Dan's Reading Journal

The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card

The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card

 

I have just finished a sci-fi orgy – reading, in order, Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Ender’s Shadow.  The series started in 1977 and the last of the ones that I read was published in 1999.  Card is nothing if not prolific, the author of some 50 books in a number of series ranging from science fiction to women of the book of Genesis.

 

To the books:  if was 14 again, I would have adored these novels.  The plots are modestly engaging if uncomplicated, not particularly involved or challenging. The dialog is similar – it keeps you going, but is not really scintillating very often. However the science fiction is relatively cool, and the characters are able to do very interesting things – there are battles between siblings, there is politics, religion, war, philosophy and ethics.  There is romance, but not much sex (more on that later).  There are multiple worlds and faster-than-light travel and sentient computer programs.  There are “games” kids play while relaxing that are actually liked to alien minds. There are interesting ideas for sure and intriguing uses of cultures (not many folks can combine Samoan culture with higher-order artificial intelligence and create an entire world where those with obsessive-compulsive disorders are revered for their genius.

 

Moreover, these novels won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in back to back years (a rarity if not the only instance of this happening) and Card has be lauded by many literary organizations, authors, and academic institutions.

 

So, what’s not to like?

 

I felt vaguely uncomfortable after reading the first novel, Ender’s Game and that discomfort continued through the rest of the novels.

 

First, the Ender series is based on the notion that the world is breeding children for intelligence while at the same time controlling the population (i.e., 2 children per couple).  The 5, 6, 7, and 8 year-olds are plucked from their families and trained for combat.  The earth, and all humanity is preparing for another encounter with the Formics (aka the Buggers) who were only narrowly (and admittedly, by sheer luck) defeated in their first foray into humanity’s hegemony.  I found these toddlers spouting Clausewitz, studying tactics, formed into mock armies that fight each other at The Battle School at bit off-putting.  You have to buy into the premise – that the entire human universe needs a commander capable of leading all of the human’s military might against the enemy and that commander is going to – after 70 years of searching – come from someone who is between 8 and 12 years old.   When Star Trek did eugenics in “The Wrath of Khan”, it was kind of cool.  Card doing it with babies who kill each other – pretend-wise in mock battles, in reality due to interpersonal conflicts and to survive alone in the future’s big city slums, is creepy.  Sort of like that investment banking commercial with the talking baby in the high chair….kinda creepy.

 

Second, the major ethical issue of the series is xenocide – the complete and total destruction of an alien race.  Xenocide is the result of the training of these young children to be military commanders and Card deals with both the acculturation of these young leaders that enables it, and the adults who place all their faith – and the fate of all humanity – on a bunch of kids they have brutally trained in uber-Darwinian fashion.  Without giving too much away, Card’s biggest dilemma is not the actual fact of xenocide, but the fact that he has created a sympathetic character – a child yet – who is both responsible, but also a “victim”.  Sound familiar – a boy traumatized (by both the upcoming conflict and the adults who are training him) and convinced that this alien race is going to destroy humanity.  Thus, the total destruction of this race is justified. The parallels were/are disturbing – and they were really disturbing for Elaine Radford who asserts that Card is creating an apologia for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.  See Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman at http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html.  Radford is more than a bit extreme, but she has a very provocative perspective.

 

It would appear that Card is saying that IF your intentions were legitimate, then there is no moral dilemma.  And here is where I was most disturbed by Card.  In his series, two different children end up in position where they could kill another child (in one case, twice).  With the first child (the double killer), the intentions were titularly self defense and safety and the results are two dead children. However, it is abundantly unclear that death was the only solution -- and the perpetrator was never told he had killed someone.  In the second case, while clearly taking care of a real threat to his life, a child plots, plans, and executes a very involved plan that could, but does not end up in a killing.  In Card’s world, the first child, the real killer of children is as clean as the second child who did not kill because his intentions were morally correct.  I don’t buy it and neither does John Kessler, who has written a much more elegant discussion of what is fundamentally disturbing about Orson Scott Card’s morality here – see Creating the Innocent Killer at  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

 

Third, my search for info on Orson Scott Card found the two articles above, but also found an enormous amount of bad press about the guy.  Do an Internet search and you find any number of people who have bad things to say about Card, e.g.,

 

First, an accusation that he is a homophobe.  Catch this quote “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison.”  Now, to be fair, Card was raised as a Mormon and writes compassionately about the Catholic Church and neither of those institutions have been exactly soft on homosexual rights.

 

Second, he has accused Barack Obama of being an “elitist” and holding environmentalism as a religion because of comments Obama has made about the USA's disproportionate impact on the environment "We already know, from Obama's comments at a private meeting with big-pocket donors in San Francisco that he's an elitist who sneers at the common people who cling to religion and guns because they're bitter about job losses twenty years ago. But what this statement reveals is that Obama's real religion has nothing to do with Reverend Wright. Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism. Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us with a vital service; and it doesn't take any faith to believe in the findings of genuine scientists doing science properly.  No, I'm speaking of the religion. It's not an organized religion (though the U.N. did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of human-caused global warming…”

Now that’s kinda off-the-wall – particularly the comments about the UN – what’s next, ranting about “black helicopters”?

