The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Satire is one of my favorite genres just in general, and Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams are two of my favorite satirical authors because they mock fantasy and sci-fi, and as sci-fi is the current topic of discussion in our class Douglas Adams is the one upon whom I will focus.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been done as a radio series, book "trilogy," television mini-series, and feature length film. If anyone answers the question of "What is the meaning of life?" with the number 42 then you'll know they're familiar with at least one of the interpretations of Douglas Adam's story. The tale of Arthur Dent and his journey's across the galaxy is fun, entertaining, and consistently clever as Adams drags the reader/viewer/listener (choose whichever you like) across the universe and back again. I can't really explain what it is that makes Adams' so funny, but perhaps it's the pure absurdity of his concepts, like sentient flower pots falling from the sky with the simple thought of "Not again." or maybe it's just his tongue in cheek approaches to humanity and it's fascination with digital watches, or it could just be that he's English. American's seem to find the English inexplicably hilarious. Any way you slice it, Adams' Hitchhikers Guide is rightly considered by many to be the penultimate in science fiction satire.

Oryx and Crake

Though I have yet to finish it, I am greatly enjoying Oryx and Crake and have every intention of finishing it. The hints at ramifications of genetic modification are very intriguing to me and the reverse-telling of the narrative from the Snowman's point of view after the apparent apocalyptic event makes me want to see exactly what it is that led to his present situation on the beach as some sort of crazed nomad.

So really I don't have much to say about the novel yet, I'm not too far in, but I am intrigued and very much intend to finish it. Alas, end of the year stresses and time crunches prevent me from finishing the novel at this juncture.

Bloodchild

Due to time constraints from impending deadlines this week I read a short story instead of the recommended novel, though it is by the same author. I understand this story was read in class, but I was absent on that Wednesday and so I've read it on my own time.

Bloodchild was to me, as the title might imply, just creepy overall. The concept of humans as hosts for parasitic grubs and the almost marriage of humans to their alien masters is just unsettling. Butler tries to reconcile the feelings of unease by echoing them in the narrator and having him reconcile with his alien mistress, with whom he had been raised. And yet, even with the alternative angle of this relationship being a romantic one, one cultivated out of love and tenderness, I can't get over the overall ickiness of it. Granted the one birth we see is botched, but the little red worms will still be in a host attempting to eat away at him regardless of whether or not he is sedated when they are removed. The whole idea of this story is to reevaluate our perceptions of love and relationships, the narrator accepts the egg willingly at the end knowing full well what will happen, and I like to think myself an open person in terms of those subjects, but this story is a bit too far for me to stretch at this juncture. Perhaps if man actually winds up as an incubation chamber for alien worms in a preserve on some planet somewhere I'll feel differently, but for the moment I'll stick with my reaction of ew.

The Scar

China Miéville is someone that I would consider to be one of my absolute favorite authors. I've only read two of his novels, but I am hooked and want very much to read more. The two that I've read are Perdido Street Station and The Scar, the first two novels in his Bas Lag series, and I've already purchased Kraken, a novel completely unrelated to Bas Lag and New Crobuzon, to read over the summer. So when I heard that this week was Cyberpunk and that there were a couple of Steampunk novels up on the reading list I thought I'd stray from the recommended titles and go with The Scar which I had been itching to read anyway. I felt it fit in with the themes of the week well enough to justify a break from form.

The Scar focuses on the lives of two individuals, Bellis Coldwine and Tanner Sack, who would have difficultly being from more opposite ends of the social spectrum. Bellis is a linguist and author, whilst Tanner is a Remade, a criminal who has been surgically altered in punishment for his crime. Tanner has had two tentacles attached to his chest, though we never discover what crime it was he committed and thus have no idea how tentacles really fit into the punishment, but he has them nonetheless. And so he is boarded onto a ship with hundreds of other Remade to be taken as slaves to the colonies to provide labor. Bellis is on the same ship, fleeing New Crobuzon for reasons also unspecified, and she takes a job as a translator for the captain in exchange for passage to the colony. And so the story is set into motion.

About midway through the journey the ship is boarded by pirates who kill most of the crew and take the rest along with the passengers and prisoners to the city of Armada. Armada is a city of ships. Literally hundreds of ships tied together, gutted, and built up to form a city with different regions, known as ridings, each ruled by their own governments. Bellis and Tanner both wind up in Garwater, arguably the most powerful of the ridings, which is helmed by a pair known simply as The Lovers. Here's where the plot really gets rolling and I'm going to in fact stop talking about the plot and discuss the world of Bas Lag instead because I don't want this to be a summary.

