Westworld, Season 3

Originally, this was going to be a post comparing the Terminator franchise with Westworld. I'll explain why a bit later, but I've decided that my love for the former can't share a post with another franchise, especially one not worthy. (Yes, I said it!) That post also explains why I have shifted the focus of my blog slightly. Basically, I spend all day reading and editing text, so all I want to do afterwards is not read. But I still need stories to cope with the everyday, so I watch a lot of TV, which means you'll just have to accept that I'll be posting about TV series more. It is what it is, and I'm not going to argue about it.

Anyway ... I was motivated to write this post after watching Season 3 of Westworld (which was about a year ago, and no, I haven't watched Season 4 yet, for reasons to be explained - let me finish!). Something had been jumping up and down at the edge of my awareness from the end of Season 1 and through Season 2. By the middle of Season 3, I was having full-on conversations with the "something".

The androids are too human. They have clearly been written by humans. It's a bit like watching a portrayal of a human created by an alien that only knows about human behaviour from watching mainstream TV.

The androids think of themselves as singular identities. They refer to themselves as "me" and "I" and they have memories that they seem to organise in a linear way, like a human would. This singularism is forced on us because we are encased in a single body. Although our cells die and are replaced, and we grow and mature and creep toward death, most of us experience our bodies as a constant entity (note I said most).

The "I" of the androids, however, have been housed, first, in a "mainframe" as part of a computer program, and then downloaded into multiple bodies to live out different storylines. Their names and identities change with the story. Although the series doesn't deal with this, I don't see how it would be profitable to have each character active in only one place in the park at one time. Surely, you'd have the same character in multiple destinations, where you are sure they won't run into each other.

Once their story - or their part in a larger story - has ended, their "I" is uploaded again and interrogated, while their bodies are either prepared to go back into the field or archived and replaced. This would happen daily or every few days.

Now, bear in mind that many of the storylines were traumatic, especially for women. They took place in the Wild Wild West where women were at best someone's daughter or wife, and at worst, worth less than a cowboy's horse. Most of the female androids experience both extremes and everything in between during their 30 years or fewer in the park.

Dolores and Maeve

When the androids escape, they are wearing their respective bodies, and their personalities continue to develop in a way that is consistent with their programming and their experiences in the park. They think of themselves as singular selves with a history and a future that they are fighting to protect.

I couldn't jump this hurdle. I couldn't reconcile how an android that has existed both as part of a computer program and as different personalities playing out the same scenarios over and over could think of themselves as a singular identity rather than a pluralistic one. (Note: I'm adopting "pluralistic" as the antonym of "singular" because that's the word that keeps coming to mind, and if the writers of Westword can play fast and loose with meaning, so can I.)

Once they leave Westworld (the park), Dolores and Maeve think of themselves as separate people, but if they are the product of the same program, are they really? Surely the edges of their personalities would blend into each other? Surely they would be the same and different at the same time?

I expected both characters to become more "glitchy" as they spent time in the outside world - not necessarily in a negative way. I expected them to display a digitally induced form of DID (dissociative identity disorder), where the multiple facades of their person-hood would become apparent. I expected them to act more like a product of a computer program.

But instead, they doubled down and became more human. And I got more and more irritated, until by the final episode of Season 3, I was shouting at my computer. I think I missed a lot of the subtext - and probably the larger text - because I was so lost in trying to reconcile how these two characters could be so human. (In other words, I may have gotten some of the details wrong, so please don't bother me about them.)

Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation

The link to the Terminator franchise comes in the fourth instalment, called Terminator Salvation. Don't shoot me, but I actually like the movie, not as a continuation of the series, but on its own. Christian Bale is the worst John Connor, but Sam Worthington (despite what I think of Avatar, which is not good) steps up and does a great job of getting us to relate to his character, before we find out his secret - the secret even he didn't know. *dramatic pause*

In one of the last scenes, Skynet appears to Worthington's character and lays out how it is using Sam to get to John. Apart from the ludicrousness of a computer program explaining its evil masterplan to one of its own servants, Skynet displays the same kind of singular identity that the androids in Westworld do. Perhaps that is the only way to engage with us humans, but it's just so ... jarring.

I don't know what I'm expecting instead. Perhaps some of the hammy acting from Dr Who (of which I'm a fan, before you come for me, but come on - Daleks?), except without the characters melting down because the human brain is incapable of housing a digital entity (I feel like I've seen that somewhere before ...) or the offensive attempt to portray genuine mental illness as something to ogle.

As much as I enjoyed Season 1 of Westworld, I've been avoiding Season 4. Perhaps the writers and actors addressed all this and so I'm complaining into a void. Perhaps ... Or I'm going to spend another eight episodes yelling at my computer. Stay tuned.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: Part 2 of 2

What is the attention span of a gnat? I am figuring that we find out its life span and divide that into something objective, like the attention span of a fly, or by the amount of time they can spend on a single task. Then we could wander through a few academic halls and land up considering the consciousness of tiny flying animals or fall through the moldy hall that is when a baby becomes a person. As you may have surmised (and as intended) you may have noticed I have a short attention span, which I would compare with that of a gnat's - no, I will compare it and tell you it is two minutes and 3.2 seconds, because I can and I did.

I have also realised that I have said 'would have' a few times today. There are three 'have's in that sentence alone. What the heck is the point of that word? (And before you get snarky, you, I am well aware there is a linguistic answer, but my point still holds because this is my blog and if I say a gnat can only focus on a single task (as defined by me) for two minutes, that is valid.)

So, I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by sheer force of will. My opinion hasn't changed. Although the structure is interesting, the symbols are heavy-handed. I could not empathise with a single character until the last 2% of the book, but by then I could also not subjugate my lack of suspension of disbelief. (I am really trying here. Whenever I want to point out how illogical something is and that it is a result of laziness not plot, I hear the 'eh' of Dwight from The Office every time he wants to point out something illogical - usually to do with bears. It builds up at the back of the throat and pops from the nasal cavity like a buzzer in a game show.)

This isn't a spoiler, unless you are inclined to belief: the book is set over centuries upon centuries, where humans build up their technology over and over to a point when they can create nuclear bombs. How? How could this happen?

Geologists tell us (although this may be a fringe group of rogue scientists who do not believe in pollution) that the poles are overdue for a shift, whereupon north becomes south, confusing swallows, polar bears and brown bears, as well as pirates and hopefully radar linked to bombs. It may or may not kill us (dust storms, rampaging polar bears and swallows, bombs). Also, (and FYI) a certain degree of climate change is normal, judging by the ice age and the fact that Europe was a desert. (Interesting point: the size of dinosaurs was only possible because the density of the air was lower than it is now.)

Given this was written in the 60s, this would take us way into the 5000s, when (hopefully for the planet) we are extinct, because, entropy. More than a few of the surviving populations would have some kind of mutation (not the X-men kind, but if I could choose, something that gives me the ability to sprint and climb like a mountain goat, because, zombies) from the recurring nuclear bombs, which they would need anyway for the fittest, which no offence, cannot be almost exclusive to monks!

Here's another meaty one for the academics: technological determinism. This book assumes a single pinnacle of human discovery and creation. Bombs, intercoms, phones, planes etc. But a) I can imagine oh so many alternatives, like, what if we discovered the more eco-friendly (and therefore smarter) solutions to electricity, fuel and, errr, general human habitation, first? And b) does this 'pinnacle' really make society 'better'?

This a controversial topic and my gnat brain has moved on. Name of the Rose depicted a monk and a monastery in Italy that captivated my imagination. In this book I met three monks I did not like or only learnt to like in the very last pages of their chapter. It is one thing to kill off characters like a gnat flaps its wings and another thing to just move me to another monastery and then tell me they died of old age while I wasn't looking. It, in fact, makes me care less about your very stupid because they are very human characters. I have compared my brain to a gnat more than once today, therefore your argument is invalid.

