Arts & Letters

SF Book Review, Part 4

Arts & Letters / /

It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Some of the below aren’t quite SF, but they’re close enough. For more SF, check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

  • The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin: Because of the recommendation of long-time Kaedrin friend Sovawanea, I picked up two Le Guin books. The first was The Left Hand of Darkness, which I really enjoyed. In The Dispossessed, Le Guin covers much of the same thematic ground, but in a much more blatant way.

    The book is set on the planet Urras and its moon Anarres. About 200 years before the events of the book, a group of anarchists lead by a woman on Urras named Odo were given the right to colonize the moon. The Odonians made their way to the moon and cut themselves off from the rest of the universe. Theoretically, it’s a non-authoritarian communist society, with no property and no formal government. In practice, things are a little more complicated. The story follows a physicist named Shevek. He’s working on a General Temporal Theory, but no one on Anerres understands his work and indeed, many stand in his way. So he makes the choice to travel to Urras. The physicists there understand his work and are also in touch with alien societies like the Terrans and the Hainish. Urras is pretty clearly supposed to represent Earth during the 1960s and early 1970s, even if the technology is more advanced. There are two main powers on Urras. A-Io represents the United States and Thu represents the Soviet Union. During the course of the story, there’s even a proxy war in Benbili, which is clearly meant to be Vietnam.

    The book’s prose has an artistry lacking in a lot of SF of the era, yet it remains straightforward enough to remain accessible. I also found the structure of the book interesting. Each chapter alternates between Shevek’s experiences on Urras and the events on Anarres leading up to his trip. Interestingly, this non-linear structure reinforces the physics of time that Shevek is attempting to work out (i.e. his theories eschew the common notion of time being linear). Unfortunately, I found the clear allusions to the US vs Soviet Union to be a bit too bald for my tastes. A good portion of the book consists of various lectures on the nature of government and property and communism, which I found a bit grating. On the one hand, I found most of the specifics of A-Io and Anarres to be unconvincing. On the other hand, I have a certain respect for thought experiments in this vein (for example, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers literally contains lecturing on various political stances). I don’t think Anarres is a place that could ever exist in reality, for instance. By the end of the novel though, this feeling was not nearly as pronounced as it was throughout. The big issue here, though, is that I didn’t really care that much about Shevek. There were times I was rooting for him, but I mostly didn’t care and in one particular instance, I really despised what he was doing (even if he was drunk at the time). In the end, it’s an interesting book, but not really my thing. I don’t think it’s soured me on Le Guin, though it has tempered my enthusiasm. In a lot of ways, The Left Hand of Darkness explores similar territory with respect to societal structures, government and even sexuality, but it does so with much more subtlety and depth. One thing I can say about The Dispossessed is that it made me appreciate The Left Hand of Darkness more… and I would certainly recommend that novel over The Dispossessed.

  • The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick: I’d actually never read a Philip K. Dick novel before this one, which I found to be quite interesting, if a little inconclusive. It’s an alternate history novel (a subject that’s come up recently here) but what really sets it apart from the others I’ve seen is the notion of recursion. In this novel, the Axis powers won WWII and have occupied the United States. The story mostly takes place on the West Coast, where the Japanese run things. There are references to the Nazi occupied East Coast, but we don’t really see anything there. The most interesting thing about the book, though, is the recursive book-within-abook. There’s a man in this novel who has written an alternate history book of his own – one in which the Allies won WWII (that book does not match our reality though). That author is the titular man in the High Castle, and several of the characters in the book have read his novel-within-the-novel, driving various plots forward. The notion being explored here is that there isn’t a singular reality, but many, and that we’d all be better for considering more than our own conception of reality. Dick writes with a lot of soul here. Like Le Guin, there’s more artistry in his prose than in a lot of other SF, and the storytelling isn’t quite as straightforward either. This novel contains a lot of interesting elements, including assassination attempts, love affairs, nuclear war plots, antiques forgery, spies and espionage, and yet, the book does not feel like a story that contains those elements. It seems much more concerned with the way various characters cope with living in a totalitarian regime, and much of the novel focuses on the tone and atmosphere of a Japanese occupied America. I have to admit, it’s a convincing portrait. Dick doesn’t go to cartoonish lengths to demonstrate the world and as a result, it seems oddly realistic. There’s not much closure in the end, but there are some interesting happeneings and it was an intriguing read nonetheless.
  • Angelmass by Timothy Zahn: Another page-turner from Zahn, and I have to admit that he’s become a standard fallback for me. Whenever I get burnt out on the thematic complexities of various novels and want something more entertaining that will turn the pages fast, I know I can count on Zahn. In this story, we get something a little different than the typical Space Opera story that Zahn seemingly specializes in… There’s a scientist who is enlisted as a spy and a con girl and a nice cast of supporting characters, all focussed around a stable black hole which emits particles dubbed as Angels. When placed in proximity to humans, these Angels seem to induce calm, reasonable feelings. They even seem capable of rendering humans incapable of lying. Of course, there are two major governments in the story. One has embraced the Angels, requiring its members to carry an Angel at all times. The other sees the Angels as an alien plot to control humanity. I have to admit that I didn’t find this to be a very compelling idea at first, but Zahn has a knack for page turning stories, and this is no exception. About 15 years ago, I read Zahn’s Conqueror’s Trilogy, which I remember really enjoying – and I think I’m going to revisit that series again next.
  • John Dies at the End by David Wong: You might recognize the name David Wong from his work as the editor of cracked.com and his brilliant articles like The Ultimate War Simulation Game, Life after the Video Game Crash, and Was 9/11 an Inside Job?. In this novel, Wong is in fine form, though it is far from a perfect effort. It’s really more of a horror/comedy novel than anything else, but it does skirt the boundaries of SF and explore some SF ideas. The plot would be tough to describe in a short space, but there’s a number of funny and entertaining set pieces, my favorite being an encounter in a shopping mall where the titular John intuits that they are basically living in an FPS video game, thus finding health packs and shotgun ammo in various crates, etc… It’s a great sequence, and there are a bunch of them throughout the novel, but at the same time, there’s a distinctive lack of connective tissue here. The book reads more like a semi-connected series of one-off stories, and there’s not really a conclusive ending, though despite the book’s title, I found myself quite surprised at what happened to John. It’s all good fun and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it isn’t really anchored by anything and it doesn’t really go anywhere in the end. This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, and Wong’s humor certainly keeps the pages turning, so it does have a lot going for it (it’s got a certain cult sensibility), but I was expecting more.
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: It’s been many years since I read this, and I have to wonder if most of it didn’t just fly over my head the first time. There isn’t much of a story to either book – they’re really just a series of encounters with strange and fantastical creatures that give Caroll, a mathematician, the chance to play word games and explore things like formal logic, philosophy, and history. What we end up with is a series of non sequiturs that can be entertaining at times but which can also be a little hard to read. That being said, I can see why it’s so influential. The reason I wanted to reread this book was Tim Burton’s film version, a movie I never got around to seeing (more because I’m not a big fan of Burton than for any other reason). It’s not one of my favorite books, but it certainly has its moments.

That wraps things up for now. Currently reading Zahn’s Conqueror’s Trilogy and working my way through my backlog of book purchases (I’ve built up a stack of unread novels and non-fiction that I’ve resolved to finish reading before purchasing anything new). I’ve only gotten through about half the books I’ve posted about wanting to read, but I’ve got many of them sitting on my shelf right now, so hopefully I can work my way through them pretty quickly.

