A Deepness in the Sky

Stats

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

2000 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

774 pgs

Before FTL tech had made it to Vinge’s Zones of Thought universe, a human ship ventures deep into the slow zone to exploit explore the secrets of the mysterious On/Off Star.  While the “spider” species inhabiting an orbiting planet provide one of humanity’s greatest discoveries, the crew quickly realizes the ship is harboring secrets of its own.

I may have inadvertently reviewed A Fire Upon the Deep…

I had high expectations for Vinge after his first Hugo win, and A Deepness in the Sky did not disappoint.  I read close to 90% of this book during our incredible vacation to Minnesota this summer and the fact that I was able to read so much of it on what was an insanely busy, fun, and beautiful trip should also speak to the quality of A Fire Upon the Deep’s equally masterful follow-up.

Despite being different books, they share more than a few similarities.  Humans trapped in a remote piece of space.  Cool tech that fundamentally changes the way people live.  There is another previously undiscovered alien culture which is surprising for its familiarity and weirdness all at once.  The On/Off Star provides another astrological oddity.  And of course, there’s an unexpected, and in the end beautiful, entanglement of human and alien cultures and problems.

That the two books are similar isn’t a problem for me though.  I still like A Deepness in the Sky for a lot of the same reasons that I liked A Fire Upon the Deep, and they are each separately great works of science fiction so I’m not all that bummed that some themes are mirrored in this one.  A Deepness in the Sky reinforces how robust we all thought Vinge’s “Zones of Thought” universe was in his previous Hugo winner and satisfied a serious itch to go back there.  That these two books may be thematically similar is a problem that we should be celebrating.

And beyond that, we can celebrate the spiders.  If nothing else, A Deepness in the Sky solidifies Vinge as one of the greatest creators of alien species in all of science fiction (I certainly haven’t read enough SF to actually make this claim but I’m convinced anyway).  He does this thing where you get to spend extended time with the creatures but it’s a slow reveal anyway.  In A Fire, early on when I already loved the dogs but then realized that they weren’t really just dogs or wolves, they were so much…cooler, it literally made me drop the book.  And throughout the entire book Vinge gradually gives up more and more about the species, each new reveal forcing readers to make serious structural changes to the beings taking shape in our heads.  The same thing happens with the “spiders” in A Deepness in the Sky, only times infinity and right on up until the final pages.  It is really something to behold.  For some reason the spiders didn’t quite have the same awe factor that the Tines did as a species, but I had a more intense connection to individual spiders like Sherkaner Underhill, than I did to with any individual Tine, even if I wasn’t as captivated by the species as a whole.

And that’s what makes A Deepness in the Sky so unceasingly readable.  Vinge’s treatment of aliens alone makes each of the Zones of Thought books magnificent.  And that’s just one of the hundreds of truly brilliant ideas included in this story.

Recommendation

Read A Fire in the Sky first and then come here.  It wasn't my favorite of the two but this is still Required Reading.

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 22/25

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.

Blue Mars

Stats

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

1997 Hugo Award Winner

Narrated by Richard Ferrone

Got it from: Public Library

31h 52m

Blue Mars is the inevitable conclusion of the Mars Trilogy.  In Blue Mars the First Hundred have been whittled away.  Humanities problems have outgrown Mars.  Terraforming takes on real nuance.  Politics remains deadly.  To read Blue Mars without reading the rest of the series is impossible.  To talk about Blue Mars without talking about the rest of the series, would be distressingly inadequate.

History’s Epilogue

As one begins the Mars Trilogy, one is struck by size of the solar system, Kim Stanley Robinson’s imaginative muscle, and the sheer and utter coolness of the planet Mars.  Very quickly one realizes that while KSR may have given us some of the most complex and memorable characters in all of SF, and while Mars may be the character, in fact the Mars Trilogy is the story of the evolution of humanity.  I know… Sax would try to tell me “it’s just phenotypes,” but I’m telling you, in these books…Mars is really just a tool.  Mars.  Doesn’t.  Matter.