Initially my foray in the world of insects was intended to justify A List. First, I did not want to talk about that book of invalidities as it shall be known from now on. Second, I am already bored, so I figured that bullet points would be more my speed. Since this argument is so very compelling, I shall add A List now, in the same blogpost, because I do not feel like writing out more than one tweet.

In the spirit of the above review (don't groan, you) I am going to pick five of the least dis-believable books I have read. I will however use short phrases instead of full, therefore very boring sentences.

1. A Canticle to Liebowitz
2. A Stranger in a Strange Land: life on Mars, general 60s-like (and spirited) shenanigans, a human taking on the physical abilities of another species as if sprinting like a cheetah were a combination of will and absence of will
3. Heart of Darkness and Atomised: more a lack of liking and an abundance of hatred than of disbelief
4. Zoo City: animal familiars that appear when you commit a crime, the final scene
5. Her Fearful Symmetry: ghosts, the characters' complete absence of character, other characters, plot - all of it, narrator (and all this from the writer who made me believe in time travel!)

While we're at it, let's add Gulliver's Travels

I always feel the need to point out that magic is meant to be compatible with physical laws, like gravity and the conservation of mass. Even zombies have an (albeit loose) explanation! So if something that didn't exist before is magicked into existence and it is made of atoms, where were those atoms before? Because so many other tricks rely on the existence of atoms - and I do not mean an interpretation of quantum laws, because *insert game-show sound effect*. Oh, I'm overthinking? Well - ok, the gnat has flown off.

In other words, if an animal familiar appears, was it lurking around waiting for you to do something awful? Is it missing from a zoo somewhere? Is it a manifestation of some communal judgement? Someone, somewhere, must have a clue - must have noticed a trend of disappearing animals - even if it isn't yet verified. And what trend is there regarding the type of crime considered worthy of a (really awesome - and if you're handing them out I'll take one) animal? Legal, societal, religious? Just one real clue, please. (I also want the awesome inseparable animal. Imagine walking down the street with a tiger, a polar bear, a tortoise, a wolf - do they come in extinct too and if so, hello, black rhino.)

Impressive - my attention is holding more like a fly battering itself against a window. (As I typed that, my bunny sat on my stomach, so maybe I am sorted. Still, a polar bear? I adore polar bears.)

What a meandering post. I think the most meandering I have ever written. Perhaps this is a good thing, because it gives me more wiggle room in future. To sum up: every book mentioned in this post, except for the Umberto Eco, is ridiculous. According to the woman with her gnat in her skull. The unconscious doesn't restrict itself to dreams. Do you see it? I asked for a polar bear when I had already been given a gnat. Does the extent of the crime affect the size of the animal? Could an insect be a familiar? That seems a bit of an anticlimax. Like this conclusion. (I walked right into that one.)

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Why do I find A Canticle for Leibowitz so annoying? Stranger in a Strange Land type of annoying. This is partly a rhetorical question, so hold on to your answers until I've found mine. It could be the style, which darts off and convinces you treasure is sure to be found at the end of only a hint of a track. A track trampled by buck or badgers, or my cats. Then he is gone and waiting for you when you find your way back to the starting point. 'Nah,' he says, leaving you to deduce what the hell is going on.

See, you would think I would only fall for it once. What's that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times... well, you are a writer and I am a reader, and this is our eternal (well, not really, because neither of us or our work is eternally immortal, but you know what I mean) struggle.

Anti-climaxes have their place: roughly two-thirds of the way into the novel. Then feel free to clump as may as will fit there. I can attribute enough meaning to anything you can deliver, and still have room for, like The History of the Solar System, with an in-depth look at the planets, moons, dwarf planets and miscellany. The only thing that can halt my desire to find meaning were there is none is irritation. And you, Walter M Miller, Jr, have irritated me more than someone who denies the universe is infinite, by your pretentious name alone. (Can you continue to call yourself 'Jr' after your parent has passed? This is a serious question.)

The book is divided into chapters. And this is where the problem begins. There is no indication that you are embarking on a new plot-line that has only place and broad era in common. Not like Cloud Atlas or The Passage. So, the author says, orientate yourself in a new society, with no characters to identify with (well, there was that one). Then he just pushes you into the room and you feel like you are having that dream where you forgot to wear clothes.

In a sense I am exaggerating. In a very broad sense that is aware that this book is regarded as one of the best apocalyptic, science-fiction novels of its time (I would stop at year, maybe decade, but ok). May I refer you back to Stranger in a Strange Land? Please, read it and get back to me about how it is better than The Road or Brave New World.

Also, I may have mentioned this is a pirated copy. I know, I know. There is an economic reasoning behind this, although I am also assuaging my conscience. Ever wondered why publishers, agents etc do not try harder to make their products impossible to copy? Because advertisers care about audience and not how said audience gets the product. In this line of reasoning, pirated products actually increase the distribution of the audience, some of whom become loyal fans and buy merchandise - and are more likely to pay for the product in future. It's a game of chance, but I am a fan of The Walking Dead and the other day I did buy a branded product and I am also well aware that Hyundai is a sponsor and that I have my very broke eye on the ix35.

It seems to have been OCR'd - 'nr' becomes 'm' and 'rl' becomes 'd'. Any normal person would this annoying. To an editor, this is a criminal act and must be rectified, like, now. But I have no one to complain to, and so I stew and plot revenge. My revenge being this post, which not even the internet cares about, but the internet allows us all a voice blah blah. At this point, my irritation is taking over, like an alterego.

Back to where we were: we are standing a room with no clothes on. Which is a metaphor for not understanding the social nuances or being able to situate ourselves in fictional space. Let's start with the last point ('start,' you wonder, startled. 'But we are 7 paragraphs in!' To which I reply, 'if you ask nicely, I may send your lazy-ass the bullet points, but then I am also going to quiz you.') Where are we? It seems we are fated to blow ourselves up or at least make the planet uninhabitable - in kind of a if we can't have it, neither can you gesture. Ka-bloowie but we can't even get this right, because some people survive and live in what is still a habitable planet.

You can probably guess this was written during the Cold War by a conscientious objector. I concede, there is a nice paragraph in which a character glibly describes how illogical it is to blow someone up before they blow you up and vice versa until every nuke, mustard gas bomb and grenade either side has is exhausted. It reminded me of the idiocy of North Korea and the US.

The 99% coordinating news feeds

But the end of the world wasn't just a pissing contest between states: the 99% rose up and instead of sitting in parks with tents and pickets (I bet you a homeless person would have appreciated a tent and the picket to make a fire out of). No, they decided that knowledge and technology were dangerous, if not actively homicidal. They smashed anything and anyone they could find, and chose to become nomadic hunter-gatherers (highly unlikely. I like having hot running water and I doubt anyone is going to say they don't). Within a generation no one remembers what half the technology left is for, which leads to a funny scene in which a monk interested in the writings of Darwin is laughed out of the room by someone intent on creating protoplasm from six elements.

The first chapter was more boring than this post - I could not identify with the character, because the plot was as slow as he was. I have just finished the second chapter. Each chapter is a jump in time and this chapter does cast some light on the first one. The abbot in this chapter is interesting - you set out with this conventional mindset that a monastery is going to ignore science that does not match their faith. Perhaps it does, but the arguments the abbot makes are convincing - in fact the opposite argument cannot hold up.

That one character is the 1% of the novel I liked (that was obvious, but I like it). He scrubs away some of the film that coats the rest of the plot. He gives us some clothes to wear. Fiction is metaphor, it is a conversation between the reader, writer and context, it is what we make of it. Fantastic. But it's not much of a conversation when you make random broad statements in a world that fails a test by logic (like, how far does human settlement extend? Is there any communication? Why, in the whole novel, is there no evidence of nuclear war? Who are people who were once children born to?!)

