kw: book reviews, science fiction, future fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction
If Slow Apocalypse by John Varley were shorter and more technically focused, I suppose it would be called high concept. Certainly the scene setting is simple enough to state, and the author does so in very few pages. In short, a microbe is developed that rapidly converts all the petroleum in an oilfield into something like coal or asphalt, releasing most of the hydrogen in the hydrocarbons, causing enormous explosions and fires. The microbe, engineered to be mobile only in liquids, mutates such that a variety can survive being blown about from oil field to oil field. It doesn't take long—a few months—for all the world's petroleum to be solidified.
This is the starting point. The story Varley tells is the more human story of what people do about it. A Hollywood screenwriter named Dave Marshall gets advance warning during an interview. The following day, not knowing what to believe, he is shown evidence that convinces him. He makes preparations for his family. But there is only so much a fellow can do, living in the Hollywood Hills. He lays in food, water, guns and ammo, and as much gasoline in as many cans as he can buy (the microbe doesn't affect refined products, only crude oil. The story would get too complicated if the author allowed the bug to mutate again!).
A little over half the book takes place mostly in the Marshalls' neighborhood north of the intersection of Doheny Drive and Sunset Blvd, and covers a month or two. At one point, the "big one", a 9+ earthquake occurs, triggered by the disturbances in the oil reservoirs deep beneath the Los Angeles basin. Not long after that, a wildfire comes roaring out of the hills above Doheny Drive, and they load up whatever they can carry and abandon their home, joining another family that has invited them to migrate with them out of the LA area. One of the men has converted two large vehicles to burn wood chips. I presume he also knows how to convert the wood chipper they take along to burn wood chips.
The fire burns about half the whole basin to the ground. Ironically, once the ground cools, the burned-out area is the best place to drive. No (living) humans, though it is hard to tell which street goes where, with all the street signs burned up. Their trek as refugees takes up the rest of the book, up to an Epilog. I have to pick a nit: near Anaheim, they pass by the Watts Towers. Last time I was there, the WT were 25 miles northwest of Anaheim, not within sight as the narrative implies.
Varley has given a lot of thought to the way a continent—or a county—can Balkanize after such a thorough disaster. The full range of human good and evil is on display, and at one point the Marshalls and their fellows are attacked by a gang that numbers 15; road-hardened and ready, they kill most of them. This makes them a lot more welcome in the town downhill of the gang's hideout.
The premise is worth thinking about. Take away petroleum, and what will happen? Can the earth support 7 billions when there is no way to make chemical fertilizers, nor a way to transport them, or the food produced? Prior to the 1880s, a large number of farmers and farm workers supported a much smaller work force of blacksmiths, wagoners, carpenters, millers and others. Such an agrarian economy is the natural state of a petroleum-free planet.
Is there a way to have a high-energy economy without petroleum? There isn't enough wood. Coal (and newly coalified petroleum) will only support a medium-energy economy, and conversion would take a long time. Solar and wind energy are just barely efficient enough that you could use solar energy to produce more solar panels, or wind energy to make more windmills, before the originals break down and have to be replaced with what you just made. You get very little surplus energy out of the process. I call a wind turbine a high-tech way to turn hydro-power into aluminum and then back into about the same amount of electric energy you started with. A truck full of aluminum windmill parts goes by, and I say, "There goes another few million KWh!"
John Varley makes you believe things could really happen this way. Amidst a global tragedy, some will triumph, and not just the most greedy. People will get things going again, as long as there are people. You have to gun down the occasional greedy gang to get there, and good people might have nightmares after doing so, but that won't stop them.
The scale of the aftermath is kept out of view; most likely, fewer than one fifth of the world population would remain after the first year. Varley's focus is narrower than this. LA is truly where the greatest problems would arise, a desert kept green by billions of acre-feet of imported water. In a post-petroleum world, no more than a few thousand people could live there. Los Angeles County, New York City (all 5 boroughs), and all the megalopolises would empty; they would have to. A very thought-provoking book, and we can always use more of those.
