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Golden Oecumene Trilogy
I’d been hearing good things about this John C Wright fellow for a sometime and finally got around to reading something by him. When I start reading a new author I like to read their first work. Now, this isn’t always a good idea. First (published*) novels can be a little rough and will often seem even to the writer–years and many books later–amateurish at best. Anyways, I tracked The Golden Age (2002), part I of the series, and….
Manalive! This is a good book! Like Frank Herbert’s Dune, it dumps you right in to an alien future that you, the reader, don’t understand. It takes a while to get one’s bearings but the story pulls you along as you gather clues trying to make sense of this strange future Wright has crafted. Tho’ I just compared it to Dune it has little in coming with that book. It is really its own thing. When I was done reading I turned back to the beginning and re-read the first few chapters scanning and finding clues I’d missed.
Quick as I could read the next two parts: The Phoenix Exultant, & The Golden Transcendence. Both very good as well, but didn’t knock me out the way the opener did. Not, I believe, from a drop in quality of writing, plot, &c., which remained high, but just because this world was a more familiar place.
Well, what to say…
I am very reluctant to really say anything about the details of the story because from beginning to end it fits together like an intricate puzzle & I don’t want to ruin it for any new readers. I will say that this is a high quality piece of speculative fiction that combines well crafted prose with an exciting, action filled plot. Not to mention intelligent moral & philosophical discussions, that in another’s hands would probably be dull but fit into the tale seamlessly.
A great trilogy & one I think people will read and re-read for years to come.
This was a rather gushing review so I’ll say one negative thing: I didn’t like the “voice” of the female lead in some spots. It sounded too normal–which won’t make sense ’til one reads this book. So there, take that Mr. Wright. It wasn’t perfect…
*I understand that some writers pen a few “practice” novels before they ever try to get something published.
Just a poem I like
Divers doth use (as I have heard and know),
When that to change their ladies do begin,
To moan and wail and never for to lynn,
Hoping thereby to pease their painful woe.
And some there be that when it chanceth so
That women change, and hate where love hath been,
They call them false and think with words to win
The hearts of them that otherwise doth go.
But as for me, though that by chance indeed
Change hath outworn the favour that I had,
I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed:
But let it pass, and think it is of kind
That often change doth please a women’s mind.
–Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)
note: lynn means stop
Just a little Gene Wolfe trivia
The second book of Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series, The Claw of the Conciliator, opens–like the others–with a bit of verse:
But strength still goes out from your thorns, and from your abysses the sound of music. Your shadow lies on my heart like roses and your nights are like strong wine
He reveals in his “book about the book[s]” The Castle of the Otter the the source of the lines as the poetess Gertrude (sic)* von Le Fort of whom he knew “next to nothing”. Curious about this & guessing (correctly as it turned out) that the lines were a translation, I did a bit of poking around, i.e., internet searches.
Alas, all I found was references to the above information not any link to the original, but thanks to a few lucky guesses & those things called search engines I found it. So hopefully some other schmo can have a quicker time of it.
Here it is:
Aber es geht noch Kraft aus von deiner Dornen und aus deinen Abgruenden toent Gesang. Deine Schatten liegen auf meinem Herzen wie Rosen, und deine Naechte sind wie starker Wein…
–from Hymnen an die Kirche, 1924
*should be Gertrud without the terminal “e”.
Review: A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe has a reputation as a difficult writer. This is, in my experienced somewhat deserved. In the past I found his writing dense & allusive–in the T.S Eliot vein of literary modernism. This is not a bad thing in the hands of a gifted writer & luckily Wolfe is such a writer.
Often I only started a Gene Wolfe novel after a certain amount of mental girding-of-the-loins. Why? Wolfe usually writes first person narratives where not only is the “person” unreliable but sometimes not at all the person he seems to be. Many fans of this author relish the challenge of pulling apart the puzzle to discover what is really going on, which can take multiple readings.
