The Brother from Another Planet

I am both disappointed and excited about this post.  The disappointment is the result of the end of the 2013 Sci-Fi Experience.  I had very high hopes for this year.  In particular I wanted focus on expanding my participation this year to film/television in addition to my Hugos (they are mine).  In fact I did that and more.  As a result of Carl’s delightful non-challenge (we are teaching Emmeline to say “delightful!”) I read part 1 of the graphic novel Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo, made a return to the delightful concept album Deltron 3030 (and actual posted briefly, but I’m not sure if it counts), finally began to wade into Star Trek: The Original Series (5 or so episodes written by Hugo winners or other SF writers), and I also watched the delightful film from the 1980’s, The Brother from Another Planet - the topic of today’s post.  I’m also disappointed that I wasn’t able to write about more of these experiences so, on this last day of the non-challenge, I am tearing myself from studying for the delightful Graduate Record Examination to sneak one last review in before the closing bell.

Stats

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) – Rated R

Dir. by John Sayles

Starring Joe Morton, Daryl Edwards

109m

After Joe Morton (The Brother) escapes his home planet, where he was a slave, he crash-lands his horrible shaky light-up cardboard box delightful spaceship in New York Harbor.  Luckily for him, he passes for human as no one ever seems to notice his feet.  Aside from a few really hairy moments and his inability to speak, his assimilation is unbelievably rather uncomplicated.  Shortly after his arrival in NY however, we also learn he is being pursued by two ridiculous men dressed in black.

The Brother from Another Planet is about outsiders, featuring outsiders.  It isn’t a pretty film.  It’s dark and grainy, and the sound, lighting, and effects can be a bit wonky at times.  Nevertheless, it was precisely those elements that made it feel all the more serious at times.    

The Brother From another Planet vacillates between biting social criticism and hilarious parody.  The film plays with and goofs on traditional alien tropes but in a way that is but can be dead serious too.  “The Brother” as the speechless alien trying to interpret some of the most inexplicable phenomena that make up the modern human experience provides plenty of laughs but other times strips our social conventions to the bone with just a look.  He comes to earth and though he’s certainly the outsider, he understands so much in his wordless yet hyper-expressive way.  Morton is well worth the watch (and stay for the delightful scene featuring Fisher Stevens).

I’d like to say more, but it’s late, I’m tired, and it’s almost March.  Please check out this vastly under-appreciated, delightful film.  It’s on Netflix Instant so make it happen.

Oh, and if you were wondering: 8 times.

Hyperion

First some housekeeping:

I didn’t realize until the other night that I’ve overshot my one year anniversary of beginning this challenge.  Go me!  I feel like I have learned the true meaning of the words bleary-eyed, but overall it has been too much fun and I really appreciate the conversations and support.  It means a lot.  That being said, I’m not going to succeed.

On time, I mean ;-)

I’ve really been working hard to catch up and I’m about a couple days’ worth of reading from doing just that!  But when I look at some of the behemoths that I’ll be up against in the remaining eleven weeks, I just don’t see how I can manage.  I think I’ve mentioned, I read novels pretty slow.  I don’t like zooming through them.  It disagrees with me when I do.  Plus I really need to start studying for the GRE and also DO EVERYTHING ELSE.

So while I won’t have any problem finishing off the Hugo’s, I won’t do it in the heretofore promised 64 weeks (and hey Blackout/All Clear is really two books anyway so I should have made that 65 weeks).  I hope you’re not too disappointed and that you don’t all hate me for it, but if you do, well…let me think how to put this.

Too bad.

#########

Stats

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

1990 Hugo Award Winner

A multi-voice narration

Got it from: Public Library

20h 58m

Told in the fashion of The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron, eight travelers have been sent on a pilgrimage by The Church of the Final Atonement, to visit the Shrike, a terrible, world-ending, creature of destruction.  Each pilgrim sets to telling the others their tale in the dual hope of passing the time and trying to uncover how to defeat the Shrike.  The collected stories are nothing short of fabulous.