What this post tells me (shoosh you, I am not here to get your opinion) is that I would rather write about anything other than this book and I would rather discuss social philosophy than most things. Perhaps there is one criterion missing from most discussions about literature: logic. Does a book make logical sense? Now I know I struggle to suspend my disbelief under normal circumstances, but I need more detail to understand a nuclear war that leaves no evidence other than polarising people, just like I needed to understand how the Martian in Stranger in a Strange Land was born on Mars with all the boxes for a human being checked, but superhuman powers gleaned from the Martians.

The moral of these stories is that Brave New World is a better book and solves both these problems while still providing a setting, plot and protagonist we identify with. Peace out.

Zero History

Zero History. The perfect blanket for the novels of William Gibson (well, all two that I have read, upon which it is feasible to develop a seasoned opinion. Shush). Less out-there than Philip K Dick (and perhaps more sensical), but more cryptic than Margaret Atwood, with worse dialogue than Robert Heinlein. (These being the authors of the canon I have read, with a few sidekicks - and no, I'm not including Hugh Howey here, because obviously success, even when unedited, is to be scorned.)

(I did read all nine, fyi, and didn't hate the ending. Did hate the editing.)

Corralling mind back to point. It's not thrilled. (Ok, I'll stop interrupting.)

Book first. You may remember that I am one of the few people I know who rate Neuromancer highly. Or not. I do. I suspect this is partly because success is to be scorned, as aforementioned. We love an underdog precisely because he is not top dog (notice how the movie always cuts off before the dog reaps his rewards). It doesn't help that they made a movie tenuously linked to the book which itself is within arm's reach of a philosopher's thought experiment.

I rate it (not because others don't, although I am otherwise like that) because it had a wider lens than the Matrix - it didn't depend on the premise that we are all slaves to 'the machines' (get it? Very subtle) and need to sign up to fight a war that requires shooting surprisingly unintellegent artificial intelligences (that always surprises me). In fact, that felt like a B or C plot. An A plot in my books, but D plot in others', is that question I don't have the answer to and am beginning to suspect won't ever be answered.

In Zero History, there are so many moments like these, forming an undercurrent (ridden by red herrings) of suspicion. For example, I am still waiting for the fruition of an exchange where a hotel receptionist takes one of the protagonists'  (Milgrim - again, very subtle, my man Gibson) passport into the back to photocopy. To justify my paranoia, American passports are microchipped and can be read by devices in the vicinity, so Milgrim keeps it in a pouch designed to tangle those signals.

Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe I'm not. As a person, I don't like surprises. As a reader, I do, but I prefer to have the satisfaction of figuring it out first. (I'm just otherwise like that.)

And here we have Gibson's skill: of immersing you in paranoia, until you're paranoid about being paranoid. Which is incidentally crucial to the plot. The two main characters, Milgrim and Hollis (really), are being manipulated by two or three (it's very confusing) deeply dodgy and steeply wealthy conmen, who are fighting against one another to get a military contract. Or sell adspace. Or clothes. Surveillance technology is built into everything, including a figurine of an ant and a phone, but not laptops apparently.

A government agent (of some underground agency, for which y'all are paying taxes, congrats) has also taken personal leave to jump into the fray. She's mostly interested in... Clothing piracy, I think.

One of the main characters (let's keep some surprises in our relationship) seems to be morphing into an autonomous being. Which is disturbing pretty much every involved who should be disturbed by their own behaviour. Like a dog chewing its tail. Maybe an hyaena. Except their tails are short. The other main character has pretty much been spared the drama, except as tales over breakfast and that bug in her ant figurine.

As mentioned, the dialogue is like cardboard. Every character uses one of two modes: one-word answers or staccato but meandering sentences. Usually the response does not tie in with the previous utterance, so people often have to ask one another to explain what they just said, to which they usually get a feint. But this works nicely to raise the paranoia up like the baboon raising the cub in The Lion King, forehead marking and all. It's not clear whether they're being evasive or just distracted, or in the case of the dodgy dealers (I couldn't resist the alliteration) are setting up situations in which to test others.

Love it. You can't pick at a single characteristic of this book that doesn't unwind into pure mind effortness. Technology, autonomy, power, lack of power, progress... All themes that have and will continue to keep philosophers busy (and out of politics), wrung up but not released. Sometimes, these themes are really flung in your face (hence the marking), but usually while you're distracted by something else, maybe a something that has flown into your eye to keep the metaphor afloat.

I'd bet money on the author laying these wrung-up themes down in a pattern locked in his mind. And I don't gamble. Perhaps he is really good at poker and keeping a straight face, his 'tells' under control, but I hope not because then I've just lost some cash. Which is why I don't gamble. (The house always wins. Always. And when it doesn't, it phones your parents, pretends to be the government and says he's going to break your legs. True story.)

Neuromancer told a similar story: a character or two controlled by some dodgy conmen with some cash, squished in with a drug addiction, motorbikes and leather. In that one, though, the story is set in an unrealised future. Zero History was published in 2010 and features iPhones (no mention of Samsung, Sony, Huawei or HTC), as well as other surveillance technologies that are plausible. Except for a floating silver mercurial penguin. As a result, there is much the narrative doesn't need to explain, leaving room for the undercurrent with the flying red herrings.

Oeuvre next. Beginning each book requires a reset, to make space for whatever world awaits you, futuristic or modern. It is a bit like having no history, which incidentally, now that I think about it, is how Milgrim appears at the beginning of the book, acquiring memory by memory. You have to keep resetting as you read, to take in new information but also anticipate it. You can't take anything for granted, which takes up a lot of trunk space.

The word 'zero' is loaded - thanks philosophers. It's completely abstract, since what isn't there, well, isn't there. There are languages that don't have a word for it (English being one of those that names everything, including the things that aren't there). It occurs meaningfully in Descartian geometry, where it gets a partner, and where it fits so well within a flat world and you can draw its portrait.

But meaningful it is not when it describes human experience. Swapping philosophers for English lit students, everything has an history, even stories. Some of the paranoia of Zero History is that there are allusions to events that have bearing on the story but are omitted. Everyone knows some of the story but not all (except the author, who I am betting writes like he might put a jigsaw puzzle together). And as all good lit students know, absence is where the juicy stuff is (not meaty, because I am a vegetarian).

This Point is disappointing in its focus - I apologise. My mind is settled with a clump of carrots and a horse blanket. Perhaps it is just worn out.

Zero History is part of a trilogy, which will probably bend to include more, if the publishers have anything to do with it. I haven't read the other two, so perhaps I will have to put this post down to an erratum and write you a new one. Regardless, and regardless of Gibson's success and un-underdog-ness, and considering no one has made a movie of this (yet and I think), I'm betting a set of handmade how-to origami diagrams hang above the author's desk: an ant, an hyaena and a baboon, and a horde of dodgy conmen and confused protagonists.

The War of the Worlds

I know you have heard this story before, but every good piece of writing should lay out its premise in an attempt at inclusivity, no matter how so-so. Back when various countries felt that wars that targeted the world they too inhabited made sense (yes, I know, now they just call their forces the UN and their weapons sanctions) and when the radio (a transistor-type thing with an aerial) was a key source of information, not just top-20 music shows and public-interest debates...

I ran out of space. No one is going to read a 20-line introduction. Assuming you read this five-line one.

Orson Welles, author of the book and the radio play

A radio drama broadcast of War of the Worlds caused widespread panic (this was also when Britain and the US were the only worthwhile parts of the world, before Britain kindly withdrew from countries like Africa - sorry, continents - all continents look the same). War of the Worlds being an invasion of Earth (only the important parts) by Martians whose intelligence ranks off the MENSA charts. Not that there were was time to check, but one can only assume.

