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Next meeting: 8 September 2010
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August 11th, 2010Barrayar
August 11th, 2010
by Lois McMaster Bujold, selected by Walt
Barrayar continues the adventures of Cordelia Vorkosigan, né Naismith, who journeyed to Barrayar at the end of Shards of Honor to marry the rugged and dashing Aral Vorkosigan. Alas, duty calls and Vorkosigan takes the role of Imperial Regent, thrusting him back into the limelight and pulling Cordelia into the unpleasant job of politican’s wife on a planet where coups d’etat are the planetary pass-time. Sure enough, there are some rebellious shenanigans and Cordelia must flee with the five-year-old Emporer, leaving the incubator holding her unborn son in deadly peril.
The conversation was quick and lively about this one. Here are some of the highlights:
- Our first question was whether this is SF or not. We pondered whether science-fiction as a category depends more on the place or the story. With a couple tweaks, this story could easily be medieval or fantasy. But if the setting is the determining factor, this is certainly SF.
- Some of the group thought Cordelia seemed much more subdued or weak than she was in the last book. This was a dissatisfying shift in her character, at least until the threat to Miles snapped her into feisty action we were all hoping for. There was some discussion about how much of her more passive attitude had to do with either a) the more rigid and sexist culture she found herself in or b) the culture shock she was experiencing as she tried to navigate the murky waters of Vor politics. One person reminded us that the books were not written in story order–Barrayar is something like the sixth book in the series. This said, perhaps Bujold’s ideas about how Cordelia should act were tweaked by time.
- Bothari, the ugly brute who had such a great change of heart in the first book, plays a key role in Barrayar, and the group pondered what he meant to the story. We also puzzled over whether the story in the book of his tortured childhood and abuse at the hands of the sadistic commander was what snapped his mind, or if there was something more.
- We also tussled a little with the question of space opera–is this one? Some thought the dramatic romance and large-scale action put it in the Space Opera camp. Others thought the story didn’t have enough s/f or adventure to be called a Space Opera proper. One person pointed out that the larger context of the whole series resolves the objections to this categorization.
- Finally, toward the end of the meeting, we hit upon the idea that Aral is actually pretty averse to personal confrontation. Throughout the book, he puts off confronting his father and even puts off confronting Cordelia. It’s an interesting trait in a world of people who value honor and image above everything, but it explains why he’d be such a good Regent.
Not bad, but definitely should be read after Shards of Honor. The astute reader could also read both books at once under the joined cover Cordelia’s Honor.
The City & the City
July 15th, 2010
by China Mievelle, selected by Trish
The City and the City takes place in two cities that share the same space. Bezel and Ul Quoma (accent marks missing b/c I’m lazy) overlap, with some spaces that people in the cities share, and other spaces that are part of one city or the other. Anyone who crosses the lines between the cities is in “Breach” and is in trouble. The societies of the cities have evolved to support the strange experience of being in a space with people who consider themselves part of a different space, resulting in citizens who “unsee” people and cars that belong in the other city. If this is a confusing description, too bad; the book’s kinda confusing too.
In the middle of all this, a murder takes place. The victim lives in one city but is found in the other, and one poor detective is tasked with solving the crime using just his wits, his ability to navigate the arcane bureaucracy of the post-soviet Eastern European culture in the cities, and a couple reluctant partners.
Our discussion:
- We spent a lot of time puzzling out breach, trying to figure out how exactly the two cities blended together. We never did reach a consensus, but we waded through different interpretations to get to a kind of mutual consensus– we agreed to remain confused together. The central question about breach was this: is the city physically two separate places with overlapping geographies or is it psychologically and socially two different cities, but geographically it’s one place with two different names? It’s a knotty puzzle that even a set of crocheted doilies cannot help you work through. We tried.
- We spent some time discussing Mievelle and his other books, as well. Apparently, he’s working on writing a book each in several genres — this being his “mystery” book. While it certainly fits the genre–it’s a murder mystery following a police officer, after all–the fantastic elements are so strong that the mystery becomes somewhat incidental. We spent a lot more time talking about how the city worked than how the murder did, for instance. For a couple members, the mystery made the story worth reading, though. One said the book only clicked for her once she stopped worrying about breach and just concentrated on the murder mystery. A couple of us commented that while this was a mystery, our mystery reading group would rebel at having to read this.
