How Do You Feel about Footnotes?

So.  What we have here is a page from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  I've been reading this for weeks but I hope my pace will pick up, now that I've finished with a few tasks that had been taking up too much time, namely, studying and practicing for the GRE.

The first thing you will notice about this page is that it contains not one word of actual text.  Well, there's text there.  More precisely, the page contains not one word that is not a footnote.  It is a page that exists solely for the purpose of footnoting the main body of text.  Not only is this a page that exists tertiary to the story itself, but it is footnote continued from the previous page.  And it isn't even the longest footnote in the book.

Nevertheless, I can't decide if I love or hate this phenomenon yet.  There have certainly been instances when a footnote has seemed so unimportant that I cannot for the life of me determine why it has been included, and there have also been footnotes that I cannot for the life of me determine why it wasn't just a part of the damn story.  I just can't deny that act itself has the effect of supplementing the character of the telling.

Have you read it?  Your thoughts?

The Uplift War

Stats

The Uplift War by David Brin

1988 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: E-book from the Library

636 Pages

I began listening to this as an audiobook but stopped half-way through because, I just wasn’t feeling the reading and I didn’t want to ruin the experience, so I quick grabbed up the e-book which my library makes available through amazon (in a lot of cases too…which is awesome).  Anyway, I just wanted to admit that I didn’t necessarily read all 636 pages in this case, but I’m counting them in my overall page count because I don’t know how to split that up and I actually started prior to the halfway mark.  I’m not sure if that counts or matters.  Whatever.

Remember the Gubru from Startide Rising?  Ha ha (sorry I have to laugh at them).  The avian species chasing the wolfling races of Earth throughout the galaxy to steal a possible artifact of the progenitors of all galactic sentience.  Turns out they’re still at it and in The Uplift War they make an attempt at takeover of another of Earth’s assets in order to gain some leverage/bargaining power.  Turns out they totally underestimate Neo-chimpanzees.  Turns out they totally bite off more than they can chew…again.

Brin’s universe

For me, Brin’s universe is something to get lost in thought over.  You know I loved how silly Startide Rising could be and with the focus of this one on the chimpanzees, there’s definitely more of Brin’s wry humor here.  But in The Uplift War, Brin added some depth to his ultra-mega-huge universe.  It’s huge, it’s paradoxical, it’s dangerous, it’s hilarious.

And the parts that get me most, are the paradoxical.  Regarding uplift, it’s so strange.  You’d think, in a universe where for millions of years sentience has been encouraged and coaxed out of so many species of all types, that such a universe would be pretty dang egalitarian.  Maybe it’s just me but it seems like an understanding that all races/animals have the potential for greatness would make you think twice before subjecting your will over another sentient.

In The Uplift War, you really get a flavor for how hierarchical the uplift process has become (well, except in humanity’s case but I’ll get to Brin’s optimism later).  When you have been space faring for hundreds of thousands of years there is some disdain for those that have only been uplifted for hundreds of years, as in the case of the Neo-chimpanzees.  Well, not all species share the disdain but in any case, the client species’ price of being uplifted is generally 100,000-years of servitude.  It’s not how I would have imagined such a thing, but I like how Brin handles it and it had me putting the book down a moment and thinking on numerous occasions.

My favorite paradox though was the Neo-chimpanzees.  Humanity uplifted the chimps about 300-years ago and they’ve become really great specialists in genetics and the selection process.  Nevertheless, they still struggle with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity over their comparatively recent introduction to the world of sentience.  I loved this self-doubt more than anything else in the book, and that battle with primitive urges didn’t stop with the Neo-Chims:

And for as long as they lived thereafter, the chims who saw it talked about what they saw: a pale green figure in loin cloth and beard, swinging through the trees, meeting fully armed Talon Soldiers with knife and garrote.  There seemed to be no stopping him, and indeed, nothing living withstood him.

Pg 609

For the record, he was green for camouflage.  I said my favorite paradox was the Neo-chims struggle, but really it was an issue taken up by nearly every character in the book and I just loved it (I guess I’m still too close to it, because I’m struggling to find words other than love here). There is one particular scene when Fiben (my favorite chim) is caught up in the moment and finds himself stuck in a feedback loop of frustration and exasperation that descends into primal rage:

Thunder pealed, setting the fence rocking.  The slats squeezed Fiben between them, and he howled in agony.  When they let go he fell, half-numbed with pain, to the ground near Sylvie.  But he was on his feet again in an instant.  Another electric ladder lit the glowering clouds.  He screamed back at the sky.  He beat the ground.  Mud and pebbles flew up as he threw handfuls into the air.  More thunder drove the stones back, pelting them into his face.

There was no longer any such thing as speech.  No words.  The part of him that knew such things reeled in shock, and in reaction other older, sturdier portions took control.

Now there was only the storm.  The wind and rain.  The lightning and thunder.  He beat his breast, lips curled back, baring his teeth to the stinging rain.  The storm sang to Fiben, reverberating in the ground and the throbbing air.  He answered with a howl.

