To Say Nothing of the Dog

Stats

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

1999 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

434 Pages

To Say Nothing of the Dog introduces us to a new team of “historians”.  Ned Henry is badly time-lagged.  Verity Kindle has made a serious mistake.  Lady Schrapnell will stop at nothing.  Princess Arjumand is not impressed.  The Coventry Cathedral’s bird stump has gone missing.  And I’m still laughing about the Jumble Sales.

Irreverent referents

There are few things that speak more directly to my lizard brain than goofy, stupid, irreverence or absurd referential comedy and To Say Nothing of the Dog was pretty much 434 pages of lizard brain goodness.  At the core of my being there is a little dolt sitting on a couch giggling at this kind of thing all day.

In my review of Doomsday Book, I mentioned that Willis was onto something good in the Dunworthy/influenza madcap narratives.  In To Say Nothing of the Dog, she takes that theme further and masters the running joke, the bumbling slapstick, the bumbling historians, the cat humor (“Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats”)...the swan humor.

The tipping point for me is Willis’ balance between a kind of subtle, unfolding, quiet farce and blatant canoe-tipping, mid-night pet sneaking, multiple-imposter-séance holding absurdity.  This is to say that I love that it was all happening at the very same time.  It had almost had a Shakespearean air – as a kind of Much Ado about Nothing type of screwball comedy of errors (oh that’s another one too).

And I think this is a bit more coherent than Doomsday Book.  Though I appreciated that the lightness broke up the intense tragedy of Kivrin’s tale, it gave it a little of that two-books-smashed-together feel.  To Say Nothing of the Dog loses the tragedy and relentless death, but it doesn't lose the core of deeper human insight that allows the book to transcend the purposefully, delightfully screwy romp.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved them both.  I’ll still re-read them both.  But of the two, To Say Nothing of the Dog felt a little more polished (even if it’s not as emotionally gripping).

Did I mention that swans have now vaulted to my list of funniest animals?

You would expect me to talk about the net or historical accuracy and I should – this isn’t just silliness, To Say Nothing of the Dog is built on the same conceptual foundation that I loved in Doomsday Book – but I’m not going to.  Well, hey…there’s a lot more I could and should say about Willis’ second Hugo winner but you know if you’re not in it for the funny, then you probably shouldn't be there.

Recommendation

I have been trying to write this review for weeks now – staring at the screen, blank Word document open.  I've taken breaks for food/sleep/work, but other than that, I've mostly just been sitting here trying to think of something to write.

It’s not actually so much that I can’t think of what to write, I could go on and on.  The problem is really that I don’t want to write it.  I feel I've had one of those intensely personal experiences with a book and I just want to keep it to myself.  If I talk about it, I have to admit it’s a book and I can’t live in it anymore.  I want it to be mine and I don’t want to share.

Don’t read this book.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 23/25

Though I’ve a few more reviews from the 90’s, I’m actually reading into the 2000’s.  I’ve already finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.  This coming week, I’ll be working on Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer and finishing The Yiddish Policeman’s Union soon on audiobook.

It's a Swan

“Princess Arjumand?”  I said and reached through the reeds to pick her up. “There you are, you naughty thing.”

The white suddenly rose up, revealing a long, curving neck.

“Squaw-w-w!” it said, and exploded into a huge white flapping.  I dropped the dish with a splash.

“It’s a swan,” I said unnecessarily.  A swan. One of the ancient beauties of the Thames, floating serenely along the banks with their snowy feathers and their long graceful necks. “I’ve always wanted to see one,” I said to Cyril.

He wasn't there.

“Squaw-w-w-k!” the swan said and unfolded its wings to an impressive width, obviously irritated at being awakened.

“Sorry,” I said, backing away. “I thought you were a cat.”

“Hiss-s-s-s!” it said, and started for me at a run.

Noting in all those “O swan” poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented be mistaken for felines. Or bit.

