In which there is the Company series by Kage Baker
This post is here for my future reference. These are my unexpanded notes from 2013 on reading the Company series by Kage Baker for the first time. I had a hate/love relationship with the stories, often on a book-by-book basis. I finished reading the whole series, and most of the tangential stories. TBH, it's only two years on and I don't remember any of the plots or most of the characters so even if I wanted to discuss the books, which I don't especially, I wouldn't be in a position to do so without re-reading and I'm not planning to do that because I'd prefer to re-read and discuss those of Ms Baker's other books that I LOVE (and will be praising again in my next book post).
My review of At the Edge of the West, aka Mendoza in Hollywood.
- Reading, books 2013: 78.
Please note that the authorial voice in a work of fiction (as mentioned below) is not identical to the author. To point out that the authorial voice says something is not to imply that it's the author's One True Vision of life the universe and everything.
43. I read The Graveyard Game, by Kage Baker.
The best joke-I-shall-assume-is-deliberate in the series is probably that 2355 = 5 minutes to midnight.
Extremist libertarianism breaks through from characters into authorial voice a couple of times.
The world-building is probably wannabe satire+parody but is actually satire+farce and then I’m laughing at the author rather than with her.
These ideas of a future indicate a creator with an insular present. It seems to be pitched as social science fiction but doesn't understand enough about the societies fictionalised to work for people who aren't as insular as the author, however I'd rather read Baker trying to extrapolate from her current ideas and not wholly succeeding than endless books about A.N. Author’s pet subjects (especially because I know with 20/20 hindsight that Baker went on to produce better work than this without retreating into comfy Californian insularity).
The English banning alcohol within the next couple of centuries, when binge drinking has been a favoured national pastime since reliable brewing technology was introduced in prehistory, is ludicrous. I tried this idea of English prohibition on a roomful of socially and politically diverse dinnerparty guests and they ALL collapsed into helpless lolz.
What Baker appears to tout as gourmet ideas appear in many cases more like inexperience and even gourmandism, e.g. a preference for Californian white wine with vindaloo, or bean protein never being a gourmet preference.
Vegetarian/vegan characters in a supposedly compulsorily vegetarian/vegan society fail to notice individual omnivorous lawbreakers despite the fact that they would presumably have exuded the unfamiliar and disgusting smells of rotting dairy and rotting meat (which is what Asians from veggie cultures used to notice about Europeans).
An earthquake destroying London in 2198 = NO, just NO. In GG the earthquake destroys "high-rises", and in LotWtC it leaves the structures but rains glass down on passers-by... and again I say NO. Srsly, London is built on a clay pan (= easy to destroy through flood!!1!!) which is readily shaken by seismic activity from the Dover Straits HOWEVER in London's loooooong recorded history there's never been an earthquake above about 5.5 ML (which = a few chimney pots and some badly maintained old masonry/glass falling on pedestrians). There was one in 1382 and another in 1580. The recorded death toll from the 1580 quake = falling masonry killed two children. London's population is now about 50x that of 1580 (although the density of pedestrians in potential danger areas isn't necessarily the same) but in Baker's future the population has reduced and there's a much smaller proportion of pedestrians so an assumption of 100 deaths would be overkill. Even to a supposedly risk-averse future population, damage to a few badly maintained old buildings and <99 deaths out of tens of millions of inhabitants doesn't seem likely to be thought of as a devastating catastrophe in a city accustomed to warfare and terrorism (with terrorism-aimed-at-the-populace being an ongoing feature of Baker's future London). I understand that a Californian imagining Fictional Disaster X might immediately imagine an earthquake but applying that to a well-known real location elsewhere without any further thought seems bizarre, especially if one's fiction heavily focuses on that location.
44. I read Sky Coyote, by Kage Baker.
pg 45 Hollywood, melting pot monoculture, multiculture.
45. I read The Life of The World to Come, by Kage Baker.
Petty petit bourgeois dystopia, middle-class Californian libertarian bad dreams (being told off for doing something you enjoy doesn't count as a full-on nightmare, especially when millions of working class/poor/disprivileged people in one's own society already live and die in far worse circumstances).
Alcohol ban mentioned every few pages continuously throws me out of the story. Prehistoric, ?4000? years?, "ritual enclosure" for binge drinking+meat (town centre before towns, heh), town centre Fri/Sat night. Scots and Welsh (Celtic Federation) anti-alcohol temperance (and Scottish minimum price-control) different from Irish.