Various and Sundry

3 Comments / Arts & Letters, Movies, Video Games / /

I must get back to being an inadvertently incompetent FBI agent in Heavy Rain (in fairness, my private eye is doing a stellar job), so just a few short notes:

  • First, an announcement! Yes, the Oscars are this Sunday, and in accordance with tradition, I will be liveblogging the event (as I have for the last several years). Feel free to stop by and stick around. I might even get me one of them event chat thingies.
  • The 2009 Muriel Awards: Speaking of movie awards, it’s nice to see that some other folks are as tardy as I am with my awards. In any case, it’s a good list, and lots of worthy winners.
  • I’m probably the only person who cares about this, but I found this announcement that 2K sports won’t be putting out a NHL game for the PS3 or 360 (instead focusing on a Wii version) mildly interesting, and probably a victory for PS3 and 360 owners. My own experience with the 2K Hockey game was rather poor, and I found it very strange indeed when the unforgivable bug that was in my 2005 game was still in evidence at least 3 years later. In any case, this move probably makes sense for 2K, as they only sold somewhere on the order of 150 thousand copies of the game last year (on the PS3 and 360) while selling 250 thousand on the Wii. I suppose it also helps that EA isn’t putting out their NHL game on the Wii (yet), as EA’s games are clearly superior to the 2K versions. That being said, hockey games (and probably sports titles in general, including Madden) have gotten a bit too complicated for their own good these days. Aside from the tacked-on inclusion of the NHL 94 controller scheme in EA’s games, these aren’t really games you can just pick up and play. Whatever you may think of the Wii, it does represent an opportunity to rethink the way you approach a game. Often, making a game simpler can increase the fun-factor. But then, I’m not exactly confident in 2K games making that sorta leap. Still, it could prove interesting if EA followed 2K to the Wii. In other news, both 2K and EA missed out on another opportunity at an Olympic Hockey themed game, which I think could be a great change of pace for the Hockey gaming crowd.
  • Frederik Pohl has been writing a sorta retrospective of his friend Isaac Asimov (part 2, part 3, part 4, and ostensibly more coming). I’ve read a ton of Asimov and credit him with being one of the first SF authors to really get me into reading, but I’ve never read any of Pohl’s books. Yet another addition to the book queue, I guess. In other news, I’ve actually been making some progress against the queue of late (3 books in 3 weeks, which is pretty good for me, though probably not a sustainable pace), so perhaps I’ll get to a Pohl book sometime in the next decade.
  • Holy cow is this post boring… To spice things up, I present this item from the “I’m not scared enough of the Japanese” file (not really NSFW, but worth noting I guess). MGK, as usual, perfectly captures the situation with his captions (note the one underneath the image too).
  • Haven’t seen many 2009 movies, why not spoil them all?

Alright, I better end here, or this is going to get really boring.

Is Inglourious Basterds Science Fiction?

7 Comments / Arts & Letters, Movies, Neal Stephenson / /

John Scalzi recently tackled the question of whether or not Quentin Tarantino’s WWII epic Inglourious Basterds qualifies for science fiction. Unfortunately, I should mention at this point that the rest of this post contains mild spoilers about the movie. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it (also, it was my favorite movie of 2009).

In any case, the entire argument hinges around the SF sub-genre of alternate history. In such stories, authors will change some aspect of history in order to explore some sort of narrative idea. This type of story takes all sorts of forms, such as Phillp K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, where Dick speculates about what would have happened if the Axis powers won WWII. There are tons of other examples. I’ve never read one of his books, but I know Harry Turtledove has made something of a career out of similar alternate history stories. Often, the alternate history comes about due to some form of time travel (such as The End of Eternity) or speculation about the many worlds theory of parallel universes (such as Anathem).

A more recent example of the genre is Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Set in the present day, that book’s alternate timeline starts that during WW II, when a temporary settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska. Chabon uses the premise to explore Jewish social and cultural issues, but never really uses “science” to explain his settings (i.e. there’s no time travel or mention of parallel universes, etc…) This is a particularly relevant example because it really does skirt the boundaries of several genres (the book reads more like a noir detective story than a SF tale), yet it’s generally considered part of the SF canon. We’ll revisit this book later in this post.

Without getting into too much detail, let’s just say that at a certain point in the movie, Tarantino diverges significantly from history. As Scalzi points out, the movie is still very much a WWII movie, but by the end, it’s just not quite the same WWII as what’s in the history books.

In his post, Scalzi outlines 4 arguments against the interpretation that Basterds is SF. However, I don’t find them entirely convincing:

1. It wasn’t marketed as science fiction

From a practical point of view, neither writer-director Quentin Tarantino nor The Weinstein Company made any attempt to play up its speculative elements, and indeed probably hoped to keep them under wraps until the last possible moment.

While true from a factual standpoint, I don’t find this argument at all convincing. It wasn’t marketed as SF because the SF elements were meant to be a surprise. Marketing it as an alternate history would be akin to marketing The Sixth Sense as a movie in which Bruce Willis plays a ghost. It’s also worth noting that the marketing for a movie isn’t always entirely accurate. This is especially true when it comes to cross-genre pieces like Basterds. By necessity, marketing simplifies a given movie to it’s basest, most salable features. Indeed, the marketing campaign for Basterds focused almost entirely on Brad Pitt’s motley crew of Nazi-hunters and their action packed exploits, yet those characters are not really the focus of the film and indeed, several of the main characters are barely mentioned. So no, it’s not surprising that the marketing didn’t focus on the SF aspects of the story. That doesn’t necessarily make it less of a SF story.

2. The science fictional aspects of the movie are not necessarily essential to it

To be sure, without the alternate history aspect it becomes a somewhat different movie in the end. But the fact is that the majority of the movie’s themes, characters and narrative are developed without engaging in or resorting to the alternate historical aspects …

On this point, I wholeheartedly disagree. Scalzi does admit that changing the SF aspects would make it a different movie, but what he doesn’t note is that the movie would be drastically inferior in that case. Without the ending (which is where the SF elements really kick in), the movie might still work, but it wouldn’t work nearly as well as it did. That ending is necessary to the success of the movie. It’s also worth noting that the movie does start with some premises that could be considered SF. For instance, take the trailer for the movie in which Brad Pitt gives a speech to his men on their upcoming mission. This scene ostensibly takes place before the D-Day invasion of Germany and it assumes a lot of things. For instance, it’s revealed that all the members of the squad are Jewish. As present day audiences, we know what this means (and Tarantino is certainly counting on that), but in reality, while the Allies knew of Nazi antisemitism in a general sense, the specifics of the Holocaust were not known until after the invasion when various concentration camps and mass graves were discovered. Now, I’m not going to call this science fiction, but it’s clear that Tarantino is counting on audience knowledge of the Holocaust during this scene, and he uses that knowledge to his advantage. This is something that will come up again later in this post.

3. It’s kinda more like fantasy than scifi anyway

This is certainly a fair point, but at the same time, a lot of what we consider SF could also be termed “Fantasy”. You could probably make a compelling argument that Star Wars is more fantasy than SF. Perhaps this is why SF and fantasy seem to get lumped together in bookstores and whatnot. There is certainly a fantasy element to Basterds though, but I’m just not sure if it outweighs the SF elements.

4. If Inglourious Basterds is science fiction, so are most historical movies

Most historical epics are about as alternate in their history as Inglourious Basterds is. For example, take Gladiator — the most recent historical epic to win the Best Picture Oscar

Another fair point and probably the most compelling among Scalzi’s arguments, though I think some important distinctions need to be made here. Movies like Gladiator and Braveheart just contain bad history. For the most part, the people who made those movies were altering history to make for more entertaining narratives, and they knew they could get away with it because 99.9% of the audience doesn’t know or care about the real history involved (and in all fairness, such tactics work – both are very good movies).

With Inglourious Basterds, something different is happening. Scalzi even mentiones that “Tarantino’s messing with history we actually still remember.” And that’s important because Tarantino is attempting something subversive. Unlike Gladiator and Braveheart, Basterds actually relies on the audience’s knowledge of history. This is a movie that wouldn’t work nearly as well if you didn’t know anything about WWII. In terms of information theory, Tarantino is making masterful use of exformation whereas movies like Gladiator change history with the confidence that the audience won’t notice or care. In short, changing history is the whole point of Basterds, whereas it’s just used to spice up the narrative in Gladiator and Braveheart.

In a very real sense, the primary theme of Basterds is the transformative power of cinema. To achieve this goal, Tarantino employs several techniques. One is the direct role of cinema in the plot. A British film critic and a German actress team up with the Basterds to accomplish a specific goal. At several points, discussions of classic German cinema become integral to the plot. Old nitrate filmstock becomes a key plot element. The final showdown occurs in a movie theater that’s run by our heroine. And so on. There’s obvious symbolism at work there. But let’s return to the idea of exformation, as it’s an interesting topic (and one I’ve mentioned before). In short, exformation refers to communication that is dependent on a shared body of knowledge between the parties involved. Wikipedia has a great anecdotal example:

In 1862 the author Victor Hugo wrote to his publisher asking how his most recent book, Les Misérables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?” in his message, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. This exchange of messages would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. The amount of information (a single character) was extremely small, and yet because of exformation a meaning is clearly conveyed.

