Shadows and the Stars (September Reading)

[ase]

I have fever, but it's of the sort that conks me out, without completely incapacitating me between naps. So have some book chatter.

The Ghost Brigades (John Scalzi): The adventures of Jared Dirac, Special Forces clone of a brilliant rogue scientist. A sort of sequel to Old Man's War: same universe, overlapping characters. The major problem I have here is that I liked Charles Boutin, who cackled and chewed scenery with amazing intensity. If I were going to be an evil overlord, I'd want to be a brilliant abrasive scientist poking holes in my colonial government's eurocentrism. Really. Look at the awesome naming rant!

"The pool of last names is actually pretty limited. A couple hundred or so, and mostly classical European scientists. Not to mention the first names! Jared. Bred. Cynthia. John. Jane." The names came out as a good-natured sneer. "Hardly a non-Western name among them, and for no good reason, since Special Forces aren't recruited from Earth like the rest of the CDF. You could have been called Yusef al-Biruni and it would have been all the same to you. The set of names Special Forces uses implicitly says something about the point of view of the people who created them, and created you. Don't you think?"

. To which I say, Dr. Boutin, you do mad biotech / bioengineering and you've got a modicum of cultural awareness. I would totally poach your Type A DNA for my hypothetical children. I might kick you out of bed afterwards, though, you ass.

I am really really sad that Boutin gave into evil overlord ranting instead of shooting more people. However, I found the climatic scene where the woman soldier and innocent girl-child escape from the aliens and child Zoe's evil overlord dad's plans a bit too... old school. I'd like to highlight this because it felt like a clip out of something from the '50s.

I should say something about the other characters - Dirac's integration of his soldier-self and Boutin's memories; the alien scientist Our Heroes capture, force to work for humanity, and eventually allow to suicide; the ongoing dissonance of the physical CDF bodies, and personnel life and combat experience. But that would mean remembering people's names, and oh, they are bland.

Scalzi does lighthearted military SF really well. He has a knack for the snappy one liner, and he's part of a genre I've been reading since someone said, "Heinlein, Weber - good times, kiddo". However, he also pulls some narrative tricks I like only when executed by a master: a "there will be a sequel!" conversation where the speakers obviously know more than they're sharing with the reader; the Evil Overlord speech (okay, I lie, it rocked my world, but it also made me sad because if Boutin had read the Evil Overlord list and shot first, there might have been further Evil Mad Scientist adventures, sigh); gooey-sweet baby Zoe Boutin. I only like small, cute, innocent kids when they are small, cute, innocent and about to do something massively problematic because they don't know better. In other words, they act their age.

Scalzi's doing mil SF in The Ghost Brigades, but he's also part of a tradition of SF/F writers trying to respin old tropes. In this case, the implications of the respins might be a little stranger than the story wants to be. At least one character asks, if the Special Forces troops are built out of DNA data from multiple humans and some Earth animals and plants and hey, some alien species too, how human are the SFs? And how "alien" are the aliens? The nature of an in-group isn't a topic that Scalzi's set out to explore (despite the introduction of the turtle-y Special Forces people - and how cool and meta is it that they're named after SF authors? I want to know who gets to be Le Guin! - Scalzi doesn't seem particularly interested in the lines we draw around human and not-human, except as arbitrary lines of descent and creation.

Conclusions: good light genre fiction, but don't think about it too hard. Also, if you have a problem with cute kids, run away.

Crystal Soldier (Sharon Lee and Steve Miller): First half of the adventures of M. Jela Granthor's Guard and Cantra yos'Phelium; prequel to the Liaden novels by the same authors. I read several of the Liaden novels in my late teens, and very little has stuck with me beyond one sentence: here we stand: An old woman, a halfling boy, two babes; a contract, a ship, and a Tree. Clan Korval. How Jela would laugh. I found the writing in the Liaden novels tended to use a lot of gimmes in ways that don't interest me, but I wanted to know more about this "old woman" and her backstory, which sounded much more interesting than her arch descendants.

