Family, Sort Of: September Reading
Oct. 18th, 2004 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseYou know the drill. Cuts usually for length, but may be for spoilers as well. This time the spoiler-happy cut is probably The Madness Season. Also, note shiny new icon. I post so much about books two dedicated icons seem necessary. What I really need, though, is a good general SF/F icon.
Contact (Carl Sagan):: Reread. Radio astronomer and SETI advocate Ellie Arrroway is enmeshed in the reception and decryption of a radio message from Vega, and the world's construction of the strange and fascinating machine the message describes.
I wish I could say that I decided to go on a "putting the 'science' back in 'science fiction' " kick after reading Forty Signs of Rain at the end of August, but it was actually a nifty Dar Williams songvid that got me to pull this off the shelf. Sometimes I bring new connotations to "shallow," oh yes.
(05.09.2004)
A Live Coal in the Sea (Madeleine L'Engle):: Family drama. The story of how Camilla Dickinson's granddaughter isn't her granddaughter, technically sort of, as told through flashbacks to Camilla's life with her deceased husband and related contemporary experiences. L'Engle's less overtly fantasy novels always drive me slightly crazy - whose family, in the crush of upsetting events, is that calm and not prone to shouting at each other?
(Right. Rhetotical question.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kd5mdk, mearigh, the message has been delivered.)
Other than that... mostly-contemporary mainstream fiction isn't something I read a lot of, so I can't comment on adherence to or deviance from the tropes of the genre. The writing style felt a bit jerky; Catherine Asaro's prose style, particularly in The Phoenix Code and Skyfall, came to mind. I think that's not new in L'Engle, but it was easier on my mental ear when I was 12 or rereading one of the stories I'm hopelessly nostalgic over. In some ways the entire novel's an exploration of the effects the main character's mother had on subsequent generations of the family. It's sort of an oblique theme, though, and may be a misread on my part.
The Madness Season (C. S. Friedman):: Friedman's novels drive me insane. Going by the descriptions, I should love them, yet I've bounced off two different books fairly badly. I was about half a wavelength off In Conquest Born for the entire 600-odd page tome, and Black Sun Rising had every marker of being cool and interesting - ambiguous evil, nifty science fantasy worldbuilding, an interesting variant on the standard Quest - yet somehow managed to be boring. I swore off Friedman after BSR, because it seemed evident I was never going to find the right mindset to enjoy anything she wrote.
The Madness Season may be considered an example of the importance of cover art, because if the book hadn't been wrapped in a fairly nifty Michael Whelan cover I would never have picked it up. Publishing houses considering skimping on the art budget, mainstream or SF, please take note.
The plot is fairly straightforward: Vampire! In! Space! With Evil Aliens. Really Weird Aliens also make an appearance.
All right, an actual blurb: the unusually long-lived Daetrin catches the attention of the Tyr, the single-minded (literally) conquerors of Earth and five other intelligent species. Exiled to the stars, he vows vengence and massive death on the alien mind that has crushed Earth's spirit and cultures.
Surprisingly, The Madness Season did not suck. Part of that probably stemmed from my previous experiences with Friedman's fiction. I expect profound meditations on the nature of humanity, and Friedman delivers casual shapeshifting. I expect the evil aliens to eventually develop a more ambiguous moral role, and they stay fairly evil aliens when the twist/revelation arrives. Energy beings from the local flavor of hyperspace (which tends to drive most sapients insane, to add a little spice to the mix) are sort of hinted at being really alien, wearing bodies and personalities as humans wear clothes (Tolkien fans, think Valar, sans divine mandate), but the concept is only partially developed as a side story to the main plot.
Friedman's just interested in writing a slightly different story than I keep expecting her to tell. This isn't going to change, and I really need to stop expecting it to.
