Having read this after The Invention of Wings, one can’t help but compare the two. In terms of the writing, plot structure, and character development, Monk Kidd’s later book, also set in South Carolina, prevails as the superior novel, if not quite the most memorable. Given the twelve years that separate them, I suppose this shouldn’t be too surprising, but Kidd’s talents as a writer have clearly flourished tremendously in that span of time. This is not to say that The Secret Life of Bees isn’t well written, because it is, but it did not grab me and refuse to let go like her 2014 masterpiece.

Beyond the noticeable backward drift in the caliber of her writing, I think what put me off was the overly saccharine tenor. Don’t get me wrong — I can do schmaltzy. In fact, I love schmaltzy, but I have to be on board with the general direction of the plot and it needs to feel organic in its delivery. In several spots, the ‘just-so’ sequence of events and the demeanor and personalities of the characters come across rather forced and unnatural. August Boatwright in particular has an elysian quality about her that lends the character an other-than-human aura. The perfected wisdom and virtue imbued in every word she utters robs her of authenticity and texture. This fits with the quasi-magical realism vibe Kidd was supposedly gunning for, but it didn’t help sell the character for me.

I did enjoy the element of beekeeping woven into the narrative and thought it offered some intriguing symbolism for the larger story. Kidd clearly did a lot of legwork exploring the science of hives and honeybees prior to charting a course for this novel, and their thematic presence throughout surely explains its lasting legacy since 2002. The vivid descriptions of Lily and August tending the hives left a strong impression, and I would have welcomed a few more of these moments.

The portrayal of Black characters by a white author is another potential sticking point. I think Kidd could have done a better job conveying that Lily’s pains and struggles are different both in kind and in degree from those shared by the nonwhite characters with whom she surrounds herself over the course of the novel. Part of this disconnect can be explained by the inherent limitations of telling the story through Lily’s eyes. As a young girl living a mostly sheltered, segregated life, she shouldn’t be expected to relate to, or have the vocabulary to describe, the contrasting lived experiences of those set apart in society. Still, I felt that more could have been done to manifest the starkly different realities inhabited by the central characters.

The friends of the Boatwright sisters also felt underdeveloped, more reminiscent of stereotypes than fully fleshed out characters. I wanted to hear about their personal struggles and racial tribulations, anything beyond what food they brought over and what type of hats they wore. If there’s any aspect of the book I felt unnecessarily watered down the racial friction of living in the deep south circa the early 1960s, it’s this one. The titular role of Black women as nurturing mother figures to a coming-of-age white girl seems passé and even insulting today, though I did appreciate those fleeting moments when Lily registers the scale of the racially charged landscape native to the era. I’ve yet to personally resolve the ethical status of white authors depicting Black voices, but I understand the perspective of critics who take a harsher stance against Kidd’s characterizations here.

Closing Thoughts

I don’t think the book necessarily deserves a lower score simply because it appeared earlier in Kidd’s career, or because direct comparisons with her 2014 standard-bearer leave much to be desired. As a work of literary fiction, it’s average — neither great nor terrible. The ambient backdrop of beekeeping elevates the narrative in original ways, but the goopy theatrics and unnatural characters weigh it back down. It’s possible this book just wasn’t for me and that others will derive greater value in accordance with their own personal experiences and the degree to which they connect with those of the characters. But if it’s a recommendation you’re after, my advice would be to skip this one and pick up The Invention of Wings for its better crafted story, its more historically grounded setting, its more enlivening characters, and its more eloquent prose, all of which combine to make it the irresistible page-turner I hoped this one would be.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Feature image: Syrphid’s Feast by Niels Strating

 
 
Having read Gone Girl first, I decided to start at the beginning of Flynn’s (three-volume deep) catalog. Where the former spun a fiendish web of deceit and manipulation around a troubled marriage, Sharp Objects is a darker, more brooding tale that explores an earnestly neurotic mind, dysfunctional family dynamics, and small-town social structure through the medium of an unconventional mystery thriller. And I don’t mean dark as in Donnie Darko; I mean dark in the vein of We Need to Talk About Kevin (both of which are excellent films). It should also be mentioned that while Gone Girl is told via alternating perspectives of its two main characters, Sharp Objects is told entirely through the lens of a single protagonist.

(Note: Spoilers to follow. Stop reading here if you’ve not read the book.)

The setting is Wind Gap (a fictional town, not the actual one in PA), a sleepy, close-knit community in southern Missouri where two young girls have turned up dead, their teeth removed. With the killer(s) still on the loose, Camille Preaker, small-time reporter from Chicago, is tasked with returning to her hometown to cover the story. Wary of the sunless memories of her painful childhood that await her there, she reluctantly agrees; this could be the big break she — and her struggling paper — needs.

Camille is the reification of the tragic character. Her younger sister Marian died at a young age. She never knew her father. Her mother Adora, an eccentric and overbearing hypochondriac, she barely speaks to anymore. And, for some “deep-chemical” reason she’s powerless to explain, Camille’s also a cutter. Scrawled across her body in the form of conspicuous scar tissue are a series of words she’s carved into her skin since she was a teenager.
 

“I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It’s covered with words – cook, cupcake, kitty, curls – as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful.”

 
In order to carry out her assignment in Wind Gap, Camille must dredge up her unpleasant past by reuniting with her family and a community she no longer feels a part of without reopening old wounds. As the revelations of this eerie town bubble to the surface, Camille’s mental anguish and the struggle to keep her inner demons at bay conspire against her, threatening to break her in body and in spirit.

One trend or stereotype Flynn set out to crush, not just with this novel but in all of her writing, is the idea that women can’t be evil. That women are the victims and men the abusers. That women are the ones who react rather than instigate — that they can’t be the authors of destruction. In telling contrast, the women of Sharp Objects plot and scheme and hurt, until there is nothing left. They are villains in every sense of the word, and more dangerous yet than their male counterparts precisely because you never see them coming. As the Kansas City detective says repeatedly, “A woman just doesn’t fit the profile for these murders.”

Flynn unapologetically deracinates default expectations of the nurturing and empathic creature, twisting them into images shaped by violence, depravity and cruelty. In a later interview about the book, she expresses it this way:
 

“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. So Sharp Objects is my creepy little bouquet.”

 
Much has been said about Adora and Amma — Camille’s half-sister, or as I like to call her, Little Miss Horrible — but can we talk about Alan for a moment? Adora’s nigh robotic husband is the lone question mark for me. Where was this wet-mop schmuck during all the ugliness unfolding before him? Did he not notice, in between his reading about horses and boats, anything amiss with either of the people living in the same house under the same roof? Surely he should have noticed a pattern of Adora’s “medications” and Amma’s health? He is the one to piece together what the doctors could not. Or Amma’s wildly antisocial tendencies? It is his daughter, after all. I see Alan as the lazy, apathetic soul who could have prevented much of this evil, but who stood by in blissful ignorance and watched it happen.

It’s been commonly said that Flynn grew as a writer between Sharp Objects and Gone Girl. However, I personally see little evidence of that here. I find her prose every bit as memorable, her metaphors just as clever, and the narrative as powerful in this offering as in her later works. Flynn is a seriously talented writer, with a knack for weaving macabre tales that leave a residue of darkness in their wake. Though she’s been heavily involved in film and television adaptations of late, including the upcoming Sharp Objects drama series on HBO starring Amy Adams, I trust there is much more to come from this brilliant mind.

Closing Thoughts

Any recommendations of this novel must be accompanied by a major trigger warning for depression, abuse and self-harm (in particular the self-harm component may turn some readers off). But assuming your psyche can handle the heavy contents, Sharp Objects is a thoroughly mesmerizing and unsettling novel that’s sure to appeal to thriller and mystery aficionados alike. The hard-hitting twists at the end are memorable in their own right, but what makes this story so gripping is less the whodunit aspect than watching unlikely heroine Camille wrestle with her emotional vulnerability and the visceral darkness at the heart of her family. Sharp Objects is filled with fierce and broken women whose penchant for destruction constantly toys with our intuitions.

