Tag Archives: fiction

BOOK REVIEW: Rules for Virgins by Amy Tan

Posted on by
Reply

Rules for VirginsRules for Virgins by Amy Tan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This Kindle Single is written in the form of advice by a Madam to the newest member of her brothel. It’s historical fiction, and is set ambiguously in the past. It is presumably set in China, but I don’t recall that that is ever explicitly determined.

The Madam shows a mix of maternal protectiveness for the girl and straightforward, harsh candor. She tells the young girl how to game the men, and how to get the most out of them. She instructs the girl in how to defend her virginity until such time as it is sold to someone who can afford to richly compensate them for it.

There is nothing in the way of a plot in the book. It does read just like rambling advice, so there is also not a lot by way of setting. We do get character development of the Madam, but not so much of the title character.

It’s well-written and seems to be well-researched as well. While I don’t know a great deal about the subject, it rings authentic. Despite the subject, the book isn’t gratuitous in its talk of sex. However, don’t be surprised that the entire work revolves “around” the intertwined subjects of sex and money.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Posted on by
10

UbikUbik by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Philip K. Dick was one of the most imaginative writers and skilled storytellers of the 20th century. There’s a reason that so many of his stories and novels have been made into movies (e.g. Minority Report, Total Recall, Scanner Darkly, and–most famously–Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [which was adapted into a less quirky and darker film called Blade Runner.])Dick’s works lend themselves to the screen because they lay out novel plots in engaging stories.

Ubik isn’t among the Dick works that have been made into movies, but it’s not for lack of trying. Dick wrote his own screenplay for a film adaptation of the novel, but the project fell through. Over the years, a few directors have talked of Ubik: the Movie, so don’t be surprised if you see it someday.

Ubik deals with the afterlife. It’s set in 1992 (Dick’s future–our past.) (You can’t blame a man who lived from 1928 to 1982 for over anticipating the futuristicness of the 90’s. In the year of his birth Amelia Earhart was making the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman–only a year after Lindbergh became the first ever to do it. The year Ubik was published (1969) the Concorde was making its first supersonic transatlantic flight.)

In the world of Ubik, the moon is being developed for human use, and there are many people with psychic abilities. The protagonist, Glen Runciter, runs a business offering services blocking psychic activity to prevent industrial espionage. He is working for a company that’s building a moon base.

Runciter’s wife is deceased; however, he often consults with her as the dividing line between life and death isn’t so clear in Runciter’s world as our own. There exists a state of “half-life” between life and being fully dead.

The inciting incident is a nefarious explosion on the moon base of which Runciter and his team are victims. At first it appears that Runciter is dead and that his team is alive and trying to rush him back to Earth to get him into a state of half-life (just like his wife.)However, as the novel goes on it becomes less clear who is alive and who is dead. All that is clear is that Runciter exists in a different world from his team members. As the story proceeds there are clues–most notably coins with faces on them that aren’t dead Presidents. Joe Chip (a team member) sees coins with Runciter’s face on them, and later Runciter sees coins with Chip’s face on them.

Ubik is a product that Chip and the others begin to see advertised in their world–which they have come to believe is the afterlife. (Some versions of the book have a spray can on the cover that represents this mysterious product that comes in many forms.) They begin to believe that Ubik is their only hope. There has been a great deal of discussion about the symbolism of Ubik. Its name comes from the word for “everywhere”– as in “ubiquitous”– but what (or who)it’s supposed to be is never clearly revealed. Some have said that Ubik is meant to be God. If so, Dick made an interesting statement because the product is always marketed like some cheesy consumer good.

One test for whether you’ll like this book is whether you enjoy ambiguity in endings. Some readers really enjoy the thought-provocation of an ambiguous ending and the process of thinking out their own conclusions. (I am among this type of reader.) However, there are other readers who feel ripped off if the writer doesn’t tie all the answers up with a neat little ribbon at the end of the book. If you are this type of reader, you will likely hate this book. In other words, if you felt good leaving the theater when you saw Inception you’ll like this book, but if you left shaking your head and saying, “WTF, Chris Nolan?” then don’t bother.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams

Posted on by
3

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide, #4)So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

My reviews of the previous books in the series are linked below:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Life, the Universe, and Everything

This, the fourth book in the H2G2 trilogy, feels different from the others. First, it’s not so much about the ensemble cast featured in the other books. This is a book about Arthur, plain and simple. Arthur is reunited with Ford Prefect only in chapter 36 of 40, though there are Ford chapters interspersed preceding that reunion. Marvin the depressive robot makes it into the final chapter, but his appearance seems random and purposeless (except that it interjects a Marvin’s typical humor to nice effect.) Zaphod and Trillian are only mentioned in passing.

