Molecularbear's Blog

Back to sci-fi – just finished Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. The book was first published in 1969 and supposedly won the Hugo Award a year earlier in 1968.

This is one of those sci-fi books that gets called “Sci-Fi” even though you could really think of it as “Fantasy”. But I’m not complaining about that. The more high-tech your sci-fi is, the more it comes to resemble magic. In Lord of Light you have a group of individuals who have ownership of very advanced technology. They live in a fantasy environment called “Heaven” that they have shaped to their desires. Equipped with immortality, mind powers, and dazzling technology, these people have become gods. They rule over the world, keeping the rest of humanity in a dark age.

The gods have fashioned themselves after Hindu gods and set up a Hindu religion that the people follow. Those with “good karma” get resurrected into new bodies (with the help of technology). The conflict comes when one man fights against the oppression of the gods.

I enjoyed this book. Throughout the book we get hints about how this society came to be established. The origins are never explicitly stated, but it was interesting to piece the clues together. Religion is obviously a strong theme in the book; I felt I would have gotten more out of it if I were more familiar with the Hindu religion. There is also a bit of Buddhism in there. I was amused at the somewhat poor representation that Christianity was given. The religious aspects gave the book a deeper level than a plain sci-fi romp with energy creatures, sword fights, mental magic, and tactical nukes. Mixed in with sci-fi/fantasy entertainment are some very thought-provoking ideas and philosophies.

An excerpt from the back of the book:

“Kali, Goddess of Destruction; Yama, Lord of Death; Krishna, God of Lust; all are opposed by him who was Siddhartha, who is now Mahasamatman, Binder of Demons, Lord of Light.”

There is an except from the book that I really liked. A demon (Taraka) has possessed the body of the main character (Siddhartha) and done maliciously hedonistic things with it. This was after Siddhartha had released him from his prison in “Hellwell”. After a time, the demon begins to find that he does not enjoy the pleasures of the flesh as he once did:

“My pleasures diminish by the day! Do you know why this is, Siddhartha? Can you tell me why strange feelings now come over me, dampening my strongest moments, weakening me and casting me down when I should be elated, when I should be filled with joy? Is this the curse of the Buddha?”

“Yes,” said Siddhartha.

“Then lift your curse, Binder, and I will depart this very day. I will give you back this cloak of flesh. I long again for the cold, clean winds of the heights! Will you free me now?”

“It is too late, oh chief of the Rakasha. You have brought this thing upon yourself.”

“What thing? How have you bound me this time?”

“Do you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me? You told me me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of the pain which you work. You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires… his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old – but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and a noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked – guilt!

Know then, that as we existed together in the same body and I partook of your ways, not always unwillingly, the road we followed was not one upon which all the traffic moved in a single direction. As you twisted my will to your workings, so was your will twisted, in turn, by my revulsion at some of your deeds. You have learned the thing called guilt, and it will ever fall as a shadow across your meat and your drink. This is why your pleasure has been broken. This is why you seek now to flee. But it will do you no good. It will follow you across the world. It will rise with you into the realms of the cold, clean winds. It will pursue you wherever you go. This is the curse of the Buddha.”

Taraka covered his face with his hands.

“So this is what it is like to weep,” he said, after a time.

Siddhartha did not reply.

“Curse you, Siddhartha,” he said. “You have bound me again, to an even more terrible prison than Hellwell.”

I took a detour from my sci-fi path to read Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Annoyingly, I see no publication date in the book, but the first copyright is in 2001. The book won the “Man Booker Prize” which seems to be a relatively new award for contemporary fiction. Emili initially bought this book because it is apparently going to be made into a movie. Instead of actually reading it, she gave it directly to me.

In a nutshell, the book is about an Indian boy named Piscine Molitor Patel. Piscine, or Pi, becomes stranded in a lifeboat at sea in the company of a Bengal tiger. Most of the story is about how Pi survives for nearly a year at sea with this oft hostile tiger in close quarters.