Third, he is more than occasionally swept away by his religious beliefs. While writing about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (and making at least a cogent argument for why it should not be seen as anti-Semitic), he shouts out this one, "Hollywood touts itself as courageous -- just like the rest of the PC Left -- whenever they stomp on Christians. It's part of the elitist war on Christianity that's clearly going on. Other people's ethnic heritage "folk beliefs"can be celebrated in school -- but Christian customs and beliefs can hardly be mentioned.” Sorry, Orson Scott Card, but you will have to do a lot more that quote Pat Buchanan to get me to believe there is any effective concerted effort to prosecute a “war” on Christianity in the United States. If anything, coming from someone who is not Christian but lives in a very conservative, Christian county, the battle is to get most people to understand that not everyone is Christian.

So, wrapping all this up….it would appear that Mr. Card is an inventive writer, a man of deep religious beliefs, a author committed to advancing the state-of-the-art of writing, and more than occasionally a writer of deeply conservative and reactionary screeds.  A complicated man.

So, it is a mixed bag for sure.  However, I do not believe I will be buying any more of Mr. Card’s books.

Polaris by Jack McDevitt

A friend recommended Jack McDevitt to me -- and it is truly a gift to be given a new author who turns out to be compatible.  I picked up Jack McDevitt's Polaris and was very pleasantly surprised by this well written mystery cum sci-fi novel.  Now, this is not great literature, but Polaris is an engaging story, well written, with a couple of very well-drawn and very interesting characters.  The mystery is better than fair and the sci-fi is quite well done -- and not over-done (by overdone I typically mean sci-fi with too many made up names with lots of strung together odd consonants and lots of strange alien creatures).

This mystery is narrated by our protagonist -- a savvy, smart woman with a great sense of irony and a very dry sense of humor.  McDevitt does a pretty good job of presenting a far human future (say 2,000 years from now) that is recognizable but enough different and with enough good ideas about what it might contain to keep the reader interested.  His main chararcter, Chase Kolpath, is interesting and intriguing and worth the sequel that this book pretty much guarantees would be a good idea.

I plan on reading more of McDevitt and I recommend him to you.

Short Takes (April 2008) Science Fiction

Escapist, junk reading is fun....most of the time.  I have found my public library's "What's New" (i.e., just published) section to be a great place to try out stuff just based on title.  I admit I usually do this with Science Fiction I am unwilling to take a flyer on and buy. This time however, the SciFi was almost a strikeout, but not quite.

Hunter's Run by George R.R. Martin, Gardiner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham plays through and combines some interesting concepts (most not original, but then, few ever are), but is amazingly less exciting than the the prestige of the three authors would lead you to believe.  The idea that the third world's (earth's that is) poor end up as labor on a new world is not new.  In fact, Richard K. Morgan does it a lot better, but it is not done badly here.  The idea that humans interact with other species is not new either and that concept has been done better elsewhere.  The idea that an alien race is hiding out from another alien race on a planet colonized by humans is an interesting twist.  The idea that the aliens hiding out are part of a collective consciousness, but able to act independently has also been done before (remember the Borg?).  The idea that the aliens clone the human who ignorantly runs into them and risks exposing them and then uses the clone to track down the original who escaped from them is pretty cool (as is the idea that the clone doesn't know who he is chasing for quite some time).  However, the aliens are not particularly well developed as a concept and come off more like Marvel Comics characters than anything else.  Moreover, the chase through the jungle has been done before as well.  The ending - if you persevere long enough to get there - has a pretty good twist.  Joe Bob would tell you to check it out (because it reads like a B drive-in movie).

Patrimony by Alan Dean Foster is a young adult scifi book billed as a "Pip and Flinx" adventure and reads just like you would expect.  Lots of places with weird names (lots of consonants and lots of x's and z's), lots of planets and species with weird names and off-putting appearances and personal hygiene (how many times should a species that smells bad but can not smell themselves be used as a plot device?). The tip off should have been the subtitle, " A Pip and Flinx Adventure" - Flinx is the genetically altered human in search of his father and Pip is the equally genetically manufactured flying venomous snake that communicates telepathically with Flinx.  And, oh yeah, they ought to be out saving the universe by finding an ancient, sentient weapons platform with which to fight off the coming scourge, but..... You get the point.....you have to be 14 and really in love with SciFi.

Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

Ok, let me get this out of the way quickly. I think Richard K. Morgan is one of the best and the brightest new science fiction writers around. His first book, Altered Carbon, has a review on the blog [Dan's Review] and remains one of my favorite and most re-read sci-fi books of all time and that includes Dune, John Varley's short stories [Dan's Review] and anything by William Gibson [Dan's Review] or Neal Stephenson [Dan's Review]. Morgan's latest offering, Thirteen, follows the pattern of all of his books in that it has a he takes a couple of not necessarily original ideas, in this case, a) humans genetically engineered to eliminate most of the "civilizing" traits that the rise of modern man has provided for us - giving rise to the ultimate soldier b) a Mars populated mostly by the high-altitude humans of the Andes and the banished genetically engineered humans who have (surprise, surprise) had a few problems fitting in and c) a United States that has been torn apart by its political differences into pieces parts -- with a west coast federation and an east cost political entity contending with a fundamentalist (i.e., Jesusland) center. What Morgan does is take those ideas and produce them as originally and creatively as you will ever see -- and then bakes them into the fabric of the novel. Those neat ideas do not drive the book - they provide context.