Anyways, on to the book at hand: A Borrowed Man. While I haven’t read every work by the author, I do know that Wolfe has tried to get away from being thought to have a “difficult” style and in this book at least he certainly succeeded. Compared with a work from a few decades ago (Shadow of the Torturer, e.g.) with which I’m most familiar, this book is comes across as practically breezy. I was almost a little disappointed. Thoughts ran through my mind along the lines of “Wolfe has really mellowed in his dotage!” That was before he began to yank a series of figurative carpets out from under my figurative feet.
But what’s this book about? Without ruining any surprises, it’s about a man who is the cloned twin a long deceased mystery author implanted with the memories (perhaps accurate ones) of that man. He is allowed to exist only to serve as a library resource & as such may be “checked out”; with the explicit threat that if he is not periodically “perused” he will be summarily executed. He has no rights, human or otherwise, that are recognized–he is property & not all that valuable. This bit of chattel is checked out by an heiress who is convinced he, by virtue of his implanted memories, is possessed of important information that unlock the secrets of her late father.
As an aside, I’ll say that Wolfe’s protagonist doesn’t spend time on (or bemoan) the ethics of his society that permit him to be regarded as not really human. It’s just something he has to deal with. He has no ambitions to change the world, just to not be put in the garbage incinerator.
Well, our hero discovers nothing is as it seems & embarks on a quest to solve the mystery & safe guard his continued existence. In all I came to really like this book despite being initially taken a bit aback by its style. Very much worth a read for scifi fans & I hear a sequel is in the works….
Rereading IV: The Luck of Relian Kru
So…
What’s your opinion of literary homage?
Actually I kind of like it as long as it’s well done and this 1987 book by Paula Volsky is right on the money. The object of her homage is one Jack Vance, who was a prolific writer of wonderfully strange books.
The first time I read it I had no idea who Vance was so the stylistic references went over my head. But several years and several Jack Vance novels later the influence is unmistakeable.
But this book stands on its own as a fun fantasy novel, so one needn’t have read or care about Jack Vance’s works to get something out of it. And, in one regard, at least, I think she (Volsky) surpasses the old master…In the creation of a character I actually LIKE.
Now, let it be stipulated that I read & enjoy Jack Vance’s work. I certainly haven’t read everything by him but I have read a fair bit (around 10 books), so I think I have a grasp of his work & style. I enjoy his stuff. Its weird & intricate, chocked full of that “sense of wonder”, but also I have always found it a little cold. In one sense this can be an advantage in a sf/fantasy work, as it helps foster a sense of alien-ness & disconnect, but that same thing prevents the reader–or THIS reader–from really liking the characters. I remember the characters from his books, but I possess no lingering affection for them. In Vosky’s homage, however, she manages to create a likable character in the titular Relian Kru.
Tho’ on the whole I really liked & like now this book there is one aspect of it that drove me to distraction & that’s the apparent allergy of the author to the word “said”. Volsky goes to almost absurd lengths to avoid using it. Seeing as how this book is meant to hearken to Jack Vance’s style I thought maybe he did that too & I just didn’t notice. So I did a bit of checking in the vast stacks of the middleclassnobody personal library. In Ms Volsky’s defense Vance does seem to (at least in the works I possess) be a chary in his use of the word but not to the extremes that Volsky goes to. After a while all the demandeds, inquireds, commandeds, argueds, coaxeds, & so on, begin to grate. I don’t need to be told when something is a demand, an inquiry, a command, an argumentative or coaxing statement. I usually can figure out such things on my lonesome, but our author in her zealous avoidance of “said” inflicts all that & more on the reader. This is more of a pet peeve of mine own rather than a fatal problem & I suspect that a less persnickety reader will pass over such things without being bothered.
I don’t want to spill to much of the plot, as everything hangs thereon, but I will say that it follows a young man of almost proverbial bad luck who travels to search for a cure of said affliction–constant bad luck that is. He finds a chance for a “cure” when he is employed, or rather, kidnapped & pressed in to service/bondage to a sorcerer.