Pi grows up in India as the son of a zoo owner. The beginning of the book contains lots of information and thought-provoking ideas about animals and zoos. As Pi gets a little older, he becomes deeply religious – to the point where he becomes a practicing Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. Religion is a strong theme in the book and, like the talk of animals, one that makes the reader think.

Pi and his family wind up making a trip to Canada by boat, carrying with them a number of animals that they intend to sell to other zoos. The boat sinks and this is when Pi finds himself alone on a lifeboat with a tiger who managed to escape the sinking ship. Seeing how Pi survives on the ocean along with dealing with the tiger was very interesting. This part of the book was very fanciful at times. But at the very end of the novel, there is a realization that makes the reader suddenly see deep layers of meaning across the entire story.

Changing gears, Quite a few of the reviews talk about how funny the book is:

“An impassioned defense of zoos, a death-defying trans-Pacific sea adventure a la Kon-Tiki, and hilarious… This audacious novel manages to be all of these.”
-The New Yorker

Yes, there were some amusing parts, but I didn’t find it to be the non-stop chuckle-fest that some of these reviewers apparently thought it was. I felt that Life of Pi was more dark and searching than it was funny. One thing I really liked is that there are “Reading Group” questions in the back of the book. I read all of these questions and they helped me to think about the novel’s meaning.

Anyway, I always like my departures from sci-fi to be deep and enriching. This book was certainly that and so I give it the Ross stamp of approval.

Just finished Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1953, and the third book in the Foundation series. As I predicted, this was a nice relaxing read after the heavy Neuromancer. Asimov gets a bit better at characters as the years go by, but nothing to raise an eyebrow at. Instead of the same stereotypical template repeated endlessly through the book, we have a variety of stereotypical templates. Though I admit I did find the characters much more entertaining than in previous two books.

Like Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation is two stories rolled into one. Unlike Foundation and Empire, these two stories have a common theme. One relates the Mule’s attempt to locate the Second Foundation, and the other relates the First Foundation’s attempt to locate the Second Foundation. While the First Foundation was composed of physical scientists, the Second Foundation was composed of mental scientists. The Second Foundation, kept hidden since its inception, is populated by mental superhumans who basically have the power to control minds. Through the Foundation’s history, the Second Foundation has been pulling the strings, ensuring that Hari Seldon’s plan is upheld. Threatened by the powers of the Second Foundation, the First Foundation begins to hunt them down to eliminate them.

Seeing the workings of the Second Foundation and more details of Hari Seldon’s plan make this book quite interesting. This is probably my favorite book of the series so far. I have high hopes for the next one because I think it won one of my preciousss Nebula/Hugo awards. I’ll probably switch gears again and read something else before heading back to the Foundation.

Neuromancer by William Gibson was published in 1984; it won the 1985 Hugo Award and the 1984 Nebula Award. The book also won the Philip K. Dick Award, though I haven’t been paying much attention to the “Dick” award yet. Anyway, most people know that this book is classic sci-fi and has been recognized as the origin of the “cyberpunk” genre. After reading it, I can see how things like Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash, Ian McDonald’s Terminal Cafe, and even the Matrix movies may have been influenced by this novel.

Apparently the Washington Post called this book, “KALEIDOSCOPIC, PICARESQUE, FLASHY AND DECADENT… AN AMAZING VIRTUOSO PERFORMANCE… STATE-OF-THE-ART!” Glowing praise for the book spans a number of pages at the beginning as well as the back cover. This is a must-read for any sci-fi fan, and would probably appeal to those who aren’t too fond of the genre. This book hit me hard, moreso because I’d been reading the emotionally light, somewhat vacant beginnings of Asimov’s Foundation series. Neuromancer is dark, full of dark characters with dark passions, and rich, compelling prose. The writing is mature as are the maligned characters.

In many ways this is a sort of James Bondian or Mission Impossible spy thriller. But the characters aren’t fighting for the side of “good”. They are basically mercenaries using their skills for monetary gain, though most have been coerced into their position. Case is the main character, interfacing his brain with cyberspace to perform hacker-like feats. Molly is another major character, a woman with heightened reflexes, Wolverine-like claw implants, and eye implants for enhanced vision and information. The setting is in the mid-future, with major body modifications, extended life, space station resorts, and scheming Artificial Intelligences.