I finally managed to escape by crashing through a thicket of some thorny variety, climbing halfway up a tree, and kicking at its beak with my foot until it waddled back to the river, muttering threats and imprecations.

I waited fifteen minutes, in case it was a trick, and then climbed down and began examining my wounds, most of them were to the rear and difficult to see. I twisted round trying to see if there was blood, and saw Cyril, coming out from behind a tree, looking shamefaced.

“A rout,” I said. “Just like the Persians.  Harris had trouble with swans. In Three Men in a Boat,” I said, wishing I’d remembered that chapter before now. “They tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat.”

I picked up the lantern, which, amazingly, had fallen in an upright position when I dropped it. “If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”

We set off again, staying away from the river and keeping a wary eye out for patches of white.

Polly Vaughn’s boyfriend had killed her because he mistook her for a swan in the old poem.  She’d been wearing a white apron, and he thought she was a swan and shot her with an arrow. I could sympathize completely. In future, I’d shoot first and ask questions later, too.

The night got darker and amber, and the bushes thornier.  There were no patches of white or shining eyes and scarcely any sounds.  When I dropped the last of the Bread and called, “Here, cat!” my voice echoed in the black, empty stillness.

Pg 125

Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog

To Say Nothing of the Dog was basically just me constantly laughing at one thing and then another.  Willis speaks directly to ALL OF THE THINGS that make me hysterical.  I might have picked a better example of the humor in this one but, the running swan jokes had me wiping tears.

Doomsday Book

Stats

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

1993 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

578 Pages

Doomsday Book completes the Grand Master Review Challenge over at WWEND for me.  It has been great fun and all the other participants are great people.  Getting involved with their challenge has seriously been one of the highlights of my year.  I can't wait for the reveal of next year's challenge!

Time travel happens.  And if you’re an excitable undergad historian that means you can have the chance to visit your very favorite times throughout history.  For Kivrin Engle, that means the Oxford of medieval England – 1320 to be exact.  When the drop is botched and the entirety of Oxford-Present comes down with a deadly virus, Kivrin’s professor, James Dunworthy is racing against the clock to save her, whether she needs saving or not.  Meanwhile, Kivrin herself must cope with translation issues, debilitating sickness and some pretty intense experiences of humanity.

Kivrin or Dunworthy?

The key to whether one enjoys Doomsday Book is in the narrative shifts. 

Despite overwhelming sickness, darkness, dirtiness and you know…the possibility of being raped, burned at the stake, or contracting the plague, the tale of Kivrin’s journey to the fourteenth century was so vibrant and emotional, and the townsfolk so distinctly human, that it was probably one of the more compelling stories for me.  Mostly, Kivrin herself was just a great experience.

Before she even leaves the present and without actually hearing much from her, Kivrin establishes her personality pretty forcefully.  She’s eternally optimistic, idealistic and just a damn enthusiastic medieval historian, despite only being an undergraduate.  Her enthusiasm is constantly under attack once she successfully drops to the 1300’s and watching experiencing her transformation from simply student of history to something less naïve and much more painfully aware of the unifying humanity and faith present throughout history but especially in a small town besieged by utterly terrifying illness.

Kivrin’s gradual understanding of Father Roche was also particularly good and it was a transformation of different sort.  From incapacitating fear of Roche to pity and then fierce admiration, Willis kept me with Kivrin through the whole damn thing and sometimes it was pretty dang gut-wrenching.

Then there was one moment after Kivrin recovered from her sickness and was just beginning to take care of Agnes (“Agnus” – oh man, I really loved that kid!) that had me laughing uncontrollably for over a minute.  I might have been affected by extreme exhaustion at the time but – no joke – I could not stop myself giggling like an idiot.

Whenever Willis…I’ll say it…forced me to break away from Kivrin’s story in the beginning, it was quite difficult to care about Dunworthy’s apparent doting over Kivrin and whether the drop was accurate.  After a good 100+ pages, and still not being sure whether Kivrin was in the right place, I was starting to feel like this plot line was just to tease us, and honestly on one or two occasions, slightly annoyed.