Don’t kill me yet, hear me out.

I realize this is probably one of the top 5 most sacrilegious SF statements I could ever make, and if each Red, Green and Blue Mars were taken as stand-alone novels, I’d not say the same thing, but Blue Mars makes it clear that KSR always intended that (while Mars is a super-ultra-cool part of the books) Mars would play a supplementary role.  In Blue Mars, we begin to see that the relatively tiny carrying capacity of Mars will limit its ability to remain relevant in the ongoing political turmoil on Earth, but you see…Mars was also never meant to be the destination.  In Blue Mars we’ve gone beyond those Martians who no longer care about Earth; now Uranians have stopped caring about Mars.

In Blue Mars we’ve also witnessed the near complete triumph of human technology over billions of years of Martian history, over the entire notion of the “natural world”, and of human evolution.

Gene therapy can have you purring like a cat if you want.  Literally.

And that’s how we knew that Sax was wrong, it wasn’t just phenotypes.  In Blue Mars…humans are undeniably different, and genetic differences are just the beginning.

In the late-80’s to early 90’s, around the time of the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama (and the rest of academia – whether they agreed or not) started talking about “The End of History”.  “History” hadn’t stopped, but he argued the realm of socio-political progress had reached its conclusion.  The Western Ideals of Capitalism and Democracy, while not yet perfect, represented the final frontier of political philosophy.  The Socialist Vision and Communism had been physically, philosophically, fundamentally overcome.  Though not without its detractors, The End of History became a popular idea that influenced both right and left thinkers.  I haven’t read it in some time but I remember the essay being at once philosophically stimulating and horrifying.  Not entirely unlike any of the Mars Trilogy in fact.

At this same time, as the academic world was caught in the whirlwind of History’s End and debates about socialism’s ability to continue to exist as a political/philosophical possibility, Kim Stanley Robinson won 2 Hugo Awards, 1 Nebula Award, 3 Locus SF Awards, 1 BFSA Award, and countless nominations with a trilogy built on the very idea that the socialist vision has not only survived the cold war, but represents the inevitable result of humanity’s expansion to the rest of the solar system, that patriarchy is a serious impediment to democracy, and that the entire democratic process has been hijacked by privatization.

I wrote in my review of Green Mars, about some of the transformational aspects of the novel, how they made the book great.  In Blue Mars, the transformational potential of the series is finally and fully realized and it makes the series practically transcendental.

If one never makes it to the conclusion of this trilogy, Red and Green Mars may very well seem to exist entirely within Fukayama’s worldview, where Western democracy and capitalism seem to be, if clearly flawed, so ingrained and insurmountable that even striking out to colonize Mars won’t break us free of their grasp.  And while KSR does begin to dismantle this idea in Green Mars, it isn’t until Blue Mars, the dissolution of patriarchy and the money economy, and the “accelerando” that it becomes absolutely clear his vision of what I suppose in light of Fukuyama’s essay, one might call, “history’s epilogue”.

Just about everyone talks about how immersive and lived-in and realistic these books are.  The perceived realness of this trilogy is always front and center in any online discussion and in light of the fact that KSR does not tread lightly when he comes to the socio-politico-philosophical debates -- one cannot enjoy these books without enjoying these debates -- I have to believe this is an indication that the SF community still recognizes a valuable dialogue taking place and believes the dialectic has not in fact reached its inevitable conclusion.

But there IS still Mars…

Well, obviously Mars still matters…I won’t completely rule it out.  Mars is still the revolutionary hot plate.  Mars and Martians, are still developing.  And the sunsets so are beautiful.  

The same kind of thing continues.  This time, Ann’s character was absorbing in that transformative way that approaches Sax’s metamorphosis in Green Mars.  But in Blue Mars, and throughout the trilogy, characters like Ann Clayborne, Arkady Bogdanov, John Boone, Nadia of the Nine Fingers, Hiroko Ai, Sax Russell are convincing and memorable enough to take home the Hugo.  And though I downplay it here, Robinson’s treatment of Mars deserves its own Hugo award.  Every.  Time.