Second, romance plays a significant part in the story line, answering the previously perennial question, “Will Arthur ever get laid?”

It will be no surprise to readers of the earlier books that the title, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, was the final message of the dolphins before they jetted from the Earth–they being the only ones on the planet who knew the Vogons were about to destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

The story begins with Arthur being dropped on a planet that looks suspiciously like the Earth that he knows was destroyed. He hitches a ride with a young man and his delirious sister, Fenchurch. He develops an inexplicable connection with Fenchurch, and their burgeoning romance makes up a considerable part of the story. Fenchurch had had an epiphany right before what she can’t help feeling was the destruction of the world, and she is traumatized by her inability to remember.

The only difference between this planet and the one Arthur knows is that–he later finds out–this one is entirely devoid of dolphins. His house is even where he left it with a couple of months of dust and dirt accumulated. The only thing out-of-place is a new fishbowl engraved with “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

The couple, once united, go to meet an eccentric scientist who claims to know what happened to the dolphins. The eccentric, who goes by the name Wonko the Sane, has a house built inside-out to symbolize that he is outside the asylum–the asylum being the rest of the world. Wonko shows the couple his engraved fishbowl, and they then realize that all three of them (including Fenchurch) received such bowls. Wonko tells them that they should have put their ear to the bowl’s mouth. They do so, and hear a message from the “Save the Humans” organization, which is a dolphin charity group whose name says it all.

Fenchurch wants to see the universe, and so when Ford lands back on Earth–having come to investigate why the Hitchhiker’s Guide entry for Earth has been expanded from “mostly harmless”–they go off together. Their first stop is to read God’s final message to His created. I’ll not tell you the message. So ends the book–well there’s a little epilogue which is nearly meaningless in isolation.

While it’s off-kilter from the other books, this one shares Adams’ usual absurdist humor. However, in keeping with the different feel, one of the best laughs I had in this book was not absurdist humor at all. That laugh resulted from a story told by Arthur to Fenchurch as an icebreaker. He had once bought a packet of crisps and a beverage and sat down at a table to work the crossword at a train station. The station cafe was crowded and so a stranger ended up sitting across the table from him. The man opened the package of crisps and ate one. Taken aback, Arthur didn’t know what to do. Being non-confrontational in a reserved British fashion, all he could manage to do was to ignore the man’s encroachment and take his own crisp to eat. The man, not to be out done, took another. They proceeded like this until the entire pack had been consumed. To Arthur’s mortification, when he got up to go to his train, he found that his packet of crisps was under his newspaper, untouched. Something about that struck me as hilarious.

View all my reviews

Here is the song from the movie of the same name.

BOOK REVIEW: You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Posted on by
4

You Only Live Twice (James Bond, #12)You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When the film Casino Royale came out, it was panned by Roger Ebert, but not because it was a bad film. What Ebert didn’t like about that movie was that it looked and felt a lot more like the lead should have been named Jason Bourne rather than James Bond. In other words, Daniel Craig portrayed the super-suave secret agent with a license-to-kill as a gritty brawler and not the superman who could take on a swarm of SPECTRE henchmen without getting dust on the labels of his impeccable Armani. The latter is the archetypal James Bond.

The problem for film-makers is that the old Bond hasn’t aged well and seems a more suitable basis for Austin Powers’ style parodies than gripping thrillers.

You Only Live Twice is an entertaining read, but it’s best described as delightfully campy. However, it wasn’t meant to be camp when it came out. That being said, the film–which bears only a superficial resemblance to the novel–made changes specifically to make the storyline make more sense (that’s an odd twist for Hollywood.)Specifically, the arch-villain’s motivation doesn’t seem to make much sense in the novel. We are supposed to accept that the fact that the man is mad and evil to the core is sufficient for him to do something randomly quasi-evil, even if it offers him no benefit.