Again, I ran out of space.

The drama was an abridged version of Orson Welles' novel (even then we had remakes and probably complained that the narration was not as we had imagined), a blatant critique of war and the desperate flailings of human beings to save themselves, updated to time and place. Unfortunately, the scenario was a little too realistic: the play included a weather report, the music and conversations of a dance hall (like a club slash hoe-down with ginger beer) interrupted by the report of an astronomer, followed by news broadcast about the touch-down of a meteorite.

While Curiosity happily pokes holes into Mars (I don't mention the Japanese attempt to sweep up intergalactic dust because I doubt they want that #epicfail mentioned), in this 1930s version we don't have a chance because Cyclops slash snake things wiggle their way out of the meteor and begin firing at anything that moves (thus destroying a lot of the land they hope to inhabit, double #epicfail). And so on and so on.

The actors and sound effects are so good that people believed that Earth was being attacked by sophisticated unanthropomorphic beings and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. The story was then picked up by another broadcaster - which, of course, according to the two-source rule means the story is legit. Apparently, people legged it out of the city, their favourite donkey, wife and cutlery set in tow. Pregnant women went into premature labour. Ostensibly because of the fright. The mind boggles.

This story took way longer to tell than I thought. If you had heard it before, I hope you had the sense to scan, in which case, YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE. If not, sorry for you.

Facetiousness aside (in arm's reach because I will need it again), people had just been through a war of epic proportions (hence why it was called a 'world' war) and the Great Depression, and a second war was brewing. Governments already had access to atomic bombs, which they would shortly drop on Japan. That is crazier than believing in an alien invasion, from my perspective.

Hats off to Orson Welles for creating a critique of war so realistic it created panic (although perhaps he should have peppered it with disclaimers like 'this is only a critique; all resemblance to people or nations is intended, but only in so far as they are the weakest link in the survival of humanity'). Unfortunately, the wrong people listened.

Assuming that your only knowledge is this story and the Tom Cruise version, please reset said knowledge now.

The book is thin, more of a novella, and usually sold together with The Invisible Man and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. They all derive from the same time period and are loosely considered fantasy. I read it a few years ago but I have the memory of a coffee filter (by which I mean it contains coffee grounds). But (from what I do or don't remember) it is more different to the movie you know than even the two versions of World War Z.

In some ways I felt 'underwhelmed' by the book (since 10 Things I Hate About You this is now a valid word), because it had none of the action we have come to expect since Star Wars (4-6, to clarify). The basics of the book match up with the display of Tom Cruise's machismo, but the main character is an astronomer who plays a much more important and intellectual role - the explanations for what is happening being more important than the shooting at special effects. There is none of the thundering intrusion that sparks off alleged machismo, although there are many thundering explosions and crashing buildings. More important than all this is the sense of helplessness (i.e. negative machismo) the characters fall deeper and deeper into as they realise that one of humanity's usual tactics work - even an atom bomb (we resort to this quickly).

Spoiler alert: it is Mother Nature that triumphs. Now, I am no great fan of casting processes as thinking feeling entities, but in this instance even I got goosebumps from the sense that the world is far greater than us - that even intelligent beings are subject to the law of survival. The more we prod at Mother, the more we discover there are processes beyond our imagining happening under our noses. Literally. We act like a runny nose is the harbinger of doom, but scientists keep discovering new bacteria we couldn't function without. And isn't it (facetiousness buried) amazing that our bodies are so finely attuned to this 'other world', too?

A week ago, I watched the first movie adaptation from the 1950s. I confess I didn't expect much - I was really just boosting my movie cred. I watched it after Terminator II - don't judge - that series of movies is a seething mass of debates about what qualifies as life, what cost are you prepared to incur in search of greatness... Mind running away; trip mind with rope.

The movie begins with a short narrative, in this booming voice that might convince me of anything, even that politicians don't hand over their hearts at the first session of Parliament. The scene is a town that our astronomer hero happens to be visiting. (What a coincidence in a world of coincidences.) One night a meteor crashes into the national park nearby. Nonplussed, some police and other officials trudge out to look, thinking they might start a theme park around it (not a joke).

But our scientist is suspicious because he can work out how fast a meteor of that size should have been travelling in his head and works out that it should have made more of a mess. However, he is equally oblivious to the danger. At the site, he meets the heroine, who kicks ass. She lectures at a nearby university but smoothly switches roles to wartime nurse when needed, and near the end organises their retreat and even drives the bus to safety. Ok, she breaks down into an hysterical mess sometimes, but us women, y'know, just can't avoid having normal emotions.

Out comes Cyclops, who starts setting fire to the things that move, so the army does the same. Well, tries to. Mostly they set fire to inanimate things like trees. Unlike us modern viewers, no one is prepared for the force field that protects Cyclops and his siblings so it takes them a while to catch on. Long enough to waste an atomic bomb. In the meantime, Cyclops' extended siblings have touched down all over the world (except the country - I mean continent - of Africa) and are destroying cities en masse.

People flee the city, at the behest of civil authorities, because the alien can't tell you're moving if you're parked among fields of vegetables, preferably corn, right? Because, if I moved into a place with fleas, I would only exterminate the spots I meant to sit in. (The others I would train into a flea circus.) Anyway, as every apocalyptic fiction writer drills home, we are a species of survivors, where surviving means bullying everyone who has something you want. Survival of the fittest, right? The ones who don't bully, pray, because then life and death is out of their hands.

(What would I do, since I'm so glib? Find a way to hide right under their noses, preferably in a group because my chances of dying are less. Sorry, I can't help it. I would think. And more people means more thinking. I think. So I would double-back to the parts of the city they'd destroyed and find shelter underground, preferably with smart people. In this case, the best thing to do would be to wait them out.)

The scientist also does a clever thing: he chops off an eye and analyses it. (I couldn't do that, because I didn't even understand his description of how it worked or why his girlfriend shows up differently on the scan.) Anyway, then they are attacked (by human bullies), they find a church (which unfortunately is attacked - hide underground, I tell you. Or in a tree) and then the alien buggers did. Just drop out of the sky. Not one of them could adapt fast enough to survive our bacteria and so are overcome. (Knowing humans and our survival ranking, at least one of us would have made it, busters.)

Then comes the bit about Mother Nature (an entity that is really a coincidental process). I have goosebumps thinking about it. About how we are blithely stomping around, discovering something whose evolution we played absolutely no part in, not realising how indebted we are to our ecosystem.

Yerp, here are our heroine and hero, with an alien eyeball

What I enjoyed about the movie though (what bumped it up past the recent one and perhaps past the book - shock horror) was the focus on the people and not the action. I find this often with older movies. Part of this is the casting (who could ever match the charisma of Humphrey Bogart or Natalie Wood?) The movie stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Barry plays our scientist as ever so slightly arrogant, witty and ultimately open-hearted. Robinson is enthusiastic but not embarrassingly so, level headed and open-hearted.

They fall for each other quickly (partly because there isn't my time to take it slowly and also because they are, remember, open-hearted) but he is oblivious to her break with stereotype because he's not the sort to be vaguely aware of stereotypes. I am not one for sentimentalism, you may remember. I don't like epigrams unless they are funny because I can't resist finding a logical frame to them. (There usually isn't one.) Then everyone thinks I'm overthinking it, but really, I think everyone is underthinking it.

But the scene where he has tried to leave town but is beaten up as people hijack his car, and then realises the same thing may have happened to her, is touching. He follows the trail she would have taken, probably reenacting what has just happened to him and could have happened to her over and over in his head. He acts within his nature, with bravery that does not require him to beat up people in his way, even when they try to beat him, or with one manly hand destroy alien ship after ship and the other while clutching a catatonic woman to his chest.

