Chemicals in the Air (July Reading)

[ase]

I read several popular books that I think I will get more out of discussing than I did out of reading them. Ditto with the minor novels by major authors. So comment away.

The Puppet Masters (Robert Heinlein): Mind controlling aliens invade Earth. Nudity ensues. Heinlein proves once more that he may have been ahead of his time, but not that ahead.

"Listen, son - most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range than we've got."

How this tallies with "Mary"'s devolution from dynamic female character to plot device and wifely appendage is an essay waiting to happen. I find the limited acknowledgment that having your body possessed by an alien entity who treated you rather less well than, say, humans treat horses really disturbing in the context of Sam's final internal monologue about wiping the mind-controlling "slugs" out of existence. Oh, and don't get me started on the fun father-son non-relationship. Fold that in with the Mary devolution for a general "dear RAH, please don't try to write family" essay.

Redeeming qualities of novel: um. Justified nudity? Aircars? Secret agents save the world from mind controlling aliens? The aliens come complete with flying saucers! Okay, let's admit I started The Puppet Masters in a moment of weakness and finished it out of blind stubbornness. The plot was well done, but the characters and patronizing author voice shining though the characters drove me nuts.

The Sharing Knife: Legacy (Lois McMaster Bujold): One aspect of ideal romance plot is finding your partner and your place in a community. Being part of relationship that improves your ability to do stuff. So it should surprise no one who has read Legacy that I, um, may not be on Dag and Fawn's side.

By the end of Legacy, a number of my least favorite romance tropes have come into play: May-December, "us against the world that would divide us", new romantic partner being your everything, a plucky and precocious young female protagonist. (I really, really hate the "everything" trope. Words cannot contain the sense of entrapment and co-dependence that sort of story brings on me in conjunction with "us against the world".)

At the conclusion of the novel, Dag and Fawn have both run away from their families and communities, leaving behind their few friends. Compare this to Kareen and Mark in A Civil Campaign. If this were clearly marked as part of a larger cycle, I might be a little less unsettled, but at the moment it makes me reluctant to ever pick up another SK book ever again.

Reading Bujold mailing list chatter: readers agree the lakewalker-farmer paradigm is broken. Reader expectation is that Dag & Fawn will fix this. Frustrated reader expectations: mine. The lakewalker concern is malice control, and by extension, keeping patrols up. I think the answer to, "how do you keep your patrols at full strength?" is some variation of, "learn to patrol without groundsense." Instead of turning to breeding programs to solve the bloodlines/inheritance problems, look for Ben Franklins to throw at the problem. Look for the natural philosophers of Grace Shoals and give them the malice problem to worry at. (As someone else said, "where are the sharing projectiles?" Aha! In this thread.)

The pacing is weird, and I think that's my greatest problem with the book. I'm an SF reader, and unfamiliar with the romance tropes, but the interpersonal focus of the book threw me. Take the council scene: in a novel following fantasy tropes, this would have been a dramatic showdown where Lakewalker custom is challenged and possibly set aside. The characters in charge of deliberations purposefully (and sensibly, from a plot-internal perspective) rule this sort of decision out of order. The character decisions flow relatively sensibly, but the consequences are funky for the fantasy genre, and the plot is extremely meandering. It feels like Dag and Fawn are "solving" their problems by walking away from them. Farmer culture unwilling to embrace their relationship? Walk away from the farmers. Lakewalkers not keen on it either? Walk away. This ticks me off, because the way to solve problems of intolerance is not to walk away, but to challenge assumptions and live your life. I'm tempted to draw real-life parallels with interracial marriages in America, and the LGBT movement. Sometimes the answer is not a dramatic fantasy showdown, but proving your point by living it. And perhaps the local equivalent of equal rights litigation. Dag and Fawn's relationship does an excellent job of pointing up the problems in the parallel farmer/lakewalker cultures, and places them in a position to heal the fissure that's opened up, but the characters aren't getting to the conclusions I consider painfully obvious, and I find my enjoyment of a usually favorite author much diminished by this.

War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda (Jonathan Tucker): Exactly what the subtitle says: a nonfiction account of the evolution of chemical weapons from mustard gas to Novichok agents. This is an absolutely straight recitation of facts, facts and more facts, with very little emphasis on the interconnections between facts that makes nonfiction enjoyable for me. I also would have enjoyed more emphasis on the biochemical side, like tedious diagrams of relevant enzymes and receptor kinase cascades, this may just be my biology geekiness showing again. The focus is on development, treaties, governments breaking treaties, new development, and government budget fights. It's an excellent education on the social/historical side, but less so on the science side, because that's just not Tucker's interest.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J. K. Rowling): Last in the series. Harry must face Voldemort and his destiny. And all that jazz.