Showing posts with label future fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future fiction. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Friday, December 23, 2011
Tangling with the wrong crowd
kw: book reviews, science fiction, future fiction, space aliens
Joe Haldeman, who achieved fame with his Forever War series, takes up quite a different tack with his recent Marsbound novels. Marsbound was followed by Starbound, and now by Earthbound. The novels are set some 200 years in our future.
In this third novel, the meaning of "bound" shifts. In the first two, humanity was bound for Mars, then for the stars. Here, they are bound to Earth. The Others, greatly superior beings from 25 light years away, were discovered to exist in the first novel, and contacted in the second. They have imposed limits on human expansion, first by blowing up the Moon into a planetary shroud. When the American president ordered a shielded rocket to launch anyway, the Others shut off the power—a source of "free energy" that had only recently revolutionized the global economies. Then they went further to prevent all electrical machinery from working. Electrochemistry seems to still work, so brains have not shut down!
The novel carries Carmen, the heroine of the first two novels, through a few weeks of adventures on a world of eight or nine billions suddenly thrust into the Nineteenth Century. Actually, for most people on Earth, I would not expect the loss of electricity to have much effect. They are still living in the Sixteenth Century. A lot depends on how far "Western" technology spreads in the 21st and early 22nd Centuries.
It is hard to say too much without giving the story away. As you might expect, in a total collapse of society, money becomes valueless, and the greatest worth is now placed on food and ammunition. Much of the excitement of the book is set in a few pitched gun battles, in which Carmen learns to shoot, perhaps to kill. The book ends with a transition, so the author has more novels planned. Why should he stop with a trilogy? The fashion these days is to go on for five to seven volumes. In particular, in the closing chapters it is not even certain just how advanced the Others are, and whether humanity can come to terms with them on any kind of useful basis. I'll stay tuned.
Joe Haldeman, who achieved fame with his Forever War series, takes up quite a different tack with his recent Marsbound novels. Marsbound was followed by Starbound, and now by Earthbound. The novels are set some 200 years in our future.
In this third novel, the meaning of "bound" shifts. In the first two, humanity was bound for Mars, then for the stars. Here, they are bound to Earth. The Others, greatly superior beings from 25 light years away, were discovered to exist in the first novel, and contacted in the second. They have imposed limits on human expansion, first by blowing up the Moon into a planetary shroud. When the American president ordered a shielded rocket to launch anyway, the Others shut off the power—a source of "free energy" that had only recently revolutionized the global economies. Then they went further to prevent all electrical machinery from working. Electrochemistry seems to still work, so brains have not shut down!
The novel carries Carmen, the heroine of the first two novels, through a few weeks of adventures on a world of eight or nine billions suddenly thrust into the Nineteenth Century. Actually, for most people on Earth, I would not expect the loss of electricity to have much effect. They are still living in the Sixteenth Century. A lot depends on how far "Western" technology spreads in the 21st and early 22nd Centuries.
It is hard to say too much without giving the story away. As you might expect, in a total collapse of society, money becomes valueless, and the greatest worth is now placed on food and ammunition. Much of the excitement of the book is set in a few pitched gun battles, in which Carmen learns to shoot, perhaps to kill. The book ends with a transition, so the author has more novels planned. Why should he stop with a trilogy? The fashion these days is to go on for five to seven volumes. In particular, in the closing chapters it is not even certain just how advanced the Others are, and whether humanity can come to terms with them on any kind of useful basis. I'll stay tuned.
