books: Lake and Doctorow
I can't spend one more minute thinking about non-metric multidimensional scaling, so... books!
Mainspring by Jay Lake
A lot of people complain that the protagonist, Hethor, is too passive. To them I say, "Congratulations, Captains Obvious. Would you each like a gold star?"
Yes, the protagonist gets tossed around from one event to the next for much of the book. This is because the acquisition of agency can't happen unless there's a lack of it to begin with. By the end of the novel, Hethor is thinking for himself, making decisions, and driving his own journey, and the decisions that he makes are all the more powerful because they are, to a degree, the first decisions he's ever had to make in his life.
The issues of free will versus destiny and responsibility versus rebellion are intimately tied up in the problem of agency, as well. Steampunk, in the narrow definition of the genre, is a literature of rebellion, and Lake flips this paradigm upside-down and backwards. The protagonist rebels against an oppressive rationalist regime to literally save the world by fulfilling a holy mission, and though Hethor is devout, Lake manages to pull off the story without making it feel dogmatic. I think there's even more to be teased out of this novel on the agency front, but it's still souping around in my subconscious.
I should note that my ScB in Geophysical Sciences hampered my sense of wonder somewhat. I am very good at accepting the initial conceit of a spec fic story, but after that, my science-brain wants everything to follow logically, or my suspension of disbelief takes a hit. For instance, a planet running along the inside of a track means no axial tilt, and no axial tilt means no seasonality. I won't even get into the various and sundry tectonics issues. But for a reader who hasn't taken years of geology classes, I imagine the world-building would be a once-in-a-decade sort of spectacle. Highly recommended.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
This is another once-in-a-decade book, but for very, very different reasons.
I should first qualify that Little Brother is not a stunning work of English prose. It reads as if the smart, tech-savvy, seventeen-year-old protagonist wrote it himself (which, obviously, is part of the point -- it is YA, after all). Marcus sometimes halts the narration for several pages to deliver a vaguely-relevant recollection from his backstory or explain how one of his gadgets works, and it does hellish things to the flow of the plot structure.
But. But! This book does so much that it doesn't really matter how the content is packaged; the packaging isn't designed for me, and that didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the content one bit. Doctorow writes a poignantly realistic criticism of the Department of Homeland Security and the terrorism scare, and he doesn't stop there: he also provides a powerful argument for ability of technology to enable us, as citizens, to maintain our civil rights. It is complex, and moving, and deeply patriotic (in the true sense of the word), and it should be taught in every high school in the US. I might cry if it doesn't win the Hugo.
Mainspring by Jay Lake
A lot of people complain that the protagonist, Hethor, is too passive. To them I say, "Congratulations, Captains Obvious. Would you each like a gold star?"
Yes, the protagonist gets tossed around from one event to the next for much of the book. This is because the acquisition of agency can't happen unless there's a lack of it to begin with. By the end of the novel, Hethor is thinking for himself, making decisions, and driving his own journey, and the decisions that he makes are all the more powerful because they are, to a degree, the first decisions he's ever had to make in his life.
The issues of free will versus destiny and responsibility versus rebellion are intimately tied up in the problem of agency, as well. Steampunk, in the narrow definition of the genre, is a literature of rebellion, and Lake flips this paradigm upside-down and backwards. The protagonist rebels against an oppressive rationalist regime to literally save the world by fulfilling a holy mission, and though Hethor is devout, Lake manages to pull off the story without making it feel dogmatic. I think there's even more to be teased out of this novel on the agency front, but it's still souping around in my subconscious.
I should note that my ScB in Geophysical Sciences hampered my sense of wonder somewhat. I am very good at accepting the initial conceit of a spec fic story, but after that, my science-brain wants everything to follow logically, or my suspension of disbelief takes a hit. For instance, a planet running along the inside of a track means no axial tilt, and no axial tilt means no seasonality. I won't even get into the various and sundry tectonics issues. But for a reader who hasn't taken years of geology classes, I imagine the world-building would be a once-in-a-decade sort of spectacle. Highly recommended.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
This is another once-in-a-decade book, but for very, very different reasons.
I should first qualify that Little Brother is not a stunning work of English prose. It reads as if the smart, tech-savvy, seventeen-year-old protagonist wrote it himself (which, obviously, is part of the point -- it is YA, after all). Marcus sometimes halts the narration for several pages to deliver a vaguely-relevant recollection from his backstory or explain how one of his gadgets works, and it does hellish things to the flow of the plot structure.
But. But! This book does so much that it doesn't really matter how the content is packaged; the packaging isn't designed for me, and that didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the content one bit. Doctorow writes a poignantly realistic criticism of the Department of Homeland Security and the terrorism scare, and he doesn't stop there: he also provides a powerful argument for ability of technology to enable us, as citizens, to maintain our civil rights. It is complex, and moving, and deeply patriotic (in the true sense of the word), and it should be taught in every high school in the US. I might cry if it doesn't win the Hugo.