After the threat of influenza had become ominous enough and especially as the relationship between Dunworthy and Colin started to seriously blossom, and the antics between the nurses, Americans, and academics became ever more akin to the tomfoolery of a Monty Python farce.  Notwithstanding my serious love for Kivrin and her fantastic voyage I did begin to appreciate, at long last, both sides of the story.

Recommendation

This was my first read of Willis and in the months prior to reading this one, I heard a number of complaints, mostly about being long-winded.  I thought the length was just fine but I can somewhat understand why folks gripe about Willis taking forever to say something; she drags out the contagion suspense longer than I would have thought humanly possible.  I eventually came around to it, but I'd caution anyone to be prepared for some amount of frustration probably.

Compared to the rest of the early 90’s winners, Willis’ tale of time travel was a welcome departure from incessant detail and explanations of some of the very serious and science-heavy tomes of the period.  This is fun no matter when you read it though.  The children in both time periods were amazing (Colin’s gumball!) and Kivrin was a saint.  This will very likely become one of those books I read many times in my life.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 23/25

I took forever slogging through Blue Mars and Barrayar for some reason.  Now I’m behind by a few reviews and I’m working on To Say Nothing of the Dog, also by Willis and Hyperion by Dan Simmons.  After that I have very little time to finish the rest of the decade if I’m to stay on schedule.  Psst...don't tell anyone but it's not looking like that's going to happen :/

Vinge vs. Willis - Round 1

About 5% of the time, SF fans can’t make up their minds.  That’s where I come in.  As Supreme Arbiter, I’ll settle for all time, which book was really deserving of the Hugo Award.

I will be the first to admit that in 1993, there were at least 3 stellar, deserving titles to choose from.  For myself, I’d have had a hard time not picking the Nebula winning Red Mars, but I absolutely understand the desire to pick either of these two.  They were both fantastic.  In refereeing my second deathmatch, I’ve decided to allow the candidates do battle prior to writing their individual reviews…because I fancy doing so and I can.  As with the last time, I’ve randomly picked five topics that seemed worth comparing and I’ll do one or two rounds every couple of days, I hope you’ll all weigh in and invent some great new cheers to lob at me when it seems my strike zone is a little off.  With the preamble concluded…

A Fire Upon the Deep

vs.

Doomsday Book

Round 1: Travel

A Fire Upon the Deep

Okay… wow…  why did I pick this first?!

Vinge is renowned for his Zones of Thought.  I admit that when I first cracked the cover and saw the diagram of The Unthinking Depths, The Slow Zone and The Beyond, I was a little confused.

I’m not sure it’s necessary to explain in greater detail than to say that each zone represents very different characteristics of chronology, psychology, physics, and .  Especially in the case of computers, but in other kinds of tech also, the further one gets from The Unthinking Depths, the greater the complexity that can be achieved.

This is what allows for faster-than-light travel in some zones, and not in others.  Even reaching speeds approaching Light in other zones requires different technology completely and if you take the wrong ship into the wrong zone, well, you’re probably up a creek.

While the idea of FTL travel is always fun, I don’t think it would ordinarily qualify as anything extra special.  In this case, Vinge has drawn up such a complicated and original process, it gets extra-high marks.

Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book is easy.  Time Travel in the most conventional sense, which I’m all for.  Willis hints at some pretty serious scholarship governing “The Net”, but doesn’t get into it in too much detail.  Once the net is opened, one is suddenly transported into whatever year has been targeted…but there are some quirks.  Primarily, there’s the problem of the slippage.

Oh the slippage.

