I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (JULY 2021 EDITION)
Workin’ through the pile, yo.
Congo by Michael Crichton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve read quite a bit of Michael Crichton before, but I’ve held off on this one - partly because Crichton wrote it as a homage to classic jungle adventures from the likes of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (a subgenre that’s never really interested me), but mainly because I’ve seen the major-motion-picture version a bunch of times, so I figured I knew the story already. Turns out I was partly wrong, as the film version came out 15 years after this was published and Crichton wasn’t involved in its production. Consequently, there’s no way I can read or review this novel without comparing it to the film (which, incidentally, I do happen to like, as silly as it sometimes is).
The basic premise is the more or less same: a tech company sends a team to the Congo to find the lost city of Zinj, said to be the location of King Solomon’s diamond mines. ERTS isn’t interested in jewelry - these diamonds have natural qualities that make them perfect for the next generation of computer chips. When the team is attacked and killed by what looks like gorillas, Karen Ross assembles a new team, which includes primates expert Peter Elliot, who has taught a gorilla named Amy sign language - and, as it happens, Amy’s drawings suggest she knows where Zinj is.
Typical of Crichton, the story is top-loaded with leading-edge technology and in-depth research about gorillas, murderhippos, cannibalism and the Congo region in general. And while it’s not as fun as the film, it’s more believable, although I’ll add that the filmmakers made the right decision in casting Ernie Hudson as the “great white hunter” character Munro, which makes him far more interesting than the book version. All up, I got more out of the book/film comparisons than the book itself - it's okay for what it is, and Crichton has written worse novels, but he’s also written better.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my first time reading Martha Wells, who usually writes fantasy - this is the first of a series of SF novellas she wrote for Tor. I confess I wasn’t that interested in it, as the cover art suggests hard military SF and the subtitle “The Murderbot Diaries” hints at a lot of gratuitous wholesale ultraviolence, neither of which interests me if that’s the chief selling point. But you know what they say about judging a book by its cover. And anyway, I scored a free copy via a Tor giveaway promotion, so I figured I'd give it a shot - and found myself pleasantly surprised.
The “Murderbot” (and narrator) is a SecUnit - a security cyborg that has secretly hacked its governor module and is thus not controlled by the team it works for or the systems of the company that owns it. The SecUnit - which has nicknamed itself Murderbot due to a past incident - has a tetchy relationship with humans, partly because it doesn't have the emotional capacity to deal with people who treat it simultaneously like property and one of the crew, and partly because it doesn't want them to find out about the hacked governor. It would rather just do its job and watch TV shows the rest of the time.
The storyline is about as basic as it gets - Murderbot accompanies a science exploration team to an unexplored planet, and things go wrong until it becomes abundantly clear that someone (or something) is trying to kill them. What makes it work is Murderbot’s relationship with everyone else on the team who either don't trust it or (worse) want to be nice to it. Essentially, the Murderbot character is a vehicle to explore how outsiders - particularly those classified by society as “property” or second-class citizens - relate to “normal” people, with the added twist that Murderbot is also somewhere between human and non-human, which complicates its relationships with its team members. Extra points for Wells’ economic yet effective prose and fast-paced plotting that keeps the pages turning.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
At the risk of doing a Richard Dawkins, I must confess I’m not big on Kafka. I read The Metamorphosis in college and thought it was good, but not so good as to make me want to read more Kafka. I only picked up The Trial because of current events in Hong Kong, where the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020 has created what many call a Kafka-esque judicial system. A number of HK scholars and pundits started including The Trial in their recommendations of books to read to understand what is happening here, and well, if that’s not a good reason to try Kafka again, I’d like to know what is.
The story follows Josef K, a bank employee who is arrested by the police. He is not told what the charge is, but is allowed to go about his usual life until his court hearing. However, K is never told when he is supposed to attend the hearing, and the more he tries to find out how to go about preparing his defense, the more impenetrable and illogical the system becomes. K’s personal and professional life starts to fall apart as the case (and its complete lack of progress) consumes his attention. For the most part, the whole story is a surreal absurdist allegory about how the faceless bureaucracy of the law can be weaponized against innocent people who stand no chance against unreasonable and arbitrary authority.