- The book’s author and the environment of the two cities also invited conversation about its politics and allegorical potential. The societies of the city seemed clearly influenced by life in Eastern Europe, with one member commenting that the book feels like a fantasy version of Berlin before the wall fell. We agreed that the societies had the rigidity of thought demanded by totalitarian societies, and that perhaps you could read the practice of “seeing” and “unseeing” as a metaphor for life in a society without freedom of thought. One member pointed out that the ‘revolutionary’ groups in the city also had the feel of impotent secret rebellious groups in Soviet states.
- We also spent a fair amount of time discussing how ‘unseeing’ translates to modern life in the city. The most common example, for us, was the experience of walking in the city among the homeless on the street. While we ‘see’ them enough not to bump into or step on them, most people who walk downtown very much learn to ignore people who aren’t part of their strata of society, as much for personal sanity as out of some sort of class-discrimination.
Overall, feedback on the book was relatively mixed, with about half the group positively liking it, and the others liking it less or finding it too confusing to assess. Two of the seven people who had read the book really disliked it.
The Day of the Triffids
June 9th, 2010
by John Wyndham; recommended by Brendan
The group generally enjoyed this science fiction classic quite a bit. The apocalyptic novel about nearly universal human blindness combined with murderous walking plants yielded quite a bit of healthy and interesting discussion. Thoroughly enjoyed. Some things we discussed:
- We started off discussing the various covers of the books, which focused on the flashes in the sky, the triffids, or on Bill fighting the triffids.
- We had a long discussion about whether things would be different if sudden blindness hit the whole world tomorrow than they were in the book. Our general impression was, alas, that the book’s general premises held true. Since utilities wouldn’t last much longer in our current world than they do in Wyndham’s story, it’s safe to assume we’d devolve into similarly horrible circumstances.
- We also discussed the book’s perspective about leaders and followers, about being active, and the relationship the book suggests between gender and those other roles. We had a long discussion about Coker, particularly his mean rant at the young girl in the basement of the mansion house, about halfway through the novel. The gender issues in the novel were even more difficult to untangle since we only get a couple female characters and they don’t appear to be “typical” women of the era.
- The different ideological and practical approaches to solving the problems of the apocalypse were also a topic of vigorous discussion. We generally agreed that the ‘rational’ approach suggested by the Bradley group (and clearly marked as the favored approach in the novel) had its merits, but the gender and moral issues tied into questions of valuing individual lives weren’t as clear cut as Wyndham makes them out to be.
- Finally, we had a good discussion about the allegorical and or cautionary aspects of the novel. We wondered about the idea that triffids could embody fears about bioengineering or atomic weapons or modern science in general, and we discussed Wyndham’s clever diagnosis of the dangers of the space and weapons races.
Overall, the book was popular and enjoyed, as well as thematically rich. When we finished discussing the book, we generated our list of readings for the next several months. Check out the Upcoming Books page for the schedule
End of the World Blues
May 12th, 2010
by Jon Courtenay Grimwood; recommended by Vicki
End of the World Blues tells the stories of Kit and Lady Neku, two people from vastly different worlds who meet up in near future Japan. Kit, a British Iraq War veteran, finds himself in the midst of a whirlwind of trouble when he’s attacked on the street and then again later. Neku, a princess from an ancient family in the far future hiding in the body of a thirteen-year-old girl, helps Kit out and needs his help as well. And this is all before they return to London to investigate the second mystery of the novel.
- It was a small group this month — just four of us — but our discussion was fruitful nonetheless. The overall tone was approving, with many of the members agreeing that the beginning of the novel was slower than the second half. Grimwood’s writing style made untangling the plots difficult, so we spent a fair amount of time rasslin’ with the plot of the book.
- The novel turns mostly on Kit’s struggle with his own life–trying to figure out who he wants to be and what he values. His journey in the novel turns mostly on learning that the facts of his life are different than he understood. He has to wrestle with whether to uncover those mysteries and what to learn from them.
- The book hits a number of themes we’ve discussed before. We pondered whether a novel set in the near future is necessarily science-fiction, even if it doesn’t really hinge on those twists. End of the World Blues takes place mostly in the 2020s in Japan, with technology a little more advanced, but not so much that things seem out of control. The novel also has a significant section that takes place aboard a huge space ship in the far future of the galaxy, where we learn that Neku is part of a dynastic, powerful family of space travelers or emporers or something. The comparisons to last month’s House of Suns are obvious.