In the case of Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino uses exformation masterfully. He knows what the audience knows about WWII and he plays on that. At first, he does so with small things, like the all-Jewish Basterds team (which, at first glance, plays like a Braveheart-style historical inaccuracy, but upon further reflection once the film is over, you can see that Tarnatino is really foreshadowing his subversion of history). A movie like Braveheart diminishes in value when you learn more about the true historical basis for the story. I’m sure there are plenty of historians who get incredibly frustrated when watching a movie like that. But Inglourious Basterds only grows stronger, even as you learn more about the historical basis for that film. For instance, the film does not require you to know all about prewar German cinema, but it certainly could be enhanced by such knowledge.

Take the aforementioned symbolic components, add in Tarantino’s use of exformation to manipulate audiences, and then look at how the ending cements the whole film (this is another strike against Scalzi’s second point). It’s not just that Tarantino doesn’t follow history in his movie, it’s that he explodes history. He’s making an audacious and subversive statement about the power of cinema, and he knows he can go over the top with it because we already know about WWII (not because he thinks he can get away with a few historical inaccuracies).

However, it is interesting to note how history often plays a role in science fiction literature. Indeed, for a while, it seemed like a lot of science fiction authors were leaving behind their SF roots in favor of historical fiction. For example, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, both known for their dystopic cyberpunk work, went out on a limb and published The Difference Engine. Similarly, Kaedrin favorite Neal Stephenson went from his popular futuristic stories in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, the semi-historical WWII/present day thriller Cryptonomicon. He then dove even further into the past with the massive Baroque Cycle, a series of books that took place in late 17th, early 18th centuries. It did concern itself with the emergence of modern science and featured notable scientists and organizations like the Royal Society. In an interview with Salon, Stephenson speculated about whether or not the Baroque Cycle was SF:

I always make it clear that I consider myself a science fiction writer. Even the “Baroque Cycle” fits under the broader vision of what science fiction is about.

And what’s that?

Fiction that’s not considered good unless it has interesting ideas in it. You can write a minimalist short story that’s set in a trailer park or a Connecticut suburb that might be considered a literary masterpiece or well-regarded by literary types, but science fiction people wouldn’t find it very interesting unless it had somewhere in it a cool idea that would make them say, “That’s interesting. I never thought of that before.” If it’s got that, then science fiction people will embrace it and bring it into the big-tent view of science fiction. That’s really the role that science fiction has come to play in literature right now. In arty lit, it’s become uncool to try to come to grips with ideas per se.

And he also mentions SF’s relationship with history:

There was a review of “Cryptonomicon” with a line in it that struck me as interesting. The guy said, “This is a book for geeks and the history buffs that they turn into.” I’m turning into one.

Of course, he does note that this fits under a “broader vision” of science fiction, but at the same time, there’s more to it than just the subject matter and ideas. Science fiction authors approach the world in a certain way, and that sort of thing tends to come through in their writing, even if what they’re writing is not science fiction in the strictest sense. So while The Baroque Cycle is primarily a historical series, it’s got some science in it and it reads enough like science fiction that SF fans can appreciate it without any issue.

But the difference between Tarantino and Stephenson is that Stephenson fully acknowledges his SF roots, while Tarantino has not. This is why I previously brought up Michael Chabon’s novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Like Tarantino, Chabon is not known primarily for science fiction work. Yet he produced this exceptional alternate history novel that ended up winning the Hugo award for best novel. There are a lot of other similarities between Chabon’s book and Tarantino’s movie. Both are set in an alternate universe, but neither really explores the speculative aspects of their situations. Chabon’s novel probably comes closer to doing so and does not rely on the alternate history as a surprise or shock in the way that Basterds does. Both the novel and the movie are cross-genre stories (the novel using elements of noir and the detective story; the movie using war movie tropes). I don’t remember any marketing around The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, but I remember being surprised that it won the best novel Hugo (this was before I had read the book and known about its alternate history premise), so I’m guessing that neither movie really calls itself SF.

Then again, the Hugo website does note:

Science Fiction? Fantasy? Horror?

While the World Science Fiction Society sponsors the Hugos, they are not limited to sf. Works of fantasy or horror are eligible if the members of the Worldcon think they are eligible.

And so we finally arrive at the classic classification problem. What is science fiction anyway? It turns out that according to the Hugos, it’s whatever they say is SF. Going by Stephenson’s broader definition, it makes sense that a book like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union could win a Hugo, as it certainly contains its fair share of interesting ideas. Similarly, I think that Inglourious Basterds could easily be considered SF. It contains interesting ideas and is reliant on relatively sophisticated information theory concepts like exformation.

Observant readers may notice that the Kaedrin Movie Awards contains a category for best SF or Horror film, and that Inglourious Basterds was absent from the nominations in that category. So it seemed that back then, I didn’t consider it SF enough to nominate. And now? I think it certainly could (and it would have won). But I think what it really comes down to is the Hugo test: Do most people consider it SF? And that’s where I think my argument that it is SF falters. I think most people do not think of it as a SF movie. This may stem from the nature of the plot, which makes it hard to market the movie as SF (and to Scalzi’s point there, blatant categorizations like SF exist for marketing purposes in the first place). Tarantino isn’t generally associated with the SF world and isn’t calling the movie SF either, which also tends to diminish my argument. But after thinking about it, I still like to think of it as SF. It may not be like any other alternate history story, but just because it’s wholly unique in that respect doesn’t make it less of a SF movie.

Stephenson For Beginners

4 Comments / Neal Stephenson / /

Long time Kaedrin compatriot Sovawanea has recently started a blog chronicling her quest to read 96 books in 2010. One of her sub-quests is to read all of Neal Stephenson’s novels (truly a woman after my heart). Knowing my love of all things Stephenson, she asked me for some advice: “Any suggestions on which order I should tackle Stephenson in? Baroque Cycle first?” To which I replied “Noooo!”

I like the Baroque Cycle as much as anyone and it is true that it’s a standalone story. However, unless you’re a die-hard scholar of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century European history, I think you’d be much better off reading Cryptonomicon first, then easing into the Baroque Cycle later. There are many advantages to this approach. First off, Cryptonomicon is about 1800 pages shorter than the 2700 page Baroque Cycle. Second, Cryptonomicon‘s settings (WWII and present day) are more accessible. Third, the entire series focuses on characters from around 2 major families, with several other side character families, and I think the introduction to these families is better made in Cryptonomicon. This provides you with a sorta shorthand when encountering characters in the Baroque Cycle, allowing you to focus on all the other stuff Stephenson is throwing at you without being totally overwhelmed. Finally, I think Cryptonomicon is just plain better than the Baroque Cycle, though I really enjoyed both. But this also begs another question – is Cryptonomicon the best place to start? If not, what is?

It’s a truly tough question. I think Shamus really nailed Cryptonomicon and Stephenson in general with this statement:

In fact, I have yet to introduce anyone to the book and have them like it. I’m slowly coming to the realization that Cryptonomicon is not a book for normal people. Flaws aside, there are wonderful parts to this book. The problem is, you have to really love math, history, and programming to derive enjoyment from them. You have to be odd in just the right way to love the book. Otherwise the thing is a bunch of wanking.

When I read Anathem, I got a similar feeling, but with different subjects. And when I think about the rest of his work, I find myself struggling to find an ideal starting place for Stephenson. I’ve come up with some ideas below, but I’d certainly be interested in any of my 5 readers’ (at least a couple of whom have read some Stephenson) thoughts on the subject as well. In any case, I think the best place to start (perhaps not coincidentally) is the same place I started: Snow Crash. It’s more accessible than most of Stephenson’s later novels, and it’s not nearly as long either. It’s also a lot of fun.