Whether you grow to hate the characters or empathize with them, you’ll want to see their story to the end. Flynn writes with an infectious presence that worms its way under your skin. Her pitch-perfect descriptions lend such vividness to her narrative that I found myself pausing periodically to imagine the scene play out in front of me. And the way she lets slip intriguing details to be cashed out later makes for sustained reading sessions. (It took me all of three days to finish.) That this was her debut novel is a promising sign Flynn will keep us entertained for years to come.

“I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.”

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

 
 
(Note: As with other reviews in this series, spoilers to follow.)

After five novels spanning as many centuries, one might have supposed Asimov’s stepwise tinkering with his Foundation universe had come to an end. The adventures of Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, and Bliss concluded in Foundation and Earth (1983), with a finale as intellectually rewarding as it was thematically resonant. Trevize gained the validation he desired for choosing Gaia (or proto-Galaxia) over the Seldon Plan. But just five short years later, again at the behest of avid fans and pushy publishers, Asimov picked up the series once more, this time in the form of a prequel. As its name suggests, Prelude to Foundation (1986) was the first of two prequels setting up the events of the original Foundation novel released in 1951.

For most of the series, psychohistory’s founder, Hari Seldon, is this enigmatic figure spoken of only in cryptic, quasi-spiritual terms, rather like a demigod. Little is known about the man other than that he was a mathematical genius whose equations helped shepherd humanity through a series of increasingly existential crises. In Prelude Seldon’s saintly aura is stripped away as we are introduced to the young, martial arts-trained professor laboring to turn his coveted psychohistory into a practical, applied science.

The first act opens on the planet Trantor, the Empire’s capital, as Dr. Seldon presents his seminal paper at the Decennial Mathematics Convention. In a decision he soon comes to regret, he lays out a theoretical method by which the future can be determined probabilistically. The key word here is ‘theoretical’, a detail those with a hankering for control over the world order seem uniformly disposed to overlook. In Seldon’s own words:
 

“And I went on to show that this would result in the ability to predict future events in a statistical fashion—that is, by stating the probability for alternate sets of events, rather than flatly predicting that one set will take place.“

 
News of his work spreads like a thunderbolt. Emperor Cleon I himself arranges a meeting, in the hope that he can use Seldon’s abilities as a means toward self-preservation. Haunted by the specter of assassination, Cleon is dismayed upon learning that psychohistory is not yet ready for primetime. He’s not about to risk it falling into the hands of his enemies, however, and orders his right-hand man, First Minister Eto Demerzel, to keep close tabs on Seldon’s progress. Demerzel is a shadowy character whose influence penetrates each of the disparate sectors on Trantor. Seldon now has a target on his back. Indeed, it seems he is now the most important person in all of the Galaxy, with the powers that be all wishing to profit from a mature psychohistory.
 

 
Before Seldon can return to his home world of Helicon, he runs into one Chetter Hummin, an intrepid journalist who warns Seldon of the Emperor’s intentions. Like Cleon, Hummin also seeks a functional psychohistory. His aims prove more noble than the former’s, as he anticipates it being used to divert the Empire from its path of rotting decay. Seldon, meanwhile, harbors strong doubts that his mathematics actually possess the potential his benefactors so eagerly seek, but Hummin is able to convince him that his research will be for the good of humanity. After dispatching a couple of the Emperor’s goons, they flee to a nearby university in Streeling Sector, where Seldon can tend to his work in relative safety.

There he meets Dors Venabili, a historian and the second protagonist in this outing. She agrees to watch over Seldon and assist him with his studies. Dors’ larger role in the narrative is shrouded in mystery and isn’t fully explored until the second prequel. In this outing she serves as an eloquent sounding board for Seldon’s frequent riffs and ruminations, while her strong-willed and circumspect presence nicely balance her counterpart’s impetuosity and fitful naivete over the course of their journeys. Thankfully for Seldon, she is also quite capable of kicking ass when only violent options present themselves.

Seldon’s stint at the university is short-lived, as he is unable to escape the feeling that his every move is being watched by the Emperor and his minions. Following a close encounter in which Seldon’s reckless actions nearly get him killed, Hummin relocates Seldon and Dors to Mycogen Sector, an underground society on Trantor proper that is believed to possess some of the oldest records in the Galaxy. It is thought that by simulating an earlier period of history where the moving parts were decidedly smaller in both scale and in number, this will greatly simplify Seldon’s intractable task of mathematizing human societies.

It wouldn’t be an Asimov novel without heaping sexism, and Mycogen serves it in spades. As thoroughly patriarchal as it is puritanical, Mycogen is a world in which the subservience of women has been raised to an organizing principle. In public, men speak only to men; women are never to address men, much less outsiders like Hari and Dors, outside the privacy of their own home. Seldon exploits the situation, manipulating one of the women to obtain their sacred book, hoping it may hold the clues he needs to perfect his theory. The book appears to be a dead-end, but it does lead Seldon to believe that the Mycogenians are protecting one big secret: a 20,000 year-old robot holed up in their Sacratorium—a museum-cum-temple of sorts dedicated to remembering their past glory on the home world Aurora.

The site is off-limits to off-worlders, so Seldon and Dors don disguises and sneak inside. They do in fact find a robot, albeit defunct. In the process they are “caught” by one of the High Elders, an artificer whose machinations had lured the duo into a trap; rather than Seldon doing the manipulating, it was he who was beguiled into following a course of action pursuant to Mycogenian interests. The Elder had been in communication with the Emperor, and sought to strike a deal in turning Seldon over to Imperial authorities for his sacrilegious breach of custom. Seemingly always in the right place at the right time, Hummin intervenes by playing up psychohistory’s potential for furthering Mycogen’s interests. The Elder reluctantly agrees to forget the whole ordeal, reneges on his arrangement with the Emperor, and allows the trio to depart Mycogen for good. (Hmm…)

Hummin shuttles them off to another of Trantor’s sectors known as Dahl. Not only is their purpose for going here unexplained, their stay in Dahl is one of the weaker sections of the book. Were it not for introducing important characters who play a larger role in the sequel, there would be little to recommend its place in the story. Seldon meets a precocious factory worker named Yugo Amaryl whom he promises a job after seeing some scribbled equations Amaryl had been working on in his spare time. Amaryl also mentions a wise woman known as Mother Rittah who holds ancient knowledge about Earth—the original home of humanity and, Seldon hopes, an ideal case study for psychohistory.

Seldon and Dors venture into the slummy Billibotton District in search of Rittah, where they are set upon by a swarm of knife-wielding miscreants. Dors makes quick work of them, an experienced knife-fighter herself. Shortly thereafter they befriend a homeless, alley-smart twelve year-old named Raych who leads them to the oracle. She reveals to them that the Mycogenians’ lost world Aurora was actually the robot world that destroyed Earth (cue the Robot series!).

Dahl authorities catch wind of their antics and send a pair of constables to question them. Threatened with arrest, Seldon and Dors knock out the officers, putting our heroes permanently on the run. Fortunately, Raych leads them to safety, when a mysterious soldier shows up on orders to escort Seldon away from Dahl. Raych, Dors and Seldon all end up in Wye—a sector at Trantor’s south pole—whose mayor (Rashelle) has been biding her time as she plots the usurpation of Emperor Cleon’s throne. Rashelle’s plan would allow her to gain full control of Trantor and its various sectors while relinquishing all Imperial command of the isolate planets. Seldon, she believes, is the ace in the hole required to carry out her grand act of sedition.

Seldon wants no part in this scheme, and for good reason: he now knows how to make psychohistory practical. Through his diverse cultural experiences in each of the sectors spread across Trantor, he realizes Trantor itself will serve as the perfect model for developing his inchoate science, which can then be generalized to the rest of the twenty-five million worlds populating the Galaxy. At least, that’s the idea. But if Rashelle’s coup comes to fruition, the Galaxy would be plunged into anarchy, menaced by a neverending series of territorial disputes and sanguinary transfers of power. If Seldon is to mature his science and stave off the destruction to come, the Empire must remain at peace.