What I (didn’t) like

The universe Simmons has created in Hyperion is the bomb-diggity.  But somehow, the total work of art never came together for me.  The shrike, the time tombs, the ouster/hegemony/Technocore dynamic – THE CYBRID! – were all remarkable, at least intellectually.  The way that Simmons reveals, in pieces, the full dynamic of Hyperion’s universe represents some really skillful world-building.  Thinking back on it all now, it sounds like serious good stuff, and yet as I was actually listening to Hyperion, I just couldn’t force myself to give a crap at any given moment whether my stereo blew up and I never had a chance to finish the book (blasphemy!!!).

I know, it’s just not right.  In addition to all of the above, Hyperion was also a theological SF/modern lit lover’s heaven.  It recalled to me some of those really great theological Hugo winners of the past: A Canticle for Leibowitz, A Case of Conscience, even some notes of Zelazny’s Lord of Light (I think of these as the “Big Three” of the theological Hugo’s…so good).  Erg…this alone should have been enough to push Hyperion over the top in my usual estimation.

Well actually, Martin Silenus alone came pretty close; not only was “The Poet’s Tale” JUST RIDONKS, but it stands as probably the best and most comprehensive inclusion of poetry (and modern literature) in SF of any of the previous Hugo Winners (and based on what I know of the remaining 12 or 13 I have left, will probably remain that way.  “The Poet’s Tale” was also one of the best readings of the many really superb actors involved in Brilliance Audio’s audiobook.

Geez, you have got to listen to the telling of Silenus losing his vocabulary.  Literally, spit-take funny and oh so gloriously vulgar.

Alas, any one tale independently just didn’t do it for me.  All that coolness, and it somehow just never gelled.  Maybe I was preoccupied.  Maybe I’m a bonehead.  I think it was simply that I was just so completely absorbed with each story that I was never able to string them together in my mind very well.  The arcs of each story swung so wildly and ended so abruptly that they all somehow remained compartmentalized for me – which is complete baloney because NONE of the stories are self-contained.  My idiocy is inexcusable and now the world knows it.

I should end this with a clearer statement.  I loved this book.  Simmons writes and creates his world unforgettably (and the audiobook was read with fabulous passion by everyone involved), the tech is minimal…BUT FANTASTIC (I hope someone has already started work on cybrids – scientists, I’m looking at you), and his use of poetry, religion, mysticism, and literature creates a novel that is both terrifically dark and hysterically funny.  I will read The Fall of Hyperion.  But for whatever the reason, I just didn’t feel like the end result was greater than the sum of its parts.

You may commence the tomato pelting.

Recommendation

Hyperion has made a lot of lists and won both the Hugo and Locus SF awards.  The pilgrim’s tales are each fascinating and I found myself disappointed when some of them ended.  I suspect that I’ll (retroactively) care more about the universe and the broader political and social aspects that were limited to the periphery in Hyperion when I get to The Fall of Hyperion.  I’m really on the verge of saying that after 50 or so Hugo’s under my belt, Hyperion is one of the most beautiful and smart yet.  But I don’t think I’m quite ready for that kind of commitment yet…

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 3/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 20/25

In addition to my ongoing quest to read every Hugo Award winner, I also read this book as part of the 2013 Science Fiction Experience.  Check it out.

Mirror Dance

Stats

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

1995 Hugo Award Winner

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Got it from: Public Library

18h 6m

I didn’t know it but Miles Vorkosigan had previously escaped an assassination attempt by his own clone (curse the scattered nature of Bujold’s Hugo winners!).  Eerie right.  Well, it turns out Miles forgives him (Mark Pierre), because of the terrible conditions he’s been put through as a clone, and allows him to take on his own secret identity as Admiral Naismith.  Well, as Naismith, his antics (trying admirably to save the rest of the clones on the planet Jackson’s Whole) get Miles shot with needle grenade and his cryo-frozen body lost somewhere…anywhere.  And you can imagine this causes some problems.