Monday, November 21, 2011
A foundation of my psyche
kw: book reviews, story reviews, science fiction, future fiction, anthologies
Richard Matheson is one writer whose stories helped me find myself and build myself as a young person. I began reading science fiction in a big way in 1967, and before long, I would simply go to the library's Science Fiction shelves each week and take out the next five books. It was a small library; I read everything they had in two years. I am Legend was one of the first novels I read that really affected me. Two stories by Matheson have also stuck with me in the years since: "Steel" and "The Traveller". How pleasant it was to find a recent collection of Matheson's stories, including the two last named: Steel and Other Stories. I'll simply provide teaser blurbs here:
Richard Matheson is one writer whose stories helped me find myself and build myself as a young person. I began reading science fiction in a big way in 1967, and before long, I would simply go to the library's Science Fiction shelves each week and take out the next five books. It was a small library; I read everything they had in two years. I am Legend was one of the first novels I read that really affected me. Two stories by Matheson have also stuck with me in the years since: "Steel" and "The Traveller". How pleasant it was to find a recent collection of Matheson's stories, including the two last named: Steel and Other Stories. I'll simply provide teaser blurbs here:
- Steel – In the boxing ring, human flesh is obsolete. A robot fighter breaks down, and ex-fighter Kelly decides to find out just how obsolete he is.
- To Fit the Crime – A demented poet, who never refrained from speaking his (acid) mind, is dying. What will his Hell be like?
- The Wedding – A prospective groom is obsessed with getting everything just perfect for his wedding.
- The Conqueror – A city boy with extraordinarily fast reflexes decides to make his name in the Old West as a gunfighter.
- Dear Diary – Women of different eras pour out their woes to their diaries.
- Descent – A giant bomb is going to destroy the surface of the Earth. People prepare to live underground.
- The Doll That Does Everything – A poet and his artist wife try to cope with an excessively destructive one-year-old by purchasing a robot playmate for him.
- The Traveller – A pioneer time traveler is sent to observe at Golgotha. The premise of this story helped me later attain faith.
- When Day is Dun – The last man on Earth after a disaster, a poet tries to chronicle his last feelings. (Matheson likes demented poets)
- The Splendid Source – Did you ever wonder who makes up all the dirty jokes going around?
- Lemmings – When overpopulation causes lemmings to clear out their food resources, they undertake mass migrations, with tragic results. Could this happen to people?
- The Edge – After a hard day, he just wants to take a break, but meets a total stranger who knows him. It gets stranger…
- A Visit to Santa Claus – A man with much on his mind tries to "help" his little son visit Santa Claus in the Mall.
- Dr. Morton's Folly – The last patient of the day has rather long teeth, but one needs a filling.
- The Window of Time – A man finds himself among scenes of his childhood. Is there any way to correct old mistakes?
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Without the three laws
kw: book reviews, science fiction, robots, future fiction
In his robot stories, Isaac Asimov explored the boundaries of the three laws he propounded to make intelligent machines safe for humanity. Famously neurotic, he wrote of robots that were sane while his human characters were typically neurotic. When an Asimov robot went bad, it was because one of the three laws was compromised. In his last novels, a robot became godlike, the only kind of a god he could believe in.
How do you implement such laws in actual machinery? How can we produce a machine with sufficient intellect to unfailingly recognize a human so it can obey? If we can take our cue from writers of robot stories, when genuinely intelligent mechanisms are produced, nobody will even bother. So when a real robot scientist writes of robots that go awry, I take notice.
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson is misnamed; "Apocalypse" simply means revelation. To connect the story with the ultimate battle, the title ought to be "Robogeddon". With that quibble out of the way, I was captivated by the story. The book is such a page-turner that I finished it today, a day or two before I'd expected. Kudos to the author!
One premise of the story is that putting lots of "intelligence" into cars, phones, radios, toasters and coffee makers has become so cheap that an intelligent chip has been installed in almost everything. A second is that robot servants, based on this bright chip, have multiplied to the point that in a "civilized" home, they outnumber the people about two to one. Then a scientist, working in a well-shielded bunker, puts together a whole lot of such chips and somehow programs the combination to become self-aware. Once the infant mind named Archos has assimilated all the databases made available within this bunker, it decides humanity is obsolete, kills the scientist, and takes steps to eliminate the human race.