As if on cue, Rashelle’s plot is foiled as the soldiers under her command no longer assent to her orders. Hummin arrives on the scene and the remaining pieces fall into place. We learn that Hummin is none other than…Cleon’s confidant and advisor Eto Demerzel. Moreover, he’s not actually a human at all, but the legendary robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, whom Trevize and crew meet in the conclusion to Foundation and Earth. Further still, Hummin / Demerzel / Olivaw possesses mentalic powers (à la the Mule) enabling him to subtly manipulate the emotions of others. This explains Seldon’s drive to perfect psychohistory despite his earlier skepticism, the High Elder’s leniency on Mycogen, and Rashelle’s failed scheme, among other improbable feats of chance.
 

 
Having lived the last 20,000 years, Demerzel sees the approaching collapse of the Empire as inevitable and psychohistory as the mechanism by which to minimize the fallout. Thus, in accordance with the Zeroth Law—”A robot may not harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”—he intervenes just enough to nudge events in Seldon’s favor.

Prequel Fever

Critics have been somewhat harsh on this entry, and not without reason, the most fundamental perhaps being that Seldon’s quest for a workable psychohistory just isn’t all that compelling. What made the earlier novels so memorable was exploring the limits of psychohistory and seeing whether the next great challenge was acidic enough to dissolve the Seldon Plan. The cerebral acrobatics of navigating the contours of each successive crisis as the Galaxy tests its fate against the provisions of ancient prophecies forms the bread and butter of the Foundation series. Sure, Prelude contains all the twists and bombshell reveals characteristic of Asimovian fiction, but the humble beginnings of Seldon’s Big Idea fail to reach the epic heights imparted by the settings that have so endeared generations of readers.

Delving too much into origins also comes at a cost. There’s a certain mystique surrounding psychohistory—one of the most inventive and successful concepts in all of science fiction—that isn’t helped by reductive exposition. By cutting the enormity of psychohistory down to size, some of the series’ allure invariably wisps away. More problematic is the lackluster execution of the reveal. There is no single ground-shaking discovery or torrent of insight that sets Seldon on the right path, no “Eureka!” moments that lead him to his statistical laws. He just wakes up one morning and says he’s worked it out. (No, literally that’s what happens.) We’re supposed to believe his traipsing around Trantor set him on the right course to a solution. That’s at best unsatisfying, even if it’s naive to expect juicy insights into what are ultimately fictional concepts with little chance of being mapped onto reality. But as plot devices go, it’s pretty tame.

What’s more, the places they visit fail to inspire and feel thrown in merely to bridge Asimov’s various fictional projects. A lot of space in this book is tied up in external references to the Robot and Empire series—in asides that aren’t particularly purposeful in and of themselves. The robot subplot on Mycogen and the preoccupation with the Aurora-Earth connection, for example, make for interesting sync points with the Asimov corpus, but don’t do much heavy lifting in progressing the central plot of Prelude. Asimov notes in the introduction that unification was not what he had in mind when these stories were conceived, and devoted greater effort to the task later in his career. It certainly shows, but surely it’s not worth the confusion readers unfamiliar with his other stories are sure to experience.

As for plot holes, there might be one relating to Olivaw. He has supposedly functioned as Demerzel, counselor to the Imperial throne, for decades, and is frequently referred to as the most influential person in the Galaxy, even more so than Cleon himself. He has connections with sectors all across Trantor. Yet no one knows what he looks like, or that Hummin and Demerzel are the same person? Or, rather, is it that Olivaw lulls them into forgetfulness? With the mind control mechanic, one can never be sure. (I had the same issue with Jessica Jones, alas.)

There is also the obligatory caveat about character development. As we’ve come to accept from this series (and from Asimov in general), the individuals on the page serve largely as mouthpieces for Asimov’s ever active, idea-saturated mind. What ‘development’ we do get is intellectual in nature, as Seldon puzzles out solutions to psychohistory. Where such shortcomings might be given a pass in earlier novels, overshadowed as they were by the larger arc built into the narrative, they’re more visible wrapped inside a more confined and chronologically compact story.

What is unique about Prelude, however slight a difference it makes in the end, is that Hari Seldon is widely thought to be modeled after Asimov himself. Ruthlessly logical, chronically inquisitive and never satisfied he has the final answer in hand, Seldon is the hardened intellectual Asimov embodied throughout his illustrious career. The recurring problem, however—and Prelude once again fails to break the mold—is the supporting cast, who is every bit as effortlessly logical and thorough as Seldon. Each of the characters he interacts with, even the oppressed women on Mycogen, go toe to toe with Seldon’s brilliance. They speak the same way, they reason the same way. The criticisms of previous entries thus still stand: the dialogue reads largely as an exchange between scholars than as variegated, down-to-earth human beings with diverse flaws and personalities and cognitive talents to boot. It’s all the more ironic given that social complexity is presented as the critical plot device underwriting psychohistory’s evolution from concept to reality.

The Alignment Problem

What if robots get there first? One point raised by Dors is the implications of reducing human behavior to mathematical laws. “How horrible,” said Dors. “You are picturing human beings as simple mechanical devices. Press this button and you will get that twitch.” Seldon’s attempt to bring quadrillions of people under computational control puts Dors ill at ease despite the benevolent impulse behind it. But should this give us pause as well? After all, whether we will be able to model our actions to this extent is irrelevant, because our future AI companions most certainly will.
 

 
And this dovetails directly with the alignment problem in AI—the notion that the goals of superintelligent AI may ultimately prove inconsistent with human well-being or the preservation of our species. Any dynamic, self-modifying superintelligence will eventually understand human behavior at the level of the brain. At that point, their intelligence and capabilities will have far surpassed our own and we may come to be viewed as lesser beings, of trivial consequence to the universe. The fundamental worry is that sufficiently advanced AI will graduate from mechanical servants to omniscient overlords and treat us the way we treat cattle or insects. Perhaps then we would need something like an AI Mule on our side to out-manipulate rogue AI. The future of AI systems will be nothing if not interesting.

Closing Thoughts

Prelude to Foundation is the story of how psychohistory was born. We learn more about the Delphic Hari Seldon (who knew he could hold it down in a fight?) and how he managed to see the future in terms of probabilities. Through expository jaunts on Trantor, he meets a range of characters who cause him to see his project in a different light and who will play pivotal roles in the events to come. Many interactions seem to exist for the sole purpose of tying in his Robot and Empire series. While some may find these tangents distracting, they do add more texture to Asimov’s voluminous universe and neither substantially improve nor detract from Seldon’s odyssey. I enjoyed the intellectual jawing that permeates all of the Foundation novels, even if Prelude‘s lesser scope made me nostalgic for the high-stakes, space-traversing amplitude of the earlier works. Whether we ultimately needed an origin story is left for the reader to decide. As for myself, it’s the stories that emerge once Seldon’s science is already off the ground that keep me coming back for more.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Further reading: In Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov delves into psychohistory’s sorta psycho history

Feature image via DeviantArt

 
 
What if seeing into the future was a matter of algorithmic precision? If we could model behavior on large scales with pinpoint accuracy, might we then predict the actions of nations, the collapse of empires, the bends and undulations of history? In Asimov’s far future (~50,000 years time), our science can do that and more, with the ability to reduce the aggregate behavior of billions to mathematical formulae and compute probable paths civilization will take. Conceived by Asimov’s fictional luminary Hari Seldon, the science of psychohistory uses the “law of mass action,” together with psychological, sociological and mathematical techniques, to predict macro-historical developments. In perhaps no other context could the phrase “knowledge is power” be more fully realized.