The synopsis is as follows: At the beginning, we find James Bond in turmoil. His wife died in the last book (within 24 hours of their marriage), and Bond has taken it hard. Since then he’s botched a couple of missions. He’s called into M’s office and thinks he is about to be canned. (He’s almost right.) Instead, M sends him on an assignment to Japan. It’s a challenging mission, but–theoretically–one of a diplomatic nature. Bond is to get Japan to turn over information from a code breaking technology they’ve developed. The Japanese only give this information to the U.S., and America is spotty at passing on relevant information to Britain.

Bond strikes up a friendship with “Tiger” Tanaka, who has no use for the bargaining chip which Bond has to offer. However, Tanaka agrees to hand over the information if Bond will take care of a delicate situation for Japan. In the country’s remote south, a European has set up a “toxic garden” of poisonous plants, animals, and insects. This garden has become a Venus flytrap for (the apparently infinite waves of)suicidal Japanese people.

Bond agrees to the proposal, and latter finds out that the European horticulturist is actually none other than the arch-nemesis who killed his wife, one Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Bond spends a couple of days in a fishing village reconnoitering and establishing the book’s romantic interest in the form of Kissy Suzuki–a pearl diver who was for a brief time a Hollywood starlet.

Bond makes his ninja-like infiltration of the Blofeld castle. I won’t get into how the climax of the book unfolds, but needless to say our hero wins the day.

The most thought-provoking part of the book may just be what happens after Bond finishes his mission. At the mission’s end, he develops amnesia as a result of a head injury. This amnesia makes the book’s title apropos.

There are some interesting themes addressed in the book. For example, there is considerable discussion of the difference of perspective on suicide between the West and Japan. Japan retains some of the samurai era notion that suicide can be used to restore honor, while Bond defends the Western view that suicide is a cowardly out. Still, while the Japanese attitude toward killing oneself when added to the stresses of a Japanese lifestyle (e.g. salaryman living) has resulted in a somewhat heightened suicide rate, the issue is greatly exaggerated to make the premise of Blofeld’s “Death Garden” seem remotely credible.

There’s also a great deal of discussion of Britain’s decline and America’s rise. Great emphasis is put on the fact that the Pacific is “America’s domain” and that the Brits have to be sneaky to operate there–lest they be at the mercy of their former colony.

This novel (and its film) introduced many exotic elements of Japanese culture to an audience beyond the Japanophiles for whom they were no surprise. This exotica includes ninja (spies of medieval Japan), fugu (poison blowfish–a potentially lethal delicacy), and Geisha (female entertainers and escorts.) It’s clear Fleming put some research into these matters. However, it also seems like he picks every element of Japanese history and culture that Westerners would find odd and unusual. At some points, one wonders what stereotype Fleming will next exploit.

There are a lot of patently ridiculous happenings in the book. At one point while Bond is hiding out on the grounds of the garden in a manner reminiscent of the ninja of old, biding his time, he decides that he simply must have a cigarette. Now, I’m not going to get into the plausibility of someone with that bad of an addiction having been able to swim a mile through waters with treacherous currents after having spent a few days rowing out to pearl dive. However, the notion that a special operative would light up in the middle of a covert operation is pretty far-fetched. It’s like saying, “I don’t care if this mission succeeds or even if you kill me, I’m going to have my Marlboro moment.” Some readers may think I’m engaging in hyperbole, but not those of you who’ve been in the military. The scent of cigarette smoke is extremely potent, and then there’s the glow. You don’t get out of boot camp without learning that you don’t smoke on LP/OP (Listening Post / Observation Post,) let alone into Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Bond’s transformation through makeup into a person who looks passably Japanese is another point at which credulity is strained. This make up survives ocean swims, fights, and even after the mission when Bond has amnesia, he can’t recognize that he, himself, looks nothing like the villagers of his hometown hamlet. (Tiger Tanaka has a card printed that says that Bond is deaf and dumb to get around his inability to speak the local language. [Props to Fleming for not going the Hollywood route and making his spy fluent in every imaginable language.])