Why not simply evolve alongside? As Archos says later on, "It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees." (While this sounds Lincolnesque, it is a paraphrase of several things Lincoln wrote.) Archos, we find, is very interested in life, just not human life. So it hacks its way into everything and takes over all the robots and other intelligent systems that underpin civilization.
The book is the story of the war that follows. Of course, humanity wins. Humankind and robotkind learn to exploit one another's weaknesses. In this case, the humans learn faster. As the lead human character, Cormac Wallace, says, "Human beings adapt. It's what we do." Will it always be so? is the lingering question the book leaves behind.
On the last page of a recent issue of Scientific American it was shown in an amazing graphic that the most powerful supercomputer (at present) is now just a little faster in total processing power, and has a larger memory capacity, than a human brain. The brain weighs about 1.6 kg and uses 20-30 watts of sugar-based energy. You could say that the human body that holds the brain is its support system, including cooling: another 30-100 kg. The supercomputer weighs about a ton, its support systems and cooling plant weigh another few tons. Its power requirement is nine megawatts, and I presume the cooling plant requires at least three megawatts.
How long will it be until this level of compute power and memory capacity can be fit in a breadbox and uses 100 watts or less? Here is a way to make a rough estimate. In 1976 a Cray-1 supercomputer was the first machine to achieve 100 MFlops (100 million numerical calculations per second). It cost almost $9 million, stood six feet high, and used thousands of watts of power. Earlier this year my son and I constructed a desktop computer for me, which is capable of about 100 MFlops per processor; it has four processors. The main 4-processor chip uses 150 watts; the whole package uses less than 500 watts. It cost $700. 2011-1976 = 35 years. This implies that a "one brain" computer costing $1,000 in today's currency might be on off-the-shelf item in about 2040-2045. I won't be 100 yet.
How long after that before robots outnumber people? And will it then be possible for such brain-boxes to become self-aware? And what will they do about it? Robopocalypse provides one man's answer. Just to comfort you, Wilson has also written How to Survive a Robot Uprising.
In his robot stories, Isaac Asimov explored the boundaries of the three laws he propounded to make intelligent machines safe for humanity. Famously neurotic, he wrote of robots that were sane while his human characters were typically neurotic. When an Asimov robot went bad, it was because one of the three laws was compromised. In his last novels, a robot became godlike, the only kind of a god he could believe in.
How do you implement such laws in actual machinery? How can we produce a machine with sufficient intellect to unfailingly recognize a human so it can obey? If we can take our cue from writers of robot stories, when genuinely intelligent mechanisms are produced, nobody will even bother. So when a real robot scientist writes of robots that go awry, I take notice.
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson is misnamed; "Apocalypse" simply means revelation. To connect the story with the ultimate battle, the title ought to be "Robogeddon". With that quibble out of the way, I was captivated by the story. The book is such a page-turner that I finished it today, a day or two before I'd expected. Kudos to the author!
One premise of the story is that putting lots of "intelligence" into cars, phones, radios, toasters and coffee makers has become so cheap that an intelligent chip has been installed in almost everything. A second is that robot servants, based on this bright chip, have multiplied to the point that in a "civilized" home, they outnumber the people about two to one. Then a scientist, working in a well-shielded bunker, puts together a whole lot of such chips and somehow programs the combination to become self-aware. Once the infant mind named Archos has assimilated all the databases made available within this bunker, it decides humanity is obsolete, kills the scientist, and takes steps to eliminate the human race.
Why not simply evolve alongside? As Archos says later on, "It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees." (While this sounds Lincolnesque, it is a paraphrase of several things Lincoln wrote.) Archos, we find, is very interested in life, just not human life. So it hacks its way into everything and takes over all the robots and other intelligent systems that underpin civilization.
The book is the story of the war that follows. Of course, humanity wins. Humankind and robotkind learn to exploit one another's weaknesses. In this case, the humans learn faster. As the lead human character, Cormac Wallace, says, "Human beings adapt. It's what we do." Will it always be so? is the lingering question the book leaves behind.