When he finds his love in a church, there is a crowd between them and the two of them do the required swimming against the current to get each other thing. Apologising to people as they do. They hug and then just stand there leaning against each other for a while. An alien ship is crashing into a stained glass window and they just stand there, happy to be with each other. Nor is there any smooching. Ok, maybe one, but more a kiss than a smooch.

Ok, so maybe I am sentimental. I just usually keep the emotion safe and warm within a blanket of facetiousness.

So, My Point? My Point is obviously that the 1953 movie is much better than the recent one, that radio is a dangerous weapon, that everyone except the Russians should leave space expeditions to Nasa, that underwhelming is a new word, and that aliens are not as intelligent as we think, because a recon team would have warned its siblings to not bother with Earth because it is governed by a (female) entity that is really just a process who is just otherwise like that.

While those are all good Points, the best is that I am usually surprised when I pick up a classic work, whether DVD or book, and especially when I have seen an updated version. The characters are sympathetic because they don't imagine they can take on monsters singlehandedly but that doesn't mean they are less brave. It isn't even part of their frame of reference. I usually expect to seethe at a woman forced into the dichotomy of mother and whore, but what I get is usually more complicated, something I am actually proud of (a forced connection, so perhaps what I mean is hopeful).

The Postman

A few days ago, a man riding a bicycle with a plastic red basket held tight to the front handlebars, swerved in front of my car. He was wearing a vest (even though it had just been raining) and looked docilely at me as I granted him his life, as if he knew something about the rules of the road that I didn't. He was either a postman or a thief who had stolen a postman's bike. The latter, I think, because it was Sunday.

We are going to stick with postman because, when I think of post-people, I think of the Borrowers riding spools of thread.

In the bad old days, when explorers were subjugating land, animals and other people, the postal workers were right behind them. The backbone of commerce, society and subjugation. According to various Western (in the Wild Wild sense) TV series, the postmaster doubled as the editor of the local daily; was tongue-tied but honourable and trustworthy; and unfortunately tended to die or be horribly maimed unless he had a heavy-duty rifle behind the counter.

Also unfortunately, the postmaster was never the hero.

Also featuring in the Westerns of long pauses, long stares and short lives, was the 'Pony Express', a service with the Olympian flavour of the ancient Greek scout who ran through war for days and days to tell someone something important. These men swore an oath, wore uniforms of blue and white, and raced across rivers and semi-arid regions carrying letters. Believing in the power of the pen over that of the knife, arrow or rifle, but never learning to wield it as a weapon, some lost their scalps... and their letters.

One day, our children won't be able to make heads nor tails of a story in which someone risked their life carrying words on paper vast distances.

Speaking of: in 1985, when David Brin wrote The Postman, the internet was still being molded as a security solution to international war, secretaries used carbon paper to make copies of memos and wireless referred exclusively to radios. As a science writer and physicist for NASA, Brin no doubt saw further into the future than most, but he and I still imagine the 2011 restoration of the United States from as far apart as the northern edge of the prairie to the southern.

The letter was under threat from the fax and photocopier (the 2-in-1) (and yes, I'm old enough and young enough to remember this) in 1985. Now the letter and the fax - nevermind the typewriter - are novelties. The last time I received a letter was a 'Seasons greeting' card. Does a postcard count? I have cards from Chicago, Hong Kong and the Grand Canyon, sent in between IMs and smses.

No, this isn't completely true, because last Sunday I almost ran over the shade of a postman. I receive my post at home (account statements, sale pamphlets and the occasional plea to take out a loan) so sometimes I catch postmen and -women mid-posting. They always have a bike, with a branded basket, and uniform. (Usually also post.) They are always polite, but perhaps this is because I always greet them first.

The Postman is a post-apocalyptic tale of hope set in 2011. The apocalypse was a sewing basket of the things the media warn us about: nuclear war, technological war, disease, starvation, natural disaster and human nature. Ten years later, only wanderers and small villages have survived, by avoiding all other people - oh and the so-called survivalists, not the reality show kind whose backstabbing (accurately) looks like the games of little girls.

Survivalists believe literally in the survival of the fittest: the strongest band together to pick off the weak who also band together to become strong. Those they don't kill they subjugate, or put aside to play with later.

Gordon, the hero, is a wanderer. He wanders from village to village, scavenging and trying to discard the flabby manners of civilisation. But really he wanders looking for a hero (cue the Bonnie Tyler song) who will restore his civilisation to him. One day, he scavenges the leather jacket and cap of a postman. In the last days of the apocalypse, post became the last frontier of communication. The jacket and cap bear the badge of the Pony Express (except they drove Jeeps).

Misunderstanding upon misunderstanding later, Gordon is hard at work spreading the word of the Restored United States and a renewed postal service. The implication being that what makes civilisation civilised is a network of communication. Before you judge him (or not) he's not a different kind of survivalist, feeding people's hopes (and himself) with lies. He believes his own lies - or he believes in hope, at least.

The (un)reality of The Postman is additionally unreal with thirty years between us and Brin. Thirty years of the evolution of the portable phone from a bulky home phone to slim gadgets that structure our lives and fit into our pockets. During which people forgot how to spell anything but phonetically. During which dictionaries of new words have been coined. During which Pluto was demoted. Populated with Dolly and Curiosity and Obama and Bieber.

The book is set in 2011, three years ago (perhaps people have forgotten how to count as well as spell, huh?). This post-apocalypse seems more charming than apocalyptic: a nostalgia for small-town values without losing the best of modern life. It imagines computers as thinking feeling judging beings, able to hold meaningful conversations and evaluate data sets.

And most importantly, it assumes that postmen are an everyday sight.

Compare this with the terrifying landscape of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. There are survivalists; their camps of subjugated lambs - I mean, subjects - are the only pockets of, um, civilisation; but no representatives of technology, communication or organised government. Instead of wandering from place to place, the reader is confined to the steps of the merry band of two and their - shudder - trolley.

The contemporary imagination is not more bloody or more cynical - Dante wrote the Inferno in the 14th century and the Nordic pantheon includes a one-eyed combination of god and devil. The Incas sacrificed people in the thousands, depending what they were praying for.

But choosing a postman as your hero seems naive. Even the character acknowledges that more than once. He does so because postmen had become cartoon regular, getting chased by dogs, bitten by dogs, soaked by sprinklers and so on. Today, postmen are made-for-TV regulars and that is mostly how we know them. If my door didn't open onto my postbox, I wouldn't know postmen and their bikes existed (I don't have dogs or sprinklers, luckily).

This is a very superficial review of a book I enjoyed. I enjoyed it, but it didn't make me think. It didn't make me think because a lot of this has been thunk. So much has passed between a date when the letter held at least a third of the written-word market and a year when there is one cellphone for every person in the world (there's a tip for the 1985 stock market) that the past seems more absurd than the horrifying future.

Popular science

Science is like Freud and Marx: a ravaged source of literary bleating. Type the word Freudian, psychoanalytic, Jungian, archetype, Marxist or socialist into a standard essay, and you've got an A, my friend. A few years ago, Ian McEwan wrote Solar, which coerces climate change to shake hands with more bleating about culture and philosophy, while some very unamused scientists watch. Science has been made into a concept! At least Freud and Marx encouraged our adoration. Science was happily breaking things and putting them back together to see if it could when we took a photo and stole its reflection.

Karl Popper was a smart man, but doesn't draw the same kind of crowd as Freud and co. In fact, I know educated people who do not know who he is. (And here is where the problem at hand throws itself at us. Duck! I have to exclude all the other things Popper said to make my point and this may be the only thing about Popper you and I will ever know. Which may be fine, but which may also distort our understanding of the world. Because what I say Popper said may not be not be what he said, strictly speaking.)