What drives the book (and what drives all his books) is a very interesting mystery/political thriller plot, great dialogue and terrific action. The other constant is Morgan's outlook on life -- it isn't cheery, or upbeat, or optimistic. It is dark, forbidding, and cold. Morgan writes sci-fi mystery noir. James Ellroy [Dan's Review] meets William Gibson.

In Thirteen, Carl Marsalis is one of the engineered, a "variant thirteen", enlisted (i.e., blackmailed - he can stay on earth as long as he helps out) to track down who has escaped exile on Mars and is currently engaged in an extensive killing spree of unconnected innocents on earth. Why, how, what are all up in the air as Marsalis pairs up with the private cops working for the folks who own the Mars concession. Morgan combines the sci-fi (which is basically a light touch here) with some good police procedurals (think Michael Connelly type stuff) and a lot of political intrigue to produce a very entertaining story.

Prejudice is a key theme. The very fact of genetically engineered humans has (in the history provided in the story) produced major conflicts across the planet including riots, wars, and political tyranny is an ever present issue. But Morgan really pushes this. Originally published in Britain as "Black Man", Morgan also does a very interesting job in discussing issues of gender (Marsalis's partner in this adventure is a woman) and race (Marsalis is black). The book seethes with overt and covert prejudice - including on the part of the "thirteens" with regard to us lesser beings. Morgan has once again taken very current trends - political, social, environmental and taken them out to a future that is very, very realistic and equally uncomfortable and unsettling.

While, as others have said, "the future t what it used to be", and while Morgan does specialize in noir sci-fi, he also always leaves just a sliver of an opening for redemption. That is surely true for his three Takeshi Kovacs novels (which I intend to review as a group, and which include "Altered Carbon") where the last good bit of humanity still - somehow - remains to shine through. It is true in Thirteen as well, but of course in the guise of one who is not quite all human.

Thirteen may be just a tad long (perhaps better editing would have helped), but that is a minor complaint compared to the overall -- this is a tough, gritty, interesting, and insightful piece of work that is hugely entertaining and challenging. Towards the end of the novel, there is a small, wonderful sub-story that is so incredibly good at challenging our conventional thinking - in this case about the nature and fear of death, that it is hard to believe it resides inside a book that also talks about genetic engineering and Mars colonies. But there it is -- and there is the wonder and joy of reading Richard K. Morgan.

If you have a chance, pick up everything Richard K. Morgan has written.

Wild Things by Charles Coleman Finlay

Full disclosure time. I have met the author, Charles Coleman Finlay, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him and had a delightful discussion with him. Overall, I really like his writing and wish him the best of success. That said, my first piece of unsolicited advice (and most likely worth exactly what he paid for said advice) is that he republish this terrific assortment (mostly) of short stories under a different title and with vastly different cover art.

You see, the cover art has a small boy chasing a slightly demonic looking leprechaun-like character through a forest. The title, "Wild Things", implies more fantasy than science-fiction - which is an immediate turn-off for us non-fantasy sci-fi types. Finlay's first novel, The Prodigal Troll, is much more in the fantasy vein, but his short stories run the fantasy/science fiction gamut and are quite, quite good.

In many ways, Finlay's writing reminds me of early John Varley....not only is the writing good, but the essential kernel of the idea is just simply intriguing and fascinating. In "Pervert", Finlay weaves a futuristic mystery story (with a fabulous mind-bending twist ending that I will not reveal) about a world where religious fanaticism has truly taken over. If the first lines, "There are two kinds of people in the world, homosexuals and hydrosexuals. And then there are perverts like me." don't hook you, then you just are not hookable. Pervert is most scary for what is not written, but what the writing has the reader conjure up having absorbed the prose.

If you had any doubts about where the critics of factory-farming see the world heading, try "A Game of Chicken". Finlay once again manages to produce tension, to introduce a vaguely disquieting disgust without ever becoming polemical or political. Well and quickly drawn characters, doing what comes naturally, do the work without ever seeming either threatening or preachy. Yet, as you hit the last line of this short gem, a small shiver - starting at the back or your neck - is produced.

Mix old Cold War with space travel, politics across planets and galaxies instead of countries and you get "The Political Officer", a taut military action thriller complete with nods to K-19 The Widowmaker and Red October. You can almost see Sean Connery and Harrison Ford in a few of the key parts. Finlay captures the Le Carre-esque inner workings of the security apparatus as well as the tension of military personnel preparing for battle. Well-written and believable....all the while being otherworldly at the same time. Very strong, very good. If it helps, this story has many of the elements that make the military descriptions in Scott Westerfeld's "Risen Empire" series so interesting, i.e., the ring of truth in the details of operation set is a wildly unfamiliar setting.

The only piece I really disliked was "We Come Not To Praise Washington" which is Finlay's attempt at alternative history. I don't know whether I didn't get it or the historical characters simply were so different than my understanding of them that I could not get into it or whether the concept didn't hold together. Whatever the reason, the story did not work for me. But it was really the only one in the whole collection that didn't work for me. That is outstanding in my experience for a short story collection.