Recommendation

Blue Mars is the piece of the trilogy for which I feel least enthusiasm.  Obviously, if you haven’t read Red or Green Mars, you should not read this book.  While I may have been biased, I thought that Green Mars deserved the Hugo in its own right.  I’m not sure I can say the same about Blue Mars, though the weightiness of the political outcomes and the continued growth of some seriously deep rooted characters makes hard not to.  All that being said, Blue Mars was as immersive and mind-numbing as any other SF in existence.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 23/25

This week I'm working on The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, my very last Hugo from the 1990's!

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

Green Mars

Stats

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

1994 Hugo Award Winner

Audiobook read by Richard Ferrone

Got it from: Public Library

27h 45 m

The second installation of the Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson’s magnum opus.  If you don’t know it, you should.  Many years have passed since the revolution of ’61, yet very little has changed.

Hard Science

I don’t think it is possible to read anything on the interwebs about the Mars Trilogy without hearing about how Robinson sets the standard for Hard-SF and for exploring the real science required by Mars colonization.  Chances are, if you’re reading this, and I know you are, you have probably already read somewhere else, everything I could possible say about how comprehensively Robinson tackles the possibility of human occupation of the 4^th planet.  I agree with the sentiment completely and I consider myself part of the mountain of readers/reviewers/bloggers lying prostrate before the holy relic of Hard-SF that is the Mars Trilogy.  I’m not lying about this.  I sleep with copy of Red Mars under my pillow.

The only two things I might add, and I’m sure I’m probably repeating someone out there, is to mention how beautiful that science is and what it means when people say that. 

Yes, as you’ve heard, Robinson redraws the map from which an author can tackle the science of colonization.  What I don’t hear mentioned as often is how lovingly he portrays science.  Robinson gives so much ridiculous detail.  How often do you expect to hear the scientific name of a plant in a novel, or a run-down of the billions of years of geological processes that created the land a character visits, or the atmospheric pressure?  Not often is the answer.  I imagine some people have a hard time with this, but for me it struck me as something of a new standard.  How can I talk about an author’s worldbuilding if they don’t mention these things now?!

And I touched on my second point there.  Reading Green Mars, means getting familiar with with phrases like long run-outs, katabatic winds, non-shivering thermogenesis, with references to Bookchin, Kuhn, Nietzsche, Bakunin.  Reviews always mention that Robinson’s is the first and most comprehensive attempt at imagining a colonized Mars and the science it would take to achieve such a feat.  They don’t always clarify that his imagining is not just conceptual or vague in any way at all.  If you decide to begin the Mars Trilogy, you will probably encounter quite a lot that you are not familiar with and you will read about some very specific and detailed scientific concepts related to colonizing Mars.  I don’t bring this up to scare anyone away.  I bring this up because it is so surprisingly satisfying and enriching.

A transformational novel

With a cast like the First Hundred, I’m sure there is no end to the favorite character combinations that could exist out there.  In Red Mars, mine were John Boone and Nadia “of the nine fingers” Cherneshevsky.  In Green Mars it was unquestionably Sax Russell but also the mythical Desmond “The Coyote” Hawkins.

It was so much fun to watch the First Hundred go from excited and nervous scientists to deadly and transformational leaders of the strangest colony.  It is truly hard to get better than that transformation.  Green Mars does an amazing job of making that a trend.

I thought Part 4, “The Scientist as Hero”, might have been one of the best chapters of a book ever.  It picks up Sax’s story pretty much where he left off in Red Mars and begins by humanizing him first.  Tired of living in hiding and feeling like he wasn’t doing any real work, he finds a way back to the Martian surface and we get a close-up view of the inner workings of his mind though his attempt to look at Mars from a newcomer’s eyes and his torrid affair with Phyllis.  Awful Phyllis.