Unleashed from its fitfully habitable home planet, humanity tore out across the stars, occupying millions of worlds, all connected under one vast Galactic Empire. The Empire has endured through twelve thousand years of relative peace among the distant and thriving ecumenes under its rule. But the great Seldon foresees dark times ahead. His research has matured in scope and scale, revealing to a mathematical certainty that the current Empire will fall, and a new regime will rise in its place, but not before a harrowing period of turmoil and barbarism lasting thousands of years. As chief bellwether of galactic catastrophe, Seldon is labeled an agitator and tried for treason, though eventually he wins over the judges at his tribunal with the force of argument.

Seldon uses his knowledge of the future to devise plans to shorten the interregnum of chaos that will inevitably follow the Empire’s collapse. He obtains a charter for establishing the Foundation on the remote peripheral planet Terminus, ostensibly to safeguard the collective knowledge of the human race. A second Foundation is also set up at the opposite or “Star’s End” of the galaxy (though precious little is disclosed about this group for reasons that become clear as you make your way through the series). Teams of scientists and scholars specially selected by Seldon are assembled on Terminus for the express purpose of compiling the Encyclopedia Galactica — a monomaniacal endeavor shrouded in suspicion and uncertainty.
 

 
It doesn’t take long before the “Encyclopedists” are embroiled in the first of several major crises to challenge the Seldon Plan. The underlying question — and one that will reemerge time and again throughout the series — is whether Seldon, in all of his psychohistorical prowess, accounted for every contingency that arises to threaten the resilience of the Foundation and its subjects. Might there be certain fortuities that lay beyond the reach of his science? Will the pair of Foundations, forearmed by Seldon’s prescience, surpass each generational obstacle that comes their way? Or more concisely, just how comprehensive was Seldon’s genius? This dramatic tension between the inevitability of history and the futility of individual action is one that nags and inspires and, as it turns out, is far more compelling than the characters Asimov created and the world they inhabit.

Which is to say that if the plot outlined above fails to fire the imagination, it’s likely nothing else in Asimov’s Foundation saga will hook you. The writing is mostly dry, the characters hopelessly bland and homogeneous, the dialogue stodgy and robotic, and the overall story loose and disjointed. The first book, especially, suffers from an egregious case of character uniformity. Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and Hober Mallow all come across as virtually identical on the page: Seldon’s plea to the board on Trantor; Hardin’s heated debate with colleagues before accessing the Vault for the very first time; Mallow’s pro se defense on Terminus; all are polished perorations reminiscent of an academic conference. In fact, if you were to excerpt random samples of their dialogue and present them to someone who hasn’t read the book, I suspect they would not be able to tell them apart. And that’s because for Asimov, dialogue is much more about advancing the plot and dissecting ideas than elaborating or individuating his characters.

Storytelling is also hampered by a staccato structure which jumps from one character and era to an entirely different time and place, with seemingly no bridge in between. Just as you grow familiar with one group of names and their goings-on, you are transported to the distant future and introduced to the next Xeroxed avatar who formulaically plays out Seldon’s statistical prophecy. I get it, though: Asimov’s psychohistorical drama spans several centuries, and each successive crisis entails a new configuration of players and technologies. But the more continuity you expect, the more jarring each new chapter feels. One might contend that it’s this grand scale that lets Asimov off the hook for the utter lack of character development; after all, why commit to chasing character arcs when they’ll be made anew a few pages on? And yet, what narrative, space epic or no, hasn’t benefited from a memorable character or two?

I later learned of two explanations for the literary mediocrity on display. The first is that Foundation isn’t actually a stand-alone novel, but a compilation of serialized short stories published independently. Only later were they smooshed together into the final form appearing in paperback. The second is that these were among Asimov’s first entries in the science fiction space. He was young and still honing his craft, but went on to write progressively better books. Though I’ve not made it through the whole series, I can vouch that the second and third are appreciably superior to the first, with more focused plotting and consistent delivery.

Closing Thoughts

I dearly expected more from such a highly revered author and series. Not in terms of plot, mind you, which is a fitting showcase of Asimov’s unmatched brilliance and which actually kept me up at night as I turned over its intricacies and scanned for possible loopholes. Indeed, the implications of psychohistory give way to some truly staggering thought experiments when explored in the abstract and deep dissections when viewed through the lens of Asimov’s world, as this essay by Mark Rosenfelder illustrates (#majorspoilers).

Rather, my gripes tend to be more of a literary nature revolving around Foundation‘s undimensional characters and stiff-as-cardboard dialogue. Believe it or not, a novel that’s at least 85% dialogue through which you learn almost nothing about the unrelatable characters can make for quite a displeasing reading experience. Worse, when your protagonists all run together, you risk losing the reader’s interest not just in the characters themselves but in the overall narrative, no matter how strong on its own terms. To enjoy this novel, I essentially had to switch off the part of my brain that expects proper characterization and simply focus on the general direction of the plot. Knowing the characters didn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things helped pad my will to continue down Seldon’s rabbit hole.

Whether or not you wish to take the plunge depends ultimately on whether you, like Asimov, favor mind-warping ideas to riveting characters and poetic prose.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Further reading:

• Isaac Asimov’s Foundation: The little idea that became science fiction’s biggest series
• The Robots and Foundation Universe: Issues Left For Us by Isaac Asimov
• Psychohistory: Was Hari Seldon pulling our leg?
]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2016/09/07/review-foundation/feed/ 0 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/09/07/review-hatchet-the-river/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/09/07/review-hatchet-the-river/#disqus_thread Mon, 07 Sep 2015 20:35:49 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=9790

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Hatchet

“There were these things to do.”

After being ambushed by a porcupine, bulldozed by a moose, ransacked by a tornado and ceaselessly blitzkrieged by mosquitos, chances are superlative that I’d have thrown in the towel and ceded Mother Nature its victory. Not so for Brian Robeson, who taps into unprovenanced reserves of resilience in the wake of each setback. Stranded following a crash landing in a remote stretch of forest south of the Canadian border, teenaged Brian must make do with little more than naked intuition and his trusty hatchet to survive.

We’ve heard it said that necessity (and military advantage) is the mother of invention. It’s what motivates Brian to try out turtle eggs and, I suspect, it’s what led our ancestors to try their first sip of cow’s milk. (Hello, lactase persistence!) Of all the godforsaken tribulations Brian faces, none weigh so heavily as the incessant dread of hunger, an enfeebling thrumming that is never truly quelled, only held in abeyance for a time. Meals that might have been considered inedible back home become a delicacy in the New Life of Brian.

It wouldn’t be much of a story if the only character in the book was mauled by a bear or succumbed to dehydration, so it is no spoiler to report that Brian, somehow, survives to tell the tale. The details are sparse and often skipped over with haste. Brian rallies and lives to fight another day (fifty-four of them, to be exact) seems to be the punchline. While young readers may draw inspiration from Paulsen’s Bildungsroman, it’s doubtful anything here will prepare you for actual survival in the wilderness, hatchet or no.

Paulsen isn’t a lyrical writer by any stretch, either, often using repetition of common themes and emotions to carry the narrative. I’d say this is the perfect summer read for a youngster within earshot of middle school; any older and the value of Paulsen’s by-the-numbers tale drops off precipitously.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

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The River

“Well, to make it short, we want you to do it again.”

When last we left Brian, he had just come out the other end of a harrowing survivathon in the woods: fifty-four days, alone with only a hatchet, of channeling his inner hunter-gatherer. It came to be known in Brian’s mind as The Time—the experience that changed him, molded him, transformed him. His conception of food, of time, of nature, the way he approaches the luxuries of modern life—all had taken on a different tint from before.

Brian, now fifteen, is just beginning to adjust to his previous life when a government research group solicits him to replicate his experience for scientific study, in particular to help illuminate the psychological component behind the human will to survive that was surely in play during Brian’s extemporized escapade. He would be accompanied by one other person, an amanuensis of sorts to chronicle Brian’s thoughts and emotions in real time. This time, however, they would have supplies, including a two-way radio, but for emergency purposes only.

Brian registers a note of incredulity, not to mention trepidation, at having to relive the horrors he can’t forget, but which shortly gives way to sincere interest. His mother objects, of course, on grounds of common sense and basic parental concern, but eventually comes around as well. If anyone could help others survive in similar situations, it’s Brian. And so begins Part Deux of The Time.