Popper devised a scientific method, which was meant to scaffold how hypotheses were tested and/or proved, so that we don't ignore the next guy who says the world is round-ish. Basically, try to prove the opposite of what you want to prove. This way you save yourself time, by identifying gaps and exceptions, so that you can adapt your hypothesis and then try to prove the opposite, and you don't taint the whole thing - and science itself - with your desire to be right.

Please read something about Popper, even Wikipaedia. So that I do not hold myself responsible for your trust in me.

I don't put much faith in my senses, especially after watching The Matrix and reading the novels of Philip K. Dick, or just media in general, and passing first-year philosophy (which obviously makes me an authority). (I certainly don't put much faith in your senses.) (Do I need to go over the irreconcilability of the words 'subjective' and 'truth' again?) Neither do I put my faith in science. Wait! What I'm saying is that faith and science are also irreconcilable.

Science is a description of, well, everything, including the things I don't put much faith in. Hypotheses are the labels we stick to things. The things themselves don't care much whether we stick them on by gravity or tape, which is really my point: some hypotheses are no-brainers (unless you want to deny the flow of electricity or how paper is made) and others are informed guesses (how Allosaurus ate (like a falcon, ripping at the flesh) and that the universe is expanding).

You spotted it, huh? The contradiction? I don't have faith in my senses or yours, but I accept that science has a good strike rate? Ah, young Padawan, but science doesn't care. It also doesn't read Philip K. Dick.

Just a hop, skip and jump, and we've arrived at another point. (Another one? You struck it lucky, folks.) Science is not a religion, nor does it build altars nor gather followers. It just (altogether now) doesn't care. Oh, there are fanatics and fundamentalists and extremists, who think the choice is stiff-upper-lipped logic or bust. Every concept in the history of history has some of those. People who need a yoke, but preferably not the one everyone else is chained to, because clearly their brains have been wiped free of psychology and all that angst of growing up without a pool.

We're getting there...

I failed Science in Grade 9, which meant I couldn't take it in Grade 10. I was smart enough for Biology and Maths though. Then I grew up and began to decide for myself who I am and found, despite the attempts of the best textbooks, I really like science. Really, who doesn't? Trees, planes, dancing; the world is a set of things that can be hypothesised and described (although, granted, that doesn't make the hypothesese right). Okay, maybe I only like pseudo-science. Magazines and books about pseudo-science, and maybe the odd experiment.

Ok, ok, I like knowledge, but maybe that's the same thing. Except I fall on the sceptic side of the epistemological scale. I grew up without a pool, okay!

I was reading one of these magazines when it told me (blithely) that Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment to show that quantum physics and the laws of relativity abide by the same logic. Because the cat is alive and dead until you observe it. Only if it's the size of an atom... See, Schrodinger placed his cat in a box (black and white, fyi) with a poison bomb. Until you open the box, you can't know whether the cat is alive or dead. (Unless you kick the box and the cat kicks back.) Note the preposition here: and vs or.

This writer may have been a fundamentalist and is definitely a solipsist, because if something could be bigger than an atom and in two states at once, I'd observe the food in my refrigerator never going off and my favourite characters in a series never getting their heads chopped off during the Red Wedding.

The cat gets maybe poisoned to show that the physical world is not governed by the laws of tiny solipsistical things. Not that that really needs proving but we humans need to understand our world and educate others including fundamentalists. Newton and Einstein can rest easy for the time being. So can gravity.

How did this error get into a well-known science magazine? (Having been in magazine publishing before, I can tell you, but that would be like showing you that there is only glitter in the middle of my crystal ball.) This is a whopper but most mistakes are more subtle. Honestly, if you are interested in science, it won't be long before you discover the world isn't magic and that the cat is dead because it isn't moving or making a noise and so you are the worst kind of human being. It is the danger of simplifying something you need to beware of.

Like, you are an artist and you're painting a tree (you're bored and there aren't any cats in boxes around). The leaf is green, you think, pulling out your pre-mixed paint. Er, it's also yellow. And blue. Maybe purple. Dark green, light green, even some red. You tell a five-year-old the leaf is green (and hopefully they will look at you askance because clearly a thing can be more than one thing at a time), but you tell a budding artist to look more closely (whereupon they may also look at you askance).

Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is a good example. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't recommend the geology section to a geologist, because he knows the leaf isn't just green. Or something. Karl Marx and Audrey Hepburn may have lived and died in the same century, but that doesn't tell me much about the 20th century except that Karl Marx mistrusted wealth and Breakfast at Tiffany's is about Holly Golightly ogling a diamonds in a jewellery store display.

Richard Dawkins also writes science books, but he does so with a cattle prod in his other hand and none of his books have geology sections. Phew. Imagine what he could do to geostrata.

Even having read that noxious editorial error and despite some misgivings, I purchased a copy of Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future. Oh, I haven't read it yet. It's just that, he has written more books than I can count on one hand, and the titles deteriorate with time from Introduction to Superstrings to The Future of the Mind. This particular book considers time travel and AI. Seriously considers it. Even when history teaches us that it goes its own way and science doesn't care.

Another of his books is Parallel Worlds. It explores the multiverse - you can take it from here - a series of bubble universes. Theoretically, there is another me who didn't fall for the nonsense about doing something you love and suffering for your art. She is being paid to travel around the world and consult with large firms about something very boring but very specialised. Or she is living her principles and doing charity work because either she doesn't mind sharing a room with three students or she has a rich husband.

This is all apparently part of a part of string theory, which is part of an attempt to explain why Schrodinger's Cat lets Schrodinger put him in a box in the first place. In other words, it wants to be The Grand Unifying Theory and explain why atoms can be in two places at once but my begonias are dead and not waiting for me to observe them being alive.

String theory is the frontrunner (although that doesn't mean you have to accept the multiverse - not that the universe cares), or so science writers tell me. But, the other day, a reliable (aren't they all...) science news site described a new theory based on the nature of copying in digital media. (In literature, we call that simulacra, but hey, I don't put faith in my senses anyway.) Now I'm perpetuating the sloppiness of pseudo-science, because that was one of the only things I understand. And another scientist from another elite university endorsed the paper, though I think he was sniggering at the end.

Popper can't help me here. What is the opposite of the Copier Theory? The Deletion Theory? Instead of a universe, a zeroverse, a finiteverse, a cat-in-the-boxverse? I'm going back to bleating because a Freudian or Marxist reading of the philosophy of science is far easier than disproving hypotheses of people who may or may not be oversimplifying things and convincing you that the universe depends on you noticing it.

It's difficult to resist the romance that you can will things alive or dead, that you know everything about the world and that everything is connected at some abstract level. Even when you put little faith in your senses and less in those of someone else. Which is why I shall read the book and tell you that all these things are true because a guy who looks very much like Einstein wrote it down. I like science fiction. However, I may never finish Dawkins' The God Delusion, the Joyce and Ulysses of the scientific world.

Stranger and Stranger: Post 2 of 2

"Stranger and stranger," cried Camilla (she was so much surprised that for the moment she forgot to think up a better title).'

I didn't write this - I typed it. Har! Ok, it isn't original nor is it a decent appropriation of Alice's surprise in Wonderland. In the original (and funny) version, this prim little miss is so surprised she has forgotten 'her grammar', saying 'curiouser and curiouser' when the correct superlative is 'more curious'. (I have just unfunnied it. But wait, there is more funny to come.) She is surprised because her neck is growing longer - nothing else, just her neck - and all she can think about are her shoes and who will tie them. Granted, she is 10 years old or something and has probably just learnt to tie her shoes.