Finlay does do fantasy....and while I typically have a minor allergic reaction (remember, I am the guy who would rather reread Dune 3 times than reread the Tolkien trilogy once), I rather liked "After the Gaud Chrysalis". In a short piece, achieving that rare situation where you convincingly create a whole different world (like Herbert, Varley, and Tolkien can do) is very tough to do and Finlay does much more than a journeyman's job in drawing you into this odd and different civilization. My biggest problem with most fantasy writing is not that the world being created is different, but that many authors cheap out and let "magic" explain the hard parts. For me much of that ends up being simply not credible. "After the Gaud Chrysalis" avoids that problem for the most part and it is the unfamiliar but credible that draws you in. I rather liked this one much better than the title story, "Wild Thing", but that is more to my taste than to Finlay's skill.

Finlay is an exciting new sci-fi writer. Mostly in the style of Varley, where really weird, fascinating, and thoroughly unique ideas are coupled with quickly drawn interesting characters in a convincing but only mildly familiar context, Finlay has great potential.

I hope he keeps writing short stories.

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Philip K. Dick provides very dark, paranoid, and occasionally depressing tales of humankind after the apocalypse or after the escape from Earth. These are intricately woven, well written, and more often than not gut-wrenching stories of a future that is not all that it has been cracked up to be.

Philip K. Dick is also the relatively unknown, but prolific author of the stories that have been made into fabulous blockbuster movies. The cult film “Blade Runner” came from Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The Arnold Schwartzenegger hit “Total Recall” was born from Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and Tom Cruise’s latest Minority Report came from the Dick story of the same name.

From social satire and keen interpersonal observations to gothic fantasy to post-Apocalypse futurism, Dick is the sci-fi author best suited to be rediscovered if you have not already done so. Philip K. Dick will remind you at times of Robert Heinlein, other times like William Gibson. After reading a few of the short stories, those other guys will begin to remind you of Philip K. Dick. Joe Bob says, “Give it a whirl.”

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

William Gibson has a view of the future that is all-absorbing, interesting, and very, very, real. It is also very, very strange at times, but always fascinating. Gibson has a terrific ability (very much like John Varley) to bring you into his world with little disruption or discomfort until you realize exactly is going on – then you get really uncomfortable.

This is true again in Pattern Recognition. Like all of Gibson’s previous novels (notably Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Idoru, and Virtual Light), this novel provides a picture of our future society – how it is influenced, modified because of, and manipulated by information technology. In this novel, Gibson drops into the world of commerce, notably marketing.

To set the stage: someone is creating and uploading to the internet a series of intriguing, troubling, and captivating video clips. Word of mouth is creating a world-wide buzz, a following that is growing exponentially – cross-border, cross-culture. Our protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is a product of the times – a graphic design expert who happens also to be “brandphobic” – she can’t stand brands and brand imagery to be a part of her life.

One of her clients is a world-wide marketing/advertising agency and during a routine assignment, she is asked to look into and find the source of these video clips – for “buzz” is the absolute be all and end all of marketing success in this advanced information age. Add to the mix the fact that Cayce’s father was a cold-war security guru – gone missing and presumed dead in the September 11 attack.

From London to New York to Tokyo to and eco-disaster in Russia, Cayce pursues the trail with a thought process and methods only Gibson could create….the use of information, the manipulation of data, the power of data all combined in a modern world of marketing, globalization, and terror networks.

From my perspective, Gibson provides a biting and incisive commentary on modern marketing thinking and the influence marketing and branding are having on our economy, our thinking, and our world.

If you have read Gibson before, you will not be disappointed. If you have not yet read anything by him, this is a good place to start. A number of other Gibsons that I have read and enjoyed are displayed below.

Roma Eterna - Robert Silverberg

Silverberg is another of the dean’s of science fiction – though typically not one of my favorites. In Roma Eterna, however, he brings to life one of the most interesting visions of alternative history I have read in a long while. Basic premise: The Roman Empire never falls. Rome is founded in 753 B.C.E. and is still running in 2000 C.E. (today). Christianity never really gets off the ground; Mohammad is murdered by a Roman who recognizes the danger of the zeal of this young man from Medina. The Jews remain a very small and very strange religious sect.

What Rome does do is to continue to rule, expand, fight for territory and fight each other. Silverberg does a masterful job of creating the east/west split and the subsequent re-conquest of the east by the west. The Romans attempt to colonize the New World and eventually succeed after numerous failures. They invade and conquer India and Asia along with the European continent, and the Middle East. If you like to think about what might have been and enjoy a master story-teller doing what he does best, try this one.

John Varley (2004)

Red Thunder by John Varley

Why not start with the best? If you enjoy the type of science fiction best practiced by the late Robert Heinlein (with only a portion of the political overtones) you will adore Red Thunder. Basic thesis: the United States has lost the race to Mars to the Chinese. A group of teenagers almost runs over a drunk one night while 4 wheeling about. Turns out the drunk is an ex-NASA pilot living in really rural Florida with his savant of a Cajun cousin, who just happens to invent the most powerful energy source ever known to man. Kids help the Captain sober up. Captain helps the kids grow up. Two teenage couples, the Captain, the cousin and a host of other oddballs, misfits, and miscreants get the idea to beat the Chinese to the Red Planet. They do, and in the process they, and the world, are changed forever.