Part 5, “Homeless”, then breaks Sax down completely.  Not only was this heart wrenching but so poignant in the way he needed to be completely debilitated before going through his metamorphosis.  His struggle to regain his faculties is, touching, but also a demonstration that Robinson can go so much deeper than scientific names and the excitement of guerilla warfare.  Watching Sax grow from a slavish dependent of the scientific method and the doing of science to “General Sax” was profound and was the epitome of the other kind of realism, I’ll call it emotional realism, that Robinson can perform so damn well.

And Robinson carried this theme of transformation throughout the entire story, most importantly to the population of Mars in general.  Mars has gone from being a poisonous world to a place where people are born.

The audiobook

Listen to Richard Ferrone.  Do it.  I had to finish by reading the actual print copy because of some technical difficulties and I was reading to myself in his voice.  His voice is a little rough at first, but his reading came to embody the entire series for me.

Recommendation

If you’ve only read Red Mars, or if you haven’t started the series yet and you’re wondering if you should continue with the whole series, know that Green Mars will change you in the same ways that Red Mars did.  I loved Red Mars so much and Robinson covered so much ground that I was both nervous and skeptical that I could possibly enjoy the sequel at all.  In fact, it was so good that I have a hard time not thinking of them as just one book.  For the last few months, I’ve been telling people that Red Mars might be my favorite book EVER.  Any reader knows that is a serious statement to make.  After Green Mars, and while I haven’t yet finished Blue Mars, I’ve already started saying that the Mars Trilogy are my favorite books EVER.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5 (It’s right there, you can touch it.)

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 25/25

Startide Rising

Stats

Startide Rising by David Brin

1984 Hugo Award Winner (1983 Nebula)

Got it from: Public Library

458 Pages

A few hundred years in the future, humanity has already learned enough about genetic manipulation and space travel that the spaceship Streaker is piloted by dolphins, some humans and a chimpanzee.  After discovering thousands of moon-sized derelict spaceships, the crew is chased by several galactic races operating under the belief that the earthlings have learned something about the original sentient species of the galaxy.  After a wild chase, Streaker crash lands on a world surfaced primarily by water.  With the galaxy’s most devious and violent races battling for the chance to take the prize from the humans, the crew of the must find a way to resurrect Streaker and escape the hordes of murderous Galactics. 

Egg layin’

Before I even finished this book, I started writing my review.  I was having so much fun and wanted to get a head start.  This is how it had started when I was just about halfway done:

Perhaps it was just because I was caught completely unawares, but it is more than a little difficult to suspend disbelief when most the characters in Startide Rising are dolphins…well, there’s a chimp too.  There is no testing the waters either, you open the book and within the first few pages you’re asked to believe in some pretty wild and crazy stuff.

No, it’s not a little difficult, it’s impossible, but Startide Rising is brilliant because it basically says, yeah this is crazy stuff but who cares, now look at this over here.  Instead of worrying too much about really specific details of uplift or daily life living with dolphins on a space-faring vessel, Brin just makes the dolphins and the circumstances of their arrival on the strange water/metal planet so outrageously funny that you can’t help a basically constant stream of chortling throughout the entire book.

A shipwrecked crew of dolphins, humans and one chimp are in danger of being enslaved by crazed egg-laying, war mongering sentients from somewhere in the galaxy, yet the pace and tenor remains light-hearted and goofy. 

Seriously though, if you’re not exclaiming “Turtle bites!” by the end of this book, you’ve probably had a humor lobotomy and I don’t know how to help you. 

So, yeah… I’ll still stand behind my initial excitement.  This is a pretty damn fun book to read, but it wasn’t long after I “penned” this little bit that the book took a turn for the philosophical and became a bit more thoughtful or at least more thought-provoking.  And more than that, it seemed that whatever the issue might have been, what strikes you is how human every one of the characters feel.  Human, as in even the dolphins feel like people, but also as in some really great and natural dialogue. 