I can only imagine what a hassle it must be to write a prequel. The readers know how the story must end, and the writers know the reader knows, so how do you get a good story out of an inevitable conclusion? Lois Bujold rocked the house with Barrayar by expanding and filling in a gap briefly mentioned in The Warrior's Apprentice; Marion Zimmer Bradley jumped all over several centuries of internal chronology, with mixed results; Steven Brust slid a little over and swapped up styles in the Viscount of Andrilankha trilogy, and less brilliantly (but still pretty entertainingly) jumps all over the timeline and claims unreliable narrator syndrome in the Vlad books. (The Vlad novels are one of the examples that make me think reading in publication order is a much better idea than reading a series in chronological order.) Crystal Soldier tells it straight, in distractingly passive prose with inexplicable word substitutions, and that just doesn't do much for me. One paragraph analysis:

The tiny shower wasn't conducive to dawdling and, in any case, he wanted to be done and clear before Dulsey came in wanting her own refresh. The ship civvies - a long-sleeved black sweater woven from skileti, which hugged him like a second dermis, and long black pants made from the same fabric - were warm, durable and easy, with nothing trailing to get caught in machinery or to obscure a section of the piloting board.

"Second skin" would work just as well as "second dermis" without the associated am I reading a tie-in novel trauma. Likewise "refresh" versus "shower". Inexplicable word substitution is something I'd do if I were writing, and I read to see authors do things that leave me astonished and asking, "how did that just happen? What - hey!" I want to read things I can't do, or would never have thought to do. Lee and Miller use the SF gimmies in ways I find uncreative. Gimme FTL? Okay. Gimme Magic? Whatever. Red-haired leoni dramliza? I could do without ever reading about a fiery-haired magic wielder ever again. Fantasy of genealogy? Marion Zimmer Bradley did it first, and with better visuals.

I read the other Liaden books before I got an LJ, so I'm going to be mean and post my series gripes here. I hate, hate, hate the romantic lifebond in every instance of its manifestation in fiction, and while I appreciate that it originated as a Bad Guys control mechanism in the Liaden series, I wish the potentially devastating drawbacks and complications got more screen time. Will someone please give me, say, Shan and Priscilla's deathbed scene. Lee and Miller's prose has not endeared itself to me. Bad guys can be picked out at 1,000 meters by their dislike of Our Heroes. There is un-creative use of gimmes and word substitution. (Creative use of gimmes would be exemplified by Rosemary Kirstein or Octavia Butler. Possibly by Naomi Novik or John Scalzi, depending.) The emphasis on pilot value over almost any other profession is stupid. The characters aren't always nice, but the series is. Most of the worldbuilding dates from the founding of Liad, with (apparently) very few changes since then. Please compare to, say, US history, 1776 - 1976.

I should say that Crystal Soldier did one thing I liked: no completely superfluous B-plot to pad the page count. Also, for all my gripes about the SF content, the romance did not completely and intrinsically irritate me, as so many romance novels or stories do.

The Outback Stars (Sandra McDonald / sandramcdonald): Jodenny Scott, survivor of one of those space disasters, gears up for the next round. Terry Myell just wants the bullying to stop.

It's impossible to read this novel without noticing it's some sort of loving shoutout to the land down under. There are geckos. There are extensive eucalyptus forests. One of the plot arcs deals with possibly-aboriginal-ish visions of the Dreamtime. I'm interested to know what logical train of thought goes from "Earth destroyed (presumably by global warming and other environmental disasters engineered by humanity)" to "Australians in the best position to colonize deep space", so I hope McDonald throws a little more deep backstory in the sequel.