This is pretty good science, pretty good pop psychology, pretty good characters, and just a whale of a good time. Love, challenge, family, and the good ole US of A where being determined and smart means you can accomplish anything. Yes, it is camp and it is clichéd. It is also terrific. The sequel, Red Lightning, is not quite as good as Red Thunder, but still terrific.

Collected Short Stories by John Varley.

The only reason I had the chance to write the recommendation for Red Thunder is that I happened upon John Varley’s short stories many years ago. Published in a variety of books, many of my favorites appear in collections titled The Barbie Murders, and The Persistence of Vision. What makes Varley’s short fiction terrific is the uniqueness of his ideas and the absolute normality he brings to them. In the story Bagatelle, a human being has been cyborged into a 50 kiloton nuclear bomb, deposited on the Moon colony’s busiest intersection, and begins announcing the time of his detonation. A vacationing Earth negotiator just happens to be on vacation three levels up. In The Barbie Murders, the same police chief that appears in Bagatelle has to deal with a murder of a member of The Temple of the Standardized Church by another member. The whole mess is captured on camera. The wee complication is that all 10,000 plus members of The Standardized Church are completely identical….every single physical feature has been “standardized” through medico technology (hence the nickname “Barbies”) and they share all experiences through the practice of group assemblies. It turns out to be an interesting investigation.

In many of his stories, the backdrop for society is the fact that earth has been taken over by the “Invaders”, beings who believe that cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are a higher form of intelligence than Homo Sapiens. The Invaders are unseen, but clearly felt. Human technology ceases to work, agriculture fails, and all the humans that do not escape earth (or are already colonizing the Moon and Mars) starve to death within 5 years. All the planets, their moons, and their rings become the humanity’s new home – but there is no going back to the green hills of Earth.

Other ideas that permeate Varley’s stories include the concept of the Symb. The Symb (the symbiotic space environment organism) is a plant based entity that bonds with a human to create a closed system capable of sustaining both lives in the harsh but beautiful environment of Saturn’s rings. Sounds neat, but the wrinkle is that you not only have to share your entire body, but you have to share your brain as well and with an entity that some consider sentient. Also, Varley’s characters change sex with the same ease that we change hats…one day a man, one day a woman. This tends to create some interesting relationships among best friends and parents – or should I say parent, as in Varley’s world, its one person, one child and the family unit is biological mother and child. No one knows (or much cares) who the father is – fatherhood is a concept with legal and biological meaning or standing.

If you want an uninhibited view of what human society might look like, try John Varley’s short stories. You will not be disappointed.

Neal Stephenson Retrospective

Yes, I am a serially addicted reader. Series or authors. Find one, like it or him or her, and buy them all and read them all. Sometimes this leads to disaster and ruin (as in Nelson DeMille, a one trick pony with The General’s Daughter and nothing else I have touched seems worth the time), but often it leads to hours of wonder and amazement as in John Varley’s short stories, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser mysteries, and anything by Elmore Leonard, Annie Proulx, Robert Heinlein, John D. MacDonald, Dick Francis, Larry McMurtry and a whole host of others.

Let me introduce to the previously unfamiliar one Neal Stephenson, a young author of prodigious output as well as astoundingly good writing and research. He has an enormous range of interest and talent and is putting together some really neat stuff. He’s kind of a cross between William Gibson (for the focus on the impact of information technology and media on society) and Colleen McCullough (for the weaving of interesting stories into historical perspective with accuracy on the history). Stephenson has proved himself a serious researcher, a developer of interesting plot lines, very interesting character development, and a wide range of historical contexts. Like William Gibson and John Varley, Stephenson has really interesting, intriguing and unusually ideas – a very, very different view of the world. Let’s start.

The first novel, Zodiac takes place in present-day Boston, where the protagonist, Sangamon Taylor is in the middle of a terrific career as a professional pain in the ass to major corporations polluting the environment. Taylor’s organization, not unlike Greenpeace, searches for targets of environmental wrong-doing and then exposes it to the public. Non-violent (mostly), but hugely embarrassing. Taylor is the master of disaster and Zodiac leads the reader on a very engrossing who-done-it-and-why. The problem, someone – trying to cover up the dumping of PCBs into Boston Harbor, has unleashed the supposed anti-dote. The only problem is the discovery that the solution, while enormously effective at eliminating PCBs, also threatens to wipe out most, if not all, ocean life. It is technology merged with politics and social commentary, and it’s a good action novel as well – as well as a throwback (or is it throw-forward??) to the social activist genre. Zodiac is fun and not-so-heavy.

Snow Crash is really a weird combination (as if Zodiac wasn’t). Now Stephenson really does begin to look at the information age…..and it is not pretty. Set in the future where the US government is just one of many power structures owning land and claiming citizens (and so are the Mafia, the Nipponese, the Crips, New South Africans, among many others). Not lacking for tongue-in-cheek, the hero/protagonist is named, well, yes, Hiro Protagonist. Pizza delivery boy by day (for CosaNostra Pizza – a company with a highly defined set of company by-laws) and king of the “Metaverse” at night, Hiro is an ace hacker who gets wired into chasing down the source of a virtually, figuratively, and literally deadly virus. At the heart of the villainy is one L. Bob Rife, multi-billionaire televangelist.