New Voices in Science Fiction (Mike Resnik, Ed.):: About what the title says: a collection of short stories by authors of rising prominence circa 2003. I wasn't overwhelmed by any of the stories, but some struck me as more interesting, incomprehensible, or irritating than others. No story smacked me upside the head and made me thing, "this is going to be a classic!", but several - Kage Baker's "The Faithful", "Different Worlds" by James Van Pelt and "Flowers from Alice" by Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross - are more to my liking than others, even when they play the Singularity gimme card. (I'm not a big believer in the Singularity. Technology - the computer - can, has, and will change the world, but I don't see it triggering the sort of really explosive paradigm shift Singularity proponents suggest is inevitable.) Some - "The Black Bird", "Aphrodite on a Bar Stool", "1-800-WICKED1", "Dressmaker to the Princess" - struck me as incomprehensible, in one case because I wasn't familiar with some of the material the story riffed on. In the other cases, it read like an essay written at 3 AM for a 9:30 AM deadlike. "Intergalactic Refridgerator Repairmen Seldom Carry Cash" had all the appeal of an amusing drunk: no logic, but fun images. Some stories suffered from various degrees of prose stiffness - "Four-Eyes" and "Nine-Fingered Maria" have been through the wash a few times, but "Lifeblood" desperately needs a few more hours in the rinse cycle. I am not rational on "Bubbles and Boxes", because I've bounced badly off Julie Czerneda's style in the past. Also, after days of hearing about the wonders of proteins, I'm wondering why anyone would ever contruct their nano-scale "bubbles and boxes" out of DNA. That one bugs me enough I'm tempted to email the author.
"The Book of Faces" (Kay Kenyon) wins the Cool Title Award for the anthology, even though the story itself is an unapologetic American not-fond-of-Bush future extrapolation.
"Messenger" (David Levine) is... it's just... look, I'm at my saturation point on Holocaust stories. Can we please find a new genocidal incident to get worked up about? Try recent African history if you're stumped.
"The Echo of Silence" (Paul Crilley) went nowhere any number of SF!dragon stories haven't already been.
"Custer's Angel" (Adrienne Gormley) uses some fairly interesting time travel and plays with psychological depth; Gormley might be another author to watch out for.
"Insubordination" has convinced me to never ever read any of Susan Matthew's novels. The "screw with people's heads" thing is definitely a narrative device I like, but what a sadistic universe. Pass, thanks.
Overall, an okay anthology: a few stories might be worth a Hugo nomination, but not an award, and a few are really not my thing, but the collection did what I wanted it to: introduced me to some authors and kept me occupied on the bus, and was easy to put down at home. (24.09.2004)
Contact (Carl Sagan):: Reread. Radio astronomer and SETI advocate Ellie Arrroway is enmeshed in the reception and decryption of a radio message from Vega, and the world's construction of the strange and fascinating machine the message describes.
I wish I could say that I decided to go on a "putting the 'science' back in 'science fiction' " kick after reading Forty Signs of Rain at the end of August, but it was actually a nifty Dar Williams songvid that got me to pull this off the shelf. Sometimes I bring new connotations to "shallow," oh yes.
(05.09.2004)
A Live Coal in the Sea (Madeleine L'Engle):: Family drama. The story of how Camilla Dickinson's granddaughter isn't her granddaughter, technically sort of, as told through flashbacks to Camilla's life with her deceased husband and related contemporary experiences. L'Engle's less overtly fantasy novels always drive me slightly crazy - whose family, in the crush of upsetting events, is that calm and not prone to shouting at each other?
(Right. Rhetotical question.
kd5mdk, mearigh, the message has been delivered.)Other than that... mostly-contemporary mainstream fiction isn't something I read a lot of, so I can't comment on adherence to or deviance from the tropes of the genre. The writing style felt a bit jerky; Catherine Asaro's prose style, particularly in The Phoenix Code and Skyfall, came to mind. I think that's not new in L'Engle, but it was easier on my mental ear when I was 12 or rereading one of the stories I'm hopelessly nostalgic over. In some ways the entire novel's an exploration of the effects the main character's mother had on subsequent generations of the family. It's sort of an oblique theme, though, and may be a misread on my part.
The Madness Season (C. S. Friedman):: Friedman's novels drive me insane. Going by the descriptions, I should love them, yet I've bounced off two different books fairly badly. I was about half a wavelength off In Conquest Born for the entire 600-odd page tome, and Black Sun Rising had every marker of being cool and interesting - ambiguous evil, nifty science fantasy worldbuilding, an interesting variant on the standard Quest - yet somehow managed to be boring. I swore off Friedman after BSR, because it seemed evident I was never going to find the right mindset to enjoy anything she wrote.
The Madness Season may be considered an example of the importance of cover art, because if the book hadn't been wrapped in a fairly nifty Michael Whelan cover I would never have picked it up. Publishing houses considering skimping on the art budget, mainstream or SF, please take note.
The plot is fairly straightforward: Vampire! In! Space! With Evil Aliens. Really Weird Aliens also make an appearance.
