Reading the Classics: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster comprises three novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, published in 1985-1986. The novels are considered a masterpiece of postmodern literature, reason enough in itself to read them, I suppose, but I discovered the trilogy when a friend recommended it to me, saying that reading it felt like having your brain gently stroked. That's a pretty great recommendation!

Once I started writing this review, I found myself, not for the first time, wishing I had attended some English Lit classes. For example, what's the difference between modernism and postmodernism? A quick google search failed to yield a simple definition, but apparently modernist works are based between late 1800s and the Second World War, and postmodernism appeared on the scene after that. The University of Turku study guide places the cutoff at 1960, but apparently some definition lean towards 1980. Here's a helpful article at Owlcation.com.

 When I think of modernist works of literature, writers like Joyce, Kafka, and Proust come to mind. Postmodernists . . . well, I think of Italo Calvino and Kurt Vonnegut, and some of the more experimental science fiction of the time (John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, anyone?). Both movements aimed to create a new kind of novel. Modernists brought us unreliable narrators, stream-of-conciousness, and experimental structures. Postmodern novels seem to focus even more on playing with the novel form, metafiction, and an ironic point-of-view. Many postmodern works feel a bit empty to me, like intellectual exercises rather than an actual story meant to touch the reader on an emotional level. Sometimes they come across as pretentious and needlessly complicated, sometimes enjoyable in the way that I enjoy a solving a puzzle. For me, The New York Trilogy landed in the latter category.

Oh yeah, spoilers ahead :)

For me, City of Glass was the hardest of the novels to wrap my mind around. A bit about the plot:  pulp writer Daniel Quinn takes a case meant for Paul Auster the detective and begins investigating Peter Stillman the elder because Stillman's daughter-in-law suspects he is coming to kill his son Peter Stillman the younger, whom he kept isolated from the world as a child because of some crackpot theories about the Tower of Babel.

First you have to figure out the characters: there's Daniel Quinn, the detective story writer who answers a wrong number and begins investigating a case meant for Paul Auster, the detective who is also a writer. This Paul Auster isn't the author of the novel, though. And then there's the narrator who is telling the story, who is a friend of Paul Auster, the detective-writer and is telling the story because Auster gave him the red notebook Quinn left behind and had written the story in. Confused yet? Yup.

Paul Auster the detective and Daniel Quinn seem to be mirror characters in several ways:

Auster/ Quinn

Detective who is also a writer / pulp writer who takes on the role of detective

Happily married with a son/ Alone, son dead

In control of his life/ Life feels empty, suffering from writer's block

The further you read, the more you start to question whether Auster the detective is even real, or only a side of Quinn's personality. In the beginning of the book Quinn wishes he were more like the fictional detective he writes about, and very conveniently the opportunity for a Noble Quest presents itself. And speaking about quests, Daniel Quinn, who takes his quest to protect Peter Stillman the younger to an absurd level, is very similar to a certain Don Quixote, and they both share the initials D. Q.. Just to make sure the reader gets it, Auster the detective/writer is writing an article on the identity of the author of Cervantes' Don Quixote. According to him, there are several possible authors for Don Quixote, and there are several possible authors for City of Glass. (In case you missed the Quixote connection the first time, you should read that bit again. If you've been taking City of Glass Very Seriously, you might feel a bit offended.) There might have been a lot more nods to Don Quixote, since I read the book as a teen and passionately hated the title character,  I don't really recall it all that well. (Not about to read it again. Walden's been on my reading list for a while, though.)

What about the title, City of Glass? Glass is fragile, and there certainly are fragile people in the story. It's also transparent, maybe that has something to do with being watched or the reader watching the characters or Quinn watching Stillman? And there's glass as in looking glass. There's a lot of mirror characters here, Quinn/Auster and the two Stillman the elders at the train station, Quinn/Don Quixote.    I dunno. 