Now, there are some things about Snow Crash that might be off-putting to new readers. For instance, it belongs to a specific sub-genre of science fiction called Cyberpunk. To be honest, I’m not especially in love with that sub-genre. William Gibson popularized the concept with his novel Neuromancer, which was kinda like futuristic Raymond Chandler, and that’s widely considered to be the best cyberpunk novel. Snow Crash is almost (but not quite) a parody of cyberpunk tropes, while still being an excellent example of the sub-genre. One of the things I don’t like about Cyberpunk is that it’s infused with a sorta earnest nihilism or cynicism. Stephenson doesn’t take it as seriously and has a lot of fun with the typical tropes of the sub-genre, which makes some of the more ridiculous stuff go down easier. There’s a satirical element to the book that I don’t get from a lot of other cyberpunk, and that makes the proceedings more interesting to me. Once you get past the initial culture shock at the beginning of Snow Crash, things rocket along pretty quickly. There’s plenty of action and even the occasional info-dump doesn’t slow things down too much. The characters are fun and the ideas are interesting. What’s more, I know lots of people who have read and enjoyed this book, which seems to indicate that it’s perhaps not as narrowly focused as something like Cryptonomicon. It’s also widely considered to be one of his best novels and also one of the best SF novels of all time. For all these reasons, I think this is probably the best place to start. After that, you could go any number of directions.

I suppose one purist way to look at it would be to read his books in the order they were written. The big issue there is that you start with The Big U, which I did have some fun with, but which is really only for Stephenson junkies who have read everything else.

However, you could make a compelling case for starting with Zodiac, which I think is one of Stephenson’s more underrated or at least, forgotten books (perhaps because it was written before Snow Crash). It’s also probably his most accessible book, and it’s subject matter is surprisingly relevant even today (it’s about a group of environmentalists). If the concepts behind Snow Crash turn you off, you might still enjoy Zodiac a lot. It’s a present day story, and not nearly as stylistic as Snow Crash. It also might be his shortest book.

The Diamond Age is a good book for those who loved Snow Crash and it makes for an interesting bridge between Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon (not surprising, as it’s the book that was written between those other two). It has a similar Cyberpunky setting, though you are also starting to see a real historical influence, as Stephenson establishes a Victorian undertone layered on top of a more typical SF setting (with nanotech and immersive interactive books, etc…). The one bit of warning about Diamond Age though: I’m convinced that Stephenson’s undeserved reputation for bad endings is due to this book (which has a deservedly bad, or at least strangely abrupt ending). It’s something I want to revisit at some point to see if the ending makes more sense upon rereading, but still.

Cryptonomicon is great, but as previously mentioned, it’s relatively long and it seems to rub some people the wrong way. Still, I consider it to be Stephenson’s best novel and it’s actually my favorite novel of all time. Following that with the Baroque Cycle makes sense, as they’re both part of the same series.

Anathem is his most recent novel, and it is very good. Perhaps not as good as Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash, but excellent in its own right. The only real caveat with this one is that Stephenson kinda invents a new vocabulary in the story, and it takes a little while to get used to the style. That said, it’s not a gimmick and there actually ends up being a pretty good reason for it. It’s up there towards the top of my rankings, but I also don’t think it’s an especially good one to start with.

One other interesting idea for a place to start with Stephenson would be the novels he wrote under a pseudonym (Stephen Bury) with his uncle, J. Frederick George – The Cobweb and Interface. They’re both written in a more prosaic style and read more like a techno-thriller than Stephenson’s other novels. They start with absurd premises (the blurbs about their plots make the books sound awful), but the authors make them seem realistic and populate the world with good characters, then have a less realistic ending. I actually really enjoyed them a lot more than I thought I would, and you can clearly see Stephenson’s influence, but they’re not as deep as the rest of his stuff. I’d recommend holding off on these until later, but they’re definitely worth reading if you’re a fan (and maybe even if you’re not).

I think that covers all his fiction novels. In terms of Non-Fiction, he actually has a few great books (or, er, reallly long essays). In the Beginning Was the Command Line is horribly out-dated (it’s about operating systems, but it was written 10 years ago – before OSX, Win XP, Ubuntu, etc…), but still an entertaining read. Despite being out-dated, it’s still relevant because he spends a lot of time talking about cultures and history of the computer and operating systems, etc.. It’s also available for free online. In the Kingdom of Mao Bell and Mother Earth Mother Board are two absurdly long articles that Stephenson wrote for Wired in the 90s. The most interesting thing about them is that you can really see how his experiences writing those articles influenced his later novels.

So in terms of a recommended order to tackle his books in, my thoughts seem to point to something like this: Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, Anathem, Zodiac, Interface, The Cobweb, and finishing off with The Big U. It’s a little top-heavy in that his best works are at the front of the list, but I think that’s generally how people approach authors anyway.

That list is, of course, purely subjective. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on the matter…

More on Visual Literacy

4 Comments / Arts & Letters, Culture, Movies / /

In response to my post on Visual Literacy and Rembrandt’s J’accuse, long-time Kaedrin friend Roy made some interesting comments about director Peter Greenaway’s insistence that our ability to analyze visual art forms like paintings is ill-informed and impoverished.

It depends on what you mean by visually illiterate, I guess. Because I think that the majority of people are as visually literate as they are textually literate. What you seem to be comparing is the ability to read into a painting with the ability to read words, but that’s not just reading, you’re talking about analyzing and deconstructing at that point. I mean, most people can watch a movie or look at a picture and do some basic contextualizing. … It’s not for lack of literacy, it’s for lack of training. You know how it is… there’s reading, and then there’s Reading. Most people in the United States know how to read, but that doesn’t mean that they know how to Read. Likewise with visual materials–most people know how to view a painting, they just don’t know how to View a Painting. I don’t think we’re visually illiterate morons, I just think we’re only superficially trained.

I mostly agree with Roy, and I spent most of my post critiquing Greenaway’s film for similar reasons. However, I find the subject of visual literacy interesting. First, as Roy mentions, it depends on how you define the phrase. When we hear the term literacy, we usually mean the ability to read and write, but there’s also a more general definition of being educated or having knowledge within a particular subject or field (i.e. computer literacy or in our case, visual literacy). Greenaway is clearly emphasizing the more general definition. It’s not that he thinks we can’t see a painting, it’s that we don’t know enough about the context of the paintings we are viewing.

Roy is correct to point out that most people actually do have relatively sophisticated visual skills:

Even when people don’t have the vocabulary or training, they still pick up on things, because I think we use symbols and visual language all the time. We read expressions and body language really well, for example. Almost all of our driving rules are encoded first and foremost as symbols, not words–red=stop, green=go, yellow=caution. You don’t need “Stop” or “Yield” on the sign to know which it is–the shape of the sign tells you.

Those are great examples of visual encoding and conventions, but do they represent literacy? Why does a stop sign represent what it does? There are three main components to the stop sign:

Stop

  1. Text – It literally says “Stop” on the sign. However, this is not universal. In Israel, for instance, there is no text. In it’s place is an image of a hand in a “stop” gesture.
  2. Shape – The octagonal shape of the sign is unique, and so the sign is identifiable even if obscured. The shape also allows drivers facing the back of the sign to identify that oncoming drivers have a stop sign…
  3. Color – The sign is red, a “hot” color that stands out more than most colors. Blood and fire are red, and red is associated with sin, guilt, passion, and anger, among many other things. As such, red is often used to represent warnings, hence it’s frequent use in traffic signals such as the stop sign.

Interestingly, these different components are overlapping and reinforcing. If one fails (for someone who is color-blind or someone who can’t read, for example), another can still communicate the meaning of the sign. There’s something similar going on with traffic lights, as the position of the light is just as important (if not more important) than the color of the light.

However, it’s worth noting that the clear meaning of a stop sign is also due to the fact that it’s a near universal convention used throughout the entire world. Not all traffic signals are as well defined. Case in point, what does a blinking green traffic light represent? Blinking red means to “stop, then proceed with caution” (kinda like a stop sign). Blinking yellow means to “slow down and proceed with caution.” So what does a blinking green mean? James Grimmelmann tried to figure it out:

It turns out (courtesy of the ODP and rec.travel), perhaps unsurpsingly, that there is no uniform agreement on the meaning of a blinking green light. In a bunch of Canadian provinces, it has the same general meaning that a regular green light does, with the added modifier that you are the undisputed master of all you survey. All other traffic entering the intersection has a stop sign or a red light, and must bow down before your awesome cosmic powers. On the other hand, if you’re in Massachusetts or British Columbia and you try a no-look Ontario-style left turn on a blinking green, you’re liable to get into a smackup, since the blinking green means only that cross traffic is seeing red, with no guarantees about oncoming traffic.