In terms of actual storytelling - this is a moderately uneven novel. There's at least four major plot arcs, some of them introduced pretty late, and the thematic and plot issues don't always interweave well. It's a novel-length plotting issue that might smooth out in later books as the writer figures out how to pace for 300+ page stories. I had some personal issues with the prologue and first chapter, which gave me a horrible Once a Hero flashback. OaH is a perfectly serviceable mil SF novel, but for me was one horrible "trauma and depression" story too many after a marathon Lackey-Asaro binge. Once you get past Jodenny's initial PTSD, Plot One improves a great deal, and may actually be redeemed by a charming offhand remark 250 pages later. (I love a good Chekhov's gun setup like almost nothing else in fiction.) Then there's Terry and Plot Two: the romance. The Hand of Author is evident, sometimes painfully so, in several interactions (such as Jodenny being run out of town on a rail and accidentally meeting Myell's brother's terrifyingly normal nuclear family), but many of their interactions fulfill my romance standard* except for the banter and comedy bits. Since there is problem-solving and McGuffin, I'm about 90% happy with the romance, despite my great dislike of the ridiculously convenient coup attempt, emotional tenor of last two pages of the last chapter, and telling-not-showing problems in the epilogue. This is about as good as I'm going to get without extraordinary intervention.

*quoting from February '07: Person A and Person B must solve a problem. Resolving the McGuffin brings them closer together. Plot, smartass banter and comedy ensue. Ultimately, the problem is solved, and A+B form a lasting romantic partnership with smartass banter, comedy, and possibly cohabitation. Steamy sex scenes or fade to black on the smooches both acceptable.

Plot Three (which may be Plot One, Part Two) is the mystery of the Yangzte, which becomes the mystery of the Mother Spheres, and that's about where I need to stop. I'm not going to talk about the Wondjina Transport System until I can stop calling it the Australian-flavored Stargate, complete with "Osherman = NID analog, duh" theory. What I can talk about is Plot Four, or Terry Has A Mystic Vision Or Ten. Is Terry crazy? Is religion getting the forgotten pale-skinned great-great-grandson of some aboriginal person? Or is religion getting used for local flavor? This is either the coolest plot ever thanks to ibarw overexposure and "passing" discussions, or another in a series of cultural appropriations by the white guy. (Only in this case the character is male and the author is female, which adds a layer. Discuss in comments.)

Conclusions: uneven, but promising. I'll make the library hold the sequel for me.

The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. Le Guin): Second book in the Earthsea trilogy. Reread. I read the Earthsea trilogy out of order - Tombs, The Farthest Shore, then A Wizard of Earthsea last. I'm trying to remember if I read Tehanu before Wizard, but I'm pretty sure I read the first book in the first trilogy before finding the first book in the second trilogy. Mostly sure. Needless to say, this misreading order has colored my feelings about the series in interesting ways. What do you mean, the trilogy's overwhelmingly important protagonist is Ged?

The original Earthsea trilogy might technically be considered epic fantasy, since it's the story of restoring the peace and the monarchy, but any Fat Fantasy Epic conventions are undercut left, right and center. Tombs is awesome about this: it's a classic "steal things from the Temple of Evil!" story, but it's told from the perspective of Evil's scornful young and nubile high priestess, and having the McGuffin solves nothing immediately. Magic can be flashy - and from his staff and his hands leapt forth a white radiance that broke as a sea-wave breaks in sunlight, against the thousand diamonds of the roof and walls: a glory of light - but it's also useful for curing goat diseases and mending things, like the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. At the end of the story, the hero sails into port, victorious, but the object he went to fetch is carried by the girl. I can see why Le Guin went back and tried to fix her universe years later - there are fundamental injustices, but life is unfair - but the books stand on their own just fine, I think.

Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler): Also a reread. The world ends. Lauren Olamina keeps going. One of the things I love about postapocalyptic fiction is the inevitable settling toward a new equilibrium, and Butler does an awesome job of that in this story. Historical injustices aren't repeated identically, but similar situations arise. I want to wave my hands and discuss the political setup and race and how everyone's wrapped up in their children.

