The Diamond Age

Sorry for the unexplained hiatus…

I’ve been working on Susanna Clarke’s mammoth Hugo winner, applying for grad school, and spending time having fun being a dad who is not as much worried about finishing this thing on time.  I think I’m back now, though posts will probably continue to be sparse until I get through both Clarke’s and Vinge’s leviathan novels.  Anyway…let’s finish off the damn 90’s!  Woot!

Think you can guess what the “Mom Pick” will be?

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Stats

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

1996 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

455 Pages

The Diamond Age is the age of the rampant proliferation of (seriously cool) nanotechnology, limited-to-no government, and a social structure that is more or less organized around class/ethnic districts.  While nanotechnology has revolutionized the production of goods, the organization and policing of cities, and the consumption of media, extremes in the distribution of wealth and power persist…

What I liked

I love that The Diamond Age unfolds just a bit at a time.  In the case of the nanotech achievements, this means a slowly telescoping view of daily-life, which now boasts such wonderful toys as: matter compliers (they’re like microwaves…in that they have buttons and doors anyway), microscopic (and biological) surveillance, scary-smart media (both “paper” and video), and basically anything can be made lighter-than-air.

Stephenson lets us in on a whole world of tech practically one element at a time so that we’re still learning how things work right up until the end.  Each piece of tech seems to allude to another entire novel’s worth of other possibilities so much so that one gets the sense that there are two separate (and successful) endeavors at worldbuilding taking place in the same book – the cultural and the nanotechnological.

Despite radical mechanical and structural design, Stephenson conveys the smallest and every detail in a way that is understandable, not boring, and which maintains the pace and excitement of whatever is actually happening.   The logistics of how the Primer works might have been the only instance when I might have wanted a mental reversal of fortune, but I figure that’s bound to happen at some point whether it’s warranted or not when a book is so crammed full of endless information.

People are telescopes too.

Stephenson relies on dual narratives, which have been used in not a few of the Hugo winners thus far.  At the same time, he introduces a false protagonist, which has become one of my favorite tropes these days.  The combination establishes the disparity of economies and access across districts but further amplifies the extent of Nell’s privation even in a district composed almost solely of a terrifying mix of despondency and abuse – it places her in a well at the bottom of a mine shaft, which was instantly endearing.  I’m restraining myself from delving too deeply here; Nell made me want to cry a lot.

But back to the point, Stephenson only releases those details in small bites as a result of the transitions between narratives, Nell’s ignorance, and the Primer’s method of instruction.  Somehow this works out to make Nell’s life both easier and harder to cope with sometimes.  The end result is a novel that seamlessly ranges from bad-ass engineering and mechanical descriptions to heart-thumping emotional distress.

What I didn’t like

The book ended.

Recommendation

The Diamond Age is an exciting example of where crossing subgenres can take us.  I’ve personally always been pretty attuned to more similarities than differences between steampunk and cyberpunk, so this worked really well for me.  I would recommend this book to nearly anyone.  Just be prepared for a bipolar reading experience.

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 4/5

Overall 21/25

Forever Peace

As usual, horrendous barcode FAIL.

Stats

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

1998 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

351 Pages

From the back copy:

“2043 A.D.: The Ngumi War rages, fought by “soldierboys”—remote control war machines run by soldiers hundreds of miles away.  Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him, war is indeed hell…”

Quietly, deeply grotesque

The violence is tarantino-esque.  There are no wounds.  If a soldier doesn’t die, the injury, the pain, the experiences are permanent, emotional, and deeply, deeply unsettling.  Despite being a war fought by long-distance controlled robots, the fighting, and the death, though infrequent, is personal and visceral.  Also think, No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers’ quietly grotesque masterpiece.

Similar to Forever War, the narrative is exceptionally somber; the telling almost has a dead-pan quality as if a victim were being interrogated while still in shock.  Of course, this only increases the reader’s emotional response to the tale.  Being an intelligent writer, one would expect Haldeman’s Hugo winners to be a heady experience, maybe resembling Le Guin’s novels.  Forever Peace certainly has the same intellectual weightiness, but that combination of visceral intelligence and somber storytelling lands directly in the stomach; it’s as if you’ve swallowed several dirt and moss covered stones, and they’re heavy, and you know they’ll never pass.

But that’s not entirely accurate.  Forever Peace gives you a heck of a lot to chew on.  The same struggle with enlisted men and women assimilated as Forever War, and the difficulty of justifying a war that is just so hard to understand.  There’s also race, bioethics and this history of the universe to keep you mentally on your toes.  I took it in relatively quick and I think that may have been a problem.  It’s less than 400 pages, but  I could have spent a month on it and only begun to digest this intellectual tome.

Recommendation

Although it isn’t strictly a sequel, it is a marvelous companion piece to Forever War.  Despite how depressing Forever Peace can be (I felt I was constantly battling feelings of guilt, anger and sorrow) it is an absolute must.  It’s also a great piece for someone making their way through the history of the genre.  There is a certain quality to their scheming and the voice certain characters that reminded me of a number of other authors, especially Heinlein and while the books stands firmly on its own, it has an undeniable contextual appeal for being deeply-rooted in the genre.