You see, despite the amount of time and attention given to ensuring The Drop is correctly adjusted to the target date and location.  I like this addition.  When my favorite Will Smith character, “J”, tunes his time machine into a date, he doesn’t have to worry about not being transported to exactly where he intended, but in Doomsday Book, it’s not that simple.  In fact, the further one travels back in time, the greater the likelihood of slippage, both spatial and/or temporal.

In this case, Kivrin (another good cat name? J) is attempting a drop into Oxford, in 1320.  Let’s just say travelling this far into the past makes the chance for missing the intended date…significant.

But then, as long as you don’t turn off the net, you won’t lose the drop location and it won’t be a problem right?  Well, if you remember anything about the fourteenth century, you’ll remember there was a concerning little world-wide health incident called the black plague.

There are some more fun elements that I could go on about, but I think this sums up what makes Doomsday Book fun.

The Call

I loved Willis’ time travel.  Srsly.  But my first inclination is to give this one to Vinge because of its complexity.  I guess I could imagine someone being turned off by how conceptual Vinge’s zones of thought can be, but I was sufficiently impressed.  On the other hand, “the net” was so fun and so laboriously revealed that I had a hard time putting Doomsday Book down.

Both authors took something that has been done before and made it their own.  That is pretty awesome and makes this hard to judge.  In the end, I think this round has to go to Vinge because it is not only such an intricate imagining of something that has been done so many times, but it is also a part of the very fabric of the rest of the book’s tension.  While the same could be said about Doomsday Book, I think the best parts of the story are to be found in subsequent rounds…

The Forever War

In case you're wondering, yeah, I'm pretty sure
that's James Franco too!

Stats

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

1976 Hugo Award Winner (1975 Nebula Award, 1976 Locus Award)

Got it from: On Loan from a Friend

278 Pages

Very much in the vein of Heinlein’s, Starship Troopers, The Forever War tells of the rise of Private William Mandella through the ranks of an interstellar and highly advanced military unit.  At war with an alien race that Earth knows very little about (most people don’t even know their real name), Mandella’s tours of duty consist primarily of centuries of time-dilated space flight punctuated by a few minutes of doing everything he can to avoid the death at the hands of either the “Taurans” or faulty/inadequate technology.  Then, returning home decades after his initial deployment doesn’t prove to be the homecoming he had hoped for and he just so happens to be specially trained for war, so…

A subtlety that is kind of in your face…

I have a conflicted relationship with military SF.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate the tension and adrenaline of a good battle; I just generally prefer a little more intellectual stimulation.  To be fair, I owe a great debt of gratitude to military SF.  It was, after all, so many Clone Wars novels that really served to entrench me in the genre to begin with.  At the same time, I generally end with the, it was great while it lasted, but now I just feel kind of…bleh, feeling.  You know that one?

With that in mind, and as regards Joe Haldeman’s seminal novel, I am going to use one word: intellectual.  I guess you might not expect a literary show-stopper from military SF, but I think that is pretty close to what you get with The Forever War.

Had he written nothing else, Haldeman would have already easily secured his place in the history of SF for a piercing analogy which spoke very clearly to the American experience of Vietnam.  Not only did he touch on the disenfranchisement of the public at home, but also of the returning soldier, without ever degenerating to simply echoing those time worn Vietnam tropes.  And he did it with an understated elegance that propels him beyond the ranks of so much military SF, which I find to be heavy-handed at times.

That being said, there is never any doubt as to what or when Haldeman is writing about.  Even for someone like me, born after the Vietnam War and without anything you might mistake for wealth of knowledge about that particular war, the parallels were evident from the start.  But those parallels are woven so seamlessly into the story of intergalactic war, that the few times Vietnam rears its head almost too tellingly, I found it actually kind of pleasant. 