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

but it's told from the perspective of Evil's scornful young and nuble high priestess

I can't tell if that's supposed to be nubile or noble, and can't remember from when I read it either. Perhaps both.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Nubile, deliberately invoking "Me Conan, you hot chick" fantasy novels of an older era. (I hope older.) It's been fixed - thanks for pointing that out.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Aaaah, I also read Tombs first. I can't remember what came next. At the time I liked Farthest Shore best because I thought Arren was cute, but Tombs has always had a special place for me. (In retrospect, I can't figure out why I plucked that particular book from the library shelf in fifth grade; I mean, tombs aren't exactly warm fuzzy welcoming places, and evoke horror, which I don't really like-- yet I have a distinct memory of seeing the book on the shelf, thinking "This looks interesting," and with no further ado checking it out, which happens rarely, and succeeds even more rarely.)

It always kind of bothers me about tehanu that the universe becomes inconsistent, especially with the wizards-having-families thing.

Hmm, I've read Butler's clayark series (which I find kind of disturbing and not really my cup of tea, but still keep going back to) but not any of the parable ones. Must go check them out. Any suggested order?

[ase.livejournal.com]

I did my best to read every sf/f novel in my middle school's library by randomly pulling them off the shelves. I think they only had Tombs, for some reason, so that's what I got to read first.

The second trilogy is all the reasons you don't revisit your 30-year-old worldbuilding. I don't know what Le Guin was really trying to fix, but it didn't work for me. Although the romance was very cute. "I have been patient with you for twenty-five years," she said. Awwww.

There are two Parable novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Talents is a direct sequel to Sower, so they ideally should be read in order. They were published in 1994 and 1999, but deal with religion and power, corruption, and life as the vestiges of the old United States dies, so they are still very topical. I read pieces of the Clay's Ark series, all out of order, and I think the Parable books are much less disturbing on the surface, despite the bloody, frequent violence and body count.

[guitaromantic.livejournal.com]

I thought I already went over this in your previous post including a John Scalzi book, but apparently not. Oh joy!

What gets me about Scalzi is that unlike many of the new-school SF authors (and most of the old ones), he has a keen sense of what it means to be human, in a down-to-earth way. I come to SF and leave SF but lately have been on a huge kick, so I can't paint any broad literary strokes, but some of his scenes in The Ghost Brigades, and the narrative voice in Old Man's War, are funny and grounded - the SF equivalent of Lake Wobegon, maybe?

Think of the scenes in The Ghost Brigades with the cheerful old-school human soldier who we only see when he ferries Dirac up to a space station or down to a planet. We meet him a handful of times but even so, he was one of the most enduring characters for me. It's not the object lesson he's supposed to teach to Dirac implicitly, it's his very normalcy. All too many science fiction authors tend to end up with wooden characters or common templates - the femme fatale with a tragic past, the lone protagonist who's already a badass, or is on a quest to become one. Even the Old Man's War protagonist is more than a little reminiscent of the narrative voice from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - but Heinlein had his own issues with character building. Scalzi seems to be doing a better job at an earlier time in his career than our friend Bob.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Scalzi does a very nice "middle America in space" thing in the OMW-verse. However, I am from the greater Washington DC suburbs, and my mother's family is from Massachusetts. Middle America reads very differently in those contexts.

[guitaromantic.livejournal.com]

I'm from Russia, so Middle America (being my home for the last fifteen years) reads pretty differently to me too, but I think Scalzi brings out the good parts of the Middle American soul in his books, or let's say the parts worth bringing out. If you've ever read Charles Stross' Accelerando, the hyper-paced Snow Crash or slumming/glam Neuromancer, their big-city metropolitan vibe is exciting but can get a bit wearing at times.

Perhaps that's how you feel about Scalzi's "Middle America in space" characterization, though.

[ase.livejournal.com]

So if Scalzi is Middle America, the cyberpunk novels and their descendants are New York City? This is a metaphor I can work with, since I enjoy visiting NYC and would die if I had to live there. But I'd sag into some sort of misery in white picket fence land, too, without attention to the unexpected in that life. The human pilot's discovery of Indian take-out, or his upstanding neighbor's wild youth in the big city - am I making any sense?