I did enjoy the whole playing-with-languge thing in the bit where Quinn reads about Stillman's theory and I found the plot interesting enough that I wanted to see where it was going, but on the whole I failed to connect with Quinn or the other characters enough that I could say I liked the book. I appreciate it for its twisty-turny puzzle of a plot and for making me think, but do I want to read it again or anything else by Auster? Not really. 

In Ghosts, we have another private eye named Blue investigating a man named Black on the behalf of a man named White and so on. Everybody's named after colours, and there's some (pseudo?)philosophical stuff about what colours are associated with. Turns out that Black and White are the same person, shocker. Once again the private eye becomes lost in another persons life. And there's that bit about how writing's a lonely job and how a writer doesn't have a life of his own or even really exist. That probably has something to do with the title.

I really liked the conversation that Blue had with Black about how real-life anecdotes are meaningful as metaphors because they're true. I have no idea if the events mentioned are indeed true (the one about Whitman's brain, for example), but they're fascinating and maybe even say something about how a writer's mind works. I collect weird little tales like that, and a lot of writers I've read about do too. Maybe it's about how people understand things through stories. Here, again, I'm unsure if Blue is actually a real person. In the end Black says that Blue was necessary and important to get this far and that he knows the story by heart even if he hasn't read it. Is Blue only a part of the whole Black/White organism, like a character in a story, doomed to be manipulated by the author?

The Locked Room was my favourite in the trilogy. Again, we have the narrator, a a journalist with literary aspirations, who unwittingly becomes a detective when his childhood friend Fanshawe disappears and bequeathes to him a closetful of unpublished manuscripts and his wife and son. Again, the narrator becomes lost in another man's life and almost loses himself and everything he values.

There's a neat scene at the beginning when the narrator recalls an episode who Fanshawe as a child gave a birthday present to another boy who didn't have one to bring to the party. A selfless act, right? Then we read on and we learn that Fanshawe is alive and abandoned his wife and son. The manuscripts he left become bestsellers and the narrator marries the wife and becomes the boy's father. Is this a selfless act by Fanshawe, where he gives everything to his friend, or an ultimately selfish act, because he abandons his family? The reason he gives is that he can't publish his works unless people think he's dead. Another apparently selfless act is when Fanshawe nurses his dying father in his last days. But then we see another side of Fanshawe, how he gathers experiences to write about (there's every bohemian writer cliché from moving to Paris to the apparently mandatory brothel visit). Are all his selfless acts more about experiencing things than about people?  

The Locked Room raises the question of whether a writer can ever have a normal life, or is he/she always alone because he must reject his family and friends to gain the experiences a writer needs to write? Again, in the end the reader begins to suspect whether the narrator and Fanshawe are really the same person, that person killing the writer part of himself enjoy his time with his family. I'm not certain how to interpret the title. Sure, there's a locked room at the end, but there isn't really a locked room mystery here. Oh, and Peter Stillman makes an appearance. Is he the same one from City of Glass? And Quinn is mentioned, but referred to as a detective. 

All the novels share a frame of the detective story, but they're not really detective stories. Most of the time the endings are open and nothing really gets resolved. It's more about playing with the idea of writing literary fiction in a pulp framework. On a thematic level, all of the novels have in common the idea of the loss of identity. The narrators appear unreliable, and the reader can't even be sure the characters exist, much less what happens to them.

Despite all of my (over)analysing, I don't feel that The New York Trilogy is a difficult book to read. Sure, you have to pay attention, but the prose is very functional and easy to read, no convoluted sentences or difficult metaphors. If you want to try Auster, the trilogy is surprisingly short, only about three hundred pages.

After reading the book I was curious about how much of it was autobiographical, so I looked up a few articles on Auster. Here's one on The Guardian website I found interesting, in case anyone wants to check it out : https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/oct/26/fiction.fashion


Just a heads-up, seems that I can't reply to comments on the blog. I have no idea why. But feel free to leave a comment, anyway. 