Now my title is not grammatically incorrect or funny. I am not surprised and my neck is still the same length as this morning, I think (I don't measure it regularly or at all so if I really wanted to be sure I'd have to compare photos, but I'm pretty sure it's still the same length). My title should tell you I am confuzzled. Again, this is not a word I am coining. It is a type of confusion, I suppose (I have never had to define it before), where you understand all the factors and reasoning, but that doesn't help you grasp it any better.

Like (sorry, folks), smoking. I don't understand it. I mean, I understand that it's addictive and that people often start out as teenagers due to peer pressure or because they think they look cool (update: not even James Dean in a leather biker jacket leaning on a fast car looks cool smoking) or because it reduces stress or because it smothers food cravings. But come on, we're a smart generation. We know better. You know better.

What confuzzles me is why someone would voluntarily imbibe tar, knowing they are imbibing tar (and bleach and rat poison), which a) is tested on animals (look that one up, you; I have nightmares about that rat) and b) destroys entire forests when factories are built (nevermind the oceans and lakes when the stuff spills). To look like James Dean on a bad day. Voluntarily. There is a link I am missing.

Anyway, that is confuzzlement. Perhaps this post is confuzzlement.

To recap, Stranger in a Strange Land is about Mike the Martian. He is physically human but a sociological 'stranger' and that 'strange land' is Earth. The Martians are a highly evolved civilisation who leave their young to survive or not before welcoming them back into the fold. (That way they weed out the weak ones.) They believe in ghosts. They also can 'discorporate' at will (die) (my favourite bit) and then their friends eat the body  (anyone catch that pun? Probably my best).

There doesn't seem to be a hint of irony in the judgement that human behaviour is largely an arbitrary set of rules designed to prevent human beings from achieving... I have no idea what noun to ascribe to the Martian ideal. Nirvana?

I'm being sarcastic here because I'm all riled up over the animal testing, so find some salt and throw it over your preferred shoulder.

Literature that was revolutionary at the time seems dated a few decades later. I have said this before, in defence of EM Foster (back off, you, that's sacred ground you're about to trample on, literally). Free love was revolutionary in the 60s (a bit like Google will seem in 50 years, after the second Silicon Valley crash). It was Mike's solution to human problems, not the Martians', because by all accounts they are as ugly as salmon and have the mating patterns of.

Mike doesn't have any of the cynicism that I and probably you (else you're in the wrong place, bud) have (I scoffed and rolled my eyes more the further I read). He can set up a telepathic and empathic link between his followers (yes, what happens next is exactly what you think happens next) so that they can access his superhero powers (lifting things and making policemen disappear and, well...) and his Martian bond between his body and let's-just-go-with mind. Ta da, emotions like jealousy discorporate.

I dunno. I can't imagine feeling less jealous because I'm in my partner's brain, and I really, really don't want him in mine.

Maybe my resistance to Mike's spirituality is only proof of how constrained I am by human mores. Well, of course! I yell. Followed by, no, I don't think so. Both. Because human beings need a framework, whether political, familial, social or religious. It's the details of the framework that can be awful and constraining, not the framework (unless your framework is cannibalism. Like Mike's).

Look, no one's stopping me from setting up a hovel... in a hovel, but then I must accept that no one's going to come to my aid when it falls down. I'm sure Mike could have constructed a lovely hovel in no time and without twitching a finger joint, and then rebuilt it, and filled it with followers. But he would just be replacing one framework with another (are you really asking me to choose between democracy and free love? The former has health care and builders to rebuild my hovel, and the latter has the power of the mind, and my mind is a scary place without entrusting my life to it).

Let us sidewind back onto the path. A path. I wrote in the last post that Stranger in a Strange Land can be divided into two distinct books, but that perhaps I was being unfair in judging the second when I hadn't finished. I have finished it, I have let a few days pass, and I stand by my judgement. (Always trust your instinct.) You may be out of salt by now, so you guessed this, I'm sure. No review can end well when it begins with smoking.

Now I think the second book is even worse than I first suspected, especially when compared with the first. Which had a plot. And character consistency. I am confuzzled about how one author can write both books - and in one book! - how it won a Hugo Award and how this book finds itself squished up with 1984, We and A Brave New World on 'best of' lists. I am confuzzled about the editor and publisher who let the book end like that (I won't spoil it - but I will warn you). I am confuzzled about why I read past that 46% (don't).

A common excuse for sci-fi writers is that they were tripping or psychotic at the time, maybe both. According to his Wikipaedia bio, he embraced that stereotype and wandered into Wonderland every once in a while. That might explain the monologues about how awful the modern world is. But Philip K Dick used to write a novel in two days while high on LSD and he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Perhaps I am judging Heinlein harshly, based on one bad experience. But I don't think so because that's how I got into this post.

Now I am irritated and need a good book to read.

Stranger in a Strange Land: Part 1 of 2

Once again, I demand your patience. Yes, demand! A reviewer should never review a book when she has not finished said book. She should also never review a book straight after finishing. But a) rules only apply 75% of the time, b) rules bore me 75% of the time and c) Stranger in a Strange Land could be divided neatly into two Kindle singles, the second of which would be filed under a different category - some synonym for 'strange, even for science fiction'.

Despite my claims to unconventionality (literally), this is the 25% of the time when I seem to have introduced my topic in, um, the introduction. Don't worry, no doubt I will have meandered by the conclusion. But just where will I meander to, huh? The mind boggles.

The conundrum here is: What happened to the author, Robert A Heinlein, when he had completed 46% of the book? Here's a clue - or a red herring - he published the book in 1961, a few years after he had written it. Before that, he had written children's books (heavens!). Did he write it and then realise he could use dirty words and sex and indulge in aesthetic, political and humanist dialogues, under the guise of the free love espoused by people who didn't shower or wash their hair (I want to say something nasty here but shall refrain. Unlike Heinlein)?

Enough suspense. I am hungry and my leftovers from dinner are a-calling. From the fridge. I should probably get it checked it out then.

Space travel deposits and then 20-ish years later reclaims a human raised on Mars by, yes, Martians. Martians we now know to be either fossilised single-celled somethings or invisible. These somethings are an advanced civilisation who live for more than 100 years and once they die they become Old Ones who talk to and guide the living Martians. They can control pretty much everything: their minds, growth of their bodies, objects around them and so on. They can also die on command (!), called 'disorporation', and make things not be by reducing them to singularities. (This might also explain why they're invisible to dear Curiosity.)

The Man from Mars (nicknamed 'Mike') automatically becomes the richest and most powerful man ever, through some series of silly laws that are sillier than the ones the colonialists imposed. He finds refuge in the home of a philanthropist named Jubal, who is surrounded by lascivious women and two willing servants, who gets him out of his mess by handing power over to the Secretary General of the world. After Mike makes some policemen disappear (the official story is they got lost. Yes. In a suburb).

Aaaaaand this is where the bar at the bottom of the Kindle screen says '46%'. It should also say 'end of Book One - proceed to the book labelled 'strange, even for science fiction'?' In Martian, 'grok' means something apparently indescribable in human language but, to take some liberties, seems to be a verb for true understanding, where the objective truth and our subjective delusions meet. (Did I mention the Martians are highly advanced? Also in the way of the spirit. That's how they control things. (They sound like hippies to me.)) I don't grok Book Two.

Mike adapts quickly to human life, but he doesn't grok it. So he takes his show on the road, together with someone else's sweetheart. He begins to speak with all the idioms and double entendres of a fluent English speaker raised in America. He also delivers monologues on the philosophies of religion and human relationships, between orgies that to him symbolise having a glass of wine together, and trips to the zoo. And he still can't make or understand a joke.