Now, maybe it’s just because we’re starting to get obscure and complicated here, but the reason traffic signals work is because we’ve established a set of conventions that are similar most everywhere. But when we mess around with them or get too complicated, it could be a problem. Luckly, we don’t do that sort of thing very often (even the blinking green example is probably vanishingly obscure – I’ve never seen or even heard of that happening until reading James’ post). These conventions are learned, usually through simple observation, though we also regulate who can drive and require people to study the rules of driving (including signs and lights) before granting a license.

Another example, perhaps surprising because it is something primarily thought of as a textual medium, is newspapers. Take a look at this front page of a newspaper1 :

The Onion Newspaper

Newspapers use numerous techniques (such as prominence, grouping, and nesting) to establish a visual hierarchy, allowing readers to scan the page to find what stories they want to read. In the image above, the size of the headline (Victory!) as well as its placement on the page makes it clear at a glance that this is the most important story. The headline “Miami Police Department Unveils New Pastel Pink and Aqua Uniforms” spans three columns of text, making it obvious that they’re all part of the same story. Furthermore, we know the picture of Crockett and Tubbs goes with the same story because both the picture and the text are spanned by the same headline. And so on.

Now I know what my younger readers2 are thinking: What the fuck is this “newspaper” thing you’re babbling about? Well, it turns out that a lot of the same conventions apply to the web. There are, of course, new conventions on the web (for instance, links are usually represented by different colored text that is also underlined), but many of the same techniques are used to establish a visual hierarchy on the web.

What’s more interesting about newspapers and the web is that we aren’t really trained how to read them, but we figure it out anyway. In his excellent book on usability, Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug writes:

At some point in our youth, without ever being taught, we all learned to read a newspaper. Not the words, but the conventions.

We learned, for instance, that a phrase in very large type is usually a headline that summarizes the story underneath it, and that the text underneath a picture is either a caption that tells me what it’s a picture of, or – if it’s in very small type – a photo credit that tells me who took the picture.

We learned that knowing the various conventions of page layout and formatting made it easier and faster to scan a newspaper and find the stories we were interested in. And when we started traveling to other cities, we learned that all newspapers used the same conventions (with slight variations), so knowing the conventions made it easy to read any newspaper.

The tricky part about this is that the learning seems to happen subconsciously. Large type is pretty obvious, but column spanning? Captions? Nesting? Some of this stuff gets pretty subtle, and for the most part, people don’t care. They just scan the page, find what they want, and read the story. It’s just intuitive.

But designing a layout is not quite as intuitive. Many of the lessons we have internalized in reading a newspaper (or a website) aren’t really available to us in a situation where we’re asked to design a layout. If you want a good example of this, look at web pages designed in the mid-90s. By now, we’ve got blogs and mini-CMS style systems that automate layouts and take design out of most people’s hands.

So, does Greenaway have a valid point? Or is Roy right? Obviously, we all process visual information, and visual symbolism is frequently used to encode large amounts of information into a relatively small space. Does that make us visually literate? I guess it all comes down to your definition of literate. Roy seems to take the more specific definition of “able to read or write” while Greenaway seems to be more concerned with “education or knowledge in a specified field.” The question then becomes, are we more textually literate than we are visually literate? Greenaway certainly seems to think so. Roy seems to think we’re just about equal on both fronts. I think both positions are defensible, especially when you consider that Greenaway is talking specifically about art. Furthermore, his movie is about a classical painting that was created several centuries ago. For most young people today, art is more diffuse. When you think about it, almost anything can be art. I suspect Greenaway would be disgusted by that sort of attitude, which is perhaps another way to view his thoughts on visual literacy.

1 – Yeah, it’s the Onion and not a real newspaper per say, but it’s fun and it’s representative of common newspaper conventions.

2 – Hahaha, as if I have more than 5 readers, let alone any young readers.

Visual Literacy and Rembrandt’s J’accuse

2 Comments / Arts & Letters, Best Entries, Movies, Philadelphia Film Festival 2009 / /

Perhaps the most fascinating film I saw at the 18½ Philadelphia Film Festival was Rembrandt’s J’accuse. It’s a documentary where British director Peter Greenaway deconstructs Rembrandt’s most famous painting: Night Watch. It’s arguably the 4th most celebrated painting in art history (preceded only by the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel…) and Greenaway believes it’s also an accusation of murder. The movie plays like a forensic detective story as Greenaway analyzes the painting from top to bottom. It’s an interesting topic for a documentary, though I think the film ultimately falters a bit in it’s investigation (either that, or Greenaway is trying to do something completely different).

(Note, you can click on the images below for a higher resolution image.)

Night Watch

Night Watch

Greenaway began his career as a painter and he contends that most people are visually illiterate, which is an interesting point. We really do live in a text-based culture. Our education system encourages textual learning over visuals, from the alphabet to vocabulary and reading skills. The proportion of time spent “reading paintings as they do text” is minute (if it happens at all). As such, our ability to analyze visual art forms like paintings is ill-informed and impoverished. Greenaway even takes the opportunity to rag on the state of modern cinema (which is a whole other discussion, as sometimes even bad movies are visually well constructed, but I digress). In any case, I do think Greenaway has a point here. Our culture is awash in visual information – television, movies, photography, etc… – and yet, we spend very little time questioning the veracity of what we’re shown. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, which is really just a way of saying that pictures can easily convey massive amounts of information. Pictures are inherently trustworthy and persuasive, but this can, in itself, cause issues. Malcolm Gladwell examined this in his essay, The Picture Problem:

You can build a high-tech camera, capable of taking pictures in the middle of the night, in other words, but the system works only if the camera is pointed in the right place, and even then the pictures are not self-explanatory. They need to be interpreted, and the human task of interpretation is often a bigger obstacle than the technical task of picture-taking. … pictures promise to clarify but often confuse. … Is it possible that we place too much faith in pictures?

Gladwell is, of course, casting suspicion on images, but he’s actually making many of the same points as Greenaway. What Gladwell is really saying is that human beings are visually illiterate. As Greenaway notes towards the beginning of the film, is what we see really what we see? Or do we only see what we want to see? Both Gladwell and Greenaway seem to agree that interpretation is key (though Gladwell might be a bit more pessimistic about the feasibility of doing so). Though this concept is not explicitly referenced later in the film, I do believe it is essential to understanding the film.

One of the first clues that Greenaway examines is the public nature of Rembrandt’s painting. For the most part, public museums didn’t start appearing until the mid 19th century. The Night Watch, by contrast, was on public display from day one (1642). In a time where paintings were private luxuries, usually viewed only by the rich and those who commissioned the paintings, the Night Watch was viewed by all. In a lot of ways, the painting is unusual and prompts questions, most of which don’t seem to have any sort of satisfactory answers. This leads to all sorts of speculation and theories about the motives behind the painting and what it really depicts. One way to look at it is to view it as an accusation. An indictment of conspiracy. Greenaway starts with this idea and proceeds to examine 34 interconnected mysteries about the painting. The mysteries all server to illuminate one thing: The content of the painting. What is it about? Who are the players? What is the accusation?

I will not go through all 34 mysteries, but as an example, the first mystery is about the Dutch Militia. At the time of the painting, there was a century-long Dutch tradition of the group military portrait. The Dutch had been involved in a long, drawn-out guerrilla war with the Spanish. Local militias were formed all throughout the country to protect their towns from their enemies. These local companies were comprised of regular citizens and volunteers, many of them important local figures, and they liked to have themselves painted, usually in uniform and in a powerful light to inspire solidarity and confidence. As the war wound down, these militias became less about the military and more about politics and power. It was a prestigious thing to be in a militia and they became more of a gentleman’s club than a military organization. In the Night Watch, Rembrandt chose to break many of the traditions associated with the common Dutch military portrait. Many of the future mysteries examine these differences in great detail.

After seeing the movie I was struck by numerous things. First, for a filmmaker ostensibly crusading against visual illiteracy, I find it strange that Greenaway has chosen to present his argument as a gigantic wall of text. He narrates the entire film. Occasionally, he’ll cut to a “reenactment”, which are scenes from his previous film, a fictional retelling of Rembrandt’s painting, but even those are comprised primarily of characters spouting dialogue (these scenes rarely provide insight, though it’s nice to break up the narration with something a little more theatrical).