Reading the Classics: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Image from Wikipedia 

And now for something completely different! Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, published 1979, is just that, a gloriously, breathlessly bonkers book that makes you smile. You might groan at the term "postmodernist novel"and grumble when you hear that part of the book is written in second person and the novel has an experimental structure, but don't let that put you off; this is a page-turner.

The novel starts in second person, telling you the Reader to put your feet up and start reading. Just when you get comfortable, the book changes on you. Turns out that there's been a mistake at the printer's, and after the opening chapter of Winter's Night, the novel continues as something completely different. And so it goes, over and over, the chapters of book openings alternating with the frame story of the Reader meeting Ludmilla (the Female Reader, I read this in Finnish so I'm not sure how the English translators handled this, Other Reader?). They try to get to the bottom of the mystery, and most importantly, keep reading.

This is the first 2nd person narrative that I've actually enjoyed, but I did get jolted out of the book a few times because the second person narrative assumes that the reader is male. The female Reader is addressed in second person in a short segment, but I didn't really relate to her, either. So there is bit of that indignant "no, I'm not" feel that you get in second person narratives, but it didn't keep me from enjoying the novel. 

The opening chapters that make up half the book are fun in their own right: each one is written in a different style in a different genre, some done better than others. Many of them are so engaging that I actually felt the Reader's frustration. And I love the last Easter Egg revelation of what happens when you read all the chapter titles in one go. 

This is very much a book about reading and writing, and I very much enjoyed reading Calvino's insight on the writer's mind and on why we read. 

As a writer, I think it's important to experience different kinds of books, and this is inventive and unique without being only an intellectual exercise or impossible to read.

 I highly recommend this book if you can handle a bit of surrealism and experimental narratives. If you can get through the first few chapters, you won't have any trouble. And as Calvino points out, it's a short book. 

Reading the Classics: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Hey, I'm back and I've got a new Reading the Classics post for you! At 672 pages The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe isn't exactly a beach read, but summer's almost over anyway, right? If you've been reading the blog, you probably know I've got a soft spot for Gothic novels, and I've come across references to Udolpho many times in modern and period fiction (most notably Jane Austen's Gothic novel parody Northanger Abbey), so I finally decided to give it a go.

Udolpho tells the story of Emily St. Aubert, a young Frenchwoman who gets orphaned and placed in the care of her unfeeling aunt, Madame Cheron. Emily has fallen in love with Valancourt, who she met while traveling with her father, but her aunt forbids her to marry him. When Madame Cheron marries the unscrupulous Signor Montoni, Emily is forced to leave her home and the man she loves to accompany her aunt to Italy, where Montoni's true character is revealed and the two women are placed in mortal peril.     

Radcliffe's novels were hugely popular in their time, and Udolpho, published in 1794, is widely considered to be her defining work. I was expecting atmospheric passages of description, an intriguing plot, and some element of the supernatural, but most of all I was expecting to be entertained. Unfortunately that didn't happen: I found this book a chore to get through. 

The book is filed under speculative fiction at the library of Turku, but while Radcliffe teases the reader with supernatural happenings, they always get explained away. And the passages of description, while atmospheric, were just too numerous and tedious for the modern reader. The plot could have been intriguing, had the book been about 300 pages shorter, and I also disliked the way Radcliffe tries to create suspense by locking the reader out at key points of the story, like the bit where Emily looks behind the veil at Castle Udolpho and sees something horrible. The revelation comes at the end of the book, but at that point it's quite anticlimactic.

The structure of the book is also a bit weird. The main conflict gets resolved, but the story goes on for hundreds of pages after the fact fuelled by a revelation of Valancourt's misdeeds that make Emily reject his proposal again.  For me this felt a bit forced. I tried to figure out what bothered me about the structure, and I realised that it's the way the love story is handled: Valancourt is absent for most of the book, and as you need obstacles for the whole star-crossed lovers thing to work, something has to get in the way of their happy ending. The problem is that this didn't feel organic or natural to me, perhaps because of a lack of foreshadowing. The introduction of Blanche at the end of the book annoyed me, because at that point I was pretty frustrated with the book and just wanted to finally finish it, especially after Radcliffe tested my patience with that pointless bit where Emily is taken to a cottage and then back to the castle. And don't get me started on the bad poetry Emily writes.