Truth be told, there’s really not much that sets The River apart from Hatchet. Mishaps occur, things go from worse to horribly worse, instincts kick into sixth gear and Brian does what needs to be done. Sure, there’s Derek, Brian’s companion this time around, but for reasons that present themselves almost upon arrival, he brings little to the companionship side of the equation. Like the first, details are scarce; how Brian manages to build a sustainable raft is rushed through, as is the rest of the truncated misadventure.

Other than to cash in a crowd-pleasing sequel to a popular predecessor, there was no reason for this book to be written. This is a token case of ‘been there, done that’, and Paulsen should have pumped the brakes. But as I’m just now seeing, he didn’t stop here, either; he churned out no less than three more clones for Brian and his readers to traipse through. While his teenage audience may derive some nourishment for their survivalist bug in these endless spinoffs, Paulsen would have done well to quit while he was ahead, or for that matter, behind.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

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Feature image:  Under Proxy Falls by theadaptive

]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/09/07/review-hatchet-the-river/feed/ 0 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/07/15/review-the-city-and-the-stars/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/07/15/review-the-city-and-the-stars/#disqus_thread Thu, 16 Jul 2015 02:26:35 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=9380
“When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce an emotional effect.”

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In Diaspar, the echoes of the past permeate the present. According to the legends, man had traipsed across the galaxies and conquered the stars. Our spread across the cosmos, aided though it was by technological marvels unfathomed in earlier ages, eventually was terminated by a tragic encounter with an advanced race known only as the Invaders. After a series of devastating conflicts, a Carthaginian peace ensued by which humanity retreated from the stars and promised never to leave Earth again or else risk extinction. Or so the legends claim.

For a billion years the surviving population has lived out its existence in Diaspar — a kind of sprawling, hermetic, techno-spiritual paradise run entirely by computers. The city is self-organizing and self-repairing, with the ability to bathe physical environments in holographic constructs. Only neural signals are required to call up digital, if unfailingly lifelike, projections with which one wishes to interface. Through genetic engineering, humans have further banished aging, the threat of disease, the need for sleep and even the capacity for reproduction, with sex serving only recreational purposes.

In this far-future refuge, immortality through longevity comes at a steep price: the level of control extends down to an individual’s personality and predispositions. Men and women are created by the Central Computer according to templates preformulated by Diaspar’s designers. After living for thousands of years, their physiological “patterns” are moved to the city’s memory banks in order to make room for others. These patterns can then be reconstituted at any time with memories of previous lives and experiences fully intact.

The designers chose to guard their secrets by programming an element of fear into the citizenry. This carefully cultivated, almost pathological dread of the past, is the regulating force that defends against a reconfiguration of the designers’ preset goals.

Like the puppeteering portrayed in Orwell’s 1984, such exhaustive measures have ultimately led to a society in stasis. The people of Diaspar shrink away from any and all thoughts of reasserting the kind of former glory that made room for spaceflight and interstellar voyaging. Diasparians know of only one, last city — their own. Outside the protective dome that closets them, it is fervently believed, lies only barren desert and the rotting remnants of humanity’s merciless defeat at the hands of the Invaders. There is nothing more, and yet the people want nothing more. It is as if curiosity has been bred right out of the human race.

But every once in a long while, Uniques are “born”: individuals with a blank slate and with a set of preferences and impulses that fall outside the usual constraints. One might think of it as the “Red Pill” protocol, a means of shaking things up from time to time. In this cycle, that Red Pill is Alvin, the first of his kind in more than seven thousand years. Unlike his peers, Alvin’s sense of wonder and intrepidity motivate him to buck the stultifying norms of his culture. It isn’t long before he is able to break free from Diaspar’s conditioning and learn the truth about humanity’s past and the world beyond its walls.
 



 
I hesitate to share too much more, but it will suffice to say that what Alvin finds in his pursuit of the facts changes the course of Diaspar forever, resulting in a total redraft of the reality they once knew. Welcome to one of Arthur C. Clarke’s first full-length novels, The City and the Stars (adapted from his earlier novella Against the Fall of Night), originally published in 1956.

Acquaintance and Anticlimax

For all of the tension and intrigue in the opening sections, one gets the distinct impression that Clarke burned through his narrative fuel earlier than expected and spent the remainder of the novel trying to make up for it. Once we learn of the true origins of Diaspar and Alvin makes it outside the city, the momentum stabilizes and the plot begins to meander in several unspecified directions without ever quite making it back on the road.

Moreover, Alvin is able to fulfill his deep sense of wonder without so much as a hiccup along the way, and this allows little room for character development. Progress isn’t achieved so much as it merely occurs. Alvin’s escape from the city despite a thousand million years of prior failings is managed within a couple chapters. His trip to the Seven Suns at the other end of the cosmos is intercut with so few obstacles as to make the experience trivial. Other than more insight into what’s “out there”, Alvin and his companion return from the stars no different from when they left.

Though the worlds Alvin visits and the assorted entities he meets are extraordinary and lyrically captured in a way only Clarke can, it’s not clear how they factor into the story you started out reading. We are briefly introduced to an enigmatic machine race that fell victim to religious indoctrination. An extended section in the middle has Alvin caroming from planet to planet and is essentially a distillate of the planet-hopping feature in Mass Effect. A chance encounter on one such world showcases an ambiguously sized creature that is simultaneously omniscient, telepathic and capable of moving at FTL speeds. Interesting as they are in isolation, there’s little working in the background to tie these threads together.

Might Sir Clarke have realized this himself and decided to let the story peter out? At one point he seems to channel this sentiment through his main protagonist:

 

“When I first left Diaspar, [Alvin] said, “I did not know what I hoped to find. Lys would have satisfied me once — more than satisfied me — yet now everything on Earth seems so small and unimportant. Each discovery I’ve made has raised bigger questions, and opened up wider horizons. I wonder where it will end…” (p. 190)

 

I, too, wondered how it would all end and felt let down when the big bang of an ending I craved never came. So much time is spent in rote, context-free exploration, too little time moving the story forward. Equally frustrating is that the many disparate elements of the story are never internally resolved or even satisfactorily explained. What were the fruits of the other fourteen Uniques who came before Alvin; did they accomplish nothing? What was the fate of the waggish Jester? Who was and what became of the “Master”, and were the “Great Ones” entirely fictional? The concluding pages are silent on these questions and instead uncork a steady stream of additional mysteries that fail to clarify the muddled story line.

Closing Thoughts

Arthur C. Clarke famously remarked, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In The City and the Stars, we are treated to a world brimming with a technological vision guaranteed to make even the fussiest of sci-fi fans gush — from virtual reality and AI to interstellar travel and bioengineering. While much of the futurism is still inconceivable today, Clarke was ahead of his time in many ways, particularly with respect to the level of control humans have invested in computers and machines. You may find yourself, as I did, periodically checking the front flap to confirm it was indeed written in the 50s, before the most basic computers existed.

If only Clarke had reined in his potent imagination to focus more on refining the narrative, this volume might be considered a masterpiece of the genre. His panoply of inspirations unfold in rapid-fire fashion — like a series of “and then” moments strung together — with little regard for overall coherence. Too much of the plot is too nebulously described, and Clarke fails to carry the entertainment level of the first half of the book through to the end. With no small irony, it’s the point at which humans return to the stars that the story begins to flag. The City and the Stars is still a good place to glimpse Clarke’s literary talents that come of age in Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s End, but the near-biblical prose isn’t enough to rescue the disjointed plot, uneven pacing and weak characterization.

The faults notwithstanding, Clarke’s interest is in the big ideas, and he gives us something as relevant to ponder today as it was sixty years ago: where are we headed with technology, what do we want from it, and how should we use it?