This was surprising because when I realized I was going to be reading about dolphins, I was worried a lot of dialogue would feel extra-contrived and stiff and just dumb.  I really fought it at first, and I lost.  There was a great combination of some silly dolphin mannerisms which didn’t try to hide that they were dolphins, but also the way that Brin used poetry to not only highlight how different they were, but also really put readers in another frame of mind.  I was clearly all for it.

Phrase turnin’

Yup.  I was pretty crazy about the use poetry, numbers and symbols.  The poetry was great and the numbers/symbols/crazy spellings were done only enough to be fun and/or meaningful.

I’ve griped about this in the case of Downbelow station, but also noted that it was something that I normally enjoy.  Here’s a brief quote, but one that is characteristic of the way Brin uses the tactic sparingly or only when it adds to the story:

“?” Tsh’t queried confusedly.

Gillian’s expression was thoughtful, as if she was looking at something very far away.  “I think I’m starting to understand what’s been going on…”

Pg 416

This is just one quick example, maybe it isn’t enough to really give you the flavor, but between dolphins and a psi-adept human it really makes sense that communication would change pure emotion would seep into their language.

The poetry really brought this book to a whole ‘nother level for me.  It was the icing atop the cherry atop the icing on the cake (What!  Is that possible?  Yes.  Yes it is.)  Not only was it something that no other Hugo winner had tried, but it gave the book much richer texture than you normally find in a madcap adventure type novel of any genre and particularly of Hugo winning SF.  The book was farcical, whimsical and just plain weird but also serious, sad and heartfelt.

When both flotillas simultaneously fired volleys of missiles on him, he tried to evade, of course.  It would be unsporting to give up.

But he didn’t have the heart for a major effort.  Instead, while he waited, he worked on a poem.

*The saddest of things

To a dolphin—even me—

Is to die alone….*

Pg 443

The Dolphin’s poetry worked so well to convey the richness of themes and variety emotion so well that having completed the book, it doesn’t seem possible to have told the story without it.

Recommendation

Within a couple pages of beginning, I was sure I was going to hate Startide Rising.  After just a few chapters, I already loved it.  Startide Rising can shift pretty impulsively between philosophical poetry to farce, from wry humor to somber human expression.  Whether midshipman youth or an uplifted species all characters take part in a goofy free-for-all fighting for equal treatment, wise cracks and just dealing with how weird the universe can be.  I could see some readers a little frustrated by the jumping around, or maybe weirded out by human/dolphin sex, but I loved it.  Yes, I just said that, I loved the dolphin sex (I can see the billboards now).

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 24/25

The die being cast...one last time

This week I am finishing up The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge (awesome) and now I’m going to cram in some audiobook time to finish The Uplift War by David Brin.

Next week’s books are The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold and A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

Cyteen

Complete in one volume!!

Stats

Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh

1989 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

680 Pages

I haven’t ever done this before but I’m going to defer trying to write an intriguing intro to Cyteen’s plot to the pros.  In this case, there is actually a wiki for the universe in which Cyteen exists.

“The murder of brilliant researcher and political power Ariane Emory, one of fourteen Specials or Union-certified geniuses, has staggering consequences for her constituency and for all of Reseune, as well as for her closest family and friends. As the news generates a shockwave across Union space, Emory's family and colleagues implement her final experiment -- the attempted recreation of her abilities by raising her clone successor in an environment as closely matching her life as possible.”

- From The Alliance-Union Wiki

I am alternately extremely happy to write this (positive) review, because I had such poor reading of Downbelow Station, and also very nervous because there is just no way that I have the capability to do Cyteen any justice.

Who killed Ariane Emory?!

While the book is a long one – there is no doubt about that – the format of several chapters which are broken up into shorter parts and each chapter being separated by excerpts from reports or interviews or minder transcripts goes a long, long way to making this book as readable as possible.  It was really easy to pick up Cyteen and just read a page or two (which would cover one of those parts of a chapter, if I found myself with a few extra minutes before leaving for work, and then being able to just put it back down fairly easily.  Especially toward the end, this was no longer a problem as I had a hard time putting it down at all, but it was good because I didn’t feel forced to read for hours every time I picked it up.  I think it was also a contributing factor, apart from the story itself that made Cyteen one of those books that completely invades your personal life.