- Spoiler-ish: One of the key points we struggled with was Lady Neku’s memories of her family in the future. From a structural point of view, her memories make a great parallel for the events relating to the Yakuza in Part 3 of the novel. We like the idea that she’s actually a real thirteen year old who has imagined this far future history to get over some trauma in her own life. But then we found a few textual markers that don’t make sense if that’s the case.
House of Suns
April 14th, 2010
by Alastair Reynolds; recommended by Sally
The House of Suns tells a huge-scale story about a group of near-immortal interstellar travelers and a betrayal that nearly wipes them out. It’s got solid character development, lots of interesting ideas about the far future, and solid storytelling. The group was split on the book, with two or three people who disliked it and several who were pleased. Some thoughts:
- Most everyone agreed that the beginning of the story was too slow and the end came too quickly. The excitement and interesting stuff in the second half of the book far outmatched the beginning of the novel.
- We spent a fair amount of time trying to dissect the Palatial sub-plot. (Spoilers in the rest of this bullet). We couldn’t decide whether the story served as 1) a kind of repressed memory of the Gentian line’s responsibility in the atrocities revealed at the end of the story OR 2) represented the children thinking about the atrocities their parents were committing (like a kid playing out her parents’ divorce using Barbie dolls OR 3)some sort of interface that actually caused the atrocities described.
- We spent some time talking about the difficulties of comprehending the massive scale in the novel, both in space and time. One member suggested that it moved into being fantasy because it was so far out there; we generally agreed on this point.
- Reynolds wields some really shocking and memorable imagery, particularly the slicing torture and the slow-motion battle for control of the ship being faught by Hesperus and the villain.
- A few of us discussed the issue that the dramatic reveal of the title’s meaning and the resolution to the novel’s central mystery came much too quickly and weren’t given the weight they deserved.
- We also discussed the end of the novel as, perhaps, a connection to an original creation myth (Adam, Eve, and God in the garden?).
Overall, an enjoyable book that’s a bit slow, but if you get past the first 100 pages, you’ll probably finish it.
Time Travelers Never Die
March 10th, 2010
By Jack McDevitt; recommended by Todd
TTND tells the story of Shel and David, two friends who learn that Shel’s father, an eminent physicist, has discovered time travel. They embark on a series of adventures in time, meeting famous people and visiting famous places as they seek to discover what’s happened to Shel’s father and, later, what will happen to Shel himself. The group generally enjoyed the book, but several of the members thought it wasn’t as good as it could have been. One member who’d read many of the other Jack McDevitt acknowledged that this book isn’t quite as good as some of his others. There was some discussion that we might try to read The Engines of God.
A few other thoughts:
- We discussed the obvious question this book poses: who would you go back to see? A couple of the members pointed out that Shel missed the most obvious opportunity, to go back and see his mother. It would be great to visit family members, we decided. Others admired the idea of visiting the library at Alexandria.
- We also spent some time trying to hash out the difficult ideas behind understanding time travel and paradoxes. We pondered the idea from this book that you can’t change the past, but if you don’t know how it came out, you can intervene (and you always have).
- Among the problems we had with the book: the dramatic arc wasn’t very strong, it spent too much time following the main characters as they met historical figure after historical figure, it seemed way too easy for these characters to pick up languages, and they didn’t take enough care to protect their teleporter machines. Two alternate stories that came up and could have been more intriguing: they accidentally catch a disease in the past (which was the plotline of the Doomsday Book) or perhaps the time travel they’ve been doing is damaging the world.
- We also spent some time comparing this story to other time travel stories we knew, spending quite a bit of time pondering the two models of time travel (changeable time line versus unchangeable). We joked in about FlashForward, but oddly, we didn’t mention The Accidental Time Machine.
- Finally, we discussed the cover art (about which I was pretty cranky) and the title, which took some unpacking.
Reactions to the book were generally positive, but a few members found sections of the book pretty slow or dull to read.