Indeed, the grand majority of the mysteries are concerned with context (i.e. the cultural and historical traditions, the timing of the painting, who commissioned the painting, etc…). There is a concept from communication theory called exformation that I think is relevant here.

Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds and gestures the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. This shared context is called exformation.

Wikipedia also has an excellent anecdotal example of the concept in action:

In 1862 the author Victor Hugo wrote to his publisher asking how his most recent book, Les Miserables, was getting on. Hugo just wrote “?” in his message, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate it was selling well. This exchange of messages would have no meaning to a third party because the shared context is unique to those taking part in it. The amount of information (a single character) was extremely small, and yet because of exformation a meaning is clearly conveyed.

Similarly, when Rembrandt painted the Night Watch and it was put on display, most of the viewers knew the subjects in the painting and the circumstances in which it was painted. As modern viewers, we do not have any of that shared knowledge. In order to understand the visual of The Night Watch, one must first understand the context of the painting, something that is primarily established through text. For example, one of the mysteries of the painting has to do with the lighting. Rembrandt was one of the pioneers of artificial lighting in paintings, and this was the result of improvements to technology of the day. There were apparently big improvements in the use of candles and mirrors, and so Rembrandt enjoyed playing with lighting, making the painting seem almost theatrical. As modern viewers, this sort of playful use of lighting isn’t special – it’s something we’ve seen a million times before and in a million other contexts. In Rembrandt’s time, it was different. It called attention to itself and caused much speculation. Modern audiences thus need to be informed of this, and again, Greenaway accomplishes this mostly through the use of text.

To be sure, there are some interesting visualization techniques that Greenaway employs when talking about specific aspects of the painting. For example, when discussing the aforementioned use of lighting, Greenaway does his own manipulation, exagerating the lighting in the painting to underline his point:

Lighting Effects

Unfortunately, these are not used as often as I would have hoped, nor are they always necessary or enlightening, and indeed there are numerous distractions throughout. For instance, the frame is often comprised of several overlapping and moving boxes. Sometimes this is used well, but it often feels visually overwhelming. Indeed, sometimes the audio is sometimes also overwhelming – with Greenaway’s narration being overlaid on top of music and sometimes even a woman’s voice which is saying the names of famous people who have seen Night Watch (the inclusion of which has always confused me). I’m sure it’s challenging to make a movie about a painting without just putting up a static shot of the painting (and that’s certainly not desirable), but does the screen need to be so busy? The visual components of the film seem to take a back seat to the textual elements… Interestingly, this is a film that seems to work a lot better on the small screen, as it’s not nearly as overwhelming on the small screen as it was in the theater.

Visually Overwhelming

Visually Overwhelming

Furthermore, the text presented to us is so dense that it can be hard to follow at times. This at least partially due to the massive amount of exformation, unfamiliar European names, different cultural traditions, etc… There are 34 people depicted in the painting (plus a dog!), and it can be tough to keep track of who is who. I suppose I should not be surprised that someone obsessed with visual literacy is not a master writer, but perhaps there is something else going on here…

Next, I was struck by the inclusion of Greenaway’s face, which is often positioned in a box right in the center of the frame. Why do that? Why is he calling so much attention to himself? My first inclination is that it’s a breathtakingly arrogant strategy. Also, the sound of his voice (sometimes overly deliberate pronunciation mixed with stereotypical European accent) lends the impression of arrogance and pretentiousness. I think that may still be part of it, but again, there is more going on here.

Look at Me!

Look at me!

There are many types of documentary films. The most common form of documentary is referred to as Direct Address (also known as Expositional Mode). In such a documentary, the viewer is directly acknowledged, usually through narration and voice-overs. There is very little ambiguity and it is pretty obvious how you’re expected to interpret these types of films. Many television and news programs use this style, to varying degrees of success. Ken Burns’ infamous Civil War and Baseball series use this format eloquently, but most traditional propaganda films also fall into this category. The disembodied nature of a voice-over lends an air of authority and even omniscience to a film’s subject matter (this type of voice-over is often referred to as “Voice of God” narration). As such, these films are open to abuse through manipulative rhetoric and social propaganda.

By contrast, Reflexive Documentaries use many devices to acknowledge the filmmaker’s presence, perspective, and selectivity in constructing the film. It is thought that films like this are much more honest about their subjectivity, and thus provide a much greater service to the audience.

An excellent example of a Reflexive documentary is Errol Morris’ brilliant film, The Thin Blue Line. The film examines the “truth” around the murder of a Dallas policeman. The use of colored lighting throughout the film eventually correlates with who is innocent or guilty, and Morris is also quite manipulative through his use of editing – deconstructing and reconstructing the case to demonstrate just how problematic finding the truth can be. His use of framing calls attention to itself, daring the audience to question the intents of the filmmakers. The use of interviews in conjunction with editing is carefully structured to demonstrate the subjectivity of the film and its subjects. As you watch the movie, it becomes quite clear that Morris is toying with you, the viewer, and that he wants you to be critical of the “truth” he is presenting.

Ironically, a documentary becomes more objective when it acknowledges its own biases and agenda. In other words, a documentary becomes more objective when it admits its own subjectivity.

Greenaway could easily have employed a direct address narration with this film, but he does not. Instead, he conspicuously inserts himself right into the middle of the frame. Indeed, later in the film, Greenaway appears dressed in a ridiculous getup more suited to appear within the painting than in the movie. It’s almost like he’s daring us to question this visual choice. Why?

Perhaps because of the third thing that struck me – Greenaway is the only narrator in the film. Most documentaries feature many talking heads, experts and historians, and even some contrary opinions, among other expositional techniques. This film does not. Why? Could it be that Greenaway’s story is complete bullshit? After all, his story is delivered in textual form. With his visuals, Greenaway is emphasizing his own subjectivity. A cursory glance around the internet (hardly a comprehensive search, but still) reveals that Greenaway appears to be the only one who subscribes to this theory of murder and accusation.

So I’m left with something of a dilemma. This movie is an impressive bit of speculation and interpretation, but I have no idea if it’s true or not. The visual elements of the film seem to emphasize that it is an emphatically subjective interpretation of the painting, but that this sort of speculation on the visual composition is still important, and that we should do more of this sort of thing (something I would agree with).

Or maybe I’m reading way too much into the movie and he employs so much text simply because he thinks we’re visually illiterate morons. At this point, I really don’t know how to rate this film. I’m having a lot of trouble gauging how much I enjoyed this film. Upon first viewing it, in the theater, I have to say that I didn’t like it very much. And yet, it still fascinated me, to the point where I started writing this post and rewatching the film to make sure my interpretation fit. Indeed, as previously mentioned, I found it much more watchable on the small screen. If this post at all interests you, I suggest checking it out. It’s actually available on Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature (and thus can be viewed through a computer, a PS3 or XBox or any number of other Netflix streaming ready boxes).

More screenshots and comments in the extended entry…

Update: More on Visual Literacy (in response to comments in this post)

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Visual Literacy and Rembrandt’s J’accuseRead More »

Link Dump – Video Edition

Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

Just a few interesting links I’ve run across recently:

  • Seeing Science Through Fiction: A talk with Neal Stephenson, Lee Smolin and Jaron Lanier at the Quantum to Cosmos festival. They talk about lots of interesting stuff. Also of note is a panel discussion featuring the same folks and more, though that one isn’t as interesting (and is preceded by some awful babbling). In other Stephenson news, he does have a book coming out… in 2011. It’s supposed to be titled REAMDE, though no one seems to know what it will be about (there is speculation that it might have something to do with deliberately mispelling “readme”, a commom filename).
  • The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc.: In this world of vampires and werewolves, you can never be too careful. This video is pretty awesome, and I’d wager that it’s probably a lot better than New Moon! (via Hey! Look Behind You!)
  • The Legend of Neil: So this is pretty old, but I just found it. It’s about Neil, who was playing Zelda and accidentally got transported into the game. Moral of the story, don’t drink and play Zelda. It’s pretty funny, with lots of in-jokes and dirty humor.
  • Johnnie Walker – The Man Who Walked Around The World: For a commercial, this is pretty amazingly well done. It helps that you have an actor like Robert Carlyle, but I wonder how many takes it took (or if there were any cheats)…

That’s all for now… Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

The 2009 Hugos

Arts & Letters / /

A few weeks ago, SF author Adam Roberts stirred up quite a storm by suggesting that the nominees for the 2009 Hugo award for best SF/F novel were somewhat lackluster:

Science Fiction Fandom: your shortlists aren’t very good.