Bad world-building. Competent prose but keeps telling us that Alec is hotstuff without showing us any evidence except the results of his Magic Hacking Skillz. Baker appears to be in love with her hero and writes as if she's assuming readers are too but without giving us any reason to love him. He's a slightly spoilt teenage boy who, as far as the reader knows, grows up into a slightly spoilt thirty-something boy... and who cares??? (written at pg120) With hindsight I know that she re-wrote a similar author's-fave character into an historical pirate story and it worked extremely well, which is especially fascinating to me because this character doesn't work for me at all (although I can imagine the sort of readers who would identify with him... o_O... ew...), but The Life of the World to Come is a cardboard stage built to showcase shallow and uninteresting characters in the middle act of a longer play (which might or might not be worth sitting through but is entertaining enough to keep me reading because, as the author repeatedly makes clear, we monkeys are prepared to spend our time in brainless entertainment). The irony that the supporting characters are far more interesting and well-written than any of Baker's spotlight figures hasn't escaped me (Sarah the cyborg, Lewin the better-than-stereotypical-butler, Lord Howard, &c).
pg 63 SuperMammy
pg 81 public school = English schoolchildren
pg 99 explaining slang to her presumed dim readers
MRA misogyny. First wife lies about pregnancy to get Alec to marry her.
Only srsly disabled character is a lying faker with an extreme victim-mentality.
More MRA misogyny. According to the text, women supposedly made Alec a rapist because he unwisely chose to marry two women for the wrong reasons and then decided to cease his lifelong use of paid sexworkers because he suddenly prefers rape-through-mind-control (so basically a sf equivalent of "date" drug-rape).
Interesting that Baker feels the need to especially trash women in misogynist ways in addition to the generalised misanthropy towards all human beings (although one could argue that most of Baker's misanthropy is aimed at men because most of her characters are men and most of the power-holders in her society are men so there aren't many direct examples of misanthropy towards women).
Ephesians = feminists? The only real life special interest group Baker targets after fudging their name. The Ephesians run women's shelters and publicly defend the human rights of abused women.
It's as if Baker wrote this using a talking-points instruction manual entitled: "How to please batshit extremist Californian libertarians (now with bonus bullshit misogyny!)".
Hereditary House of Lords + "meritocracy" = joke about Tories or what?
47. I read The Children of the Company, by Kage Baker.
"Racial" stereotyping abounds. Atrahasis/Labienus is west Asian, and a cruel and scheming administrator. Latif is black, 5 years old, and a drug-dealer.
More an episodic collection of interlinked short stories about characters.
48. I read The Machine's Child, by Kage Baker.
Mendoza appears to be 14 years old and Alec lies to her, claiming she's his wife. Consent issues.
Reliable banking: all european & USian (including San Francisco!) but no Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Singapore. India and Asia don't rly exist at all except for supplying a few immigrants to California. Boat practically moored off California despite Company presence and Alec's oft previously stated preference for the Caribbean (author write what know but insular).
49. I read The Sons of Heaven, by Kage Baker.
Warning for rape apologism via the mouth of the female protagonist Mendoza. Tropes include: she didn't fight him off enough, it's not rly rape if they've had sex before (because consenting once to one sex act = consenting to all sex acts forever), &c. EW!
"The Ephesians would have us believe that men can't nurture, that they're mere sex-and-violence machines, useful for producing Y chromosomes and best banished from the home once their reproductive task is finished. Men themselves buy into this lie, often, I think. I know Edward was bullied into believing it, by the Company agents who trained him. [...]" pbk pg 192-3
Picking out a (fictional) British ban on blue food colouring as a target for mockery is in bad taste (ahem). A particular blue food colouring was banned when I was a child because SCIENCE said it killed children while conveying no benefit other than pointlessly colouring food blue. If one wants to mock human risk-averseness then it's probably better to choose a target without a recent historical resonance including dead children.
Tellingly, it's only when the story reaches the part where The Baddies are punished that women characters, mortal and immortal, suddenly appear in positions of equal-ish administrative power (to receive a share of the punishment).
"Goodie" Preservers versus Enforcers cut short by LITERAL deus ex machina.
P.S. Remember, and Baker can't emphasise this enough (for herself? her presumed paying customers?) the Company is British, so that means every problem in recorded history was caused by the British and USians aren't responsible for anything ever, especially not global capitalist oligarchs*!!1!! ( * like William Randolph Hearst, who exists in Baker's 'verse and controls the global media but is a product of the wicked British and is controlled by the same wicked Brits!!1!!)