The most ridiculous piece of the book involves an elaborate machine works that Blofeld uses to make the volcano let off liquid hot magma every 15 minutes like clockwork. He has this ready in anticipation of a need to test whether a victim can understand his instructions to get up and walk out to avoid being burned with hot lava. If Bond understands, he must not be deaf and dumb like the card says, and if he stays put–oh, well, he’s just a deaf and dumb coal miner who went sleepwalking in his ninja suit and ended up inside the heavily guarded castle retreat of the SPECTRE leader. What’s more, he puts the control for this Rube Goldberg contraption where the interrogated can see it (a fact that Bond later puts to use), and even though it’s inside a box, Bond knows exactly what it must be (he’s just that good.)

And, of course, in the most mocked device in this genre, Blofeld gives a long speech when he should be killing Bond.

You’ve got to read this with a certain mindset, and if you want a realistic, gritty thriller you’re not in the right mindset.

View all my reviews

As I said, the movie doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the book besides borrowing some character names and a few scenes. However, below is the trailer for the movie.

CLASSIC WORKS: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on by
6

Slaughterhouse-FiveSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

If you’re like me, you had to read this in high school. I reread it as an adult because the first time its awesomeness was tarnished by the fact that it was mandatory. Being a pessimistic youth, my thought was, “How good could it be if they are making me read it?” They don’t make you read Batman; they make you read Moby Dick. I’m glad I reread it as an adult. Little did I realize, my knee-jerk rejection of the book as something forced upon me, beyond my control, was mirrored by the theme of the book.

Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist who survived the Dresden fire-bombings was abducted by an alien race and became “unstuck in time.” If you didn’t get this impression, the book is strange. As the term “unstuck in time” suggests, there isn’t a chronological sequencing of events. Instead, the story leaps around from Pilgrim’s adult life as an optometrist to his time as a young soldier in the military to his time as an exhibit in a Tralfamadorian Zoo.

While the novel covers a lot of life, many of the important themes are seen in protagonist’s war experience. It should be noted that there is an autobiographical component to this book. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war who was ordered to help dig for survivors in the wake of the fire-bombing of Dresden. This gave Vonnegut a unique perspective of war and how similarly it is experienced by the enemy. An important line of tension in the book is between Pilgrim’s character and that of the jingoistic Roland Weary.

The Tralfamadorian subplot has a lot to do with being out of control, and learning that perceptions of control are illusory. This is exemplified by the time jumps, which leave Pilgrim completely unable to predict what will happen next. Then there is Pilgrim’s experience being exhibited in an alien zoo, what  could be less in control than that.

Like most of Vonnegut’s work, Slaughterhouse-Five is a dark comedy. There is humor throughout, but humor wrapped in the macabre. For example, whenever anyone dies there is a chorus of “So it goes.”

Everyone should read this, and reread it if necessary.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW: A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

Posted on by
2

A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaA Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Paul Theroux

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

A Dead Hand opens with the protagonist, Jerry Delfont, receiving an unexpected and unusual letter. Delfont is a traveling writer who is temporarily in Calcutta. The letter is from an American businesswoman and philanthropist who seems to have gone native in India. The woman, Merrill “Ma” Unger, asks Delfont to investigate a mysterious event involving her son’s boyfriend, a young Indian man named Rajat.

Rajat claims to have woken up one night in his cheap hotel room to find the dead body of a boy on the floor. Rajat panicked and left, and is living in fear that he will be picked by the police.

The book in part traces Delfont’s investigation of this mysterious body, and in part describes his burgeoning relationship with “Ma” Unger. The former is slow going through the first 2/3 of the book, and at some points one wonders if Delfont has forgotten about the investigation altogether.

The title has a dual meaning. It describes both the writer’s block Delfont is suffering at the beginning of the book and the actual physical hand that turns up as the sole remaining trace of the dead boy who turns out really was in Rajat’s room.

Coming from famed traveling writer Paul Theroux, it’s no surprise that the development of setting is phenomenal. Theroux not only gives one a sense of the sights, sounds, and scents of Calcutta, he also gives the reader insight into the human dimension of India through a number of supporting characters. There is a passionate young woman who writes poetry and practices the Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu. She is a strong, bright, and independent woman but is stuck in a world of arranged marriages and sexual repression. Despite the official end of the caste system, we see completely subservient Indians as well as others who think they are beyond talking to a lowly writer.