All right, an actual blurb: the unusually long-lived Daetrin catches the attention of the Tyr, the single-minded (literally) conquerors of Earth and five other intelligent species. Exiled to the stars, he vows vengence and massive death on the alien mind that has crushed Earth's spirit and cultures.
Surprisingly, The Madness Season did not suck. Part of that probably stemmed from my previous experiences with Friedman's fiction. I expect profound meditations on the nature of humanity, and Friedman delivers casual shapeshifting. I expect the evil aliens to eventually develop a more ambiguous moral role, and they stay fairly evil aliens when the twist/revelation arrives. Energy beings from the local flavor of hyperspace (which tends to drive most sapients insane, to add a little spice to the mix) are sort of hinted at being really alien, wearing bodies and personalities as humans wear clothes (Tolkien fans, think Valar, sans divine mandate), but the concept is only partially developed as a side story to the main plot.
Friedman's just interested in writing a slightly different story than I keep expecting her to tell. This isn't going to change, and I really need to stop expecting it to.
New Voices in Science Fiction (Mike Resnik, Ed.):: About what the title says: a collection of short stories by authors of rising prominence circa 2003. I wasn't overwhelmed by any of the stories, but some struck me as more interesting, incomprehensible, or irritating than others. No story smacked me upside the head and made me thing, "this is going to be a classic!", but several - Kage Baker's "The Faithful", "Different Worlds" by James Van Pelt and "Flowers from Alice" by Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross - are more to my liking than others, even when they play the Singularity gimme card. (I'm not a big believer in the Singularity. Technology - the computer - can, has, and will change the world, but I don't see it triggering the sort of really explosive paradigm shift Singularity proponents suggest is inevitable.) Some - "The Black Bird", "Aphrodite on a Bar Stool", "1-800-WICKED1", "Dressmaker to the Princess" - struck me as incomprehensible, in one case because I wasn't familiar with some of the material the story riffed on. In the other cases, it read like an essay written at 3 AM for a 9:30 AM deadlike. "Intergalactic Refridgerator Repairmen Seldom Carry Cash" had all the appeal of an amusing drunk: no logic, but fun images. Some stories suffered from various degrees of prose stiffness - "Four-Eyes" and "Nine-Fingered Maria" have been through the wash a few times, but "Lifeblood" desperately needs a few more hours in the rinse cycle. I am not rational on "Bubbles and Boxes", because I've bounced badly off Julie Czerneda's style in the past. Also, after days of hearing about the wonders of proteins, I'm wondering why anyone would ever contruct their nano-scale "bubbles and boxes" out of DNA. That one bugs me enough I'm tempted to email the author.
"The Book of Faces" (Kay Kenyon) wins the Cool Title Award for the anthology, even though the story itself is an unapologetic American not-fond-of-Bush future extrapolation.
"Messenger" (David Levine) is... it's just... look, I'm at my saturation point on Holocaust stories. Can we please find a new genocidal incident to get worked up about? Try recent African history if you're stumped.
"The Echo of Silence" (Paul Crilley) went nowhere any number of SF!dragon stories haven't already been.
"Custer's Angel" (Adrienne Gormley) uses some fairly interesting time travel and plays with psychological depth; Gormley might be another author to watch out for.
"Insubordination" has convinced me to never ever read any of Susan Matthew's novels. The "screw with people's heads" thing is definitely a narrative device I like, but what a sadistic universe. Pass, thanks.
Overall, an okay anthology: a few stories might be worth a Hugo nomination, but not an award, and a few are really not my thing, but the collection did what I wanted it to: introduced me to some authors and kept me occupied on the bus, and was easy to put down at home. (24.09.2004)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 07:18 pm (UTC)Cool.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-18 08:27 pm (UTC)re anthology: Good, someone else is as sick of the Singularity as I am. SF writers: get a new idea, ASAP. (Has there been any anime made with this theme yet? Not like you'd know, but I don't know either.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-20 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-20 10:51 am (UTC)Good, someone else is as sick of the Singularity as I am.
It's a nifty idea, but it's been done. It's time to find some new Nifty Idea(s) to pounce on.
I'm a little off SF as a genre these days. I feel like most authors are using their gimmes (human expansion into space, the Singularity, FTL travel and/or communication) without bringing new ideas into the genre. Possibly I'm reading the wrong authors, but SF seems a bit tired at the moment.
So this month I'm doing massive amounts of fantasy reading. Yay Jasper Fforde!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-20 12:51 pm (UTC)Also, I keep getting sucked into her books because they have the most evocative titles. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.