Ebony
55. I read Gods and Pawns, by Kage Baker. Company short stories focussed on characters. Generally enjoyed, especially the lighter-hearted stories with Lewis.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/557784.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
My review of At the Edge of the West, aka Mendoza in Hollywood.
- Reading, books 2013: 78.
Please note that the authorial voice in a work of fiction (as mentioned below) is not identical to the author. To point out that the authorial voice says something is not to imply that it's the author's One True Vision of life the universe and everything.
43. I read The Graveyard Game, by Kage Baker.
The best joke-I-shall-assume-is-deliberate in the series is probably that 2355 = 5 minutes to midnight.
Extremist libertarianism breaks through from characters into authorial voice a couple of times.
The world-building is probably wannabe satire+parody but is actually satire+farce and then I’m laughing at the author rather than with her.
These ideas of a future indicate a creator with an insular present. It seems to be pitched as social science fiction but doesn't understand enough about the societies fictionalised to work for people who aren't as insular as the author, however I'd rather read Baker trying to extrapolate from her current ideas and not wholly succeeding than endless books about A.N. Author’s pet subjects (especially because I know with 20/20 hindsight that Baker went on to produce better work than this without retreating into comfy Californian insularity).
The English banning alcohol within the next couple of centuries, when binge drinking has been a favoured national pastime since reliable brewing technology was introduced in prehistory, is ludicrous. I tried this idea of English prohibition on a roomful of socially and politically diverse dinnerparty guests and they ALL collapsed into helpless lolz.
What Baker appears to tout as gourmet ideas appear in many cases more like inexperience and even gourmandism, e.g. a preference for Californian white wine with vindaloo, or bean protein never being a gourmet preference.
Vegetarian/vegan characters in a supposedly compulsorily vegetarian/vegan society fail to notice individual omnivorous lawbreakers despite the fact that they would presumably have exuded the unfamiliar and disgusting smells of rotting dairy and rotting meat (which is what Asians from veggie cultures used to notice about Europeans).
An earthquake destroying London in 2198 = NO, just NO. In GG the earthquake destroys "high-rises", and in LotWtC it leaves the structures but rains glass down on passers-by... and again I say NO. Srsly, London is built on a clay pan (= easy to destroy through flood!!1!!) which is readily shaken by seismic activity from the Dover Straits HOWEVER in London's loooooong recorded history there's never been an earthquake above about 5.5 ML (which = a few chimney pots and some badly maintained old masonry/glass falling on pedestrians). There was one in 1382 and another in 1580. The recorded death toll from the 1580 quake = falling masonry killed two children. London's population is now about 50x that of 1580 (although the density of pedestrians in potential danger areas isn't necessarily the same) but in Baker's future the population has reduced and there's a much smaller proportion of pedestrians so an assumption of 100 deaths would be overkill. Even to a supposedly risk-averse future population, damage to a few badly maintained old buildings and <99 deaths out of tens of millions of inhabitants doesn't seem likely to be thought of as a devastating catastrophe in a city accustomed to warfare and terrorism (with terrorism-aimed-at-the-populace being an ongoing feature of Baker's future London). I understand that a Californian imagining Fictional Disaster X might immediately imagine an earthquake but applying that to a well-known real location elsewhere without any further thought seems bizarre, especially if one's fiction heavily focuses on that location.
44. I read Sky Coyote, by Kage Baker.
pg 45 Hollywood, melting pot monoculture, multiculture.
45. I read The Life of The World to Come, by Kage Baker.
Petty petit bourgeois dystopia, middle-class Californian libertarian bad dreams (being told off for doing something you enjoy doesn't count as a full-on nightmare, especially when millions of working class/poor/disprivileged people in one's own society already live and die in far worse circumstances).
Alcohol ban mentioned every few pages continuously throws me out of the story. Prehistoric, ?4000? years?, "ritual enclosure" for binge drinking+meat (town centre before towns, heh), town centre Fri/Sat night. Scots and Welsh (Celtic Federation) anti-alcohol temperance (and Scottish minimum price-control) different from Irish.