So no wonder it’s become popular in some circles in Hong Kong, where national security offenses are subject to arbitrary interpretation of the govt to the point where no one knows where the “red lines” are, and where the govt offers nonsensical alt-reality explanations to justify censorship, police brutality, political arrests and protest bans. However, as a reading experience, The Trial is equal parts riveting and tedious - Kafka is prone to philosophical tangents and episodes of surrealism that make the actions of most characters in it inexplicable. Which may be the whole point, for all I know. Anyway, I do get what Kafka was driving at here, and it’s not like I went in expecting it to be as straightforward as the average Grisham novel. Still, I also now remember why I never really followed up on Kafka after reading The Metamorphosis.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is Valente’s “Eurovision In Space” novel, and as a fan of both Valente and Eurovision, I just had to read it, didn’t I? The pitch: after the Sentience Wars, aliens decided to settle their differences over who qualifies as a sentient race via an annual pop song contest called the Metagalactic Grand Prix. Newly discovered backwater planets are automatically entered (whether they like it or not), and they’re allowed to live as long as they don’t place dead last. Now it's the Earth’s turn, and the aliens show up with a list of Earth music artists they reckon have the best chance of avoiding a last-place ranking. Unfortunately, due to outdated research, all of the candidates are long dead except for British glam-rock one-hit wonders Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros - who have long since broken up after the death of their drummer.
The story is dirt simple: flamboyant lead singer Decibel and multi-instrumentalist Oort St Ultraviolet must put aside their differences and come up with a song that can save the Earth. But no matter - this is one of those novels where the story is incidental to everything else packed inside the book, from the history of the Grand Prix to the wide variety of alien races competing. The bare-bones plot serves as a platform for savage satire, philosophical musings, alien sex and truly jaw-dropping puns. (The “earworm” pun alone should win an award for something.)
The comparisons to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are inevitable (as Valente herself has acknowledged), but Space Opera stands out on its own - partly because it's funny as hell, but mostly because Valente writes with the glee and conviction of a fangirl obsessed with Eurovision, glam-rock and Anglophile pop culture. Also, Valente puts a lot of thought not only into the various types of alien life in her universe, but the kind of music and accompanying stage shows such alien cultures might produce. And her take on how Earth would react to such an invitation (i.e. with politics and arguments over what band should go instead) is pretty much spot on. This was everything I hoped for and more.
View all my reviews
Follow the bouncing disco ball,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1661085.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Congo by Michael Crichton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve read quite a bit of Michael Crichton before, but I’ve held off on this one - partly because Crichton wrote it as a homage to classic jungle adventures from the likes of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (a subgenre that’s never really interested me), but mainly because I’ve seen the major-motion-picture version a bunch of times, so I figured I knew the story already. Turns out I was partly wrong, as the film version came out 15 years after this was published and Crichton wasn’t involved in its production. Consequently, there’s no way I can read or review this novel without comparing it to the film (which, incidentally, I do happen to like, as silly as it sometimes is).
The basic premise is the more or less same: a tech company sends a team to the Congo to find the lost city of Zinj, said to be the location of King Solomon’s diamond mines. ERTS isn’t interested in jewelry - these diamonds have natural qualities that make them perfect for the next generation of computer chips. When the team is attacked and killed by what looks like gorillas, Karen Ross assembles a new team, which includes primates expert Peter Elliot, who has taught a gorilla named Amy sign language - and, as it happens, Amy’s drawings suggest she knows where Zinj is.
Typical of Crichton, the story is top-loaded with leading-edge technology and in-depth research about gorillas, murderhippos, cannibalism and the Congo region in general. And while it’s not as fun as the film, it’s more believable, although I’ll add that the filmmakers made the right decision in casting Ernie Hudson as the “great white hunter” character Munro, which makes him far more interesting than the book version. All up, I got more out of the book/film comparisons than the book itself - it's okay for what it is, and Crichton has written worse novels, but he’s also written better.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my first time reading Martha Wells, who usually writes fantasy - this is the first of a series of SF novellas she wrote for Tor. I confess I wasn’t that interested in it, as the cover art suggests hard military SF and the subtitle “The Murderbot Diaries” hints at a lot of gratuitous wholesale ultraviolence, neither of which interests me if that’s the chief selling point. But you know what they say about judging a book by its cover. And anyway, I scored a free copy via a Tor giveaway promotion, so I figured I'd give it a shot - and found myself pleasantly surprised.