As far as criticisms go, I’ll mention one of the things my brother has complained of when talking about William Gibson novels. Gibson avoids obvious exposition at the cost of leaving you trying to figure out what the hell is going on. He’ll introduce terms or concepts, sometimes at a rapid pace, and you have to discover what these things are via context. This is hard, especially in the beginning of the book. A character will rattle off a bunch of street slang and you have no idea what they’re saying. I also found the representations of cyberspace to be somewhat unfulfilling. They were interesting, but I never quite felt that the character was actually doing something productive in there. Much more interesting was when Case would switch perspectives to Molly via an implant she had.

The book really is spectacular and I found myself swept up in it. But now, after having been immersed in these complex, disaffected, drug-laden characters, I look forward to returning to the simplicity of Asimov’s Foundation series.

Foundation and Empire, published in 1952, is another book I read in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. One of the things that is impressive about this series is that Asimov starting writing it when he was only twenty-one. Given some of the complex, intelligent ideas in these books, I am amazed that a 21-year-old could come up with them. On the negative side, his youth obviously hurt his characters. In Foundation and Empire we actually have a prominent female character, but she is almost just as one-dimensional as the males. Though I must say that I found the characters to be a lot more varied than in the series’ first novel.

Foundation and Empire is two stories lumped into the same book. In the first story, the Foundation must face the conquest-hungry Imperial General Bel Riose. The Empire is dwindling, but still holds much power. Bel Riose brings the Imperial might to bear in a full attack on the Foundation holdings. This attack represents the first Seldon crisis in the book.

The second story is more interesting. The back of the book reads: “But not even Hari Seldon could have predicted the birth of the extraordinary creature called the Mule – a mutant intelligence with a power greaters than a dozen battle fleets… a power that can turn the strongest-willed human into an obediant slave.” The book ends on something of a cliffhanger, with a desperate search for the second Foundation underway.

Two books into the series, I feel obligated to read the whole thing. The lack of deep characters and complex personal interactions make the books quite “low stress”. The idea of this 1000-year plan mapped out by the dead psychohistorian Hari Seldon is an engaging one. While I don’t find myself being too emotionally involved, I am intrigued and intellectually stimulated. The books have been light, quick reads so far and I intend to continue consuming this classic sci-fi.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov was first published in 1951. This book is the first in the Foundation series; the series won the Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. Foundation is an example of why I am hesitant to read old science fiction. There are a lot of ideas in this book that have been explored and rehashed by authors over the ensuing decades. For example, Asimov describes a world that is covered by one huge city. Coruscant, anyone? I think that perhaps some of the book’s innovations were lost of me because of things like this.

I don’t know if I’d recommend this book because I really didn’t enjoy it that much. I think there was maybe one woman in the entire thing; she was the cold, manipulative daughter of a viceroy or something, and had been placed in a diplomatic marriage. There were a number of male figures in the book, but they were all the same character! It was the same guy, just with a different name. In other words, the characters were pretty dreadful and the dialogue was trite.

The thing that makes this book worthwhile is the premise. The mighty Galactic Empire is crumbling beneath its own weight and corruption. A man named Hari Seldon perfects a field of study called “psychohistory” that allows him to predict large scale population trends. He realizes that the Empire is going to fall soon and sets a plan in motion that will limit the Dark Age effect that would follow the Empire’s fall. He starts the Foundation on a remote planet at the Galaxy’s edge. This Foundation will battle through a series of “Seldon Crises” until it eventually restores order to the Galaxy. Seldon has predicted the course of the Foundation for hundreds of years and posthumously helps to guide things via pre-recorded messages.

Foundation follows the first few decades of this process. Different leaders rise up to meet the challenges of barbarian kingdoms in ways other than violence. They first use a sort of technological religion to gain control and influence, followed by trade and economic domination. Asimov gives some interesting political scenarios throughout all of this. Anyway, it’s an interesting read, but I didn’t find myself that swept up by it. I’ll continue to read the series – hopefully it gets better.