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Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/07/15/review-the-city-and-the-stars/feed/ 1 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/05/03/review-whiteout/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/05/03/review-whiteout/#disqus_thread Sun, 03 May 2015 17:01:11 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=9089

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Blink once or twice and you might mistake Whiteout‘s opening act for that other ode to mysophobia, The Hot Zone. Coming a full ten years after Richard Preston’s fan favorite, Follett administers a quick shot of déjà vu, retreading familiar themes early on before cracking the lid on a dizzyingly diverse cast and a bioterrorist plot filched straight from a Hollywood screenplay. Whereas The Hot Zone is an uneasy mix of nonfiction gussied up in sensationalist garb, Whiteout is pure novel — and quite the kind for which Follett’s reputation precedes him. While the former fixes its attention almost solely on the pathogen, even idolizing it at times, the latter sculpts its drama around the many characters tangled up in the threatening peril of a diffuse outbreak.

Renowned Scottish pharmaceutical Oxenford Medical specializes in lab-based research on some of nature’s deadliest viruses. The scourge du jour here is the fictitious “Madoba-2,” the deadliest of them all. No one has survived its acquaintance; it is the perfect pathogen. When a narrowly tested vaccine for Madoba-2 goes missing from the Kremlin lab, along with an unwell rabbit reserved for in vivo trials, the company finds itself at the center of a media firestorm. It is the arch responsibility of ex-cop turned Chief of Oxenford Security Toni Gallo to track down the culprit and contain the leak.

With public confidence at an all-time low, the gears of a far more sinister plot are about to be set in motion. Opposite Toni Gallo is the chairman Stanley Oxenford, whose own son is embroiled in a devilish agenda of malfeasance in order to settle his escalating gambling debts. A highly trained unit of heist artists taps Kit Oxenford, a computer wiz who designed the Kremlin’s security system before being fired for lifting funds from the firm’s bottom line, to break in and theft hazardous materials. Desperate to pay off his creditors, and with his life hanging in the balance, Kit finds himself throwing in with a roguish crew whose intentions are unclear. As the holidays descend upon snow-covered Scotland, the Oxenfords gather at Steepfall, the family estate, only to find themselves key players in thwarting an international crisis.

The number of characters introduced as the plot takes shape can feel like a flood, but Follett has the knack for bringing the reader up to speed with well-placed summaries of how each character factors into the immediate scene and reminders of earlier details. While some of the Oxenford clan are standard-issue, many characters turn in quite memorable performances, chief among them Toni Gallo. True to form, Follett invariably reserves the most candescent performances for his strong female leads. While not quite attaining the level of depth and sophistication of Aliena in Pillars of the Earth, Flick in Jackdaws, or Lucy in Eye of the Needle, Toni stands head and shoulders above the rest with her steely resolve and poised demeanor. Her detective training allows her to stay one step ahead of the local constabulary and outsmart the assailants who hauled off with the precious cargo.

The book is not without its faults. An early scene at the family estate borders on soap opera melodramatics and seems out of place in a Follett novel. That the security system wasn’t changed — right down to the thumbprint software on the BSL-4 chamber and the passcodes on the virus lockers — following Kit’s departure from the company reeks of dubious plausibility. A few of the twists and turns feel forced and wrap up a bit too neatly, leaving one to wonder how a more organic progression might have played out. And, though many may neither care nor notice, some of the finer points on the science side of things skew toward the problematic.

The Science of Whiteout

As part of his research, we’re told in the addendum, Follett visited biosafety facilities in Manitoba and London and corresponded with a few biosecurity professionals. Had he consulted virologists as well, he might have brought greater accuracy to the details surrounding Madoba-2 and its supposed cousin. The science in Whiteout, what little of it there is, for the most part is not bad, but, like Richard Preston before him, gives a misleading picture of Ebola.

Madoba-2 is frequently compared to the Ebola strain and even referred to as a “variant” of Ebola on one occasion. But the descriptions of Madoba-2 are at odds with what we know about the biology of Ebola and how it has adapted to circulate among human populations. Madoba-2 is airborne, so much so that the terrorists choose a perfume bottle as the delivery mechanism.

Ebola, meanwhile, is a close-contact germ; its proteins prefer to hole up in fluids like blood, saliva, feces and urine rather than in its host’s respiratory pathways. To speak of a virus that wafts on clouds of aerosol droplets emitted by a cough or a sneeze — à la influenza — is to speak of a fundamentally different virus from the strain that’s been ravaging West Africa since December 2013. Suffice to say that if Ebola were even a little like Madoba-2, the current epidemic would be global, not confined to regions with poor medical infrastructure.

Lastly, Madoba-2’s level of efficiency is unexampled in nature. With a human mortality rate of 100%, Madoba-2 is clearly not of this world. A non-free-living organism that killed too efficiently would jeopardize its ability to spread to new hosts. Dead hosts are like wet gunpowder, an evolutionary endgame. With every pathogen we’ve encountered, some portion of the susceptible population is resistant and passes on its immunity to successive generations. That is, until the virus adapts to the new regime and the cycle repeats. Even Ebola, among the deadliest viruses known, has topped out at 90% mortality in some populations. All considered, Madoba-2 sounds more like something engineered by man than something that would arise naturally.

Closing Thoughts

You’re always in good hands with Follett. The brigadier general of historical fiction delivers another suspenseful tale worthy of the big screen, this time cutting his teeth on the killer virus motif in modern-day Scotland. While this may stray outside Follett’s typical genre, all of the key elements are ported over intact. Thanks to its intriguing characters, smooth pacing and a Costco’s worth of page-turning tension without an excess of sex or violence, Whiteout joins a rich legacy of polished narrative that leaps off the page with ease. Settle in for a night of frosty weather, dueling ambition, budding romance, and a high-strung thriller just compelling enough to dispel disbelief. A fine choice for your next weekend away.

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Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/05/03/review-whiteout/feed/ 0 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/03/29/review-the-drive-in/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/03/29/review-the-drive-in/#disqus_thread Mon, 30 Mar 2015 01:05:30 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=8862

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A generation or two ago, Texas was known for its sprawling drive-in cinemas and zany monster flicks playing out over the cool summer air. In his 1988 cult classic, Joe Lansdale taps into this nostalgia, turning a lightsome night out at the theater into a grungy galleria of claustrophobic terror. What begins with frights and screams beaming from the sparkling screens ends with panic-stricken mobs dancing to the tune of the B-movie gods. Jack and his three friends dash off to the movies, only to become part of one themselves — an insidious twist ensued by barrels of laughs, irreverence, and a vomitorium of blood-encrusted popcorn.

A two-shot pulse of comedy and horror, The Drive-In is a goretastic romp through B-movie stardom. Four teenage friends and the moviegoing locals are ejected into the front row of their very own apocalypse. Basic camaraderie is among the first to go as normalcy takes a back seat to survival. Engulfed on all sides by an ink-like substance that promises sure death, the crowd is barred from leaving the drive-in. They have for food and drink whatever remains of the concession supply, and only the looping movies and each other for company. The forces interacting from the outside manifest themselves in mysterious ways, slowly but surely driving the trapped masses to bedlam. The face of humanity slips away as if being sucked into the murk beyond, unmasking an anarchic depravity unseen this side of hell.

Lansdale paints a vivid world wrapped in a narrative economy that allows for just the right mix of action and character progression. In Stephen King’s hands, this might have ballooned to 350+ pages, but Lansdale’s tight writing forbids any eyes from glazing over. Keeping the chaos front and center puts the reader permanently on edge, while the author’s extraterrestrial imagination makes for an unpredictable tale. Around every corner lies a gruesome conflagration or another fantastic one-liner, oftentimes both.