Haldeman writes, clearly, concisely and for the most part he is wickedly subtle in his critique of war and the life of a soldier.  For some his style might come off a little too direct and maybe without much flair, but he masters the art of peppering snarky comments throughout which made me bark idiotically every time (so we know it is entertaining at least to society’s most basic individuals…).  There were too many instances to count, but one of my favorites occurred later in the book:

What was that old experiment they told us about in high school biology?  Take a flatworm and teach it how to swim through a maze.  Then mash it up and feed it to a stupid flatworm and lo! The stupid flatworm would be able to swim the maze, too.

   I had a bad taste of major general in my mouth.

Pg 189

He certainly never wanders into the heady intellectual territory of an author like say, Le Guin, but his delivery is a refreshing mix of the somberly absurd and the technological mysticism that has been rare in my experience of military SF.  It is a fairly short novel, but in that short time, Haldeman manages to tell an epic story that is as socially murky as it is emotionally stirring.  The Forever War was and remains a monument of science fiction.

Recommendation

Haldeman is by no means trying to hide the fact that he is writing about his experience of the Vietnam War.  He says so in the introduction to my copy at least.  But he also notes that many people no longer make the connection.  I find that hard to believe, but maybe people have started comparing it our current endless war.  Whatever you think of the subtext, The Forever War is just an absolutely wonderful book.  There’s tons of crazy physics, dark and depressing social observations, space fights, earth fights, near constant sexy times and even time travel!  If you have ever read this book, even if it wasn’t your favorite, there was likely something you loved.

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 3/5

Overall 21/25

Another roll of the die…

This week’s book is Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

Next week’s book is The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.

The Big Time

Screenshot from Project Gutenberg E-Book

Stats

The Big Time by Fritz R. Leiber

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Published in 1958 in Galaxy Science Fiction

96 pages

E-Book format - get it from The Gutenberg Project

I’ll start this week by mentioning that this was the first e-book I’ve ever read!  I wasn’t a fan of the experience.  I want to believe it will get better though and I’ll need to read at least a few more e-books by the time this over though so I guess I’ll have to suck it up.

I really struggled with how to tackle this week’s post.  I think this review by Ted Gioia hits on a lot of elements that made this book work for me so I’ll try to bring up just a couple of things that made it interesting to me, and if you find yourself interested in this one you should definitely have a look at Gioia’s review.  Try as I might, I was not able to keep my reflections from spoiling some parts of the ending this week so I apologize in advance.

The Surface

Earlier this week I wrote that the one of biggest obstacles to the popularity of Science Fiction literature is that, I think, people focus on what is right on the surface and miss everything that is actually interesting about science fiction.  The Big Time is a great example of how this can happen.

This short and fast-paced novel begins in the middle of the “Change War,” in which two opposing factions, the Spiders and the Snakes have been at war throughout space and time.  The Big Time is a lot like a locked-door mystery and is set in “The Place,” a kind of entertainment and rest area for soldiers who travel throughout billions of years of history (they call this being a part of The Big Time) on the “change winds.”

The main character, Greta (“29 and a party girl”), was one of a number of entertainers at The Place and she begins the story exuberant, playful and confident. Entertainers were, in my mind, somewhere between Geisha and nurse and they served to occupy the time of the change warriors in whatever way necessary.  I immediately liked her for casual and care free tone.  Also she was 29 and a party girl.  What’s not to like about that?

Many reviews (recent reviews anyway) get stuck on discussing whether this book was written more like a novel or a play, whether there was any character development or how Leiber’s notion of time travel was so different than most.  While those are worthwhile discussions, I think the absurdist elements mentioned in Gioia’s review are what made this book great, even when they’re rather heavy-handed. 

The Conservation of Reality

The book really starts to come together with the Law of the Conservation of Reality.  In the Change War, soldiers travelling on the change winds fight in real-time (The Small Time) wars for whatever cause is deemed important enough to influence, or else parallel to those wars, against other time travelers.  Sometimes events are changed and people might die in their own time.