The story is interesting, the action pretty good, there are good guys and bad guys and a love interest, but the most fascinating thing about this book is the ideas. Idea: America has become fractionated into mini-states of influence that act like embassies of safety – if you belong. Idea: the Mafia is a power player with “franchises” set up all over the country…like some big corporation complete with recruiting on high school and college campuses. Idea: the US government has given up on some polluted areas – they become “Sacrifice Zones” – where the National Parks Service has determined that the clean-up cost of the particular parcel of land exceeds its total future economic value. Idea: that the way that ancient Sumerian priests were able to communicate with and control populations could be coded into modern information technology – in other words, there was (and is) a merging of the virtual and the actual virus and it can be used against specific targets – named Snow Crash.

Snow Crash gives an inkling of things to come….many of the ideas that Stephenson develops in later books see their start in this book. This is another fun, rollicking read…with a bit more content and the beginnings of some fairly involved ideas.

Next in line is The Diamond Age. Here, Stephenson really develops a couple of ideas first surfaced in Snow Crash. First, in this 21st century, society has clearly evolved beyond nation states into a combination of states sects or cults (common cultures or “claves”) driven by either ideology or economics (or both) but all managed collectively by the “Common Economic Protocol”. Second, his thoughts around the role of information technology – and its impact on and integration with people are much more highly developed.

John Percival Hackworth is an artificial intelligence engineer living in Atlantis/Shanghai, Atlantis being the common terminology for the neo-Victorian clave. He is given the task of using state-of-the art nano-technology to create “A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” for the daughter of Atlantis/Shanghai’s chief executive. Now this book – as we come to find – is designed to help a young lady being raised in rigid (can you say stultifying) Victorian mode to learn to think for herself. Hackworth steals a copy for his own daughter, but loses it in a mugging (outside the enclave, of course) and the book falls into the hands of a young street girl, Nell – and it is no surprise that it changes her entire outlook and trajectory. Now this is Science Fiction, so you know that the fate of all humanity hinges on Nell and what and how she reacts to the challenges that face her.

There are other great characters in the book and Stephenson does a terrific job giving them life – Judge Fang, the Confucian judge for the district of Shanghai, who has a soft spot for children, but is by-the-book on law-breakers, or Miranda, the “ractor” (reactive actor) hired to participate in the functioning of the “Lady’s Illustrated Primer”, who becomes as much a mother to Nell as she ever (or will ever) have. Then there is Dr. X, the mysterious underworld figure living in the “Celestial Kingdom” and whose motives are always unclear.

Stephenson brings all of this together – social community and inequity, nanotechnology, the impact of information, masses of people in South East Asia to a major conflagration all surrounding Nell and Hackworth and Dr. X.

I must say that The Diamond Age also begins to show one of Stephenson’s flaws -- and that is the ending is not as strong as the beginning and middle. Not terrible, but a bit confusing and confused…. like he ran out of just a bit of steam and couldn’t wrap it all up quite as well as he was able to introduce it. In any case, he continues to be creative with his ideas - you may or may not love how information is transferred surreptitiously across borders – but you will appreciate the concept. Perhaps a re-reading of the ending helps. Overall, though, a fascinating set of ideas, good character development, lots of mystery and action. Very different from Snow Crash and Zodiac and just as good.

All of Neal Stephenson’s previous work is just a warm-up for Cryptonomicon, a giant of a novel (literally, at 918 pages, and figuratively) and a truly great read. Here Stephenson really bites off a challenge: using past and present/future, using two (if not really 2½) plot lines, Stephenson weaves a story of war and intrigue, of information technology and spies, of World-War-II and the World-Wide-Web.

Perhaps the best writing Stephenson has ever produced is found in his WWII adventures of Marine Bobby Shaftoe and his eventually joining up with Captain Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse whose Detachment 2702 is involved in amazing adventure of deception and cryptography (remember the Allied breaking of the famed German Enigma code). Stephenson’s battle descriptions and his ability to get into the mind of the “grunt” on the ground are simply terrific. The battle of the Pacific has rarely been so vivid and visceral, so horrible and so real. Shaftoe is a true character in every sense of the word – he is developed well by Stephenson and endowed with an uncanny ability to survive the worst moments of battle – all while maintaining a fabulous sense of humor and total self-awareness. Stephenson’s descriptions of the initial Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and the battles for the then unknown islands in the Pacific rank up there with the best war writing I remember. For this alone, the book is worth the time and effort.

Lawrence Waterhouse is a bit more of a stereotype – Princeton grad school (along with his classmates Alan Turing (real) and Rudolf “Rudy” von Hacklheber (invented), he gets wound into the increasingly deadly game of spying and deception surrounding the Enigma code. From the names, you can guess that the classmates end up on slightly different sides of the war. There is both humor and horror, insights into the history; and some fantastical invention (just wait until you visit Qwhlgm).

