Fiction reviews
Sheri S. Tepper, The Visitor: A young girl, raised in an oppressive postapocalyptic culture in which injured or rebellious people are “bottled” - pieces of their flesh preserved, the rest destroyed, and the bottles culturally considered still alive awaiting Paradise - begins to receive messages indicating she has a larger destiny. As people from around the country begin to converge in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, the high-tech survivors from before the apocalypse begin to understand that their manipulations of others are themselves subject to manipulation by some outside force - and it’s coming closer. As often happens, Tepper can’t quite manage the tension between free will and determination - it’s more noticeable because the characters themselves ask whether they’re just pawns or whether they have choices to make. Bottling was a very creepy concept; I would have liked it better if Tepper didn’t insist that the bottle-victims’ souls were still hanging around, seeking release.
Walter Mosley, Blue Light: In the sixties, a strange blue light sweeps through San Francisco, changing those exposed to it - making some crazy, and some maybe saner than anyone else who’s ever lived. Some develop unusual powers, especially the changed children. Because of the general wackiness of the counterculture at the time, nobody really notices. One of the changed starts hunting and killing the others, who gather to establish their own new society. How will people who aren’t quite people any more behave when confronted with questions of loyalty and trust that have puzzled the unchanged for millenia? I liked Mosley’s short sf stories better, though this book, written from the perspective of a man who general society considers schizophrenic and helpless, was good at describing the eternal, eternally failing struggle for connection with others.
Joe Haldeman, Buying Time: In the future, the very rich can buy regeneration, so they can live forever. The only hitch: they need to give up their total net worth to purchase the treatment, which takes them from age to youth each time. Of course, the smart ones think of ways around this; Dallas Barr is one of the smart ones. But the foundation that controls the treatment wants to control the world, and when Dallas refuses to go along, he finds himself on the run with a beautiful ex-lover. The treatment protects against age, not (say) decapitation. Fairly standard; I didn’t enjoy Haldeman’s jump into superpowers at the end, when a character conveniently acquired abilities that made mortal peril significantly less perilous.
John Christopher, When the Tripods Came: I loved the Tripods trilogy a lot when I was a kid. The trilogy starts with Tripod domination over humanity firmly established; this book is a prequel written years later. It has some commentary on human vulnerability to media manipulation and nationalism as a way of controlling people, and it tries to explain some of the Excellent Questions about Tripod behavior that a careful reader might ask, but I think the trilogy stands fine on its own.
Graham Greene, The Shipwrecked: In Copenhagen, a magnate meets his mistress’s brother, the man she loves above all others - a wastrel and a cheat, whose presence quickly breaks apart all the compromises she’s made. Kate knows all her employer/lover’s dirty little secrets; each of them can quickly destroy the others. Tragedy is the only outcome, but how many people will be ruined? The passion between sister and brother - never physical, but probably more powerful because of that - feels clogged and deadly, but I couldn’t empathize with the characters, and the writing was not as sublime as that in The End of the Affair. So many of the crucial social attitudes that drove the plot have passed away, and it’s not a universal enough story to survive the decades.
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy: Unfortunately, this sweeping novel, set in post-Independence India among several intertwined well-off families, bored me so much I stopped reading it. There’s lots of domestic drama, with a background of economic change and religious conflict (Partition was new and tensions among Muslims and Hindus high), and characters of every personality imaginable, including plenty of whimsy. But after 500 pages (1/3 of the way through!), I still didn’t care - it was like overhearing the gossip of the table next to you, lots of personal dramas that didn’t make a difference to me.
Walter Mosley, Blue Light: In the sixties, a strange blue light sweeps through San Francisco, changing those exposed to it - making some crazy, and some maybe saner than anyone else who’s ever lived. Some develop unusual powers, especially the changed children. Because of the general wackiness of the counterculture at the time, nobody really notices. One of the changed starts hunting and killing the others, who gather to establish their own new society. How will people who aren’t quite people any more behave when confronted with questions of loyalty and trust that have puzzled the unchanged for millenia? I liked Mosley’s short sf stories better, though this book, written from the perspective of a man who general society considers schizophrenic and helpless, was good at describing the eternal, eternally failing struggle for connection with others.
Joe Haldeman, Buying Time: In the future, the very rich can buy regeneration, so they can live forever. The only hitch: they need to give up their total net worth to purchase the treatment, which takes them from age to youth each time. Of course, the smart ones think of ways around this; Dallas Barr is one of the smart ones. But the foundation that controls the treatment wants to control the world, and when Dallas refuses to go along, he finds himself on the run with a beautiful ex-lover. The treatment protects against age, not (say) decapitation. Fairly standard; I didn’t enjoy Haldeman’s jump into superpowers at the end, when a character conveniently acquired abilities that made mortal peril significantly less perilous.
John Christopher, When the Tripods Came: I loved the Tripods trilogy a lot when I was a kid. The trilogy starts with Tripod domination over humanity firmly established; this book is a prequel written years later. It has some commentary on human vulnerability to media manipulation and nationalism as a way of controlling people, and it tries to explain some of the Excellent Questions about Tripod behavior that a careful reader might ask, but I think the trilogy stands fine on its own.
Graham Greene, The Shipwrecked: In Copenhagen, a magnate meets his mistress’s brother, the man she loves above all others - a wastrel and a cheat, whose presence quickly breaks apart all the compromises she’s made. Kate knows all her employer/lover’s dirty little secrets; each of them can quickly destroy the others. Tragedy is the only outcome, but how many people will be ruined? The passion between sister and brother - never physical, but probably more powerful because of that - feels clogged and deadly, but I couldn’t empathize with the characters, and the writing was not as sublime as that in The End of the Affair. So many of the crucial social attitudes that drove the plot have passed away, and it’s not a universal enough story to survive the decades.
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy: Unfortunately, this sweeping novel, set in post-Independence India among several intertwined well-off families, bored me so much I stopped reading it. There’s lots of domestic drama, with a background of economic change and religious conflict (Partition was new and tensions among Muslims and Hindus high), and characters of every personality imaginable, including plenty of whimsy. But after 500 pages (1/3 of the way through!), I still didn’t care - it was like overhearing the gossip of the table next to you, lots of personal dramas that didn’t make a difference to me.