On the last page of a recent issue of Scientific American it was shown in an amazing graphic that the most powerful supercomputer (at present) is now just a little faster in total processing power, and has a larger memory capacity, than a human brain. The brain weighs about 1.6 kg and uses 20-30 watts of sugar-based energy. You could say that the human body that holds the brain is its support system, including cooling: another 30-100 kg. The supercomputer weighs about a ton, its support systems and cooling plant weigh another few tons. Its power requirement is nine megawatts, and I presume the cooling plant requires at least three megawatts.
How long will it be until this level of compute power and memory capacity can be fit in a breadbox and uses 100 watts or less? Here is a way to make a rough estimate. In 1976 a Cray-1 supercomputer was the first machine to achieve 100 MFlops (100 million numerical calculations per second). It cost almost $9 million, stood six feet high, and used thousands of watts of power. Earlier this year my son and I constructed a desktop computer for me, which is capable of about 100 MFlops per processor; it has four processors. The main 4-processor chip uses 150 watts; the whole package uses less than 500 watts. It cost $700. 2011-1976 = 35 years. This implies that a "one brain" computer costing $1,000 in today's currency might be on off-the-shelf item in about 2040-2045. I won't be 100 yet.
How long after that before robots outnumber people? And will it then be possible for such brain-boxes to become self-aware? And what will they do about it? Robopocalypse provides one man's answer. Just to comfort you, Wilson has also written How to Survive a Robot Uprising.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Stretching the definition of usness
kw: book reviews, science fiction, human variations, future fiction
Well, the book left me hanging. It is the first of a series that turns out to be a serial with novel-length episodes: The Tipping Point. Nonetheless, The Human Blend by Alan Dean Foster was a satisfying read. The cover art amused me. It shows a human eye with a fly's eye in place of the cornea. How that would be an improvement is beyond me, but it did convey a major element of the story.
In a future perhaps a century or two beyond today, humanity is composed of Naturals and Melds, the latter being those who have chosen to be surgically altered in some fashion, though Melding is portrayed as more than just a surgical intervention. Some people choose to have added capabilities, such as longer, faster fingers for musicians, plus an enhanced ear. Some take "cosmetic surgery" to new heights, adding a cockatoo-like crest of feathers, or even wings and a tail; one fellow nicknamed Gator has been croc-ified to the point that there is little visibly human left of him. Except he can stand upright and shake hands, and speak.
A Meld calling himself Whispr, for his whisper-thin physique and nearly silent step, is a murdering thief. With a friend nicknamed Jiminy for his cricket-like jumping legs, he has killed a courier to steal his clearly expensive Melded hand. In the process he discovers a shiny bit of thread that seems to be a storage device, so he steals that also. The rest of the book is taken up with his quest to find out just what this thread is, and perhaps what it holds. In his wake, an accumulating tally of dead—killed not by him but by others trying to retrieve the thread—attest to its value. He gains an unlikely ally, a doctor who treats him when he is shot full of police tracking devices called tractacs.
Under the surface of seeming amity between Meld and Natural, there is an undercurrent that resembles the latent racism which still infects America. I am sure it will figure more largely in later episodes (novels) in the series. In the meantime, Whispr and his doctor friend have discovered that the thread is made of an impossible material, MSMH or metastable metallic hydrogen, which supposedly cannot exist at pressures less than half a million atmospheres or so. That is about 10-20 times the pressure needed to produce diamond, a more familiar metastable high-pressure material. As this novel concludes, the two are on their way to confront the people who are most likely to have produced the thread. I guess that is one way to shorten a quest, if not your life.