Emily as a character didn't really resonate with me. Mostly it feels like (bad) things just happen to her and she doesn't really do much about it. And boy, does she faint a lot! While it's a good thing that Emily doesn't get rescued by Valancourt, she doesn't exactly get herself out of Castle Udolpho either. Most of the other character feel quite stereotypical, too, but is that because Radcliffe has been widely imitated later?

So, what did I learn as a writer? Radcliffe is great at atmospheric descriptions, and that's something to pay attention to, but too much of a good thing is really too much.

I can't actually recommend this novel to anybody, but if you're interested in the evolution of the novel form and Gothic literature, by all means pick up a copy from the library.

And if you're reading Udolpho as an assignment for class, I've got a little something to make it more bearable. I present to you:

The Castle of Udolpho Drinking Game

The rules: take a sip every time:

- Emily admires the landscape

- Something is described as "melancholy"

- Emily faints

- Montoni does something villainous

- Emily thinks she's going to get attacked by bandits and isn't

- Valancourt gets shot

  

Reading The Classics: Madame Bovary

Image from Wikipedia.org

Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary is considered one of the first novels to represent the style of literary realism (as opposed to romanticism). It tells the story of Emma Bovary, a 19th century desperate housewife who tries to escape her mundane existence by having affairs and buying things she doesn't need and can't afford. Spoilers ahead, beware!

I have to say, Emma Bovary is one of the most unlikeable women characters I've come across in literature so far. She's selfish, callous, mean to her husband and daughter, materialistic, vain, and a total drama queen. Not that there are many likeable characters to be found here; maybe Charles Bovary, the kind but dull husband, or the daughter, Berthe? The rest are a deplorable bunch. There's Rodolphe, the serial womaniser who seduces Emma and then casts her aside, Leon, the clerk with whom Emma has her second affair, Homais, the town pharmacist and frenemy to Charles, and Monsieur Lheureux, who sells Emma goods for credit and manipulates her to buy more and more things while at the same time offering credit to her husband until the Bovarys are completely ruined.

Emma is easy to despise because she makes so many stupid decisions during the story. She's never content, always yearning for something more. She doesn't appreciate her husband or enjoy watching her daughter grow up and is always fawning after the fripperies of wealth and totally unrealistic romantic expectations that her illicit lovers can't hope to live up to. There's a feeling of being stifled and trapped about her, mentally and physically. At first she's happy at the prospect of marrying Charles and escaping her father's humble farmhouse, but then the realities of marriage set in. Her extramarital affairs help her feel alive for a moment, but then they, too, start to feel as dull as married life. Then she tries to fill the void in her soul with materialistic things. In the end she takes her own life and is at peace in her final moments, having at last escaped.

I have to wonder, would things have been different if Emma had lived in the present? Perhaps she'd be a career woman sleeping around to fill the emptiness within, or a young stay-at-home mom trying to keep up with the Kardashians by ordering designer bags and clothes on the internet with money she doesn't have? There's something about Emma's ennui, dissatisfaction, and materialism that feel very contemporary. How many of us are really satisfied with our lives? We, too, escape into fantasies and use shopping to lift our spirits when we're feeling low. Many spend over their means and are up to their ears in credit card debt. But it is true that women have other options than being a mother and wife these days. Would Emma have found a career that gave her life purpose? Could she have been truly happy?    

Many have complained about Flaubert's long and meticulous descriptions, but I quite enjoyed them. Unfortunately my French isn't good enough to read the book in the original language, but as I've studied French it's easier to see that some parts that feel overly sentimental have to do with the translation. I did have a hard time seeing why this book is considered to represent realism, though. The plot is full of melodrama and the ending is almost Shakespearean: pretty much everyone dies/is cast into destitution. Maybe the descriptions of club foot surgery and life in a small town in France in the 1800s are the reason. And Emma is certainly not a romantic heroine.