Forever Peace also made me a little depressed.  I just finished it today and I wanted to get this review done quickly (which accounts for the brevity) so it doesn’t have to sit in my head any longer than it naturally would.  This is serious SF that should not be taken lightly and it’s one of my favorites.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 24/25

Neuromancer

Stats

Neuromancer by William Gibson

1985 Hugo Award Winner

Audiobook read by Robertson Dean

Got it from: Public Library

10h 36m

In Neuromancer, the dream of brain-computer interfaces has become a computing reality (people dream about that right?) and hustlers like Case have capitalized on their augmented ability to hack complex computer systems.  After being poisoned and becoming addicted to drugs, he is then “saved” by a mysterious figure looking for a cyber-cowboy like Case, but his saviors only lead him to an even more mysterious and dystopian underworld.   

This was a really strange…and dumb week for me.  I chose to listen to the audiobook (published in 2011 by Books on Tape) because I’m still struggling to get through Cyteen and I thought, even though I really wanted to physically read this one, that I could score some kind of mega-bonus, triple-double reading time by listening to one book while I drive and run and reading Cyteen at night.  As it turns out, my resolve completely failed and while I made it through Neuromancer just fine, I read almost nothing from Cyteen all week.  AHHH!  Instead, I sat around drinking wine and watching the first season of ‘24’ (which is soo BAD, but it was nice to just relax and laugh at something stupid with my wife) while the house crumbled around me.  So it turns out, I probably should have just read the stupid book since it was pretty short anyway and as I’ll go into later, would have been a lot more enjoyable.

Jacking in

There was a lot I enjoyed about Neuromancer.  Mostly, it fits into a gigantic lexicon of books and films that never fail to disappoint me.  Of course it’s easy to make comparisons to Blade Runner (I wouldn’t say Androids so much though) or The Matrix, (though I would say Ghost In the Shell is probably a closer match).  The best way I can describe my experience though, is like that of possibly reading a Cronenberg film from the late 70’s to early 80’s.  I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone other than actual fans of movies like the delightful, Videodrome, but the dark and oozing atmospheres, the quick use of slang that is both arcane and familiar, the comfortable and easy relationship between male and female protagonists that still bleeds tension off the page, the attractive yet terrifying underworld, all reminded me of those same aspects of some of Cronenberg’s greatest.  While all that comparison is fun, there’s really no need though.  Gibson’s drug addled, illicit electronic setting is unmatched by anything it has ever been compared to.

If I had any gripes about Neuromancer, it would be that it is a little difficult to follow sometimes and immediately decipher which reality is which.  Ultimately though I think that was one of the charms of this book and I’m excited for a more thorough re-read later.  As a result, I don’t feel that after listening to the audiobook once (especially since the reader was constantly threatening to put me to sleep despite the enthralling content), I’m not sure I can claim expert status on the finer details of the narrative.  Robertson Dean, was really difficult to pay attention to and I’ll admit that even though I enjoyed this book so much, my attention was not always thoroughly riveted and I feel pretty bad for not giving this one everything I had.  I blame C.J Cherryh for draining me ;-)  

Jacking out

This was - by far - the worst audiobook experience I’ve ever had.  The reader, Robertson Dean, had a lifeless, dead pan delivery that maybe someone thought could have actually worked with the dark and brooding tone of the book…I suppose…  The actual effect was to completely disrupt my attention and enjoyment of what was otherwise exactly what I needed to read right now.

The glass-eyed Molly Millions

I actually have many gripes about the choice of Dean for this book.  I know how easy it is to get an audition for a voice actor and I know there are many great voice actors out there so I am having a really hard time understanding why a man who does not possess the capability to affect a Jamaican patois in any way AT ALL would be chosen for this role.  I always hate to completely trash a book (in this case audiobook) without finding something worth a positive mention, but this is a rare case in which the garbage is the only appropriate place for this recording.  Dean completely manhandles and nearly ruins a book that is so overwhelmingly moody that it must have actually been difficult to read it with so little emotion.  Please if you are considering an alternative experience to just reading this book, pass the audiobook up and just wait for the movie.

Recommendation

My recommendation is simple, but also mainly directed back at myself: READ THIS BOOK.  There have actually been a couple of Hugo winners that I’ve immediately identified as potential re-reads in the near future and this one immediately jumped to the top of the list.  That which I loved most about this book, the shadowy cyber-space underworld subculture and the brooding and edgy visual and emotional textures were exactly the elements that most suffered from Robertson Dean’s reading.  But even more than trying to correct my horrendous mistake, there are so many levels of subtle and nuanced seediness that I’m pretty sure it will hold up to years of re-reading.

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 24/25

This week’s book is The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke.  Yet another from the Master.  It’s short, so I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.  I’ll definitely be reading!

Next week’s book is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.