Bas Lag is the name of the world in which Miéville has set three of his novels, Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. It's home to a huge variety of intelligent races and strange technologies. Some of the races included are: humans, khepri (the females of whom have human bodies and scarab beetles for heads), cactacae (humanoid cacti), garuda (creatures with bird heads, wings, and legs but human torso's), cray (part human, part lobster), and vodyanoi (fat and froglike with webbed feet and toes). And there are several other races besides such as scab-mettlers and the anophelii that I really can't even get into. Miéville has built an entire world without taking the Tolkien approach and focusing more on the world-building than the characters.

In Miéville's novels you get a sense of the world without having it directly explained to you and you get a rich and fun plot to enjoy with the detailed world as an aside into which you can further delve. I think that's why I like his work so much, it's hugely rich and layered and still fun all around.

Babel 17

Language is a fascinating thing. Perceptions of the world in areas where languages arise hugely influence the structure of that language, like how the Inuit have so many words for snow. Even within the same base language there are variations based on location, for instance in Britain the vegetable known as the aubergine is the same as the vegetable that American's call the eggplant. Both countries technically speak English but they have several variations that might be mystifying to a non-English speaker.

Samuel R. Delany's Babel 17 is all about these linguistic variations and what they say about the people who speak them. There are other commentaries about society and the unity of people, but the core idea of the book is language. The heroine is a poet who is also a linguist and the man she meets and associates with mid-way through the book, the Butcher, is a linguistic puzzle that she wants to solve. The story is set in motion because a language needs decoding and translations and the lead's transitions in and out of thinking in various languages (largely her thinking in Babel 17, the language of the Invaders) leads to her being able to see solutions to problems that individuals speaking other languages just can't perceive. Language is the key to everything in this book, and as a person who is also fascinated by languages and their inner workings I really enjoyed it.

The novel is short, sweet, and to the point. It's really just an interesting jaunt into the structure of language and it's effects on people and if that's your cup of tea, and it is mine, then you'll enjoy it greatly. But if it isn't, you might not enjoy it so much.

The Stars My Destination

Space Opera's have never really been my thing. I think it's similar to the problem I have with Tolkien, I just don't enjoy the level of world-building that is described in comparison to the plot and characters that are narrated. So, for the first time this semester, I didn't finish one of the novels. I got just past Foyle breaking into the Presteign space-docks and I just severely lost interest. I was already sort of starting on novels for later weeks and I couldn't bring myself to read The Stars My Destination in lieu of the other books which I enjoyed more. Not particularly professional, or really even very academic of me, but nonetheless that is the decision I made.

As far as what I gathered from the chapters I did read you can tell I didn't particularly enjoy it. Foyle is, as was stated to me prior to my attempt at reading, a thoroughly unlikable human being. His speech pattern grated my nerves and he was just a general creep, though I did sort of pity him for his tattoo's courtesy of the scientific people and the fact that Vorga passed him by. Those occurrences combined with what little of his life prior to the wreck of the Nomad was described justified his rash actions in my mind, specifically his unmonitored jaunting and break in at the aforementioned space-docks.

All in all the novel just couldn't grab my attention. I feel bad about it because I am very much for reading a wide range of writing, but I just wasn't in the right mindset for a Space Opera, and perhaps I never will be. It's just not particularly my style.

Warbreaker

Now I'm not into tabletop gaming. I've never played D&D or Warhammer or anything of that sort, and I'd heard people saying that Warbreaker was, in their mind, a narrative of a tabletop campaign, and that was why they liked it so much. Well, despite the fact that I don't play tabletop games, I loved this book. I simply couldn't put it down.

From the get go I was confused and intrigued by the use of Breath and colors for Awakening, Sanderson doesn't really ever explain it but you grow to understand the basic rules as the narrative develops. Eventually Awakening is sort of explained when Vasher is trying to instruct Vivenna on how to Command objects in order to Awaken them, but largely the reader has to draw their own conclusions. And I liked that, it made me think. I had to draw my own conclusions and come up with my own theories which kept me reading to either confirm or deny what I thought to be true. Throw in a dash of political intrigue, several strong lead characters in whose story I was invested, and you've got a story I want very much to read. Literally towards the end of the story I was sitting on the couch reading and reacting to the climax of the story whilst my boyfriend sat by, holding my hand, waiting for me to finish the book.

And, as I mentioned in class, when I finished the book I was surprised. Slightly upset even. The .pdf file told me there were about a hundred pages left and so I was expecting to read about Kalad's Phantoms taking down the Lifeless army and Siri and Vivenna dealing with peace talks between Idris and Hallandren. But right after Vasher was revealed to be Peacegiver and Lightsong sacrificed himself to heal Susebron the chapter header was suddenly 'Epilogue' and I was a bit shocked, I was so invested in the story and the characters and how they all tied together that I just wanted to know more, and had been led by the .pdf's page count to expect that.

But it's probably good that the story ended where it did, it left me wondering about what else could go on in the world that the author had created, and so I am left again to draw my own conclusions and create my own ideas within that landscape.