Mark

In Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold continues with just about everything I loved about Barrayar.  Cordelia’s appearances are few, but she’s still so…well, she’s still so Cordelia.  And Mark, despite being a clone, is SO Cordelia too.  Mark was exasperating, fascinating, pitiable, disgusting, and just the world’s biggest underdog ever.  He was one of the most conflicted characters ever – and believe me – Mirror Dance WILL force you to live through his excruciating mess and you WILL feel like an emotional punching bag.  As with Cordelia in Barrayar, Bujold uses Mark as a mirror for our own ugliness and beauty.

As an example (one of many) let’s consider Mark’s pain after the attempted rape of a 10-year old, (artificially) physically-matured clone.

In short, blunt phrases, he described exactly what he had just tried to do.  It all came out sounding terribly ugly, though it had been her beauty that had overwhelmed him.

…and he knew he had alienated the one person who might have spoken for him.  It hurt, a killing hurt, to have so little and then lose it.

Chapter 10

Despite being disgusted by Mark, his real human pain and a honestly terrible past makes it hard not to feel bad for him as well as the clone girl.  It’s disturbing, it’s sad, and I didn’t like what seemed like light treatment for his actions, but I also really wanted him to have a normal connection with another person.  It made me feel horrible and complicit but also even more bound up in Mark’s pain.   Needless to say, it stimulated some soul searching.

I think this might be that thing I admire most about Bujold.  She can make some really interesting and troubling cultural observations look like any other light-hearted fun SF romp.  Despite the fact that there’s a heck of a lot to unpack from a book under 400-pages (I think all three Hugo winners have been), Mirror Dance is just as readable as anything.  She’s dynamic and it is really something to behold.

Miles

Sometimes when people die, they stay dead…other times, they don’t.  In only a few books from this series, I already know Miles is one of those people who will be in the latter category.  Being that this is only my third Vorkosigan novel though (and one of them took place before Miles was born), I still don’t really know much about Miles.  He seems to be the world’s most slowly unfolding character…or maybe it’s just me?

As such, Miles’ convalescence was only interesting insomuch as the technology is interesting.  He’s scrappy, he doesn’t give up, he has kind of a thing with women, I get all that, but I still don’t feel like I know him very well and while it was pretty shocking that he’d be so thoroughly and completely incapacitated, I struggled care as much about him as I did Mark, who in only one book was just so damn absorbing.

Well okay, who am I kidding?  At some point, I’m going to have to acknowledge that Miles is tipping the scales and becoming a character that is just fun to be around.  Maybe starting with The Vor Game was a jarring first experience, and he was absent in Barrayar, but hey, now that I’m actually taking stock of my Miles experiences, they’re actually pretty crazy/fun/ny.  He’s been frozen into the snow, blown-up, gassed in-utero then grown in a petri dish, cloned, and nearly killed how many times now? Since I’m being honest with myself and the internet, I guess I have to admit now that it’s going to be pretty exciting to see how many different ways Bujold can find to beat him up throughout the rest of the saga…and how long Miles can maintain his indestructible pluck.  She really puts him through it!

Recommendation

I enjoyed this book, though I’m not sure I was actually ready for it.  I think I needed to get a few more Vorkosigan books under my belt prior to Mirror Dance.  Luckily, Mark was interesting enough to keep me engaged.  At the same time, just the act of writing this review has seriously increased my appreciation for the book and the series as a whole.  Of the three Hugo winners, I’d put this one in the middle, just behind Barrayar, which is to say it is a thoroughly enjoyable read!

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 3/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 21/25

Well folks, that’s two reviews in as many days.  Lately they’ve been a little short and maybe not my finest, but I’m nearly caught up now.  Maybe I go for a Grandslam and get another done tomorrow?!

And since I’m finally into books I read in January, this one counts for Carl’s 2013 Science Fiction Experience, for which I also hope to have some non-book reviews done in the coming weeks too.  Yay!