This music was no prissy, human thing.  It was not poetical, like the whale dream phantoms of the dolphins.  No, this was music he could feel clear down to his bones.  It rocked him.  It rolled him.  It lifted Fiben like a rag doll and tossed him down into the mud.  He came back up, spitting and hooting.

Pg 444

At this point, my brain exploded (at least I have an excuse for my stupidity now?).  Seriously though, it was such a powerful moment in the progression of Fiben’s self-doubt and despite the uncontrollable primal rage, it was his most human moment in the entire book, and it really deeply moved me.  Maybe that sounds strange, but maybe after reading it, you’ll agree.

Brin’s Environmentalism

Wolfing humans are the greatest environmentalists.  We were on the brink and nursed our planet back to health.  But throughout the universe it is understood and one of the most important rules of uplift, that the ecosystem of a planet is not to be damaged.  When nearly the entire animal species of a planet is a potential uplift candidate, you just don’t want ruin another species future potential.

There is an environmental message running throughout The Uplift War though I’m not sure it was entirely coherent, but because I had loved Startide Rising so much and for the most part, Uplift War too, I was excited to see how that loosely woven thread might come together.  In the end, I think Brin’s message may not have gained much more cohesion than a general optimism and I was looking for more.

If I had to make comparisons, I would point out that there were some really strong connections to the controversial brand of environmental optimism of Gregg Easterbrook.  Then, the prologue specifically notes his attempt at an infusion of environmentalism in which he attempted to depict “a new view of life”, one that disavows the view of humans as a poisonous, detestable, and destructive force wreaking havoc on the earth.  I’m not entirely sure whether the prologue was written for the initial printing in the 80’s or if it was recently added, but Easterbrook would attempt to say much the same thing in the early 2000’s and well, it really didn’t go over too well then and coming from Brin didn’t make a very good impression on me either.

I don’t want to use this forum as a soapbox, so I won’t go into more detail than to reiterate that it is really difficult to downplay the extent of environmental damage that humans have accumulated over the years and while a positive attitude is great, reason and science would argue there is a long way to go before that optimism resembles anything like realism.  Frankly, I just don’t understand Brin’s anger over the environmental movement and I think the attitude decrying humanity as “a foul, evil, murderous, rapacious canker on the lip of creation” is some kind of straw man.  I’ve never heard of such an attitude.

Nevertheless, Brin’s environmentalism really takes a back seat to the rest of the fun and especially without the prologue could probably just be forgotten.  In fact, I hope I will do just that because I liked the rest too much to let this ruin it.  Plus, despite my general aggravation over the specific message, it was nice to see an explicitly environmental message in a Hugo Winner, so I guess he deserves some props for that at least.

Recommendation

Of the two Uplift Trilogy books to win a Hugo, I think this one was my favorite, which seems crazy considering how much I enjoyed Startide Rising.  I know I’m bordering the clichéd but this book literally had me laughing, crying, pondering, fuming.  Everything.  This is a book (the whole series, really) that I envision myself coming back to again and again.  I couldn’t get over so many great quotables (“This universe is a goddam awful place”), hilarious jokes and really odd sexual moments, and oh yeah, Brin has inspired some really great art too!  I could go on forever but as it is, this review is already much too long.  Please read and enjoy.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 24/25

Well folks, that wraps up the 80’s!  But before I start in on the 90’s, it’s on to those posts that I love to do so much (The charts!  I love the charts!).

Worlds Are Colliding

The firelight flickered over Alice’s handsome aristocratic face and bald head and on the magnificent body and long legs.  Burton suddenly knew that all of him had been resurrected.  He definitely was not the old man who, during the last sixteen years of his life, had paid so heavily for the many fevers and sicknesses that had squeezed him dry in the tropics.  Now he was young again, healthy, and possessed by the old clamoring demon.

Chapter 8, To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

I spent most of today helping my brother move and when I got home I decided I just wanted to spend the rest of the evening with my family so I’m willfully disobeying my own rules and delaying my post until tomorrow for no good reason, other than that I feel like it.  In place of a review for tonight, I figured I could give a little hint at my thoughts.

This book made me think of two things, one SF related and the other not.  First, everyone in the Riverworld is resurrected with a towel.  Every time this was mentioned I couldn’t help but think of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  So silly.

Second, I was reminded often of an installment of Dinosaur Comics (see my blog feedà) in which T-Rex asks whether the idea that we shouldn’t judge our forefathers and grandparents by today’s standards and cultural norms means heaven will be primarily populated by bigots and racists.  It was a funny post and I wish I could find it to link it up.  The characters of TYSBG are quite aggravating.  In particular, Sir Richard Francis Burton makes certain to rate the attractiveness and/or suppleness of breast (as the above quote hints at) for nearly every female he comes across…  Am I gonna have to bring this up in my review?  Yeah...probably. 