Bad world-building. Competent prose but keeps telling us that Alec is hotstuff without showing us any evidence except the results of his Magic Hacking Skillz. Baker appears to be in love with her hero and writes as if she's assuming readers are too but without giving us any reason to love him. He's a slightly spoilt teenage boy who, as far as the reader knows, grows up into a slightly spoilt thirty-something boy... and who cares??? (written at pg120) With hindsight I know that she re-wrote a similar author's-fave character into an historical pirate story and it worked extremely well, which is especially fascinating to me because this character doesn't work for me at all (although I can imagine the sort of readers who would identify with him... o_O... ew...), but The Life of the World to Come is a cardboard stage built to showcase shallow and uninteresting characters in the middle act of a longer play (which might or might not be worth sitting through but is entertaining enough to keep me reading because, as the author repeatedly makes clear, we monkeys are prepared to spend our time in brainless entertainment). The irony that the supporting characters are far more interesting and well-written than any of Baker's spotlight figures hasn't escaped me (Sarah the cyborg, Lewin the better-than-stereotypical-butler, Lord Howard, &c).
pg 63 SuperMammy
pg 81 public school = English schoolchildren
pg 99 explaining slang to her presumed dim readers
MRA misogyny. First wife lies about pregnancy to get Alec to marry her.
Only srsly disabled character is a lying faker with an extreme victim-mentality.
More MRA misogyny. According to the text, women supposedly made Alec a rapist because he unwisely chose to marry two women for the wrong reasons and then decided to cease his lifelong use of paid sexworkers because he suddenly prefers rape-through-mind-control (so basically a sf equivalent of "date" drug-rape).
Interesting that Baker feels the need to especially trash women in misogynist ways in addition to the generalised misanthropy towards all human beings (although one could argue that most of Baker's misanthropy is aimed at men because most of her characters are men and most of the power-holders in her society are men so there aren't many direct examples of misanthropy towards women).
Ephesians = feminists? The only real life special interest group Baker targets after fudging their name. The Ephesians run women's shelters and publicly defend the human rights of abused women.
It's as if Baker wrote this using a talking-points instruction manual entitled: "How to please batshit extremist Californian libertarians (now with bonus bullshit misogyny!)".
Hereditary House of Lords + "meritocracy" = joke about Tories or what?
47. I read The Children of the Company, by Kage Baker.
"Racial" stereotyping abounds. Atrahasis/Labienus is west Asian, and a cruel and scheming administrator. Latif is black, 5 years old, and a drug-dealer.
More an episodic collection of interlinked short stories about characters.
48. I read The Machine's Child, by Kage Baker.
Mendoza appears to be 14 years old and Alec lies to her, claiming she's his wife. Consent issues.
Reliable banking: all european & USian (including San Francisco!) but no Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Singapore. India and Asia don't rly exist at all except for supplying a few immigrants to California. Boat practically moored off California despite Company presence and Alec's oft previously stated preference for the Caribbean (author write what know but insular).
49. I read The Sons of Heaven, by Kage Baker.
Warning for rape apologism via the mouth of the female protagonist Mendoza. Tropes include: she didn't fight him off enough, it's not rly rape if they've had sex before (because consenting once to one sex act = consenting to all sex acts forever), &c. EW!
"The Ephesians would have us believe that men can't nurture, that they're mere sex-and-violence machines, useful for producing Y chromosomes and best banished from the home once their reproductive task is finished. Men themselves buy into this lie, often, I think. I know Edward was bullied into believing it, by the Company agents who trained him. [...]" pbk pg 192-3
Picking out a (fictional) British ban on blue food colouring as a target for mockery is in bad taste (ahem). A particular blue food colouring was banned when I was a child because SCIENCE said it killed children while conveying no benefit other than pointlessly colouring food blue. If one wants to mock human risk-averseness then it's probably better to choose a target without a recent historical resonance including dead children.
Tellingly, it's only when the story reaches the part where The Baddies are punished that women characters, mortal and immortal, suddenly appear in positions of equal-ish administrative power (to receive a share of the punishment).
"Goodie" Preservers versus Enforcers cut short by LITERAL deus ex machina.
P.S. Remember, and Baker can't emphasise this enough (for herself? her presumed paying customers?) the Company is British, so that means every problem in recorded history was caused by the British and USians aren't responsible for anything ever, especially not global capitalist oligarchs*!!1!! ( * like William Randolph Hearst, who exists in Baker's 'verse and controls the global media but is a product of the wicked British and is controlled by the same wicked Brits!!1!!)
Ebony
55. I read Gods and Pawns, by Kage Baker. Company short stories focussed on characters. Generally enjoyed, especially the lighter-hearted stories with Lewis.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/557784.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.