Rainbows End

Stats

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

2007 Hugo Award Winner

Read by Eric Conger

Got it from: Own it

14h 46m

After medical treatments make it possible for Alzheimer patients to completely recover, Robert Gu finds himself in a pretty intensive rehab program.  He isn’t the person he used to be, and he doesn’t live in the same world either.  He was a famous poet in a world similar to ours. Now he is no one, learning how to “sming” and how to interface with computers.  It is during his rehab at Fairmont High School, that Robert becomes embroiled in a conspiracy plot to end all conspiracy plots.

Multiple realities

So there is one reality where an author has an uncanny ability to tap into the most salient features of some really complex issues.  In Rainbows End, Vinge reminds us how well he capitalizes on our most deep-rooted fears and our most lofty scientific achievements.  In beginning this book, I had figured Rainbows End for another goldmine of Vinge-y, SF goodness…but I didn’t labor under that delusion for long.

I was excited by the opening computer/chemical warfare plot.  I was reminded of the cyber-attacks on nuclear facilities in Iran going back a couple of years and I thought Vinge might have been preparing to go bigger.  I was strapping myself in for Vinge’s brand of ultra-paranoia.  It harkened to the message boards in A Fire Upon the Deep and man…I ate that stuff up.

In the first chapter, “Mr. Rabbit visits Barcelona” (Sweet title. I loved it), Vinge was poised to capitalize on how compelling and/or dangerous the convergence of several technological advancements could be in a world where anonymous access is taken to just about every extreme, and I was ready to follow him wherever he wanted to go.

Taken separately, individual elements of Vinge’s future were awe inspiring, but the other reality of Rainbows End is that as these elements come together and the story starts to drag on and on, the final product doesn’t seem equal the sum of its parts.

I almost think this is worse than having just written a story that falls flat altogether.  Vinge touches on all the right topics and sets himself up for a home run, while everyone is batting blindfolded.  Instead of just striking out, as authors do sometimes, in Rainbows End, Vinge lets go of the bat and injures some unsuspecting kid in the stands hoping to catch a foul ball.  And I think I might have been that kid, because this one left me confused.

While I admit to exclaiming audibly at the coolness of this or that bit of tech or social construction quite frequently, I didn’t much enjoy the overall story.  Tension? Not so much.  Compelling characters? Nope.  Cool world, but there was never any reason to be in it.

Recommendation

Consistent with my last Vinge experience, Rainbows End incorporates a plethora of themes both scientific and psychological, and fantastically so, but it also lacks a lot. Comparing the two Hugo winners that I’m familiar with, Rainbows End feels like it occupies a specific place and time in a way that A Fire Upon the Deep did not.  I don’t have much interest in re-reading this one, but I am curious how it will hold up to another ten years or so.  I might be wrong; it could be like good wine.

I actually started this review several weeks ago and before I chucked everything I had and started again, I noticed that this audiobook was only fourteen hours.  Not terribly long as far as audiobooks go, but it felt longer than some of the longest I’ve gone through so far.  I guess even though the concepts were interesting, they only had the power to captivate for so long.  Perhaps I’ll enjoy the shorter stories that Rainbows End was based on instead.

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 3/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 3/5

Overall 19/25

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

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.