Watchtower, Singularity Sky, Should You Leave?
Couple of books. Also, I saw Charlie Wilson's War, which is recommended and is kind of like a Heinlein novel as written by Aaron Sorkin.
Watchtower (Elizabeth A. Lynn): This book won a World Fantasy Award, and has a bunch of smoochy blurbs on the back, and I don't really get why. I mean, it's perfectly fine and entertaining stuff, but it feels like only about half a book. It's one of those stories where a guy goes to a place where his old skills and way of life aren't useful and is exposed to crazy new ideas, and eventually comes back back to the old place and then we see how he's changed. That can be a fine setup for a book, it just doesn't seem like it really works here.
I said it was like half a book, but maybe more accurate is that it's like a theorem without a proof. Like, the whole point of bringing the character back into their old surroundings is to see how the new experience has changed them -- or in some sense, it's to prove that the new way of life is valid, because it's a more-suitable philosophy in the old situation as well as the new. What we get here is instead a trick. Two tricks, actually -- the characters come back and win with a trick*, but the real trick is what the author pulls, where the book jumps back to the old philosophy with the new characters. This doesn't prove anything about the new way of life! In fact, it argues that it's just as limited as the protagonist's original perspective.
I dunno, like I said at the beginning, this book has a lot of people giving it a thumbs up and I don't get why. There's also some things about gender roles that might have been pretty cutting-edge in 1980 (when the book was written, and presumably when it won the award), but the basic thing is what I said. I am cheerfully willing to concede I missed something but I'm not sure what it is. (For what is possibly an instance thereof, there's this review, which starts out "This won the World Fantasy Award in 1980, and very well deserved it was.")
*There is a weird ethical side-issue here too. Some guy lives in this castle, and somebody comes and conquers it and kicks him out, and then some other good guys come and conquer him and put the first guy back. But there's never any indication the first set of conquerers are bad people or bad stewards, and no justification that I can see for getting rid of them unless you want to invoke the divine right of kings or something. Since the other good guys are supposedly pro-non-violence, you'd think they would be against conquering for the sake of conquering.
Singularity Sky (Charles Stross): katre50 recommended this after I read Halting State. Without actually knowing anything about Stross I have the idea that this is a little more typical of his work -- it's farther future and more sf than thriller. I feel like the writing works a little better here because of that, too. The jokes are more toned down (like, there's a Monty Python joke but it's a reference and not a character explicitly quoting a line) and there's no real commentary on current-day world events (in fact, given that it's in a faux-Soviet setting, it feels like out-of-date commentary on world events). The plot, on the other hand, feels weaker. I think with the genders reversed the activity imbalance would be easier to miss, but as it is, it's pretty striking how one of the characters just hangs out for the second half of the novel and doesn't really accomplish anything except to be a dude in distress.
But, so we're clear, this isn't the sort of novel that's concerned about the characters, it's the sort of novel that opens with a storm of telephones falling from the sky, because that's awesome. Lots of other awesome stuff appears throughout the novel, ranging from nanobot-assisted karate to the real downside of a goose that lays golden eggs to intelligent spy pants. The downside to all this, though, is sometimes the book is so in love with ideas that it resorts to the protagonists lecturing other, dumber characters about them. At one point a character is kept alive by the author for the sole purpose of having the Singularity explained to him at great length, which seems like it borders on being a fate worse than death.
And speaking of the Singularity, I think it screws up the balance of the book. See, in most cases, somebody with a way higher tech level has nothing to worry about from somebody with a way lower tech level. Yeah, there are plenty of situations you can set up as an author to make that not the case for a while, but generally speaking that's how it goes. And the whole idea of the Singularity is you have people with low tech levels right next to people with high tech levels (unless the Singularity hits everyone at exactly the same time, which it doesn't in this book). So the result is, for about three quarters of the book there is danger and excitement and then the protagonist opens the can of nano-cyber-AI-whoopass, and suddenly there's no real danger for the rest of the book. If this happened later it wouldn't be such a big deal, but here it's earlier enough that the plot glides smoothly to a halt rather than screeching improbably to a stop at the last minute. This would be good in an airplane landing, but we're talking a story here.