Now, start at the other side of the story. Lawrence Waterhouse’s grandson (yes, a romance – you will love it!!) is Randy Waterhouse – a hacker and dot.bomb graduate who is embarking on one of a series of start-up companies. This one aims at creating a “data-haven” in some Southeast Asian sultanate – a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged far away from the pesky, prying eyes of governments. As in all of these new age startups, competition is fierce and money scarce. Randy joins forces with Bobby Shaftoe’s granddaughter (Amy) to salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that may hold either enough treasure or enough data to finance the whole venture. Are you beginning to see some of the possibilities here? Grandfathers Bobby and Lawrence are in the Pacific during WWII dodging the Japanese and waging crypto-war against the Germans. Grandchildren Randy and Amy are trying to fend off Filipino entrepreneurs and found a company with a location that allows data to escape government scrutiny. The linkage to the mysterious doings of detachment 2702 and the Japanese occupation of the Philippines is really well architected.

Stephenson manages to keep both plot lines cooking – good dialogue, good characters (lots of them, too) and insight worth noting. Stephenson really understands data encryption and cryptography and can explain it and make it interesting. He also proves he can write war stories as well. On top of all of that, Stephenson has a deep interest in how markets work, how commerce proceeds – something that started in Snow Crash, evolved in The Diamond Age, is really given its head in Cryptonomicon.

This really is a fabulous book. Better than his early novels….really worth the time. This guy is really an original thinker and its just plain good fun, too.

Jump-shift next to Quicksilver: Volume One of the Baroque Cycle. This is a truly ambitious undertaking….to my eye and to my taste perhaps a bit more ambitious than it should have (or could have) been. The novel’s overreaching made it longer than it needed to be (unfortunately, a few places where interest flagged) and just not as sharp as earlier work. That said, it’s a HUGE ambition at work here and falling a bit short makes Quicksilver very good, just not great.

Again, Stephenson’s scholarship and research is superior and telling – this is a romp through history – placed in the late 17th and early 18th century English and American Colonies and peppered with cameo (and sometimes enduring) appearances by the notables in science and politics of the day. You will meet Isaac Newton (as the neurotic student), Gottfried Leibniz (as the maligned co-inventor of the calculus), Ben Franklin, Spinoza, William of Orange, Jan Sobieski, Samuel Pepys, Robert Hooke (famous for using the microscope), and John Churchill (yes, Winston’s ancestor). You will romp from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to London, to the Siege of Vienna and through the myriad of German principalities as well as Paris and North Africa. You will experience science, e.g., the invention of calculus, the practice of alchemy, the use of cryptography, the advances and debates in astronomy, just to name a few. You will live through how the state-of-the-art of medicine dealt, more than a bit inadequately, with plague, syphilis, and smallpox. You will get to see how commerce drove the world as it either created or benefited from such enduring institutions as the birth and development of the multinational corporation, slavery, warfare, and the coffee trade.

This is a march through the science, technology, and human conditions of the time period. To get you there, Stephenson has developed a 3-in-1 novel, three relatively intricate plot lines woven together.

Plot one finds Enoch Root seeking out Daniel Waterhouse (yes, same family names that appear in Cryptonomicon) to help resolve the fight between Newton and Leibniz over the origins (and future) of calculus. In his trip back to London from Boston, Daniel recounts his 50 year journey from Cambridge (as Newton’s roommate), through the English religious upheaval of the mid-1600’s, the politics of the destruction and restoration of the English monarchy, and the progress of the Royal Society. Daniel is the son of a Puritan burned at the stake, struggling for recognition and success, who ends up hob-nobbing with the best and the brightest in England.

Plot two introduces Jack Shaftoe (yep, another family name from Cryptonomicon) and Eliza. Jack is the “King of the Vagabonds) who just happens (neat story there) to rescue Eliza from a Turkish harem during the siege of Vienna. Eliza’s brains and her sex appeal (as well as her lust for power, fame, and money) combined with Jack’s sheer chutzpah result in a voyage through most of Europe, bumping into and getting entangled with the noble and near noble….not the least of which is William of Orange.

Plot three is really the weaving together of plots one and two.

Epic is the word here – great sweep, great issues, great people (mostly, but not exclusively, great men). Epic too, is the size of the book. At 900 pages plus, this is not a great airplane book. In fact, it was hard enough to hold up while reading in bed. I think the book could have benefited from more rigorous editing….the prose wanders at times and loses its sharp edge in other instances. Occasionally, Stephenson tries too hard – his characters are almost unbelievable in what they experience and how much (a kind of historical Forrest Gumping, if you will). Also, the novel starts slowly - it really helps if you are a history buff. Finally, Stephenson repeats the difficulty seen in earlier work in bringing us to the conclusion. In addition to the effect of being Volume One of a trilogy, there is no real satisfaction in the ending – a true disappointment after 900 pages.

The brilliance that Stephenson brings – helping the reader be there, so to speak, mostly succeeds in overshadowing the novel’s weaknesses. However, there are a number of weaknesses to this tome – you will really need to be in shape for this one….more than just a bit of endurance is required. However, I have ordered Volume Two….it is probably worth it.

The Risen Empire (Book One of Succession) - Scott Westerfeld

For years, unless you liked true fantasy novels, the only science fiction writers capable of creating a “space opera” – a whole new world and world view – and capable of sustaining it seemed to be Frank Herbert (Dune, et. al.) and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, et. al.) Many others have tried, many others have been moderately successful, but few if any have really broken through. Scott Westerfeld has made a first and valiant attempt with The Risen Empire. Set so far into the future as to render timing irrelevant, Westerfeld creates a universe both foreign and familiar and ties in a unique love story at the same time.