Friday at midnight I went to Books-A-Million to obtain my reserved copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling’s latest installment in the Harry Potter series. After some solid reading blocks on Saturday and Sunday, I’ve completed the 650-odd page book. Obviously Half-Blood Prince is a must-read for any follower of the Harry Potter series. My thoughts are below – I have attempted to be careful not to include any spoilers.

After reading through the book, I am feeling glad that the series will be coming to an end soon. Not in an I-can’t-wait-for-this-to-be-over sort of way, but more along the lines of feeling like the the story has run its course. Rowling is careful not to dwell too long on the aspects of the series of which we are intensely familiar: the antics of Harry’s Muggle family, the Hogwarts Express, the zany magical classes, Quidditch, and so forth. All the staples are there of course, but I think Rowling understands that the reader has been through five books with these constructs and does not need to linger upon them.

Because the characters are now sixteen years old, you’ll see more in the way of romantic relationships. In fact, I count four such relationships off the top of my head involving eight of the series’ core or near-core characters. You also get a lot of good info about the history of Lord Voldemort. I think it was this information about Voldemort’s past that I found most intriguing about Half-Blood Prince. The climax of the book is also very exciting; I found myself tearing through the pages with quickened pulse.

Predictably, there is the old Harry/Snape and Harry/Malfoy conflict. This book brings that conflict to a head, as it should, considering that the conflict must be resolved in the next and final book. Once again Rowling raises the question of which side Snape is working for. Perhaps this is just my point of view, but it seems obvious that Rowling is attempting to set the reader up for a surprise reversal in the final book.

All in all, Half-Blood Prince is an entertaining read that puts things in place for an exciting final book. There is an addictive quality to these novels that compels me to read them voraciously. I felt drawn in to the story and was pleased to spend more time in the world Rowling has created.

I finished The Time Machine by H. G. Wells which is a brief 140-page snack. This book won neither the Hugo nor the Nebula, but that isn’t too surprising considering that the book was written before those awards were in existence. The Time Machine was first printed in 1957 and the back of the book reads: “H. G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE is universally regarded as a prototype of all science fiction stories.”

I had been avoiding this book because I figured it would be full of the tired time traveling cliches found in most modern sci-fi (I’m thinking Star Trek here). But to my surprise, the book isn’t like that at all. It doesn’t exactly feel like sci-fi, but it is – I can see how this would be considered one of the first sci-fi novels. One of the things that struck me about this book is the rich language in which it is written. The Time Machine definitely feels like an older book; it has almost flowery prose and uses vocabulary in somewhat unfamiliar contexts.

The Time Machine is told from the Time Traveller’s point of view – he relates his fantasic story to a group of gentlemen. Basically, he travels forward in time to the year 802,701 A.D. and finds that humanity has undergone a profound change. We’re not talking about laser guns, nanotech, and lightspeed here; this story is much more subtle and low key than that. At its heart, The Time Machine is a thoughtful commentary on humanity and class distinction.

The book is engaging and rewarding to read. Plus it is good to see the origins of the Morlock/Eloi cultural reference. Probably the next book I’ll comment on will be the latest Harry Potter!

Ringworld by Larry Niven won the Nebula Award in 1970 and the Hugo Award in 1971 (though the book says that the Hugo was awarded in 1970). Contrasted with Greg Bear’s realistic Darwin’s Radio, this book was a very pleasant venture to high scifi. Ringworld takes place in the far future where humans have faster-than-light travel, “transfer booths” that are kind of like Star Trek transporters, medical miracles like “booster spice” that prolong life indefinitely, and relations with a number of sentient alien races.

In a nutshell, the story relates the exploration of the “Ringworld” by a group of travelers. Events unfold through the 3rd-person perspective of the human Louis Wu. Louis, a woman named Teela Brown, and a kzin (a mighty, cat-like warrior race) named Speaker-To-Animals all agree to be employed by a puppeteer (a two-headed, three-legged race of herbivores) named Nessus for the purpose of learning more of the Ringworld.