I’m not saying the works you have shortlisted are terrible. They’re not terrible, mostly, as it goes. But they aren’t exceptionally good either. They’re in the middle. There’s a word for that. The word is mediocre.

It is an interesting post, and of course his remarks have engendered all sorts of responses and discussion about the nature of the awards themselves and which books on this year’s shortlist deserved or didn’t deserve to be there. SF Signal took the opportunity to ask a panel of writers several questions, and since I’ve been reading a lot of SF lately, I thought it might be fun to answer them myself.

How would you rate the track record of the Hugo Awards at directing readers to the best that the genre has to offer?

A quick glance at the history of the Hugo Award for Best Novel shows a pretty good list of winners. A lot of my favorite SF novels are winners of the Hugo, and several others were at least nominated. Now, I’m far from an authoritative expert on SF novels and I have not read the grand majority of nominated books, but still, the list seems pretty well balanced. It’s worth noting that of the past 15 or 20 SF novels I’ve read, a little more than half have been hugo winners (or nominees), and a hefty portion of my book queue is also represented by Hugo books.

As an award, the Hugo is interesting because it’s a popular vote of Worldcon members. You have to pay to be a member, so that weeds out most casual voters, and it’s interesting that a lot of Worldcon members are themselves SF authors or otherwise involved in the SF or publishing business world. This seems to present a good mix. Not as insular as something like, say, the Oscars, but not completely populist either. And I think that shows with a lot of the Hugo winners and nominees. Of course, the entire premise of this question relies on a completely subjective evaluation, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt.

As for this year’s slate, well, I’ve only read 2 of the 5 nominees. Zoe’s Tale is an entertaining read and a good book, but I’m surprised it made the shortlist. I certainly don’t think it’s an embarrassment or anything, and it’s a fine book, but the other book on the shortlist that I’ve read was Anathem, which I loved and which even curmudgeons like Roberts admit probably deserves to be on the list (if not win). With all due respect to John Scalzi, Anathem far outclasses Zoe’s Tale. The other nominees include Charlie Stross’s Saturn’s Children, which I haven’t read but given my experience with Stross, I’d wager I wouldn’t like. I’ve never much cared for anything of his that I’ve read, so when he gets nominated (and he does, just about every year), it seems kinda boring. For all I know, Saturn’s Children is the greatest book evar, but I’m doubting it. I admit that I’m intrigued by the premise of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and as a YA novel, I bet it works pretty well (at the same time, it’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff… then again, what is?) Finally, there’s Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book, which I don’t know much about except that it’s a children’s book. All in all, not a bad field at all. Not having read a lot of other novels from this year, I can’t say if they’re truly the best, but there doesn’t seem to be any stinkers in the list. It does seem to have a pretty good variety – you’ve got a children’s book (Graveyard Book), a young-adult novel (Little Brother), a book that might as well be young-adult and that features a teenage girl protagonist (Zoe’s Tale), a rather standard SF book (Saturn’s Children) and an ambitious, epic novel that features numerous philosophical digressions as well as an entire glossary of made-up words and references (Anathem). I suppose that the under-represented group would be authors that focus a lot on style and literary flourish, but that doesn’t bother me (though it does seem to bother Roberts).

How well do you think the Hugo shortlist, year over year, represents to the outside world what speculative fiction has to offer?

Since I think the winners, overall, seem to comprise a pretty good list of novels, I think the Hugos do a pretty good job of representing what SF has to offer. Several Hugo winners would make a good first SF novel for a more traditional reader, and there are plenty of other winners that have enough heft to attract more discriminating readers. The one thing that might be a bit strange to outsiders is that SF is more concerned with ideas than stylistic flourishes (something that Roberts seems to lament), but honestly, the focus on ideas is what makes us all love SF in the first place. If you’re not into that, your interest in SF will probably be limited to certain authors.

Which of this year’s finalists do you predict will receive the Hugo award for Best Novel?

The two frontrunners seem to be Graveyard Book and Anathem. Both Neil and Neal are popular with the SF crowd (both have already won an award), and these two books seem to be quite popular. I’ll say that Graveyard Book will win, because I’m assuming it has a broader appeal.

Which of this year’s finalists do you think should receive the Hugo award for Best Novel?

If you read this blog, I’m sure you already know that I think that Anathem should win. Even though I haven’t read 3 of the other nominees, I’m pretty confident that Anathem would be my favorite. What can I say, I’m a Stephenson junkie.

Which books do you think were missing from this year’s list of Best Novel finalists?

And not having ready any other 2009 SF books, I have nothing to contribute here. So there.

Well, there you have it. I’d be interested to see how some others more knowledgeable of the genre would respond to this though. Maybe next year, I’ll make sure I read all of the nominees. That way, I could better comment on something like this… Of course, that assumes I ever finish Infinite Jest (which, incidentally, is a SF novel, something I didn’t know when I set out to read it). I’m a few hundred pages behind at this point and not sure if I’ll be able to make the deadline. But I digress. The Hugos, like any other list of bests, can sometimes leave something to be desired, but that’s half the fun of awards and top 10s and the like. Even lists that are generated by hundreds of votes (as opposed to a list collected by an individual) have their interesting bits, and I think the Hugos do a decent job of that.

SF Book Review, Part 3

7 Comments / Arts & Letters / /

I probably should have written this about half a year ago, but better late that never, I suppose (check out Part 1 and Part 2 for more SF). No real theme to the list of books, but a couple were recommended by readers (and both were quite good).