I find it interesting that Melding is portrayed as something so many people do because they can. I suppose it stands in for face-lifts and liposuction as they are practiced today, even though much plastic surgery is undertaken for the sake of reconstruction or correction of inherent defects. Just so, Melds to adjust height or weight or to correct very unsightly appearance seem most common. Some Melds are functional, including very extensive modifications to allow certain persons to live on Mars or Titan, though I don't know where you can find source material to allow someone to breathe methane at a few dozen degrees below zero. It will be interesting over the next few decades to see just where a combination of plastic surgery and genomics can take us. Maybe this future trend is not as far-fetched as I think. In the meantime, Foster has hooked me good and solid. I wonder when book 2 of the series is due?
Well, the book left me hanging. It is the first of a series that turns out to be a serial with novel-length episodes: The Tipping Point. Nonetheless, The Human Blend by Alan Dean Foster was a satisfying read. The cover art amused me. It shows a human eye with a fly's eye in place of the cornea. How that would be an improvement is beyond me, but it did convey a major element of the story.
In a future perhaps a century or two beyond today, humanity is composed of Naturals and Melds, the latter being those who have chosen to be surgically altered in some fashion, though Melding is portrayed as more than just a surgical intervention. Some people choose to have added capabilities, such as longer, faster fingers for musicians, plus an enhanced ear. Some take "cosmetic surgery" to new heights, adding a cockatoo-like crest of feathers, or even wings and a tail; one fellow nicknamed Gator has been croc-ified to the point that there is little visibly human left of him. Except he can stand upright and shake hands, and speak.
A Meld calling himself Whispr, for his whisper-thin physique and nearly silent step, is a murdering thief. With a friend nicknamed Jiminy for his cricket-like jumping legs, he has killed a courier to steal his clearly expensive Melded hand. In the process he discovers a shiny bit of thread that seems to be a storage device, so he steals that also. The rest of the book is taken up with his quest to find out just what this thread is, and perhaps what it holds. In his wake, an accumulating tally of dead—killed not by him but by others trying to retrieve the thread—attest to its value. He gains an unlikely ally, a doctor who treats him when he is shot full of police tracking devices called tractacs.
Under the surface of seeming amity between Meld and Natural, there is an undercurrent that resembles the latent racism which still infects America. I am sure it will figure more largely in later episodes (novels) in the series. In the meantime, Whispr and his doctor friend have discovered that the thread is made of an impossible material, MSMH or metastable metallic hydrogen, which supposedly cannot exist at pressures less than half a million atmospheres or so. That is about 10-20 times the pressure needed to produce diamond, a more familiar metastable high-pressure material. As this novel concludes, the two are on their way to confront the people who are most likely to have produced the thread. I guess that is one way to shorten a quest, if not your life.
I find it interesting that Melding is portrayed as something so many people do because they can. I suppose it stands in for face-lifts and liposuction as they are practiced today, even though much plastic surgery is undertaken for the sake of reconstruction or correction of inherent defects. Just so, Melds to adjust height or weight or to correct very unsightly appearance seem most common. Some Melds are functional, including very extensive modifications to allow certain persons to live on Mars or Titan, though I don't know where you can find source material to allow someone to breathe methane at a few dozen degrees below zero. It will be interesting over the next few decades to see just where a combination of plastic surgery and genomics can take us. Maybe this future trend is not as far-fetched as I think. In the meantime, Foster has hooked me good and solid. I wonder when book 2 of the series is due?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
In his world the government is redundant
kw: book reviews, science fiction, future fiction
"Welcome, I'm Robert Burger King, may I take your order, please?" Had I written Jennifer Government, which was actually written by Max Barry, that would have been my opening line. Maybe that's why I only write reviews.
So, a passel of cool ideas: Family names have given way to the name of one's employer (I first thought, from the title, that Jennifer was much bigger or more dangerous than the FBI agent she turned out to be). Taxation has been abolished, so even the government must "run as a business"; that leads to painful scenes like a victim's family being asked to pay for investigatory and prosecution expenses. The Western Hemisphere plus Australia & Britain is the largest of three market blocs, while today's "third world" is still as anarchic as ever. Within the American bloc, free trade is freer than ever, complete with corporations that hire mercenaries and wage war.