Personal reactions: Rowling's strength is unobtrusively sliding plot coupons into the narrative and charming, wacky (if sometimes massively stupid) worldbuilding, two things which I didn't really see in play in this book. The Hallows introduction was clumsy, and sort of out of left field. The epilogue demonstrates how differently Rowling and I view the world: the scene is constructed to echo Harry's first King's Cross experience as much as possible, with zero irony about any unresolved problems that might linger. Stasis is an artificial comfort, in my worldview. Where are the wizarding iPods and Hermione's cell phone going off as her assistant tries to tell her about the Very Important Work Thing? Where is the evidence that the fundamental problems with discrimination in the wizarding world have been addressed? I could get into textual analysis about Harry's desire for a "normal" happy family and how that shapes his approach to the world, but honestly, I am a big fan of zany not-normal happy families in fiction. Tolstoy said, "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" and we have been stuck hearing it since. I find this to be an over-generalization. Not everyone wants - or is happy with - a spouse, white picket fence, and 2.1 children. So the "all was well" end didn't feel well to me: rather, if felt like a happy dream of well-ness, without the pesky inconsistencies of real life to trip people up.

And yet, despite my fundamental dis-engagement with the conclusion, I found much of the book entertaining for hours in airplanes and terminals. Things I did like: Luna (always), Neville, the return of the DA. The unintentionally hysterical wand-lore. Harry's, "oh snap, I dropped the Resurrection Stone" attitude. The chaotic tumble from a sneaky mission gone wrong to the gigantic set-battle. I've been reading the books mostly to keep up with pop culture for a while, so I'm just as glad they're over, though I sort of wish I hadn't lost my copy on the plane.

The Blue Castle (L. M. Montgomery): Valancy Stirling's 29th birthday brings nothing but gloom to an old maid in the making. Not until a doctor tells her she has a year to live does Valancy choose to upend her prim life. Mild havoc and romance ensue.

The book would have been vastly improved had it started on chapter three and cut out the first 25 pages of moping. I was completely unsurprised to learn Valancy's husband was John Foster, though the revelation about his fortune was a pretty twist. Her subsequent artificial dithering, however, was not. This is lightweight LMM, which is saying something. I'm glad to have it checked off the to-read list, but I'm relieved I ILLed it, and didn't spend money on it.

Comments

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

That was how I initially was able to read Wrinkle in Time, way back in grade school, by jumping to the chapter "The Man with Red Eyes." The previous chapters *are* necessary for plot, but still were kind of boring when I went back and read them afterwards.

And then there's Doomsday Book, which I loved, but apparently only because I've deleted a whole half of the book from my head... most people I know don't really like it that much due to the "modern-day" bits, which I mostly just skipped over.

Good to know about Cyteen, actually, because I've been in this stasis regarding Cherryh. I really love her short stories, but my two novel forays (Downbelow Station and Fortress of Something-or-another) have not been wildly successful. I suspect though that we may be badly matched-- as far as I can tell, she likes to take a fairly small piece of the action and follow it until you realize it's really affecting the whole system. Which works well for me in a story, but I get too impatient in a novel-length setting.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

See, I like Doomsday Book's modern-life bits, because they were sooooo academic-politicksy. Which is totally the culture I grew up in. :->

Hrm. Cherryh SF you might like without having to skip the opening:

• Forty Thousand in Gehenna is a very weird book, for her, but I loved it for its alien-species anthropology. If you're into wellmade alien cultures (even if they're run by humans), also try Serpent's Reach.
  
• For Folks-On-Space-Stations-and-Ships stuff, I rather like Finity's End -- supremely subversive of the 'oppressed talented teenager' trope, because not only do we realize he's right, we realize the grownups are right TOO, and that there may not be any easy solution without someone, y'know, growing UP. Neat inside view of what it's like to live on one of the trader-family ships, too.
  
• Voyager in Night is a weird art-novel, but I found it oddly compelling, in a Philip-K-Dick 'what is reality, anyhow, and how could we tell??' kind of way.
  
• Hellburner is about fighter-jocks in space, and gets into what's going on in that huge Earth/Stations war thing in the Alliance/Union 'verse.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that I think of it, the moral of Finity's End might be, "Yeah, life sucks for you. Sucks for me, too. World's like that, sometimes. Now, are you going to sit there pouting about it, or, y'know, get ON with it?"

[almeda.livejournal.com]

(i'm going to get hairy palms, replying to myself this much!)

I also just realized that Finity's End's protagonist is a Third-Culture Kid. Now, who was it that had an entry asking for examples of that? Hrm. Oyceter, maybe?