I guess my issue with the OMW-verse so far is that it's not hitting "major sense of wonder and odd" buttons and forcing me to pay attention. I think I missed a OMW character cameo in tBG because I'd forgotten his name. That's a fairly significantly failure of characterization for me. Scalzi's big on the theory of writing a colorblind universe, but it means he has to work harder to put unique visuals in my head. However, his one-liner dialogue comebacks are awesome. If we could get Scalzi dialogue in Octavia Bulter worldbuilding, the resulting novel would make me ridiculously happy.

[guitaromantic.livejournal.com]

I'd say some cyberpunk novels are New York in the 70s maybe 80s, even when they're set in a future Tokyo. Whether east or west coast, there's a heavy urban element. But it appears to be played out. We know all we ever wanted to know, and more, about how life in the future will be for city dwellers. How about Middle America (though this is less Scalzi than channeling Gibson into Ohio or what have you), or a country that is neither America nor Japan? Russian cyberpunks dealing with mafiosos, religious mania, and communist old believers? Indian Turing Police (Krishna Cops) hunting rogue AIs on the black market to make sure they don't evolve past a certain predetermined limit? The latter actually appears in a book by Ian McDonald called River of Gods, and it's amazing, if for no other reason than that the setting has nothing to do with America.

"But I'd sag into some sort of misery in white picket fence land, too, without attention to the unexpected in that life. The human pilot's discovery of Indian take-out, or his upstanding neighbor's wild youth in the big city - am I making any sense?"

Well, thanks in part to the Internet you can live virtually anywhere and only be limited by your curiosity. I get your point though - there's a lot more that goes on in metropolitan areas, or even college towns, than in the suburbs.

On the Scalzi side, the middle Americans in both senses of the word - average and from the Midwest, are humble in quiet times and willing to stand up for themselves and others when trouble arises. They don't quite devolve into salt of the earth stereotypes but they come from a persistent streak of Good People that runs through all races and cultures. The farmer Levin visited in Anna Karenina who showed him best how Russia's future could look like (even if that whole scene was pretty improbable). Or Razumihin from Crime and Punishment, whose name almost literally means "Reasoned out," and who magically manages to go to university, eat, have a room with a bed to sleep on, and help out friends financially while making no money.

Without getting overly sentimental, it's interesting to me how Scalzi can evoke a basic goodness and normality from just a few lines of dialogue - especially when that "normality" is not really the norm at all for most people, whether in his books or the human race. Most of us apparently want to kill, hurt, or exploit each other, as much as the law or other people will let us get away with. Meeting people who really are truly normal, in such a context, is refreshing.

That pilot is such an obvious object lesson, like sticking a white man in the 1950s South who doesn't mind sharing space with black people and doesn't see what the big deal is anyway - but it still captures one of the most enduring and optimistic traits of the human race: our capacity to see past each other's differences and understand, intrinsically, that we're all the same.

This may take on an even stranger dimension with regards to Special Forces - touchy feely or not, they're not really "human." In that context, Scalzi's universe is about choices that the "true" humans have to make. Why entrust your security to an army of super soldiers with radically different abilities and DNA from your own? Then again, why push away people who are still fundamentally cut from the same cloth as you, just because they have alien DNA? Wouldn't it be better to encourage the Special Forces to keep acting on, and fighting, because of their still significant human genes, and more importantly their sense of selves as more human than alien? Or should we push them away and think of them more as completely different creatures with just enough shreds of human identity left behind to fool us into playing their game?

In any case, Scalzi is still young so we can only expect better things from him.

[ase.livejournal.com]

You have taken my metaphor and run out of the country with it.

This may take on an even stranger dimension with regards to Special Forces - touchy feely or not, they're not really "human."

See, I'm not sure about that. Scalzi's failed to define human to my satisfaction in this context. At about the point where you're making people who are turtles living in deep space, you've crossed the reductive species and phenotype grey zone, and you're well into something else. But the narrative doesn't want to deal with those complications, so - it doesn't.