The bad guys are amusingly arrogant, there’s a love interest & the story chugs right along. Except for a few little quibbles I found it a lot of fun.
Maybe the most important lines in the Lord of the Rings.
Probably too much in has been written about LOTR at this point but I thought I’d waste some pixels.
I had the occasion to read the whole trilogy aloud (after having read it several times “in my head”) & to confess found myself choked up by a bit of dialog that I’d passed over without noticing who knows how many times.
These are the lines (spoken by Legolas to Gimli)* in question:
‘Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and to lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream.’
I think to a lot of people** LOTR is a simplistic tale of good versus evil. But this isn’t only wrong it misses the point. The point being…
Everything you love about this world can & will pass away.
This is pretty bleak stuff. Tolkien as a veteran of WWI was someone who lived through the “ending of an Age”. He really saw a whole world–the pre WWI world–vanish.
*Chap 8 Farewell to Lorien, Fellowship of the Ring
**I’ve actually read such critiques & the malefactors shall remain nameless.
Rereading III: Gateway
So, I reread Gateway (1977) by Frederick Pohl (1919-2013) recently, which is the opening book of the “Heechee Saga”. I haven’t read all of them but I own this one & decided to pick it up again.
Well, I liked it the first time I read it (which was earlier age-wise & content-wise than I should of) & I still like it.
The book is structured around a series of pschoanalysis sessions of the main character, Robinette Broadhead, who despite the feminine name is a man. This book might be the only (openly) Freudian* SF novel. Which is kind of strange when you think how massively influential Freud was on 20th C. Western literature.
Just a sign of what a literary “ghetto” science fiction can be. Not that a bit of isolation from intellectual fads** is a bad thing, mind you.
Anyways, the main character has what are called nowadays “issues”, but then he is in therapy. He is rich & successful but has a lot of guilt regarding his own actions as well as the usual childhood hangups, which are the staple of psychoanalytic influenced fiction. The book consists of therapy sessions with his therapist–an artificial intelligence the main character dubs Sigfrid von Shrink (this is a scifi novel after all!)–along with reminiscences provoked by these sessions. There are also pages from letters, news reports, etc., inter cut in the text, a bit in the style that John dos Passos** pioneered.
Without spilling too many figurative beans, the “Heechee” are mysterious (& mysteriously absent) ancient aliens who left all sorts of goodies lying around the solar system–including functioning FTL spacecraft. Functioning , but just barely understood by their new human operators. The plot of the book is center around the nearly random missions undertaken by human adventurers trying to discover lost alien treasures & not die horribly in the process-which many do.
Anyways, the book is a good combination of traditional scifi adventure with close examination of the psyche of the main character & stands up very well to the passage of time.
*Maybe I shouldn’t call it “Freudian” as maybe a professional wouldn’t detect actual Freudian style analysis–as opposed to other later & less well known methodologies to non-cognoscenti (e.g., me)– in the book…but close enough…
**Okay, Freudianism was more than a fad, granted.
Reading a book to say that you’ve read it…
Finally finished reading an oldish book by Frenchman named Julien Benda. It’s called Treason of the Intellectuals; La Trahison des clercs (1928) in the original French. It’s not an easy book to categorize–I guess I’d call it a “history of ideas” sort of book. Benda’s thesis is that the “clercs”, i.e., intellectuals (including some literal clerics), starting in the 19th century, have entered into the political realm, focusing on the worldly rather than the transcendent. And this has been a Bad Thing… Well I’m inclined to agree, but as is usually the case, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, yes, the transcendant is more important than the quotidian, but since were all creatures of the poleis (i.e, a human community) isn’t this sort of “seduction” of the intellectuals often inevitable? Or at least to be expected? “What is to be done” about it is, I guess, the real question. To which neither I, nor Monsieur Benda, have any solution.
In any event its a book I’m glad to have read, at least simply to be conversant regarding it. Tho’ I suppose it fairly unlikely to come up unless I bring it up–like I just did….