Meanwhile, back at Jubal's ranch, amid pregnancy (implied to be the progeny of the Man from Mars) and a wedding with - wait - a celibate Muslim (shock, horror!), the ranch-owner delivers his own monologues on the philosophy of aesthetics, with so much passion that I am beginning to suspect the author is speaking through these characters. I fell asleep at this point.

At the end of Book One, I thought, this is unusual: to continue past what feels like the climax and resolution of the novel. Fun; it reminds me of Star Wars (that's a compliment). Sometimes it's best to stop while you're ahead (one valuable rule).

As I said, a reviewer should never pass comment before the end of the book. (Note this, my future reviewers. It's not polite.) Maybe there will be a plot development that says (from the author): "I know this has all been a bit much to stomach and I apologise for offending the sensibilities of sensible people. Here is why I did it and see, it works! Continue reading and praise my book in your blog post." Perhaps just an endnote. Even a footnote.

It won a pretty impressive prize, a Hugo Award (not a Booker or a Nobel though), if you're impressed by that sort of thing. Neuromancer won the same award in 1985 and I thought that was grand (seriously, no one has answered my question). (Also, did you know that they give out the award to films and that Jurassic Park won in 1992? Don't roll your eyes - deny you watch the repeats when they come on the movie channel, I dare you.)

Brontosaurus had been my favourite dinosaur since I was a child. Even though he may not exist. I like an underd-ino (har!)

Essentially (because this is the most conventional post I have written in a while, I will summarise My Point(s) - even though I am listening to Thom Yorke!) the characterisation reduces to the author's opinions (mostly negative) of the human race, thus losing the subtlety of Book One and makes it grand. These opinions are dated: diatribes on modern art, misanthropism, religion as akin to commercialism, how media distort reality and so on. We have heard them and read them ad nauseam. People waiting to cross the road talk about this!

Essentially (revised) in Book Two we're being preached to. By characters who think that orgies are a valid way to encourage social empathy. Granted, Mike is revealing (haha) social norms and mores for what they are: artificial. But that's a little ridiculous from a man who will choose the moment he will die - sorry, discorporate - and believes he is being educated by ghosts. Norms and mores are necessary for the existence of any life form with a brain. Watch your pets introduce themselves to other pets.

Having potentially stuck my foot in my mouth, I am going to finish the book and hopefully not have to retract this post (I won't delete it, that seems unethical somehow, like copying a picture of a model from a website and uploading it as your profile pic. Yeah, I'm talking to you). At the very least, I will grok the philosophies of aesthetics, economics and human relationships in the 60s. I always wanted to take that course at varsity, but it conflicted with the rest of my schedule.

The Year of the Flood

On a shelf in Borges's library is a box. (Ok, there are many shelves and many boxes maybe even many libraries). This shelf and box is the one on your right. The other right. No, no, his left. Three-hundred-and-sixty degrees from her right. Dammit, you lost it. Nevermind; we'll get another box and label it in permanent marker. Underneath I will write: "You, the reader, lost the first box" and I will tie it to you with rope that scratches the inside of your wrist.

So I write (stop crowding me) "Literary Science-Fiction". But the letters are small and there is a space to the right and below as if something should follow. This isn't necessarily significant: writing in permanent marker on an object is as difficult as writing in a straight line with chalk. Into this box we tip Margaret Atwood, followed by the world and her husband because nerds are the cool kids right now. Which is, in its own way, a blip in the multi-verse.

Ms Atwood hates the label on the box, and not just because of the handwriting. I don't know her personally, but in a way I do, because I follow her on Twitter. I know she hates the label because I would too (as confirmed by a Gargoyle search). It's not because the label suggests that science fiction is lowbrow. It's because writers don't like boxes. We imagine that we live around the box, spending our days decorating it with warning signs, like the Borrowers in The Borrowers but more cynical.

I bet the marketing department adore that label. I bet they invented it. I also bet (I'm going to be rich) that they adore that she hates the label. They hand her buttons and glue to make pretty patterns on the wall of the nearest box, and she looks at them and paces the length of said box dropping buttons along the way. And they cheer. Because, you see, we're all in boxes with boxes stacked on our heads and around our arms like bangles. We need boxes because otherwise we would suffocate in the chaos of the universe. Trust me on this.

Why am I taking Ms Atwood in and out of the box and giving her buttons to drop like breadcrumbs? You guessed it! I just finished The Year of the Flood. Now, you know reading about books is only worthwhile if we meander down hillocks and over rivers, because otherwise, you could just spend the time reading the book. You have also guessed the Ms Atwood and I have 'a history', albeit one she knows nothing about even though I follow her on Twitter.

The first book of hers that I read was Oryx and Crake, which is part of a set of three (not a trilogy, no; more like a puzzle but not all the pieces match) including The Year of the Flood. I was a bookseller and I bought it on sale because I had heard the surname Atwood whispered among my learned friends but mostly because it is a deckle-edged, first-edition hardcover.

I disliked the book at the time. Her writing style is precise, almost minimalistic, and so much is left buried under the rubble of disaster, because it is easier than digging it out and discovering that what you have your hand is a child's shoe. Or so I thought. I was quick to believe the worst because I needed some boxes. Or shoes. Anything to hold in my hands. This easy disdain festered until I wasn't sure how I felt about the book. Or the author.

Next I read The Blind Assassin and the The Handmaid's Tale. Neither of which I can remember. Here she buried me with boxes, took them away, put them back the wrong way up and dowsed them in water. I'd had it! By now, you and I know that protest is a sure sign that you have trampled on something you care about. Still, Oryx and Crake festered. By now, I thought the book was ok, maybe even good, perhaps by some fluke. Sometimes authors write things by accident. Although I have not experienced this.

Now we get to the actual topic. Eight paragraphs later. Honestly, you have travelled further in search of My Point before, so no whinging.

The Year of the Flood, as I mentioned is part of a set, with Oryx and Crake and Maddadam. Like Oryx and Crake, the book is narrated from just after the apocalypse, although most of the book is a reflection on events before it. Yes, this is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel and I said I would give you a break from this, but this is what's cool. Yo. Now button up your plaid and appreciate.

The first third (and I am being kind here) is no less confusing than Oryx and Crake, because both jump from person to place to time without always being specific. But the narrative of The Year of the Flood does even out. Characters begin to reappear consistently, as do places, and mostly in chronological order. It is almost as though the author is teasing us with the character Ren, withholding so much and then releasing it like the wall of a dam. (Get it? Dam... Flood. Har!)

This worked for me better than the unceasing teasing of Oryx and Crake. I was pulled along by the main characters, sympathising and even empathising with them, even when things got damn right weird and the characters seemed to have switched personalities with people not even in the novel. Even now I have soft spots for Ren and Toby, although the spots for Amanda and the boys are small. They have to balance on the sole of one foot.

But The Year of the Flood is not festering like Oryx and Crake did. It has found its place on my shelf and I would loan it out because it is a good book and you should read it. The narrative and characters are fixed, while those of Oryx and Crake swirl around like milk that never turns into cheese, not even blue cheese. Then again, perhaps I am judging it too soon. Perhaps it will sizzle rather than swirl or fester. Perhaps it will only be complete when I read Maddadam.

So, it's on my shelf - they're on my shelf, because it fits into a bunch of different boxes. I didn't intend this (I swear), even though I started off on a rant about genre, but none of my comments have anything to do with the label. What sold me on The Year of the Flood were the characters and what haunts me about Oryx and Crake is the discontinuity of the narrative. No mention of rubble or shoes or carnivorous pigs. Until now. Surprise!

Now I dare you to pick up all the boxes (use the muscles in your legs - yes, like that) and distribute them around the library. I won't yell at you this time or chain you to anything. I only did that the first time to see if you'd let me, oh passive reader you.