Another 2013 Update

Announcement Post

Review Site

Announcement Post

Challenge Page

I won’t pretend that you all aren’t already aware of these two challenges but as you might have guessed, I’m participating in both and I want to put out my reading list out there for comments/critique.  If somehow, you don’t know about these events, you should.

2013 Sci-Fi Experience posts

This promises to be an awesome (non)challenge as it was last year.  I’ve already added two of my recent reviews and hope to get a few more in.  After the 2012 Experience, I decided to make a better effort at TV/Film so I’m working on that this year.

Existing Posts:

A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge

Forever Peace – Joe Haldeman

Planned Posts

Whichever other Hugo winners I’m able to get to

Star Trek (1960’s)

I recently decided to give the influential TV series from the sixties a shot.  When I was younger, my Mom considered herself a “trekkie” (now I understand it’s more appropriate to say “trekker”?), so I have some limited experience with The Next Generation.  I have little to know memory of seeing any from the original series though, so I hope someone will help me with this.  Prior to the 2013 Sci-Fi Experience, I watched the Pilot and the first episode of season 1, “The Man Trap”.  I’m wondering if this is a series one ought to watch from start to finish or if I’ll be well served enough by trying to hit some of the most memorable/influential episodes first.  If the former is most appropriate, I’ll do that but if the latter is the case, I need some help picking some episodes to watch.  I know that there were some episodes written by Hugo winners, and that would be interesting, but I really want to see the episodes that are standards for SF fans.

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) – Directed by John Sayles

While planning, I was in the right mood for this one and I didn’t think many other people would be reviewing it.

DRAFT WoGF Picks

Here, I’ve noted the 12 Women of Genre Fiction that I originally picked to read.  Then I remembered that one of the stipulations is to pick an author randomly so I plopped Ali in front of the WWEND All Female Authors page and asked her to randomly pick an author for whatever reason she wanted.  So I have one extra author listed here, but I fully expect this list to change.  WWEND is still adding authors and they promise to make it hard on us by adding new lists/authors throughout the year, forcing us to reconsider our author list.  I like it.  Anyway, here’s my list with some possible titles as well, if you have a different suggestion or think I might really like an author I haven’t listed, please let me know!

Definite WoGF picks:

Ali’s Random Pick

Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolpho (it’s the only title on WWEND)

Hugo Winners

Susanna Clarke – Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Jo Walton – Among Others

Possible WoGF picks:

Margaret Atwoood –The Handmaid’s Tale (Likely)

Lauren Beukes – Zoo City (But Moxyland seems cool too)

Evangeline Walton – The Mabinogion

C.S.Friedman – Black Sun Rising (This was a recommendation from SJ)

P.D. James – The Children of Men

Diana Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle

Margo Lanagan – Tender Morsels

The audiobook is read by Michael Page – he killed The Lies of Locke Lamora so I couldn’t pass this up!

Hope Mirrlees – Lud-in-the-Mist

Nnedi Okorafor –Who Fears Death (Likely)

Cherie Priest – Boneshaker

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

A Fire Upon the Deep

Stats

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

1993 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

613 Pages

A Fire Upon the Deep is an eccentric two-ply many-ply yarn of a space opera.  Jeffry and Johanna Olsndot, they’re kids and stranded alone on a strange planet.  Then Ravna and Pham, they’re trying save the children and basically the rest of the universe too.  A Fire Upon the Deep shifts pretty seamlessly between these two narratives beginning as two seemingly completely separate stories but they shortly become so intertwined as to be one super-mega-crazy-awesome story.  I don’t even want to begin to try to explain the Zones of Thought concept.  You can see there’s a lot going on here…and it’s all good.