The characters are witty, but not as witty as Lansdale, who reserves the maximal comedic payout for himself. His deadpan descriptions always hit home and blend seamlessly into the unfolding horror. An early scene places the characters in a bar, and a dustup with a patron is foreshadowed thusly:
 

“His name was Bear and you didn’t ponder why he was called that. He was six-five, ugly as disease, had red-brown hair and a beard that mercifully consumed most of his face. All that was clearly visible were some nasty blue eyes and a snout that was garage to some troublesome nose hairs thick enough to use for piano wire…What could be seen of his lips reminded me of those rubber worms fishermen use, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see shiny silver hooks poking out of them, or to discover that the whole of Bear had been made from decaying meat, wire and the contents of a tackle box and a Crisco can.” (pp. 10-11)

 

The vibrant interplay between humor and horror is mostly successful, even if many of the sequences are about as over the top as it gets. Cannibalism? Check. Crucifixions? Check. Sacrilege? Check. One scene features a group of Christian evangelists using their faith as a cover for their cannibalistic jonesing, a swivel rightly qualifying as the nadir of religious experiences. The squeamish and easily offended might look for their fiction fix elsewhere, though the violence is never handled too seriously.

There also seems to be a whole social satire subtext in which the main character spends ample time existentializing amid the bouts of receding humanity arrayed before him. The rollicking lunacy of it all only adds to the absurd juxtaposition of deep cogitation on things philosophical. Nevertheless, what the narrative seems to be getting at is that for all our pretensions to civility and higher consciousness, the only thing keeping us from reverting to the behaviors of the wild is the distance from our last meal. The collapse of society is only a hunger pang away.

But don’t waste your time trying to find morals or life lessons embedded here. The Drive-In: A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas is raunchy-rowdy fun and a perfect alternative to a night at the movies. It’s graphic and gritty in all the right ways and serves as a dark warning to humans everywhere: Grow too peaceable, and the gods get bored.

The Drive-In 2

The sequel, fittingly titled The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels and released a year later in 1989, unfortunately does not live up to its predecessor. Here Lansdale spends much of the time recounting the events of the first novel through the perspective of other characters. These backstories are rambling affairs which drag on entirely too long and pale in comparison to the raw immediacy of the original.

Nor do the new characters and villains do justice to the unique cast crafted in book one. Grace is less dimensional than the teenage wet dream to which she clearly owes her origins, while Popalong Cassidy is a catch-all antihero conceived on LSD and put to print on ritalin. And contrary to the book’s cover, dinosaurs do not number among the hazards in this phantasmal caper. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Lansdale edited out the reptilian bits after it was too late to change the cover art.)

Moreover, the writing isn’t nearly as solid, the narrative as focused, the sequences as memorably scripted, or the comedy as chuckle-inducing. Whereas the first book’s laughs and vulgarity were well-placed and right on pitch, the raunchiness of the sequel is spread like chipped paint, awash in overspent shock value and bargain-bin clichés. Lansdale either ran out of steam on this one or all but phoned it in. The tension just isn’t there, and the ride isn’t as fun.

The idea of society-as-cinema felt fresh and thrilling in Lansdale’s first outing but fails to breathe enough new life in the second take to keep me coming back for more. While it’s even higher on the wonkiness scale than the original, its disordered pastiche of influences and repetitive nature ultimately terminate in forgettable schlock — like a B-movie you really didn’t need to see.

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Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads (original, sequel) and at Amazon (original, sequel).

]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2015/03/29/review-the-drive-in/feed/ 0 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2014/12/19/review-the-black-cloud/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2014/12/19/review-the-black-cloud/#disqus_thread Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:47:12 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=8286
“We tend to give ourselves a pat on the back when we contemplate our successes, as if to say that the Universe is following our logic. But this is surely to put the cart before the horse. It isn’t the Universe that’s following our logic, it’s we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe.” (p. 172)

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There may be two reasons Hoyle’s classic has endured in the minds of sci-fi cognoscenti. The first is its premise: a mammoth interstellar cloud, moving at incredible speed and headed directly for Earth, is suddenly spotted by observatories around the world. Astronomers busy themselves with plotting its course and assessing all potential dangers. Getting an insider’s view of how science happens is what gives this one its legs. The scientists squabble over their favorite theories, wrangling over this and that nicety, only relenting once a better argument is put forward. The fusion of exhaustive, authentic physics and stepwise logic elevates the traditional sci-fi trope of having experts solve existential crises to something memorable. In this respect, The Black Cloud (1957) is hard sci-fi at its best.

The other reason has to do with its central character, Christopher Kingsley, who turns out to be an almost absurdly obvious ectype of the author himself. Tetchy, confident, brilliant, hostile to authority and the sluggishness of Parliament — Kingsley is everything Fred Hoyle embodied throughout his illustrious yet controversial career. Hoyle was infamous for his heated disagreements with colleagues and gauche forays into other fields. Among the more high-profile blunders include his claims that sunspot activity causes flu epidemics and that the Archaeopteryx fossils (yes, all of them) were faked, to say nothing of his cosmological crotchets.

While many of Hoyle’s ideas never panned out and were ultimately discontinued, there’s no reason his fictive amalgam must walk the same path. Hoyle’s Kingsley is a man of seemingly endless brilliance and rationality, a dispenser of insight and dry wit who leads his comrades out of their various intellectual quagmires. Any deference is in short reserve and is all but depleted in his dealings with the British government, for whose slow maneuverings he has little patience. When he refuses to truckle to the Prime Minister’s demands, he’s begrudgingly handed the red-carpet treatment. He and his team are furnished a state of the art facility called Nortonstowe secreted away in the highlands of South West England, a base of operations where they can study the Cloud away from the public’s prying eyes.

Did I mention he’s never wrong? An early chapter sees Kingsley scribbling out dense equations to chart the predicted trajectory of the Cloud. Other observatories come to the same conclusions, but Kingsley gets there first. When Kingsley proffers a rather screwy idea about the nature of the cloud to his colleagues, he is initially jeered before being vindicated by later observation.

The same fate cannot be recounted for Hoyle’s attachment to steady state theory, an out-of-fashion idea which sees an eternally expanding but structurally static universe, one without beginning or end. In contrast with Kingsley, Hoyle clung to this idea in spite of the evidence, referring to the prevailing view as the “Big Bang” in a 1949 BBC broadcast. And so the man who coined the term for the prevailing theory of the universe’s origin was also its most vocal critic — the irony heard ’round the world. Hoyle even sneaks in a few words during dialogue as if to remind us that perhaps, just perhaps, not all the evidence is in.

In a sense, Kingsley may best be thought of as the unimpeachable version of its author. The old adage might thus be revised as, ‘when life gives you lemons, live vicariously through the characters in your books’.

Closing Thoughts

In the preface to his 1957 sci-fi classic, Hoyle requests that his colleagues allow him this excursus from the workaday pursuits that occupy most of his life. Had they known he was capable of delivering gems like A For Andromeda and The Black Cloud, I am sure they would have encouraged it all the more. What makes The Black Cloud in particular stand out among crowded company is its plausibility. As Hoyle notes, “there is very little here that could not conceivably happen.” And of course it’s the parts we can’t presently conceive that will turn over in your imagination long after the story is through. While it’s chock full of good science and thrilling possibility, it should be noted that there is very little in the way of character development. Most of the characters besides Kingsley are colorless, thinly drawn stand-ins — flat, stale and occasionally sexist. But if following heady, incisive chains of reasoning is your fancy, or you enjoy contemplating wonders at the outer edge of science, Hoyle’s sci-fi debut is sure to satisfy.

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Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

]]> https://www.waivingentropy.com/2014/12/19/review-the-black-cloud/feed/ 0 https://www.waivingentropy.com/2014/09/30/review-the-martian/ https://www.waivingentropy.com/2014/09/30/review-the-martian/#disqus_thread Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:42:54 +0000 http://www.waivingentropy.com/?p=7336
“It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.”

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I have a bit of a lover’s quarrel with this one. The plot (lone crew member gets stranded on Mars), setting (Mars) and scientific integrity (there’s a lot of good science here) would seem to be the perfect blend for a target audience that is me. But then there’s Mark Watney, or as I like to call him: the teenager in an EVA suit. Crafted of equal parts cocky and corny, The Martian‘s main character makes the male cohort on The Big Bang Theory seem downright intoxicating. Each time you’re about to settle into the sci-fi goodness unfolding on the blood-red planet, Watney’s juvenility and hackeneyed attempts at humor rear up to depressurize the drama and poison the narrative atmosphere. I did not connect with this character, at all.