The “Murderbot” (and narrator) is a SecUnit - a security cyborg that has secretly hacked its governor module and is thus not controlled by the team it works for or the systems of the company that owns it. The SecUnit - which has nicknamed itself Murderbot due to a past incident - has a tetchy relationship with humans, partly because it doesn't have the emotional capacity to deal with people who treat it simultaneously like property and one of the crew, and partly because it doesn't want them to find out about the hacked governor. It would rather just do its job and watch TV shows the rest of the time.
The storyline is about as basic as it gets - Murderbot accompanies a science exploration team to an unexplored planet, and things go wrong until it becomes abundantly clear that someone (or something) is trying to kill them. What makes it work is Murderbot’s relationship with everyone else on the team who either don't trust it or (worse) want to be nice to it. Essentially, the Murderbot character is a vehicle to explore how outsiders - particularly those classified by society as “property” or second-class citizens - relate to “normal” people, with the added twist that Murderbot is also somewhere between human and non-human, which complicates its relationships with its team members. Extra points for Wells’ economic yet effective prose and fast-paced plotting that keeps the pages turning.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
At the risk of doing a Richard Dawkins, I must confess I’m not big on Kafka. I read The Metamorphosis in college and thought it was good, but not so good as to make me want to read more Kafka. I only picked up The Trial because of current events in Hong Kong, where the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020 has created what many call a Kafka-esque judicial system. A number of HK scholars and pundits started including The Trial in their recommendations of books to read to understand what is happening here, and well, if that’s not a good reason to try Kafka again, I’d like to know what is.
The story follows Josef K, a bank employee who is arrested by the police. He is not told what the charge is, but is allowed to go about his usual life until his court hearing. However, K is never told when he is supposed to attend the hearing, and the more he tries to find out how to go about preparing his defense, the more impenetrable and illogical the system becomes. K’s personal and professional life starts to fall apart as the case (and its complete lack of progress) consumes his attention. For the most part, the whole story is a surreal absurdist allegory about how the faceless bureaucracy of the law can be weaponized against innocent people who stand no chance against unreasonable and arbitrary authority.
So no wonder it’s become popular in some circles in Hong Kong, where national security offenses are subject to arbitrary interpretation of the govt to the point where no one knows where the “red lines” are, and where the govt offers nonsensical alt-reality explanations to justify censorship, police brutality, political arrests and protest bans. However, as a reading experience, The Trial is equal parts riveting and tedious - Kafka is prone to philosophical tangents and episodes of surrealism that make the actions of most characters in it inexplicable. Which may be the whole point, for all I know. Anyway, I do get what Kafka was driving at here, and it’s not like I went in expecting it to be as straightforward as the average Grisham novel. Still, I also now remember why I never really followed up on Kafka after reading The Metamorphosis.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is Valente’s “Eurovision In Space” novel, and as a fan of both Valente and Eurovision, I just had to read it, didn’t I? The pitch: after the Sentience Wars, aliens decided to settle their differences over who qualifies as a sentient race via an annual pop song contest called the Metagalactic Grand Prix. Newly discovered backwater planets are automatically entered (whether they like it or not), and they’re allowed to live as long as they don’t place dead last. Now it's the Earth’s turn, and the aliens show up with a list of Earth music artists they reckon have the best chance of avoiding a last-place ranking. Unfortunately, due to outdated research, all of the candidates are long dead except for British glam-rock one-hit wonders Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros - who have long since broken up after the death of their drummer.
The story is dirt simple: flamboyant lead singer Decibel and multi-instrumentalist Oort St Ultraviolet must put aside their differences and come up with a song that can save the Earth. But no matter - this is one of those novels where the story is incidental to everything else packed inside the book, from the history of the Grand Prix to the wide variety of alien races competing. The bare-bones plot serves as a platform for savage satire, philosophical musings, alien sex and truly jaw-dropping puns. (The “earworm” pun alone should win an award for something.)
The comparisons to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are inevitable (as Valente herself has acknowledged), but Space Opera stands out on its own - partly because it's funny as hell, but mostly because Valente writes with the glee and conviction of a fangirl obsessed with Eurovision, glam-rock and Anglophile pop culture. Also, Valente puts a lot of thought not only into the various types of alien life in her universe, but the kind of music and accompanying stage shows such alien cultures might produce. And her take on how Earth would react to such an invitation (i.e. with politics and arguments over what band should go instead) is pretty much spot on. This was everything I hoped for and more.
View all my reviews
Follow the bouncing disco ball,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1661085.html. Please comment there using OpenID.