficult I found Moby Dick at the start, only to read on, dictionary close to hand, and find myself transformed by the experience. Not only had I just exposed myself to something profound, but I had tested my mastery over language and redefined what I found to be a challenge. It was an eye-opening piece of literature to me, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with overcoming something challenging was just the cherry on top.

While 2666 isn't perfect, and something of a chore to read, I felt the same feeling as I did with Moby Dick when I turned the last page of this book. A feeling that the experience of reading the book was just as valuable as its content.

PS: I know this review is huge, but I have a few extra notes as I come back to edit this.

First: I’ve tried really hard not to comment directly on the themes/my interpretation of the book in this review. That’s unique to this book because a. I could probably go on for at least another thousand words and b. I think your enjoyment of this text is determined by how curious of a reader you are. Much of this book is focused on the surface level events, the banal, and the remaining elements all point away from resolution; trying to understand the why, piercing through the subtlety, that is the core of the reading experience. I feel like explaining would spoil that experience, interpretations are something best saved to discuss with other readers.

With that said, if you somehow read through this whole review and you need to know what it's actually about, I can't put it any better than phantom_fonte did in this reddit comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/1coc67d/comment/l3g1qjm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1).

Second: I managed to get through all this without ever commenting on how much I adore the cover? People say don’t judge a book by its cover but like, this must be the exception that proves the rule. It’s a just small portion of Jupiter and Semele, the painting by the symbolist Gustave Moreau, and you should really look at the entire thing of it. If you know the story of Semele, the cover becomes yet another element added to the narrative. Out of all the possible elements in the full painting, the selection of death and the white lily is not lost on me either, “At the foot of the throne, Death and Sorrow form the tragic basis of Human Life.”