I do realize this is one of those literature-of-ideas kinda books, and on that score it delivers and I had a good time. It makes me wonder a bit about where novels will be wrt the Singularity in five years or so. Is it going to get to be like FTL, where you say "yeah, this culture is post-Singularity" and don't have to explain it any further? Come to think of it, I guess that's Sun of Suns, though I note this suggests that post-Singularity a culture settles down to some other more-understandable equilibrium.
Should You Leave? (Peter D. Kramer): This is the kind of book where I finish it and can't really say what it's about. I guess it's best characterized as a combination of advice and case studies about relationship errors, a discussion of the history of advice-giving in psychiatry, and a meditation by the author on the validity and purpose and method of advising patients. I'm more interested in items one and three, I should add. I feel like psychology* tends to spend too much time on the history of the field, on theories which have been rejected or superseded. While it's good to mention Freud in the context of advice as an example of how sometimes psychiatrists don't know what the hell they're talking about, the book spends more time on him than I think he really warrants here.
When someone describes a book as "a meditation on X" that seems to be code for "kind of rambly" and that is certainly true here. There's a pair of interesting stylistic choices here that form a rough structure for the book. Basically, it's written in the second person, with "you" being a series of possible hypothetical patients showing up for an appointment. I haven't read If on a winter's night a traveler so I don't know how the point of view worked there, but here it's interesting to note how different it is from the second person point of view in an IF game. Because this book has an explicit "I" as well as the explicit "you", the effect of the second person viewpoint is to give omniscience and omnipotence to the narrator. Which may be appropriate since he's the therapist, but it's still weird to have him declaring that "you feel this" and "you say that". On the other hand, he offsets this to some extent by frankly admitting how much he doesn't know and isn't sure about. Part of the point of the book is how little the therapist knows when giving advice -- you can imagine various hypothetical people who you apply the same advice to, and in some situations it produces good outcomes and some bad. Or in some situations they ignore the advice and are happy and in some they ignore it and are sad, and how do you know what to do.
I guess this is more than enough to find out if you are into this kind of thing or not. I found the book a little muddled and a little frustrating but overall rewarding and thought-provoking. I guess it might even be helpful if you're concerned about the question in the title, though if that's your main purpose it seems like something more focused might be better. (But book recommendations are a form of advice, right? So clearly I should quit while I'm ahead.)
*And philosophy too, which figures, since they're related disciplines.
Next up: The Dresden Files, I think.
Watchtower (Elizabeth A. Lynn): This book won a World Fantasy Award, and has a bunch of smoochy blurbs on the back, and I don't really get why. I mean, it's perfectly fine and entertaining stuff, but it feels like only about half a book. It's one of those stories where a guy goes to a place where his old skills and way of life aren't useful and is exposed to crazy new ideas, and eventually comes back back to the old place and then we see how he's changed. That can be a fine setup for a book, it just doesn't seem like it really works here.
I said it was like half a book, but maybe more accurate is that it's like a theorem without a proof. Like, the whole point of bringing the character back into their old surroundings is to see how the new experience has changed them -- or in some sense, it's to prove that the new way of life is valid, because it's a more-suitable philosophy in the old situation as well as the new. What we get here is instead a trick. Two tricks, actually -- the characters come back and win with a trick*, but the real trick is what the author pulls, where the book jumps back to the old philosophy with the new characters. This doesn't prove anything about the new way of life! In fact, it argues that it's just as limited as the protagonist's original perspective.
I dunno, like I said at the beginning, this book has a lot of people giving it a thumbs up and I don't get why. There's also some things about gender roles that might have been pretty cutting-edge in 1980 (when the book was written, and presumably when it won the award), but the basic thing is what I said. I am cheerfully willing to concede I missed something but I'm not sure what it is. (For what is possibly an instance thereof, there's this review, which starts out "This won the World Fantasy Award in 1980, and very well deserved it was.")
*There is a weird ethical side-issue here too. Some guy lives in this castle, and somebody comes and conquers it and kicks him out, and then some other good guys come and conquer him and put the first guy back. But there's never any indication the first set of conquerers are bad people or bad stewards, and no justification that I can see for getting rid of them unless you want to invoke the divine right of kings or something. Since the other good guys are supposedly pro-non-violence, you'd think they would be against conquering for the sake of conquering.