I wonder what Flaubert really wanted to accomplish with this story. Is it a cautionary tale to scare women into being meek and faithful little housewives, or was Flaubert trying to show how narrow the role of women was at the time and what it could lead to? Somehow I suspect the former. Apparently he also despised the bourgeoisie with their yearning for social climbing and making money, and while he was at it, he also made fun of the silly romantic novels they read by making those one of the causes Emma acted like she did.

On the writerly front, what did I learn? I felt the descriptions were worth studying, even if they're probably too long for the modern reader. And there's a fine line between drama and melodrama. Drama goes over better. I also felt the opening and ending were weird: the story opens with Charles as a boy, but he's not the main character, and it takes quite a while for Emma to appear on the scene. Is this the best way to proceed? Is Flaubert trying to make the reader feel more sympathy towards Charles by introducing him first? The ending, on the other hand, drags on after Emma's death with long passages about Homais and his business affairs while stating the fate of Charles, Charles' mother, and little Berthe in a very clunky and callous way that feels like "Hey, look, here's the moral of the story." Nobody likes being lectured to.

Once again, not a book I enjoyed or would read again, but I can see why it's considered a classic.

Classics read: 31/100

                                                               

Reading the Classics: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Image from wikipedia.org

                                                         
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel about sin, guilt, and judgement in a 17th century Puritan colony, is not an easy read. Hawthorne's attempt at imitating how people (presumably) spoke in the 1600s combined with a very 1800s tendency for long and complicated sentences makes this novel heavy going, not to mention unintentionally humorous at times, especially when little Pearl is speaking, and the plodding plot and heavy-handed imagery don't help things.

The novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who has an affair and gives birth to an illegitimate daughter, Pearl. Living in Puritan Massachusetts, this doesn't go over well with the society at large, especially as she refuses to divulge the name of the child's father. As punishment, Hester is forced to wear the letter A on her breast as a sign of her crime.

Personally, I didn't find much to like about this novel, but Hester as a character was an exception. I admired her strength and how she got on with things despite being ostracised by society, and the rebellious way she embroidered the scarlet letter so it was almost more an adornment than a symbol of shame. Because of Hester's skill as a seamstress, she was offered work despite being in disgrace, which made it possible for her to support herself and her daughter, just one example of Puritan hypocrisy.

The daughter, Pearl, is continuously referred to as a fairy child and unnatural in some way, and even Hester seems afraid of her a times. A lot of the time Hawthorne uses her to spell out uncomfortable truths, which at times reduces her to more of a symbol than a character. (Not that this happens only with Pearl.)

Of the other characters, the villain of the piece, if you can even call him that, is Hester's long-lost husband who takes the name Roger Chillingworth and swears to discover the father of the child while working as the town physician. The father, the town minister Arthur Dimmesdale, is a weakling who lets Hester suffer alone while his guilt eats at him from the inside.

The novel examines the nature of sin and the injustice of Hester's punishment and questions the rules of the intensely religious Puritan society that wreck the lives of everyone involved. Hester does find a sort of redemption in the end, even if she never quite shrugs off the weight of the scarlet letter, while Dimmesdale's guilt destroys him. In Dimmesdale's case, I doubt even the Puritan legal system would have been harder on him than he was on himself.

Concerning writer tricks, Hawthorne is famous for his use of metaphor in the novel, but I found him quite heavy-handed. Every time he does something particularly clever, he seems to have a need to point it out to the reader in a very unsubtle hey-look-what-I-did-there way. For examples of this, see the bit where he compares Pearl to the roses on the prison wall to the scarlet letter and the scene where the scarlet letter appears in the sky. I did like the use of colour and light and darkness in the novel. For me, this novel also served as a reminder of what not to do: even if you're writing a historical novel, it doesn't mean you need to make the prose so archaic that it takes away from the reader's experience.