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Oh, the academic-politics parts were not bad. It was the hospital antics that turned people off, I think. Whereas I'm all, "What hospital?"

Hmm. ok, thanks! I'll look these up.

PK Dick-like hallucinogens I have to be in a specific mood to imbibe (really, after reading one of those things I walk around for hours thinking, "are you a figment?"), so maybe I'll wait on that one a bit.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Forty Thousand in Gehenna is a very weird book, for her

Which is really saying something. It suffers from trying to compress 300 years of history into less than 500 pages.

Finity's End is what happens when Cherryh tries to do YA.

Voyager in Night has always pleased me because I saw the twist coming.

Hellburner! Top Gun in Spaaace! It was almost worth slogging through Heavy Time just so I could crack up at Ben Pollard's obnoxious "what time is it, Dekker?" right off the top. I loved that book with a happy irrational glee.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Have I mentioned yet that I think the family-trading-ships culture and the azi are, together, the best part by far of the entire Alliance/Union worldbuilding? And Gehenna was settled by, effectively, feral azi.

I want more azi-protagonist books, dammit. :->

[ase.livejournal.com]

as far as I can tell, she likes to take a fairly small piece of the action and follow it until you realize it's really affecting the whole system.

Yes. I adore this, so Cherryh novels and I get along frighteningly well. I read Cherryh's novels before her short stories, and got sucked in by Downbelow Station, so I may be of little help in finding the novels you'd like. I love Downbelow Station for its unremitting grim working-out of consequences until the one moment of anastrophe, and Cyteen for what it says about intelligence, environment, and parents.

A couple shots in the dark, though. Try the Nighthorse books - Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider - which are technically SF, but riff off Westerns a bit as well. Rider also employs Cherryh's take on the Magical Chosen Teenage Girl trope. These may distract you from the slow pacing until the stars align and merry havoc breaks loose.

Nighthorse blurb: humans are the aliens on a planet where the native fauna are telepathic. While the god-fearing shut themselves behind wooden walls, travel between townships is protected by the riders, telepathically joined to the intelligent beasts preachers say were sent by the Devil.

Nighthorses are black. And like bacon.

It may be worth noting that Cherryh mentored Mercedes Lackey while ML was writing her first Valdemar trilogy.

Also, try Wave Without a Shore (out of print; look for the Alternate Realities omnibus). It's about art, and society, and it's shorter than many of her novels.

I think you would like the fifth Chanur book, but not the four preceding it. (This may be a biased opinion, because I got bored with the Chanur series). It's the closest Cherryh will probably get to slapstick comedy.

The Fortress books should be cool, but suffer from fuzzy magic and really, really slow pacing.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in principle I really like this, but in practice I tend to get distracted (my attention span is about three minutes) (this is part of why I am no longer in academia, although I'm finding out that a short attention span is really a problem wherever you go), and then by the time we find out what is really going on, I have lost the thread. Which is why the short stories really work for me, because it's a small enough canvas that I can keep paying attention until the end.

Perhaps I'll give Downbelow Station another shot, though. I've definitely had luck with other complex books on the second go.

Nighthorses are black. And like bacon.
Okay, this convinced me. I'm worried my library has the second one and not the first. Bah.

It is good to know I wasn't making up the slow pacing in the Fortress books, though.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Oh, attention span. Yes. There's a reason I'm refusing to start grad school until I know exactly I have a better idea what I want to do. I like to hold entire books in my head and find the links, but I'm not good with themes and leitmotifs in "real" literature. Give me a spaceship and I can talk for an hour; ask me about rain as a metaphor in Alvarez' In the Time of the Butterflies and I say, "...um?"

Downbelow Station holds a special place in my heart as part of Summer 2000, which was roughly bracketed by DbS and Cyteen, and was an important period in my adolescent rebellion.

Okay, this convinced me. I'm worried my library has the second one and not the first. Bah.

ILL is your friend. Alternatively, check your local used book stores or bookfinder.com. (Also? I have a spare copy. It's at dad's, but he and I still need to do the Las Vegas slideshow sometime this month.)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

A followup: I started reading Riders at the Gate (I'm oh, a third through), and... wow. Yeah. I think you may have hit a home run on this one. Probably much more later, after my in-laws leave and I can dive back into it.

It may be worth noting that Cherryh mentored Mercedes Lackey while ML was writing her first Valdemar trilogy.

Let me just say now though that because you said that, I totally noticed that the nighthorses are hilariously like Valdemar companions on steroids and maybe heroin, and it makes me crack up.

[ase.livejournal.com]

I think you may have hit a home run on this one.

I am doing the quiet dance of the victorious recommendation.