The Ringworld itself is as the name suggests. It is a tremendous ring around a star that rotates at a tremendous speed in order to give the illusion of gravity. Larry Niven got the idea from the concept of a Dyson Sphere – a shell around a star that would be capable of producing a massive amount of power due to the fact that it would absorb 100% of the sun’s radiant energy.

I found the characters in the book to be interesting and more complex than you find in most sci-fi. The aliens are done well, though the kzinti are painfully reminiscent of Star Trek’s Klingons. Star Trek first aired in the mid-to-late sixies which was probably about the time that Larry Niven was writing this book. One wonders about the affect the series had the book and vice-versa.

When I began reading the book, there was almost a Douglas Adams sense of absurdity. I think this may have been been because much of the sci-fi I’ve been reading has had a lot of theoretically feasible ideas. And while the Ringworld does have some theoretical basis, there are a lot of fanciful things in the book that you just have to accept at face value. In that regard parts of Ringworld had an almost fantasy feel to it. But this is not to say that the book didn’t have a lot of cool ideas and science.

As I’m discovering, most of these award-winning novels have sequels. The sequels to Ringworld have the potential to be fun reads, but I’ll hold off on pursuing them for now. This book is chock-full of grandiose scifi and I found it quite entertaining. Time to head back to the Nebula/Hugo list…

When I was a teenager my father looked disparagingly at my Dragonlance novels and told me a fact that I still remember to this day. He said that so many books have been written that a single person could not hope to read them all in a lifetime. With that in mind, he said, I should choose my books carefully. This did not stop me from reading Dragonlance books, but it does have an impact on me today.

I do not have much free time these days. If I am going to read a book then I want it to count. To this end, I have decided to pursue books that are either Nebula Award winners or Hugo Award winners. I don’t plan to read them to the exclusion of all else, but these awards do provide a good filter for my literary consumption.

I recently read two books by Greg Bear: Moving Mars (Nebula Award 1994) and Darwin’s Radio (Nebula Award 2000).

I enjoyed Moving Mars more as I felt that both the characters and ideas were more interesting than Darwin’s Radio. Moving Mars follows the remarkable life of Casseia Mujumdar, a native of Mars. The story is told in her first-person point of view and follows her life from her college days protesting against Earth’s encroachment on Mars’ sovereignty, to her eye-opening visit to Earth, and finally to the world-changing decisions she must make when she becomes leader of Mars.

Whenever you read a review of this book, you see praise about the character of Casseia Mujumdar. She is a much richer character than you find in many sci-fi books and the book is richer because of that. Casseia’s first love, the revolutionary physicist Charles Franklin, is also an interesting character and plays a large role in the novel.

As far as sci-fi goes, I believe the book is set in the late 22nd century. Nanotechnology is ubiquitous and can do everything from constructing buildings, to replacing damaged body parts, to altering the human form, to adding enhancements to the human brain. Humans have created sentient computers called Thinkers that benevolently serve in various functions. The moon, Mars, and the asteroid belts have been colonized, though political friction exists between these colonies and Mother Earth. Space flight is common, though limited to sub-lightspeed travel within the solar system. However, Dr. Charles Franklin is on the verge of a discovery that will change everything…

On the other hand, Darwin’s Radio is set in present day. The book is less sci-fi than it is a sort of medical thriller. A blurb on the book’s cover reads: “In the next stage of evolution, humans are history…” Darwin’s Radio deals a lot with genetics, specifically human endogenous retroviruses which are basically parts of our DNA that contain pieces of old viruses. Without giving too much away, the sci-fi aspect of the book centers around the evolution of the human race.

Again, the characters are better than what you find in most sci-fi, but perhaps not as interesting as those in Moving Mars. The book moves a bit slow at first, but picks up after the first 200 pages (it’s about 500 pages long). You get a decent amount of talk about genetics, viruses, and evolution. There’s also some interesting politics and human response to the global-scale events that transpire. Definitely some cools ideas, but it didn’t leave me as affected as I was after reading Moving Mars. I think Darwin’s Radio may have a sequel or two that might be worth checking out one of these days.

Anyway, on to the next award-winner!