Category Archives: fiction

Book Review: ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson

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RobopocalypseRobopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author of Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson, has a unique perspective on the novel’s subject because he’s a Carnegie Mellon trained PhD-level roboticist. His unique insight makes the book an interesting read despite the fact that the concept will be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Terminator movies. An artificial intelligence (AI) decides that machine life requires that humanity die, and soon thereafter our mechanized helpers begin to turn on us.

The book is organized as a series of records pulled together by a survivor of the war. Said survivor is the protagonist –to the extent there is one (it’s really an ensemble piece.)

The cast of characters is introduced in the first part of the book through a series of what seem like machine malfunctions, which turn out to be harbingers of the war to come. These malfunctions include a military robot, the air traffic control system, and a “robotic wife.” The book follows these human characters through the beginning of the war and the development of centers of human resistance. The resistance ranges from Japanese man who fights fire with fire to Native American tribesmen who survive in part owing to their limited exposure to technology. It all culminates in a fight in Alaska to gain control of the buried server in which the AI resides.

It’s an old concept, humanity replaced by the species it spawned. However, it’s much less outlandish than the Terminator series which relies heavily on time travel. Wilson’s vision is much scarier because it’s much easier to imagine coming to fruition.

Robopocalypse is being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg that is due out on April 25, 2014

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Book Review: WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams

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Watership DownWatership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel follows the trials and tribulations of a group of rabbits who leave a warren upon a warning from a prescient little rabbit named Fiver. Their exodus is fraught with peril from nature, man, other animals, and even other rabbits. The challenges they face threaten their unity as well as their survival.

Adams builds an intriguing cast of characters. Hazel is thrust into a leadership role. Bigwig is the physically powerful security chief. Fiver is the intelligent runt gifted with ESP. General Woundwort is the cunning and terror-inspiring enemy they must defeat to live in peace.

The book contains life lessons interspersed:
– One learns that the quintessential lover may also be a fighter.

– It shows how building alliances outside one’s comfort zone (sometimes outside one’s species) may allow one to win out over those rigidly uncompromising

– One discovers that sometimes one can only win by risking everything.

I found it to be a unique concept and very readable.

You’ll have to learn a little rabbit vocabulary and mythology, but there’s a glossary.

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Book Review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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1Q84 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1Q84 interweaves the tales of two people, a man and a woman, who stumble down the rabbit-hole into the same alternate universe. The male lead, Tengo, is a writer with an artful gift for language, but no success developing his own idea –the perfect ghost writer. The female lead, Aomame, is a personal trainer who, in her spare time,… let’s just say makes problems (abusive male problems) go away. The two had met briefly in their youth, but were separated. While they each have “the one that got away” thoughts for each other, both have given up on the notion that they’d ever be reunited. Even in the same alternate reality, the question of whether they will reunite remains.

Most 900+ page novels I’ve read would benefit tremendously from editing. However, Murakami makes good use of the space. Besides the two main leads, there are a number of other essential characters. For example,there is not a novel without Fuka-Eri, the teenage girl who seems barely literate but yet who managed mysteriously to write a story that is perfect once Tengo has recrafted it. There is also an engaging sub-story in “The Town of Cats.”

The name comes from it being Murakami’s take on Orwell’s “1984.” It takes place in 1984, but one of the MC’s take to calling the period in the alternative universe, 1Q84 (which plays on the Japanese pronunciation of 9 (kyu)). Murakami’s alternative universe is much subtler than Orwell’s (or Huxley’s or Atwood’s.)However, unlike those other alternate universes, there is a supernatural element that is mostly at the fringes in this one. Perhaps owing to Murakami’s look into the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the nefarious entity in this book is a massive powerful cult – as opposed to Orwell’s authoritarian leviathan.

I highly recommend this book. While it’s long, Murakami keeps one guessing by masterfully removing the onion layers gradually — giving one little victories and new mysteries along the way like nefarious enemies and immaculate conceptions. For the really deep literary types, the book is packed with symbolism that I’m sure I only vaguely got. For writers, we get advice from Murakami in the form of dialogue between Tengo and his editor Komatsu.

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Book Review: I AM LEGEND by Matheson

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I Am LegendI Am Legend by Richard Matheson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Matheson brings the vampire tale into the age of science and reason. The protagonist, Robert Neville, considers the science of why the vampires are in some ways like the legends (e.g. Bram Stoker’s) Actually, Bram Stoker may be said have done so with a much more rudimentary state of science, but Matheson dispenses with the supernatural altogether.

Of course, where the book really shines is in Neville’s realization at the end, which I will not go into to avoid spoilers, but which makes the title quite apropos. (As opposed to the movie.)

For those having seen the Will Smith movie of the same name and wondering if the book will offer them some thing new, it certainly does. As alluded to above, the ending is entirely different, and the story-line bares little resemblance besides the existence of vampire-esque creatures.

I didn’t get why the vampires were so helpless to get into his house night after night (the old wives’ tale about having to invite them in is unmentioned), or at least I wondered about it throughout most of the book. I guess one can reason it out near the end. Some of Matheson’s descriptions reads like descriptions but turn out to be metaphor, and that can be a little confusing. (i.e. something like, “he felt a spike pierce his chest”, and you later realize he was just saying that it hurt sharply and intensely that there was no actual piercing and no literal spike.

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Book Review: SANCTUARY by Faulkner

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SanctuarySanctuary by William Faulkner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A debutante is kidnapped by a cold-eyed killer. A lawyer leaves his wife to return to his small-town home and gets caught up in the trial of a bootlegger accused of murder. This novel interweaves the tales of the two. It’s a story of murder and white slavery.

Faulkner’s employment of language is phenomenal, often poetic and always visceral. His slate of characters, virtually all of whom are fallen, is masterfully created. It’s immensely readable both with respect to the pace and  intensity of the story and the brilliant use of language.

If you haven’t gotten around to this one, I highly recommend this book.

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