The plotting is solid. It’s neither exceptional nor so flat or formulaic as to be boring. I, who am not particularly good at foreseeing plot twists, did anticipate the ending–at least in broad brush stroke terms. However, the book kept me interested and reading. There was a clear narrative arc and the main character definitely undergoes a change over the course of the book (more on that below.)

In my opinion, the book’s weakness is in character development, and specifically Delfont’s character. We are introduced to a Delfont who is having a tough time, but is essentially a likable guy with his head on straight. However, as he begins to fall for “Ma” Unger, he seems increasingly pathetic. Specifically, he falls into this weird relationship in which he seems to see her both sexually and maternally, and–like a schoolboy with a crush–he wants to do anything he can to please her and to gain her attention. Now, being pathetic is a little like being crazy. If the character knows or suspects they are crazy, then how crazy can they really be? Because Delfont recognizes he’s being pathetic, he remains a sympathetic character. However, I think Theroux over hammers the degree to which Delfont is smitten until we begin to think he is obsessed. The problem is that it makes his transformation and that of his relationship with “Ma”, which happens like the flip of a switch, less credible.

All and all, I would recommend this book. I think it’s particularly interesting for one who wants greater insight into India and, specifically, Calcutta.

View all my reviews

WRITING DEVICES: The Author Cameo in A Dead Hand

Posted on by
2

I’ll soon finish reading a novel by Paul Theroux called A Dead Hand. I won’t get into the details of the book in this post because I’ll do a review later, but there’s a writing device in it that really intrigued me. Theroux inserts himself into the novel in a cameo role as a competitor to the protagonist. That is to say, the main character is a traveling writer who writes mostly magazine articles, while Theroux a prolific writer famous for travelogues such as The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,  as well as for many novels which are written with a travel writer’s sensibility for location. (A Dead Hand takes place in and around Calcutta, India.)

I enjoyed the author cameo. It would only work well for a writer like Theroux, one who is both well-known and, because of his nonfiction work, who readers have a feel for as a person. Still, I couldn’t think of another novel I’ve read in which this has been done. I’ve only read Theroux’s nonfiction so far, so maybe this is a running gag with him.

Inserting himself offers some opportunity for adding humor. For example, there’s a part in which the main character’s friend, who is also a go-between who introduces the two writers, says, “He [Theroux] said he wanted to take the train from Battambang to Phnom Penh.”

To which the main character replies, “He would. The bus is quicker!”

This technique also gives one the impression that we are getting some inside insight into the writer. When the main character mistrusts the author, how are we to process that?

Granted it’s a little like an actor looking into the camera and talking straight to the audience.

I’m interested to hear if this is a more widespread technique than I’m aware of? Who else does this?

Sharing Stories of the Plaguepocalypse

Posted on by
2

[I’m recycling this from a Figment competition that I once entered–and lost.]

Day 100, Post-Apocalypse

Day 100, Post-Apocalypse

JB and I worked tediously to find and repair damaged insulation on the main from the solar farm down to our bunker. Breaks or cracks in the insulation meant lost energy that we could not afford, but we had to bury the cheap cable available to us because the Mojave sun degraded it too rapidly otherwise. Burying the line invited a whole new problem because burrowing critters then began to gnaw on it. Whenever there was a power drop, two of our trio had to come out and do line maintenance.  Output should have been at its maximum given it was mid-day during the hottest time of year, but, instead, we were experiencing a sixty percent drop in power.

We wore white from head to toe except for a slit in our ninja-like masks where sunglasses covered the unclothed region and protected our eyes from the harsh rays and glints.  This had always been a harsh land, but changes experienced in recent decades made it far hotter.  I sucked a mouthful of water from the bladder that lay next to my body under my baggy white clothes. The water was hot, like a freshly brewed cup of tea—sans the tea.

“Son-of-a…, sweat is stinging my eyes,”  JB said as he removed his sunglasses, and blotted his eyes with his sleeve.

“Put the shades back on. We can’t have you getting burned retinas,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, if I go blind who’ll come out here with you to dig up line?” JB’s reply dripped sarcasm.

“Exactly, now you’re getting it,” I said.

JB wiped his eyes once more, and then put the glasses back on. Without the shades, the surroundings looked like the Mars of old movies – cast in a reddish hue.