The effect of the Law of the Conservation of Reality is that history will make as few adjustments as possible to maintain equilibrium, and historical events rarely notice the death of single person or the alteration of some previously significant event. Though history resists change, if a person whose life or experiences are changed in Small Time, is eventually “resurrected” into The Big Time, their memories of their Small Time life or their attitudes will imperceptibly change.  I was instantly hooked when Greta mused,

But sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.

Chapter 3

Because Greta was an entertainer, permanently stationed in The Place, she was not aware of the events in the Change War and experiences these changes completely unguarded.  What could be more devastating than to constantly feel that the events in your life were meaningless, not only to the ebb and flow of history, but to your own continued existence?  For anyone trying to argue that there was no character development, you might notice that this marked the beginning of a rapid spiral into near perpetual existential crisis that dominated nearly the rest of the book.

“Voulez-vous vivre mademoiselle?”

At a younger age, I came to similar conclusions that existentialism and absurdism had on my own and without knowing it, completely by chance and without guidance, and it was terribly difficult.  Once I started studying philosophy in college, I began to understand that this could be a position of power and as Camus believed, of freedom, instead of the crushing depression I experienced.  I don’t believe The Big Time is this optimistic, and if you can’t tell by now, I absolutely love a plot that deals in debilitating misery.

After the door to the Void was sealed shut and the maintainer of the Place (the devise that allowed them to stay connected to the outside world) was introverted, another inhabitant of the Place tells a long-winded (for this book anyway) story about how when she passed from Small Time to The Big Time, she did not want to go on living.   After meeting her sweetheart in The Big Time though, she realized that her life had new meaning and encouraged the rest of the group to see things her way.  She was almost categorically dismissed.  Not even given a second thought.  If you like sentimental love stories, this book will ruin you.

The collective mood of the group was declining and everyone was trying to make sense of what they’d been though.  Greta was hoping for an easy answer, but knew it wasn’t there when she said,

It would be a wonderful philosophy to stand against the change winds.  Also damn silly.  I wondered if Mark really believed it.  I wished I could.

Chapter 16

Greta knows that it is difficult “to love through it,” but she has no other alternative.  I really felt her frustration.  The idea of finding a way to cope with the proposition that the world does not love you can be soul crushing.  I’ve been there.  Near the end of the book, I was really worried that Greta wouldn’t be able to stand up to it for long and I imagined that she was on her way to debilitating depression.  She’d lost faith in the leadership of both sides, didn’t understand the reason for the Change War any longer, began to think the Place was hell and felt her life was gradually losing meaning.  And then it ends.  It was a bit like the ending of the Sopranos.  I Loved it.

You may not find Leiber’s answer satisfying, but you have to appreciate it when a story is crafted such that you really experience that misery as your own.

Recommendation

This book is much heavier than other reviews would have you believe.  Indeed, I’m glad I finished early this week so that I could take a couple days to keeping running through this one.  I have to say, its holding up to the scrutiny of time.  This is what makes science fiction great.  It’s excruciating and horrifying and fabulous.

As much as I enjoyed the spiraling misery, I don’t think I would really recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t have more than a passing interest in religion or philosophy.  Needless to say, this book resonated with me, but it doesn’t have much mass appeal so approach this one with caution.  While the style is very different, if you are the kind of person who enjoys Sartre and Camus, you probably will like this one.

HEP SCORE

Universe: 3/5

Social/Political Climate: 5/5

Dialogue: 4/5 (I love it when an author assumes I’m witty and an intellectual)

Scientific Wonders: 3/5

Characters: 4/5

Overall 19/25 (Not a great score, but my categories don’t really reflect how hard hitting it was)

This week’s book is Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, which is yet another short one.  He is one of my favorite authors, but the last book I read by him (The Number of the Beast) wasn’t great, so I’m excited and nervous.

If you watched this week’s video update you know that I inadvertently names 1954 as the next year, when the die had clearly decided on 1953.  This means next week's book is actually the The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester.  It is the first year that a Hugo Award was given, so it should be exciting!

**I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at book blogs.**