The Empire consists of eighty human worlds tied together and ruled for 1,600 years by the Emperor. The Emperor has the secret of eternal life at his disposal and has created an elite caste, known as the Risen. His grasp on power is complete and unassailable within the Eighty Worlds. However, the Empire has competitors, chief among them The Rix. The Rix are machine augmented humans (women, by the way) whose existence is dedicated to creating Compound Minds – artificial intelligences of enormous proportions, formed by taking over all of the computer, data, and communications infrastructure of a planet. Aimed against the prolonged rule of the Emperor, the Rix seek to “free” planets from the one-man control so long possessed.

In Book One, the Rix take the Child Empress (the Emperor’s sister, Risen as a child) hostage on a planet tens of light-years from the home world. Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate Lynx is serendipitously fortunate (or horribly unlucky) to be the closest military assets to the incursion. Lai is romantically linked to leader of the most effective (and peculiar) opposition party to the Emperor’s Loyalty Party. Senator Nora Oxham is the leader of the Secularist Party. The Secularist Party believes that the Eighty Worlds are losing their edge to other empires because the Risen have lost their ability to challenge their own conventional wisdom. In other words, they are for Death and oppose eternal life. As the war with the Rix heats up, the Senator is asked to join the Emperor’s War Council to conduct the process of the war. With her lover at the forefront and her Party’s influence at stake, the politics of empire and the politics of love and commitment are played out on a stage of massive proportions.

In terms of depth and complexity, The Risen Empire is not a challenger to Dune nor to The Lord of the Rings. Occasionally, the story is slow and the detail a bit overdone. Character development is just OK (bordering on good, but clearly not great). There isn’t enough development of the Emperor as a character or as a concept. There are flickers of brilliance in the character development of both of the main characters, but flickers only. The love story is interesting because of the (pardon the pun) relative positions of the individuals, but not because Westerfeld builds any passion between them – they are lovers, but I can’t figure out why. Westerfeld has done a strong job of inventing believable, but clearly futuristic technology and weaves it very naturally into the story line.

The Risen Empire is, however, a very interesting story and I look forward to seeing more from Mr. Westerfeld.

Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan

Put down what you are reading and buy this book. Science fiction meets pulp fiction. John Varley meets Dashiell Hammett. Hemingway meets Herbert. 3CPO played by Philip Marlow. James Ellroy must have loved this book. This is a great, interesting, fascinating read and a good mystery on top of everything else.

A person’s essence – their personality, their thoughts, memories, their experiences, their education – everything about a person, can be inserted into a “sleeve”…a sleeve being either a cloned version of the original, another human body, or an artificial body…matters not. Moreover, technology can broadcast this essence, but not the sleeve, at faster than light speed. Sending ships of “sleeves” to new worlds, then “needlecasting” the personalities once the trip is over, has been the method of colonizing for better than 400 years.

In the twenty-fifth century, if you are rich enough, you can live forever. Everyone is implanted with a cortical stack. When you body wears out, clone a new one, insert the contents of your stack into the new body, and repeat as many times as your money holds out.

In the twenty-fifth century, there are no prisons. Punishment means your stack gets removed from your body. If your family can afford it, your stack can be inserted into some not so terrible virtual reality for the duration of your sentence and your body housed and protected from use by others. If you can’t afford it, your stack goes into the same cold storage as your body – time stands still for your brain and your body can be bought for use by anyone with the cash. If your sentence is up and your body has been sold, they give you whatever is available at the time of your release (this leads to some interesting social commentary – as in when a man comes to the release area looking for his young African-American wife and children, only to see their shock when they realize their Dad is now housed in the body of a fat, middle-aged white guy).

Harlan’s World was colonized by the Eastern European laborers sent by the Japanese keiritsu that bought it. Takeshi Lev Kovacs grew up in the tough gangs of Harlan’s world and escaped by joining the Envoy Corps…the neuro-mechanically enhanced military elite used in keeping the peace. After leaving the Corps, Kovacs, like many other Envoy Corps graduates, has turned to a life of crime, been caught, convicted, and put on ice.

Kovacs wakes up on Earth one day in an unfamiliar sleeve, having been freighted (needlecast) to the planet from his native Harlan’s World, for a six-week contract in the employ of one Laurens J. Bancroft. Bancroft is a “meth” (short for Methuselah – over 300 years old) and one of the richest men on earth. He also killed himself a few days ago, burned his head off along with his cortical stack, so the last two days are lost to him. Bancroft has hired Kovacs to find out what happened as the police have ruled it a suicide and Bancroft doesn’t believe it.

We are off to the races on a great ride. Morgan has his future technology down cold…interesting, intriguing and NOT distracting. Artificial Intelligences are real – and own things like the hotel Kovacs at which Kovacs takes up residence. Human bodies can be enhanced and augmented, the chemistry altered to juice reflexes or secrete pheromones, and bones can be reinforced with metals, memories implanted.

The basic human condition is explored – from Kovac’s brutal childhood on Harlan’s World, to the current state of life in Bay City, Earth (aka San Francisco). The mystery unfolds well, it is a not so simple problem all wrapped up in what happens to humans and their psyche’s when they live 300 years plus.

Oh, boy, this is really good. Get it, read it, and hope Morgan continues this as a series.