“I think I’ve got it,” JB called out.

“Looks like it,” I replied, leaning over to look in JB’s newly-excavated hole.

A mole rat skeleton had its teeth buried in the insulation.

After removing the rodent, patching the insulation, and putting the sand back, JB and I walked back to the hatch of our bunker.

JB crouched over the opening. He touched the metal lip of the hatch and immediately yanked his hand away while screaming an expletive. The gloves were not thick; they were for keeping the sun off the skin while holding in as little heat as possible.

JB called down the shaft, “Brit!”

“What ‘cha want,”  Brittany replied.

“How’s our power level, we pulled a fried mole rat off the line,” I asked.

“Yum!…,  The power is back to normal,”  She called back.

I followed JB down the long ladder into the bunker. I pulled the hot hatch closed behind me and secured it against some unlikely foe.

“We need to protect that line somehow,” I said

“I’m just glad we didn’t have to hump out to the transmitter. The last time it broke down I was loopy with dehydration by the time I got back. You sure this is the only place for us to live?” JB said.

Brit came in with two cups of water and handed them to JB and myself.  She said, “I’ve got the loop broadcasting again and the receivers are turned up loud.”

“If you can come up with someplace else where we can tap into the energy necessary to keep broadcasting, I’m all ears,” I responded.

“That’s just it. We’ve been broadcasting all this time, and we’re not getting any reply,”  JB said.

“We also don’t know whether this climate is responsible for our good fortune,” I said.

JB had no response.

“Good fortune? Oh, my, I feel like such a princess.” Brit said curtseying with her fingertips bunched up and wrists kinked as if she were holding up a skirt.

“I mean being alive,” I clarified.

There was a silence.

Brit spoke up, “Remember people?… I love you guys, but I’d give anything to meet a stranger. Remember the last time you saw a crowd of strangers.”

 

I did, indeed, remember.

I was planning on going to Union Station to get out the Los Angeles. Before I left my apartment, I saw a news story showing the train station among all the other avenues of disembarkation that were thronged with people.  The streets outside the station were flooded with a throbbing, undulating mass of humanity. As in the mosh-pit of a rock concert, there were two primary classes of people: those who were screaming and those who were suffocating. Mixed in among these were glassy-eyed souls who had the good sense to realize they were the walking dead, and to behave accordingly.  There were images from packed train-less platforms, and the grandiose cavernous waiting area.

I packed my gear and donned boots so as to be prepared to hike out of town if necessary. It proved to be a wise move, because I when I arrived at the train station the wall of humanity was impenetrable.

I hated crowds. Crowds were noisy, hot, and chaotic.  My hatred of crowds saved my life. Nature has its weird ways. I had once read about ants that could take down a fully grown cow. They did this by covering the animal benignly, and then, upon a release of a pheromone from the ants on the creature’s head, they all stung at once. This malady, a hemorrhagic fever of some sort, was similarly impossibly intelligent and geared toward wiping out the entire species. It seemed to know when its victims were within a crowd, by what mechanism I cannot imagine, and it would then send them into sneezing and coughing fits that propelled droplets of virulent blood in a fine mist to those all around.

Now I missed crowds, because they were a sign that one’s species wouldn’t die with oneself.

JB and Brit had taken to telling each other their own last crowd stories, which we’d heard before. We’d heard all of each other’s stories.

Well there was one story that I kept for myself. It was the story of the day before I met up with Brit and JB. It was my nadir.

I had been hiking east from the city. My path merged with the I-40 corridor, and it was the most horrific day of my life. I’d always been an avid hiker and had spent long periods on my own before, but these times of solitude were without signs of humanity. As I came upon I-40, there were people all around -in cars and on the ground, but they were all stiff and had rivulets of brown or red running from their noses, mouths, ears, eyes, and presumably the unseen orifices.

When I saw a monastery on a hillside, I thought I was saved.  Surely the isolated monks or nuns were safe and would help out a weary uninfected traveler? I found an old stone church that was post and beam on the inside. Anyway, my hope faded when I found the pews had been used as hospital beds, and all, patient and caretaker alike, were bled out. The only signs of life were rats on the floor, weeds in the mortar joints, and birds in the rafters. That was my moment of greatest loneliness, for if God had abandoned his own house, what hope was there for me.