The Graveyard Book
February 10th, 2010
by Neil Gaiman; recommended by Gail
The group really enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s new take on The Jungle Book. Gaiman tells the story of Bod, a toddler who survives the murder of his family by hiding in a graveyard, where the supernatural inhabitants decide to shelter and raise him. Some things we discussed:
- We pondered the episodic nature of the tale, which some members felt left too many holes in the life of the boy, but others thought worked well. Each episode seemed to provide life lessons that young readers could learn from, though these lessons were not always clear. We gave special attention to the danse macabre and to the lesson of the bullies.
- We enjoyed the clever small touches Gaiman sprinkles throughout the novel, from the list of Jacks in the villainous group to the Honor Guard made up of classic film monsters to the delightful relationship between Bod’s adoptive parents, the Owenses.
- The group also spent time discussing the way the plot generated suspense and action. Some members felt like the scary moments really worked, while others thought the nature and feel of the narrative made it obvious that Bod would survive.
- The group also spent time pondering Gaiman’s use of small details that become important later in the story, as well as discussing some surprises that happen late in the novel and how predictable (or not) they were.
- Finally, we discussed the fact that Gaiman’s rendering of the graveyard wasn’t really focused on being scary or creepy so much as quaint.
Overall, we liked the book quite a bit, and I suspect we’ll read more Gaiman in the future.
Flashforward
January 13th, 2010
by Robert J. Sawyer; recommended by Walt
Flashforward, the inspiration for the television show of the same name, tells the story of several scientists who inadvertently launch the consciousness of the world 21 years into the future for two minutes. During that time, people blacked out and crashed their cars or fell down stairs or whatever. The ramifications of the event take up the rest of the novel.
Overall, the group spent most of our time talking about the gaps or failings in the book. While we acknowledged the potential in the idea, we were disappointed in the execution, generally. Some details:
- Some of the group thought Sawyer’s writing felt pretty juvenile in this book, spending too much time on inconsequential details and not enough time on details that would have helped make the story more compelling. For instance, we felt like we learned too much about the past love life of a minor character while we had no investment at all in a character whose death was supposed to be a driving emotional factor in the story.
- Some members also felt like the “hard sf” elements were too intense, their depth pushing the book into incomprehensibility. While Sawyer’s explanation of the future using a block with sheets of acetate was pretty solid, the discussion of the science behind the flashforward event went too far.
- We thoroughly agreed that the premise of the story worked really well, and that Sawyer does a great job thinking through the ramifications of it. The newspaper clippings, a staple in Rollback and The Terminal Experiment as well, are the best part of the book. He uses them to tease out elements like what the Vatican might do about the event, that people might try to patent technologies they saw in the future, and so on.
- We spent some time talking about how time shifting worked in the story and its ramification for time travel. We also talked about a number of other time travel stories and generally discussed the idea. Finally, we considered what we might tell ourselves if we knew that our 22-year-younger self were going to know what we were going to see.
- We also noted that the romantic elements in the three books we’d read all use similar tricks to add emotional drama, as though Sawyer comes up with his idea and his characters and then says “I’d better add some drama” and adds a complication to the main character’s life.
- Finally, the group lamented that Sawyer doesn’t seem to write very good female characters. They seem to be accessories to the story, unable to do much beyond support the male characters. Nobody in the group has read more than one or two of his books beyond the ones we’ve read, but so far we’ve not seen any female characters we really liked.
The Stupidest Angel
December 9th, 2009
A Heart-warming Tale of Christmas Terror
by Christopher Moore; selected by the group
We started our discussion by selecting the next six months’ books, which you can find on our Upcoming Books page.
It was a light and pleasant discussion this month, as we all enjoyed the book but quickly discovered there wasn’t a lot of “meat” to discuss about it. Nonetheless, we generally thought:
- The characters are all skillfully crafted, with hilarious nuances that makes them both enjoyable to read and difficult to predict or pigeonhole.
- Everyone loved Roberto the Fruit Bat who wears Ray Bans.
- We all agreed that the villain (Dale the developer) was well-crafted enough that we didn’t mind his murder at all, and mostly felt bad that Lena had to deal with it.
The rest of our discussion was about other things, from other SF books we’d read or movies we’d seen. We had a long discussion of the SF sub-genre of “space opera,” and a conversation about whether Star Trek was space opera or not (it seems like an individual’s judgment on this issue comes down mostly to whether or not s/he thinks of the original series or the later series’ as the seminal Star Trek episodes.
Happy holidays from the FPSF book club! See you in January.