Jennifer Government, formerly Jennifer Maher when she was in insurance, is caught in the middle of this war. Of course, she gets out alive, as do a few of those dear to her, but the pathway is strewn with bodies. Only one or two of those are her responsibility; NRA mercenaries are much more prolific corpse-producers.
The book jacket blurbs all emphasize the book's humor. There's a little, such as Billy NRA being mistaken for Bill NRA, a much more dangerous dude, though Billy is the one who survives the confrontation. But I was in little danger of laughing myself to death. The emotional roller-coaster never let up, and was sometimes as nausea-inducing as a real coaster. And the book's villain, one John Nike, is the first completely unredeemable character I've encountered. Interestingly, the other major characters are as complex, as good-and-stupid-and-smart-and-bad as we all are underneath. This kind of range is rare in a younger writer.
Mixed feelings on my part. I think I'm glad I read it, but the jury is still out.
"Welcome, I'm Robert Burger King, may I take your order, please?" Had I written Jennifer Government, which was actually written by Max Barry, that would have been my opening line. Maybe that's why I only write reviews.
So, a passel of cool ideas: Family names have given way to the name of one's employer (I first thought, from the title, that Jennifer was much bigger or more dangerous than the FBI agent she turned out to be). Taxation has been abolished, so even the government must "run as a business"; that leads to painful scenes like a victim's family being asked to pay for investigatory and prosecution expenses. The Western Hemisphere plus Australia & Britain is the largest of three market blocs, while today's "third world" is still as anarchic as ever. Within the American bloc, free trade is freer than ever, complete with corporations that hire mercenaries and wage war.
Jennifer Government, formerly Jennifer Maher when she was in insurance, is caught in the middle of this war. Of course, she gets out alive, as do a few of those dear to her, but the pathway is strewn with bodies. Only one or two of those are her responsibility; NRA mercenaries are much more prolific corpse-producers.
The book jacket blurbs all emphasize the book's humor. There's a little, such as Billy NRA being mistaken for Bill NRA, a much more dangerous dude, though Billy is the one who survives the confrontation. But I was in little danger of laughing myself to death. The emotional roller-coaster never let up, and was sometimes as nausea-inducing as a real coaster. And the book's villain, one John Nike, is the first completely unredeemable character I've encountered. Interestingly, the other major characters are as complex, as good-and-stupid-and-smart-and-bad as we all are underneath. This kind of range is rare in a younger writer.
Mixed feelings on my part. I think I'm glad I read it, but the jury is still out.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Weapons as toys, toys as weapons
kw: book reviews, science fiction, future fiction, politics
The first edition of The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick was published in 1965, written in 1964. I suppose he thought it safe to put his novel forty years into the future. Of course, now 2004 is mostly four years in our past. I found it mildly interesting to see the trends that have reversed on him. Principally, while there remain tensions between the US and Russia, the world has not rigidified into a Wes-bloc and Peep-East (the latter from PRC plus Eastern Bloc). He couldn't have imagined resurgent Islam or a terrorism-dominated Mideast.
Linguistic trends hold up better. Many terms are shortened, so we have Indy (independent) filmmaking, iPods (I used to know what it acronymizes), and "the burbs"; we don't have Dick's cogs (cognoscenti) or pursaps (poor saps; all who aren't cogs).
We didn't settle the cold war by agreeing to "plowshare" our weapons development (all image, no substance), a process he also calls "weapons fashion". No, the richest nation on Earth simply made weapons of domination and occupation too costly for anyone but themselves, but then began selling them at a discount to all takers. Ergo: well-armed terrorists.
Dick wrote at a time that we could still dream of steaming jungles on Venus (we didn't quite know it was a steamy 800°). He makes use of telepathy and clairvoyance. He, like many, expected air cars. Here's why we never will have air cars: wheels on the ground are cheaper than any hovering technology, for getting you through your daily commute. Even maglev trains are becoming white elephants (France's TGV still beats out all maglev contendors, economically; the "lifting current" exceeds the propulsion current).