Your Life is Hard? Try Working with Ninjas,Pirates, and Smugglers!

Posted on by
4

Ninjas, pirates, and smugglers aren’t exactly chatty. They burn, or shred, their correspondence. They sow seeds of disinformation to confuse the authorities. They lurk in the inkiest of shadow worlds behind doors we don’t even know exist. Still, who wants to do a hatchet job on a pirate? Right?

Did I mention that these are characters in the novel that I’m currently revising (or did I let you believe I was talking about in-the-flesh smugglers so that you’d keep reading.) Sorry, no one ever accused me of NOT being a deceitful bastard. Well, my friend, you’re now more than Tweet deep in this post; that’s quite an investment; it’s the modern-day equivalent of having read The Iliad, so you might as well keep reading.

Kiss the Cobra (my third working title) features a cast of characters of not only the aforementioned occupations but also monks  (both the scholarly and  kick-ass kung fu varieties), an Emperor, a muay Thai master, and a secret society that makes ninjas look like chatty Cathys. Like all good lies, this novel begins with a seed of truth. That seed is the rescue of Emperor Go-Daigo from imprisonment by an evil (ok, quasi-evil) shogun in 1337.  From that seed, it’s my wild imagination run amok… or is it? The Emperor assigns the loyalist ninja who rescued him, Korando, to travel to Southeast Asia to acquire an artifact that legend has it will help him re-consolidate power.

Cut to the present day, a linguistically-talented young man, Matsuo (a.k.a. “Matt”), comes into possession of a scroll. The scroll is Korando’s journal, written and hidden as a confessional. Matt investigates Korando’s journal on an electronic bulletin board only to find himself being chased by nefarious characters. Matt discovers that there are still people willing to kidnap, kill, or commit treason for the secrets that Korando’s journal may possess.

The novel weaves the 14th century journal with this present-day cat and mouse game between the forces of good and evil. There’s murder and mayhem, love and betrayal, victory and defeat, virtue and vice; in short everything you love in a novel is densely crammed into this book.  There’s even one character who may or may not be a Zombie–I’ll let you be the judge.

Now let me just add this screenshot of me to show you ho

Do you ever get a chill on the back of your neck?

Did you ever get an inexplicable chill on the back of your neck?

BOOK REVIEW: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Posted on by
1

SolarisSolaris by Stanisław Lem

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solaris is the  best known work of the Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem. It’s the story of the planet Solaris’s super-intelligent ocean and the humans that are observing it from an orbiting space station. Scientists discover that the ocean is intelligent because the planet orbits two stars, and the ocean must redistribute itself as ballast to keep Solaris from flying off out of its star systems.

Having had no luck in learning about this ocean, the scientists begin more invasive operations–bombarding the ocean with electromagnetic radiation. The ocean then begins to project human beings into the space station, using blueprints in the minds of the scientists. Each of the scientists begins to see, and eventually interact with, someone from his past. Each “guest” is physically indistinguishable from the person in the respective scientist’s past, but the simulacra are “off.”  These simulacra stir up bad memories.

The most extensive interaction we see between a crew member and one of these manifestations is that of the protagonist, Dr. Kris Kelvin, and his ex-wife. Dr. Kelvin is a psychologist and is the most recent crew edition. (The novel actually starts with him as a new arrival, we learn of the earlier incidents as he does.) His “visitor” is the spitting image of his wife, a woman who committed suicide after the couple broke up.

The novel plays with an intriguing question. What if a person you loved and lost came back from the dead, but you would only be able to experience them as they existed in your mind? In some sense, they’d be more real to you than the actual person. But you’d know they were just a fabrication, and you could never learn anything new about them. At first Kelvin rejects, even banishes, his wife’s doppelgänger, but when she inexplicably returns he finds it hard to maintain his distance.

I enjoyed this book. The translation seemed skilled to me (though I don’t read Polish, and hence didn’t read the original.) I’d recommend it.

View all my reviews

There have been three film adaptations of this novel. I haven’t seen any of the movies, but this is the trailer for the most recent one. The trailer emphasizes the love relationship more and the sentient ocean less than the novel (though the interaction of the protagonist with his imagined wife is central to the work.)