  • Downtiming the Night Side by Jack Chalker: Recommended as an “offbeat suggestion” by Steven in a previous post, this is a rather strange time travel tale. I’m a fan of time travel stories and one of the interesting things about them is how they seek to get around the messy paradoxes that are inherent in such stories. In this book, Chalker gets around paradox by pretty much embracing it. Time travel is possible, but when you travel back in time you “leap” (Sam Beckett style) into another person who is native to the time period in question. The catch is that your personality is mixed with the native personality, and if you stay in the past too long, you’ll “trip” and become that person. Furthermore, while in the past, you can change the course of history (Back to the Future style) and in the course of this story, history certainly changes. A lot. At first, I was put off by this time travel theory, but by the end, things had worked out well enough. The rules Chalker set up for himself seemed arbitrary at first, but once things got going, I began to see what he was doing a little better. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I followed every twist and turn, but it sure was an entertaining ride and towards the end, Chalker drops a couple of serious bombshells (said bombshells are no doubt controversial, but I don’t want to ruin it for any readers – suffice to say, they are quite unexpected). It’s Chalker’s willingness to embrace the time travel rules he set up and drag his characters, kicking and screaming, through to logical extremes that makes this book work.
  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: I read this at the recommendation of long-time Kaedrin reader and friend Sovawanea (who has been very patient!) and enjoyed it quite a bit. The story centers around a single human envoy named Genly Ai who visits an alien planet in an attempt to get the planet to join a coalition of worlds called the Ekumen. The planet is called Gethen and it is similar to earth except that it has a particularly cold climate, often leading people to call the planet “Winter.” Genly visits the planet and both of the major nation states, Karhide and Orgoreyn. The planet seems to have technology roughly equivalent with 20th century earth, except that their focus seems to be on other things (i.e. survival gear seems more advanced, while transportation doesn’t – which makes sense on such a “cold” planet) and the natives are androgynous for most of their lives, except during a period called Kemmer, when they can become male or female and mate (as such, any person could choose to become pregnant or to be the male). One of the seemingly unique things about the planet is that they haven’t ever had a war. Genly speculates this may be because of the hostile environment or their sexuality, or both. In any case, it seems that tensions have been mounting between the two nations, and Genly may be caught in the middle. I got a very distinct Communism vs Capitalism vibe from the two nations, though it isn’t an exact comparison. It is an interesting setting and it seems like it would be a fertile ground for a much more in-depth exploration than I’m giving it. One other thing to note is that Le Guin has a much better way with words than most of her contemporaries. I think folks like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov are better storytellers, but they do so with straightforward prose. Le Guin has more of a flourish to her language, which I appreciated. Also, I don’t mean to belittle the story here – it’s quite good and it even has a few action set pieces (I particularly enjoyed the long trek two characters make from one nation back to the other). So I enjoyed this enough to put Le Guin’s The Dispossessed in the book queue (though I’m not sure when I’ll get to it).
  • The Forever War by Joe Haldeman: This is one of a few important milestones in the military SF subgenre. In many ways it is a response to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (and you’d be much better off reading this than watching Paul Verhoeven’s atrocious criticism as adaptation of Starship Troopers), yet it stands on it’s own as a superb SF novel. It shares many similarities with Heinlein’s earlier work, but Haldeman takes things in a different direction. Both novels follow a young recruit (in Starship – a volunteer, in Forever an educated student drafted into compulsory service) as they make their way through the military ranks in a war against aliens. Both feature powered armor suits, but in Forever the suits are almost as dangerous to you as they are to your enemy. The endings diverge more significantly. Haldeman’s novel seems to have more of a plot than Heinlein’s, and he also seems more interested in relationships. Both novels feature an integrated military, with both men and women serving side by side. I think the biggest issue with Haldeman’s novel is the way he treats sexuality – in this novel, the military doesn’t just tolerate fraternization, it encourages and forces it. Besides this compulsory heterosexual coupling in the military, Haldeman later puts his characters back on Earth at a time when nearly everyone is a homosexual. From a thematic standpoint, it sorta makes sense – it’s a way to emphasise the isolation the protagonist feels – but from nearly every other standpoint, it doesn’t work. This book was written not too long after Le Guin’s aforementioned Left Hand of Darkness, which had a very sophisticated understanding of sexuality, and several of Haldeman’s contemporaries were also breaking new ground, so Haldeman’s attempts seem somewhat paltry or naive by comparison (much to his credit, this is something he has apparently acknowledged himself). But the novel also features a nice enough love story between the two main characters, and the SF is top notch and quite thrilling at times. The effects of time dilation (where our main character ends up hundreds of years in the future while he has only lived 30 or so years himself) caused by long range space travel are particularly thought provoking. The battle at the end of the novel is very effective and the tactics of the characters are sound, making for a solidly entertaining set piece. The ultimate ending can be a bit of a downer as you find out how misguided things got on the strategic level of the war, but the ending remains satisfying because the two main characters are fulfilled. The differences between this novel and Heinlein’s novel are most likely due to the respective backgrounds of the authors – Heinlein was a WWII vet, while Haldeman was a Vietnam vet. When viewed from that context, the novels differences make a lot of sense, and reading both is a must for anyone interested in this subgenre (then, when you’re done with these, move on to Old Man’s War).
  • The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn: I first became aware of Zahn when he wrote the first modern Star Wars books (early 90s Thrawn Trilogy), and this novel seems to bear a superficial resemblance to a Star Wars type space opera. It’s about a smuggler and his alien partner who troll around space ports (he doesn’t use the phrase “wretched hive of scum and villainy” but he might as well have), take a job transporting cargo, and get caught up in a galactic conspiracy, etc… This isn’t actually a bad thing, but the book is much more of a page turner than anything else, and it works very well. There are perhaps a few too many scenes where the main character attempts to reason out what is going on with the story by reviewing what’s happened so far, but the various plot points are well laid out and interesting enough. The characters are likeable, the story is entertaining, and the conclusion is appropriately tense. Of the books listed in this entry, this was probably the most fun to read and I probably read it the quickest (despite it being longer than some of the others).
  • Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is dating the woman who never laughs? Whenever Jerry tells a joke, she smiles and says “That’s funny,” but she doesn’t laugh. Well that’s how I felt reading this book. I would often find myself reading something and thinking to myself “That’s clever and funny,” but I don’t think I laughed out loud once. Maybe I cracked a smile a few times. On paper, this book sounds quite interesting. The one line pitch might be that it’s a snarky parody of The Omen, where a series of accidents and incompetant evil deeds prevent the anti-christ from being able to or even wanting to fulfill his role in the apocalypse. Irony is abound throughout the story – demons from hell want to avoid the apocalypse because they like screwing around on Earth, while Angels from heaven are fine with the apocolypse because they know they’ll win. And so on. I appear to be in the minority on this though, as I have read countless professions of love for this book all over the internet. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood for British humour or something, but this book never really clicked with me.

That’s all for now. Given what I’m currently reading, I probably won’t get around to most of the SF books that are in my queue for a while, but when I do, I’ll post about them here…

Notes from the Infinite Summer, Part I

Arts & Letters / /

It’s been about 2 weeks since I started reading David Foster Wallace’s epic novel Infinite Jest. According to the schedule, I’m about a week behind (thanks a lot, GitS:SAC 2nd Gig). Anime viewing aside, I’ve been making steady progress and wanted to post some of the stuff I’ve found interesting so far:

  • The book is reasonably accessible and easy to read. To be sure, it’s not something I’d want to read with lots of distractions around (i.e. not on a plane or at the beach), but it doesn’t require the sort of intense concentration something like Gravity’s Rainbow needs.
  • There appear to be a ton of characters. It seems like every other chapter features a new set of characters, and even 100 pages or so into the book, I’m not sure if I’ve even come close to meeting everyone yet. So far, the narrative seems quite disjointed, in part because of the breadth of characters, but there are some parallels and connections that are beginning to develop. Some connections are more complex than others. Some are simply thematic similarities between two different sets of characters. For instance, at one point, we’re introduced to a medical attaché who starts watching a movie and becomes transfixed by it. Later, in one of the endnotes (actually, it’s a 9 page endnote that includes footnotes of its own), we see the filmography of another character and one of the movies sounds awfully familiar and is surely what the medical attaché is watching (or maybe not, it hasn’t been confirmed just yet).

    Another example: the book starts with a high school student interviewing with a college. He’s a quiet kid, but apparently quite gifted, and when he speaks, we can read the dialogue fine, but we later figure out that the characters he’s talking to couldn’t understand a word and also think he’s insane. Later in the book, we meet a chronically depressed girl who is being interviewed by her doctor after a suicide attempt. She seems to have issues explaining her condition, and the doctor thinks something offhand: “Classic unipolars were usually tormented by the conviction that no one else could hear or understand them when they tried to communicate.” Does that mean the original character is unipolar? Or, because the original character doesn’t have the “conviction” that no one could understant them (indeed, he seems to think he’s doing well, and we the readers can see that he is as well), does that mean he’s the opposite? Or maybe I’m just reading too much into this and trying to connect the unconnected – perhaps that’s just how I’m dealing with the breadth of characters and settings. Another reason it seems disjointed is because the story appears to be jumping around in time.

  • Speaking of time, the story appears to take place mostly in the future. Is this science fiction? One of the characters contributed to the invention of “cold annular fusion” which has helped the U.S. and its allies to achieve “approximate energy independence.” When Wallace talks about phones, he refers to them as “consoles.” People seem to watch “cartridges” that are manufactured with lasers of some sort (or perhaps delivered via a laser-like system of fiber optics or something, I’m not sure). At some point, years went from being incremented numerically to being sponsored by corporations (i.e. Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, Year of the Whopper, etc…). Conceptually, this last one is kinda funny, not just because of the concept but because of the actual names of each year. This is also somewhat tricky, as it obscures when the story is actually taking place, a choice that is probably deliberate. Also amusing: This system is called “Subsidized Time” and the years we’re all familiar with (i.e. 1996, 2009, etc…) are referred to as “Before Subsidization” or B.S. Do you think it’s a coincidence that B.S. is something that already has a meaning?
  • There seems to be a lot of talk about drugs in the book. I’m not sure why, but a lot of books like this seem to fixate on drugs for some reason. I generally tend to find drug talk kinda boring, but Wallace at least manages to keep it interesting enough…
  • Wallace uses single quotes when doing dialogue. No idea why, but it seems like a deliberate choice. Or maybe not.

So far, I’m quite enjoying it. It’s not a book that tickles my exact eccentricities (like Cryptonomicon does, for instance), but it manages to do well enough. More posts to come.