For the same reason, economics, the concept of "Slavers from Sirius" that is this story's backdrop, just doesn't make sense. Robots are cheaper than slaves, once you have the tech infrastructure.
The title of this post probably gives away too much of the story. It is a game, of a sort, that overcomes the interstellar slavers. But in Phil Dick's hands, getting there is all the fun. It is a classic I'm happy to have run across.
The first edition of The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick was published in 1965, written in 1964. I suppose he thought it safe to put his novel forty years into the future. Of course, now 2004 is mostly four years in our past. I found it mildly interesting to see the trends that have reversed on him. Principally, while there remain tensions between the US and Russia, the world has not rigidified into a Wes-bloc and Peep-East (the latter from PRC plus Eastern Bloc). He couldn't have imagined resurgent Islam or a terrorism-dominated Mideast.
Linguistic trends hold up better. Many terms are shortened, so we have Indy (independent) filmmaking, iPods (I used to know what it acronymizes), and "the burbs"; we don't have Dick's cogs (cognoscenti) or pursaps (poor saps; all who aren't cogs).
We didn't settle the cold war by agreeing to "plowshare" our weapons development (all image, no substance), a process he also calls "weapons fashion". No, the richest nation on Earth simply made weapons of domination and occupation too costly for anyone but themselves, but then began selling them at a discount to all takers. Ergo: well-armed terrorists.
Dick wrote at a time that we could still dream of steaming jungles on Venus (we didn't quite know it was a steamy 800°). He makes use of telepathy and clairvoyance. He, like many, expected air cars. Here's why we never will have air cars: wheels on the ground are cheaper than any hovering technology, for getting you through your daily commute. Even maglev trains are becoming white elephants (France's TGV still beats out all maglev contendors, economically; the "lifting current" exceeds the propulsion current).
For the same reason, economics, the concept of "Slavers from Sirius" that is this story's backdrop, just doesn't make sense. Robots are cheaper than slaves, once you have the tech infrastructure.
The title of this post probably gives away too much of the story. It is a game, of a sort, that overcomes the interstellar slavers. But in Phil Dick's hands, getting there is all the fun. It is a classic I'm happy to have run across.
Friday, May 18, 2007
A Dystopia and-a-Half
kw: book reviews, future fiction, fantasy
Jonathan Lethem writes across the boundaries claimed by numerous genres. How We Got Insipid contains two very different sorta-short stories (too short to be novellas—there goes another boundary).
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" chronicles a future sufficiently post-apocalyptic that the point-of-view character is illiterate, but folks are still looting the remains of civilization. The action: a tawdry "virtual reality" competition based on 1930s dance marathons. The surprise is, there are no surprises. People will still be banal once they get over the shock.
"The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom (Hommage Heinlein) recasts "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", complete with evil birds, but they come via TV screens, not mirrors. An artist hires a PI to find out what he is doing when blacked out. Things rapidly turn occult. The happy ending (for the PI) is a surprise; Heinlein's story ended on a mildly unhappy note.
Jonathan Lethem writes across the boundaries claimed by numerous genres. How We Got Insipid contains two very different sorta-short stories (too short to be novellas—there goes another boundary).
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" chronicles a future sufficiently post-apocalyptic that the point-of-view character is illiterate, but folks are still looting the remains of civilization. The action: a tawdry "virtual reality" competition based on 1930s dance marathons. The surprise is, there are no surprises. People will still be banal once they get over the shock.
"The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom (Hommage Heinlein) recasts "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", complete with evil birds, but they come via TV screens, not mirrors. An artist hires a PI to find out what he is doing when blacked out. Things rapidly turn occult. The happy ending (for the PI) is a surprise; Heinlein's story ended on a mildly unhappy note.
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