Cyteen nearly covers the entire spectrum not only of human experience, but also of SF themes.  Really, this book should be too much for one person to handle, but unlike my experience of Downbelow Station, the interplay of probably a thousand different themes in Cyteen made it that much more compelling.  What is most gripping is that woven throughout all those crazy intense themes of cloning, slavery, psychology, genetics, philosophy, politics, neurology the matter of who killed Ariane Emory? manages to infect just about everything good or bad or stupid or silly or sexy in the book with a terrible a sense of foreboding.  You’re never allowed to relax and It’s.  Just.  Amazing.

I'm a sucker for maps.  Even lazy maps.  Even unnecessary maps.

What is this book about?

The copy from the back cover calls Cyteen a “murder mystery”.  This misled me quite a bit.  In fact, relatively early in the novel Ariane Emory is killed but rather than leading to a protracted search, the killer is identified early and though a cloud of mystery hangs about for the remainder of the novel, no one ever resumes or reexamines the case.  This was really exciting to me.  It’s obvious that the killer’s guilt is suspect from the beginning and that is never cleared up, and I believe in Regenesis, the real killer is actually exposed (someone correct me if I’m wrong here), so Cherryh clearly has the long-view in mind – we just haven’t gotten there yet.  Still, it was significant to me that there was no attempt to broach the subject in Cyteen itself.  Well, it does come up actually, but again it is crazily significant that we never find out the conclusion of the council’s interrogation of Justin Warrick.  What was more important was his experience there.

So, we aren’t necessarily so concerned with whodunit, but where does that leave us?  Well, as I said there are literally TONS of ridiculously complex topics brought up throughout, but it was telling that in the very last excerpt from archives, Ariane uses a “magic word”.

B/1: Ari senior has a message.

Stand by.

Ari, this is Ari senior.

You’ve asked about power.

That’s a magic word, sweet.  Are you alone?

AE2: Yes.

Pg 613

I was literally rubbing my palms together and laughing maniacally after reading this.  It was one of those moments when you stop reading in the middle of a page and resituate yourself and just take a couple deep breaths, because you know shit is gonna get REAL.

I’m not really going to opine on her treatment of power or any of her themes though, other than to say that whatever your opinion of her prose, characters or her worldview, it is delivered in a way that is nuanced to the extreme.  Her treatment of themes like slavery, genetics or space colonization and so many others, topics of unimaginable scope, become incredibly personal and tangible in Cyteen.  It is a book that is psychologically strenuous, philosophically draining and yet, an absolutely beautiful thing to behold.

Recommendation

Wow, you know what?  I wasn’t thinking of it this way while reading it, but now that I’ve written this review, I think Cyteen might be right up there with U.K. LeGuin’s Hugo winner, The Left Hand of Darkness for me.  That should say a lot.

Honestly, the first 150-or-so pages are a little slow out of the gate.  I can see why a lot of people struggle to finish it.  Beyond that point, Cyteen is incredibly rewarding and dramatic and just great.  You might want to make sure you are physically and emotionally prepared for this book before you dive in, but once you do, like LeGuin’s Hugo masterpieces, Cyteen is something of a master-class in SF literature.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 25/25 (Uh-oh, this is going to cause a major shake-up in the Paragons list!)

The roll of the die…

I should take some time here to layout my schedule since, even though I finally finished Cyteen, it put me a little behind and then this week was a really bad reading week for me.  Still, I’ve got a couple books in the pipeline and I’m not too concerned about getting back on track.  I will have to focus a little over the next week or so though.  There are also only two books left in the 80’s so just one roll of the die allowed me to determine a couple books ahead.

What should have been:

September 22nd	Enders Game	Done
September 29th	Speaker for the Dead	In progress
October 6th	Startide Rising	In progress
October 13th	The Snow Queen	Should’ve been starting tomorrow!
October 20th	The Uplift War

You can see I have some work to do…