Best of L. Sprague DeCamp
This short story collection sat on my shelf for years with only a few stories ever getting read. I picked it up again recently whilst awaiting a request from a library & was reminded what a fun writer DeCamp can be & also how the short story form is almost ideal for SF. There are many ideas that wouldn’t sustain a novel but make for great short stories.
His story Merman is a case in point. Its a very simple story: A biologist who works at a big city aquarium accidentally inhales a chemical compound that will let air breathing lung tissue absorb oxygen from water. DeCamp throws in a little authorial hand waving around what is basically a magic potion. Anyways, the point is to get the biologist to be able to breathe underwater. What makes this story fun is that the idea of breathing water with human lungs is thought through, e.g., breathing water in and out of lungs (as opposed to passing the water in the mouth & out gill slits) would be hard work. Our diaphragms aren’t made for such work & the main character finds it exhausting. Unfortunately a side effect of the chemical compound is to make breathing air painful so the the subject actively seeks water. And as the character’s day underwater progresses he has to deal with trying to eat & later realizes that he daren’t go to sleep, because he fears his unconscious breathing reflex wouldn’t sustain him with his conscious direction.
That’s what I mean by “thought through”. DeCamp takes what is on the surface a somewhat silly premise and treats it seriously. I should that he takes the idea serious, but this story isn’t–& none of the stories in the collection are–solemn. DeCamp can be pretty amusing if not laugh out loud funny. Every story in the book is solid tho’ and it has a nice afterward by the author where he explains the background/inspiration to the stories, as well as giving a brief professional bio. I’ll probably write some more on this collection but that’s it for now.
Rereading II: Cemetery World
So Clifford Simak…
Kind of an odd duck in the scifi genre. A newspaperman from the upper Midwest who moonlighted as a scifi novelist & short story writer. I’ve often thought of him as science fiction’s only pastoralist. His most famous book was probably City (1952). Now I just said he was some sort of pastoralist; how come his “most famous” work is called “City”? Well, despite the title it’s not about cities or a city but about the dissolution thereof.
But I’m not writing to talk about that book, the book I just reread, after about a twenty year interval, was Cemetery World.
So, plot…
About 10,000 years in the future Earth is mostly uninhabited. It’s main industry is to serve as a graveyard for the remains of a scattered humanity. Earth was largely abandoned during a cataclysmic war with humanity spreading through the galaxy (presumably with FTL travel). The main character, Fletcher, is a native of one those worlds and travels to Earth accompanied by two robots: One, Elmer, a “native” of Earth & a survivor of the aforementioned cataclysmic war. The other, Bronco, a creation of the main characterand the first robot, whose purpose is as a “composer” of some sort of multi-sensory artwork that is never really fully explained.
That lack of explanation is just as well, as the “composition” made by the second robot is only the pretext to get Fletcher & Elmer to Earth.
They find the mother world to be utterly dominated by a single business known only as Cemetery, which is slowly claiming more & more of the land. Fletcher acquires a female sidekick & an enemy. The former is a fellow native of his planet; the latter the supervisor of Cemetery’s operations on Earth. Well, I don’t want to give to much away in case I gain any non-imaginary readers, but there’s a lot of fun elements thrown in: ancient cyborg war machines, even more ancient aliens, roaming ghosts, time travel, & more.
I had forgotten almost everything about this book from the first time I’d read it, which can be a little disheartening. it makes me wonder how carefully I read it way back when. The book has an interesting premise and the characters are like-able if not vividly drawn. However, I found it a bit unsatisfying–mostly because of the ending. Part of it may have been length limitations that were imposed on SF of that era. Tho’ I remember having similar reactions to other Simak works. He has great ideas but somehow they always fall just a little flat. Maybe it’s more the lack of really engaging personalities. SF is an idea driven genre so a writer can get away with flat characters a bit more easily than in other types of fiction. This last issue is something that I think Simak avoided in the more acclaimed Waystation.
middleclassnobody 