Singularity Sky (Charles Stross): katre50 recommended this after I read Halting State. Without actually knowing anything about Stross I have the idea that this is a little more typical of his work -- it's farther future and more sf than thriller. I feel like the writing works a little better here because of that, too. The jokes are more toned down (like, there's a Monty Python joke but it's a reference and not a character explicitly quoting a line) and there's no real commentary on current-day world events (in fact, given that it's in a faux-Soviet setting, it feels like out-of-date commentary on world events). The plot, on the other hand, feels weaker. I think with the genders reversed the activity imbalance would be easier to miss, but as it is, it's pretty striking how one of the characters just hangs out for the second half of the novel and doesn't really accomplish anything except to be a dude in distress.
But, so we're clear, this isn't the sort of novel that's concerned about the characters, it's the sort of novel that opens with a storm of telephones falling from the sky, because that's awesome. Lots of other awesome stuff appears throughout the novel, ranging from nanobot-assisted karate to the real downside of a goose that lays golden eggs to intelligent spy pants. The downside to all this, though, is sometimes the book is so in love with ideas that it resorts to the protagonists lecturing other, dumber characters about them. At one point a character is kept alive by the author for the sole purpose of having the Singularity explained to him at great length, which seems like it borders on being a fate worse than death.
And speaking of the Singularity, I think it screws up the balance of the book. See, in most cases, somebody with a way higher tech level has nothing to worry about from somebody with a way lower tech level. Yeah, there are plenty of situations you can set up as an author to make that not the case for a while, but generally speaking that's how it goes. And the whole idea of the Singularity is you have people with low tech levels right next to people with high tech levels (unless the Singularity hits everyone at exactly the same time, which it doesn't in this book). So the result is, for about three quarters of the book there is danger and excitement and then the protagonist opens the can of nano-cyber-AI-whoopass, and suddenly there's no real danger for the rest of the book. If this happened later it wouldn't be such a big deal, but here it's earlier enough that the plot glides smoothly to a halt rather than screeching improbably to a stop at the last minute. This would be good in an airplane landing, but we're talking a story here.
I do realize this is one of those literature-of-ideas kinda books, and on that score it delivers and I had a good time. It makes me wonder a bit about where novels will be wrt the Singularity in five years or so. Is it going to get to be like FTL, where you say "yeah, this culture is post-Singularity" and don't have to explain it any further? Come to think of it, I guess that's Sun of Suns, though I note this suggests that post-Singularity a culture settles down to some other more-understandable equilibrium.
Should You Leave? (Peter D. Kramer): This is the kind of book where I finish it and can't really say what it's about. I guess it's best characterized as a combination of advice and case studies about relationship errors, a discussion of the history of advice-giving in psychiatry, and a meditation by the author on the validity and purpose and method of advising patients. I'm more interested in items one and three, I should add. I feel like psychology* tends to spend too much time on the history of the field, on theories which have been rejected or superseded. While it's good to mention Freud in the context of advice as an example of how sometimes psychiatrists don't know what the hell they're talking about, the book spends more time on him than I think he really warrants here.
When someone describes a book as "a meditation on X" that seems to be code for "kind of rambly" and that is certainly true here. There's a pair of interesting stylistic choices here that form a rough structure for the book. Basically, it's written in the second person, with "you" being a series of possible hypothetical patients showing up for an appointment. I haven't read If on a winter's night a traveler so I don't know how the point of view worked there, but here it's interesting to note how different it is from the second person point of view in an IF game. Because this book has an explicit "I" as well as the explicit "you", the effect of the second person viewpoint is to give omniscience and omnipotence to the narrator. Which may be appropriate since he's the therapist, but it's still weird to have him declaring that "you feel this" and "you say that". On the other hand, he offsets this to some extent by frankly admitting how much he doesn't know and isn't sure about. Part of the point of the book is how little the therapist knows when giving advice -- you can imagine various hypothetical people who you apply the same advice to, and in some situations it produces good outcomes and some bad. Or in some situations they ignore the advice and are happy and in some they ignore it and are sad, and how do you know what to do.
I guess this is more than enough to find out if you are into this kind of thing or not. I found the book a little muddled and a little frustrating but overall rewarding and thought-provoking. I guess it might even be helpful if you're concerned about the question in the title, though if that's your main purpose it seems like something more focused might be better. (But book recommendations are a form of advice, right? So clearly I should quit while I'm ahead.)
*And philosophy too, which figures, since they're related disciplines.
Next up: The Dresden Files, I think.