Yeah, what they said

It’s really hard to write a review for this book that doesn’t stupidly parrot everything everyone has already said about it.  A Fire Upon the Deep is seriously fantastic.  I’m spoiling my own review here by telling you that it gets a perfect score from me.  I explain myself and sum up one of the most oft repeated sentiments about this book with the first line from Jo Walton’s review on Tor.com: “It’s not that I think A Fire Upon the Deep is perfect, it’s just that it’s got so much in it”.

Likewise, reviews also talk about how complex and exciting A Fire Upon the Deep is.  Again, they aren’t wrong.  A Fire Upon the Deep made me feel like a new SF reader all over again.  One feels like it’s possible to literally climb into this book and though Vinge’s universe is still our home he’s reimagined it in such a way that makes it exciting to live here all over again.  Still, do you need to hear me repeat what others have said better?

Characters… let’s talk about them a bit

People talk about movies being huge.  Physically, they’re the same size as any other movie, but that’s not what they mean.  A Fire Upon the Deep is a huge book, that’s why Walton (and everyone else) says “it’s go so much in it”.  It’s so huge and the action is so absorbing that some really great characters are easily overshadowed in some reviews.  I don’t blame anyone, even after spending some time away from it there is so much that is indelibly etched in my imagination and it’s like trying to blink the sun out of your eyes, it seems you can never really make it go away completely.

I’m actually loath to just sit here and describe this cast, because separated from any context they might sound a little unreal.  A couple of kids get stranded on a strange planet cut off from much of the rest of the universe where almost immediately a bunch of sentient and near-telepathic dogs kill their parents and separate them into rival factions.  Or how about the Skroderiders who, billions of years ago, began the path to sentience as some kind of sponge/anemone and even now can’t remember shit unless they’re literally sitting on top of a computer.  And the Tines…well, the Tines are just awesome, I’m not sure I even want to attempt to make them sound strange – I’ll stick with the near-telepathic dog bit...  But you get the picture, it could all sound a little weird right?  Maybe if you were only half listening and you didn’t like science fiction and you didn’t actually even like to read either…

Come on, A Fire Upon the Deep is flush with characters, each of whom and their individual circumstances could inspire their very own book. 

I hate to return over and over to Walton’s review but hey, she’s a good reviewer and there was something else that made a lot of sense to me.  She said: “This particular kind of fascination is almost unique to science fiction.  There a universe and the way it works is really weird, and he keeps handing out pieces of it and you keep fitting it together.”  She’s right about how compelling this universe is, but she misses a little of what it is that really makes this book so hard not to call perfect.

As cool as pretty much everything about this book is, and as fascinating and compelling the Zones of Thought and the weaving of the two stories might be, anyone who has read these books can tell you the reason they couldn’t stop turning pages and the things they cared about so much were those damn cool ass dogs or poor Ravna and those freaking scared kids.  A Fire Upon the Deep might have some of the coolest Hard-SF elements of any Hugo winner ever, but it’s still the people who leave you breathless.  Ask someone.  They might not realize it right away, but if they think about it, they will know.

The next time you’re talking to someone about A Fire Upon the Deep, remember to tell them about Pham, the god/computer/man, and the slow-to-remember Skroderiders, the sentient seaweeds.  And talk to them about the time you were glued to a SF novel because of a wolf pack.  Because as huge and complex and fascinating and great as A Fire Upon the Deep is, it still doesn’t work without a cast that feels real despite however unlikely they might be.

Recommendation

As I write this review, I’ve read every Hugo winner from the 90’s, with the exception of three, and I’m almost done with a couple of those.  If I were to hastily characterize the decade’s winners, I would call them dichotomous.  A Fire Upon the Deep bridges the ultra-serious, ultra-hard SF of Kim Stanley Robinson and the lighter, goofier, more adventurous SF of Willis or Bujold.  Within 10 pages I was already telling my wife how great it was and my surprise and excitement never went away.  I don’t want to sound dramatic, but this book was so indescribably fantastic that I think I might die!  But really, in a decade with at least three of my favorite Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep holds up really well and promises even more for the prequel.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 25/25