Ringworld

Stats

Ringworld by Larry Niven

1971 Hugo Award Winner (1970 Nebula and Locus SF winner)

Got it from: Public Library

313 Pages

Three beings walk into a bar, a human, a Kzin and a Pierson’s Puppeteer walk into a bar…

But really, if you’ve not read Ringworld, I don’t want to give up any of the juicy details.  I think this book is best read with as many surprises as possible.  If you must know though, the ring world is quite a fantastic place.  It has a radius equal to Earth’s orbit with walls a thousand miles high and a rotation fast enough to give it gravity and keep the atmosphere from spilling out into vacuum.  Interested yet?

Choose your own adventure

Of all the Hugo winners or nominees I’ve read to date, Ringworld is the most smorgasbord-y of them all.  Ringworld allows you to pick your poison: kooky alien species, faster-than-light travel, super high-tech gadgets, lovemaking, deadly battle.  What’ll it be?

I think there are some pretty spectacular advantages to this sort of thing.  Most importantly, no matter what it is that you look for in SF, you are likely to find it here.  Perhaps that aided the meteoric rise and conferring of multiple awards.  It definitely led to an outpouring of fan devotion.

For me it had two effects, good and not-as-good.  I have been reading SF for probably five or six years now.  As may have been evidenced by my reviews thus far, my interests in the genre span quite a vast range.  Ringworld had a maturing effect on my understanding of the genre and my tastes.  So much happens.  Stats and species make their way in and quickly fall out of the novel at perilous speeds and most of the time I found myself whining (to myself) about wanting to know more about quite a number of things.

There Ain’t No Justice

Tanj it all!  There was nothing that I struggled with more in Ringworld than “tanj”.  At first I thought it derivative of Heinlien’s “TANSTAAFL”, but it did finally become something more toward the end of the book (it took me a while to catch on).

Tanj can pretty much take the place of any of your favorite four letter words, but it has a galactic significance that I came to appreciate quite a lot.  “There ain’t no justice”, means exactly what it says.  The universe is cold and dark and it does not love or care about you.  This is a theme that can be found readily in a number of the other Hugo winners I’ve reviewed and you likely know how much I enjoy the theme.  After thousands of years operating under the awareness, rather than getting caught up in a vortex of despair, they approach the problem with something like irreverence.  Sometimes it felt like a cheesy superhero movie in which the hero always has time to make a snarky comment.  But tanj coalesced into something less annoying when I thought of how they could have responded but didn’t.  Rather than getting depressed about the galaxy being, at its core unjust and unfair, our trio of explorers focus on the luck of Teela Brown.  It’s a decidedly positive outlook on a series of undesirable outcomes.

To be clear, Louis Wu is the only character who uses the phrase I believe.  However, pretty much everyone is sold on the idea of blind luck controlling the fate of the universe which may as well be the same thing, right?

Coffee and Cats and Science Fiction

I have wondered about a couple of things practically from the beginning of this quest; given that one Ringworld’s characters is an overgrown kind of humanoid cat, I’m going to make that musing public now.

On numerous occasions during spaceflight or voyages to distant stars travelers of the pages of science fiction frequently make sure to pack coffee.  I love coffee, I understand that other people love coffee and I understand that it can be powdered and lends itself to space flight.  I refuse to believe that any group of rational beings will continue to drink a powdered substitute for hundreds or thousands of years.  Nevertheless, I enjoy the convention of incorporating ancient brews into our vision the future on occasion.

What I refuse to understand is cats.  I’m not anti-cat.  I’ve had a cat in the past and I generally enjoy friend’s cats.  This has been a less common tradition to be sure, but one I believe to be far more misused.  Very few of us will go through life ever having a close encounter with a “big cat”.  They are no doubt fearsome hunters, but generally secretive and interested very little in the affairs of humans.  Most of us are familiar with domestic cats.  They can be curious and sometimes playful and some enjoy a good petting.   Yet even these cats only interact with humans when they please.

I’m not really even sure that this is a real gripe but something about creating alien species from cats makes me want to complain.  If I were working out an alien cat-like species, I would imagine they’d go out of their way to avoid contact with very many species other than their own.  I’ll give you that curiosity might lure them toward the stars, I just figure they wouldn’t ever make contact.

Recommendation

As SF is still relatively new to me, I am happy to have read Ringworld.  It was a fun and helpful experience.  I didn’t find it to be all that compelling though.  I wanted more and I wanted it to feel less like some guy crammed every cool or odd-ball thing he could into a novel.  I loved the way Louis Wu, Speaker and Nessus dove into a problem.  They deduced solutions to incredibly complex problems with an infectious gusto that came recalled to me the scientists of Michael Crichton’s Sphere (which is a favorite of mine), though the dialogue was less smart and academic by orders of magnitude.  Still very fun and you really can’t get away from how cool and silly and terrible the puppeteers are!

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 3/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 4/5

Overall 20/25

The die being cast…

This week’s book is Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm.  Cloning.  Mmwahahaha (diabolical laughter)!

Next week’s book is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin.  One of SF’s greats.  As usual, I can’t wait.