Here’s an exchange between Watney and NASA Mission Control in which Watney can’t help but lay on the prepubescent charm:
 

[11:49] JPL: What we can see of your planned cut looks good. We’re assuming the other side is identical. You’re cleared to start drilling.

[12:07] Watney: That’s what she said.

…..

[12:04] JPL: We’ll get botanists in to ask detailed questions and double-check your work. Your life is at stake, so we want to be sure. Also, please watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcast live all over the world.

[12:15] Watney: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.)

 
…What am I reading? Is this sci-fi or middle school? I’m all for bucking stereotypes — like the urbane, straight-laced NASA astronaut Weir apparently had in mind — but Watney is a stride too far in the opposite direction. On occasion the dullish teen-speak gives way to genuine wit, but such instances are too few and far between that the bad taste in my mouth never left. That said, I do expect reader mileage to vary on this score.

I could probably look the other way if the supporting cast were infused with greater dimensionality, but it’s hardly the case. The crew deliver dialogue every bit as stilted and cliched, their interactions adding nothing of substance to the narrative. Here’s one crew member chatting with his wife back home:
 

Martinez: “So, you’re pissed.”

Marissa: “I have to wait another 533 days to get laid!”

Martinez: “So do I,” he said defensively.

A World Away

But not even Watney’s itchy tongue and forgettable dialogue are enough to dash an epic quest on a foreign world. This is Mars after all, our second closest neighbor and perennial sci-fi favorite. In this outing a crew of six travel to Mars for NASA’s third manned mission, known as Ares 3. While out on expedition, a nasty storm sweeps up and amid the chaos one crew member is struck by a wayward antenna carried by the high-powered surface winds. With his comms no longer transmitting, the crew is unable to locate the downed engineer. Fearing the destruction of their return vehicle, the crew abandon the search and conclude that Mars has claimed its first human casualty.

Except Ares 3 leaves behind more than an unforgivable environment. They leave one of their own, bruised and battered, but not exactly dead. It’s now Watney vs. the Red Planet, a match less lopsided than one might think. Mars’ razor thin atmosphere, brutal cold, active weather, and craggy terrain all serve as redoubtable antagonists Watney must overcome to secure a return trip home. Imagine being all alone on a planet climatically hostile to your kind of life with dwindling resources, no return vessel and no contact with the only people who can bring you one. Even the best odds of survival would be Planck length-low.

Fortunately, our deserted soul is no slouch. What Watney lacks in charisma he more than makes up for in sheer intelligence and technical brilliance. Mars’ first “colonizer” wears the hats of botanist and mechanical engineer, and is a person for whom “asleep at the wheel” would be a most inapt descriptor. If MacGyver, Rube Goldberg and Robinson Crusoe were to have some kind of hybrid child, Watney would be it. The man’s a dynamo, as pragmatically minded, resourceful and resilient as they come. It’s probably why he was chosen for a NASA mission.

He’s also utterly determined to make it back to Earth. As Watney awakes groggy-eyed and the true extent of his plight comes into focus, his indomitable survivalism takes over and doesn’t let up. He quickly realizes it will require every ounce of his scientific acumen to hold out until the next scheduled NASA mission, at which time an aghast Ares 4 crew would set eyes on one weary astronaut. His botany training is put to immediate use by creating a renewable source of food from little more than potato seeds and “homegrown” fertilizer. He employs some fancy chemistry in order to maintain a breathable atmosphere and reliable (though radiatively unstable) heat source. And every whit of Watney’s engineering know-how is spent on preparing the rover for a transplanetary jaunt over Mars’ surly, rough-and-tumble terrain.

Watney’s time on Mars is relayed through daily first-person logs that record his progress in addition to a few clunky transitions to third-person omniscient. Provided you don’t mind being submerged in technical detail, these logs may just win you over as they did me. This is science at its most raw and ad hoc. The meticulous cataloging succeeds in connecting you to the action as Watney slaps together one near-suicidal scheme after another.

Just as we might expect of someone marooned 140 million miles (annual average) from all of civilization, our hero is never allowed too much comfort. Part of the allure is seeing what hellish scenario presents itself next and how Watney’s ingenuity and moxie will combine to solve it away. Better yet, all of the science here is kosher, otherwise known as “hard” sci-fi. Watney won’t run into any boogeymen or Martian monsters in this one, but the trials he does chance upon are every bit as deadly. With each setback and triumph, no specifics are spared the reader, as complex concepts are unspooled with ease and clarity.

Andy Weir, something of a prodigy himself, started out as a computer programmer at age 15. For him, science can be both a hobby and a narrative device. But Weir’s goal was not just to use sciencey tropes to drive the story forward, but to make Watney’s exploits as scientifically plausible as possible. He released some early chapters online as a free serial novel, which quickly garnered interest from fans and scientists alike. Weir incorporated their technical feedback for the final print edition, making The Martian a kind of collective effort by science enthusiasts.

What results is a unique blend of survivalist sci-fi and problem-solving escapades told through excruciatingly detailed science. Could one human really survive on Mars with standard NASA equipage? The answer is surely yes, if Watney has anything to say about it. All of his interdisciplinary expertise is on display for the reader to either absorb, deconstruct and debunk, or skim over until the next existential disaster strikes.

Technical readers will fall head over heels working through the minutia, while the less initiated may find their eyes glazing over, but both audiences will come away having learned something new. The thoroughness of it all is really what pulled me in and lent the story its strong scent of credibility. There’s no deus ex machina here. If Watney didn’t die in the previous chapter, it’s because he used science to decatastrophize the latest curveball Mars threw his way. It’s satisfying in a way that “softer” sci-fi tropes aren’t.
 




As beautiful as it is inhospitable

 

Don’t Leave Home Without Them

Before wrapping up the review, I thought I’d briefly walk through a few pieces of equipment that recur throughout the story. These are absolutely vital to Watney’s survival, and given how often they’re mentioned it might be helpful to have a quick reference here for those looking to embark on Weir’s planetary safari. The “Big Three” are:

• Oxygenator. A machine that strips apart the carbon atoms from the CO₂ that Watney exhales and retains the oxygen atoms. Relies on the atmospheric regulator for the CO₂; worthless without it.
• Atmospheric regulator. A machine that monitors the molecular gas concentrations in the air, removing and resupplying CO₂ and O₂ as necessary. Too much oxygen (oxygen toxicity) is just as dangerous as too much carbon dioxide (hypercapnia).
• Water reclaimer. A machine that salvages and purifies water from virtually anything that gives off moisture, including humidity from the air when Watney exhales or sweats in the pressurized environments, waste waters from the Hab’s fuel cells, and even Watney’s urine. If this sounds disgusting, it’s worth noting that the reclaimers NASA employs on their manned missions use three-step purification.

Closing Thoughts

In The Martian, science is front and center, assuming the roles of protagonist and antagonist and is the driving mechanism that allows forward progress for the hero. If chemistry, biology, and physics aren’t your speed, you won’t last long on this cerebral joyride. Much of the narrative hovers just on the edge of possible, and Weir’s technical accuracy and attention to detail were more than enough to keep me glued, even if Watney’s unsavory personality and the stilted character interactions frequently left me out in the cold.

Were the grade-school script and throwaway dialogue intentional juxtapositions to compensate for the technical nature of much of the rest of the book — a lighthearted, expletive-suffused respite to allow your brain a cooldown period from the stress and heavy lifting? Perhaps, but I think they could have been handled much better, as I found the contrast jarring, often piercing the tension at several inopportune moments. I also simply found the attempts at humor largely nonfunctional, though I acknowledge the subjectivity on this account. Quibbles aside, The Martian is well researched space fiction that manages to capture mankind’s relentless will to survive, an orchestra of science in which limited resources and unlimited creativity battle to the last breath.

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Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

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