So all in all, not exactly the book for me. But hey, I did learn you can use the word "pillory" as a verb!

Classics read: 30/100



 

Science Fiction Classics: Lest Darkness Fall by L Sprague de Camp

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Lest Darkness Fall, a 1939 alternative history novel by L. Sprague de Camp, tells the story of American archaeologist Martin Padway's accidental journey to 535 AD Rome. The idea feels very familiar to anyone who's read more than one or two science fiction books, but this was one of the first alternative history novels and has helped to shape the whole subgenre, something that needs to be taken into account when reading the classics. Spoilers ahead, beware!

The opening of the book is a bit strange, almost a science lecture on how people could get transported through time, and then that exact thing happens. Poor Padway is trying to take shelter from a thunderstorm in the Pantheon. Lightning cracks, and suddenly he finds himself in ancient Rome. I guess de Camp's foreshadowing works, because instead of contemplating the plausibility of a lightning strike being able to do something like that, I concentrated on Padway's fate instead. I actually think this is something many science fiction fans do: we're willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the story, but only up to a point. Most of the facts need to be right, or we get antsy. Fortunately, even if the science part of science fiction isn't that evident in the fantastical way Padway ends up in Rome, the rest of the novel feels meticulously researched and historically accurate; from Padway's struggle to get a craftsman to make copper piping for distilling alcohol (he wants to sell brandy to the Romans) to building a working telegraph system, every undertaking is described in detail and the issues well thought out. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the way the Romans and Goths talked in colloquial English, supposedly translated from the Latin Padway quickly masters. 

Padway as a character is quite likeable: he's resourceful and doesn't wallow in his unfortunate circumstances, but gets straight to work instead. The novel is very entertaining and de Camp's clear and plain writing style helps to sell the story. My attention wandered a bit at the end with all the fighting, but all in all, I enjoyed the book. One thing that I especially liked was that de Camp didn't take the easy way out and return Padway to modern Italy at the end of the novel, as is customary in many alternative history stories. Padway's adventure continues far beyond the last page. 

The name of the novel of course alludes to the fall of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages. Imagine where we'd be if we had skipped those? An interesting idea. The morality of changing the future doesn't figure into Padway's thinking that much, but as he isn't going back to the future, does it really matter? The original future will remain as an alternate timeline, according to the opening lecture bit.

Writing-wise, there aren't too many writer tricks to find here, but the advantages of clear prose and doing your research if you want to write alternative history are some obvious take-home points here. 

A fascinating book. If you like alternative history, do give it a go.   

Science Fiction Classics read 47/193.

The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal

Maylis de Kerangal is a French writer who has won many awards for her work, but only two of her novels have been translated into English: The Heart (Mend the Living) and The Birth of a Bridge. My mom brought me the Finnish translation of The Heart and said: "You have to read this!" That's usually a good sign so I dove right in and fell in love with the book from the first page. (In Finnish the name is translated as Bury the Dead, Patch up the Living, by the way. I tried to find more translations, but I think this is the only one of de Kerangal's books that's been translated into Finnish so far.)

The Heart tells the story of a heart transplant from the accident that leaves young surfer Simon brain-dead to the surgery where the heart is transplanted into another's chest. On the way de Kerangal dips into the minds of the grieving parents, the doctors and nurses, and the heart's recipient. The novel is a great example of how the much-maligned third person omniscient point of view is sometimes the best choice for a narrative. I can't imagine this book written in any other way; the voice of the author permeates the novel, ebbs and flows in breathless, rolling sentences while still revealing a deeply moving study of the characters and their emotions. This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, and one of the saddest. I'd love to reread it in French, but because of the subject matter I feel like I need to give myself some time before I can do that.

I also loved the way de Kerangal uses free association in her descriptions, like in the journey of the heart to the hospital for the transplant. This yields many unique and beautiful passages that you want to read over and over again. I'm definitely going to try this technique for one of my own stories. (Yay, new writer tricks!)

I haven't read the English translation, but I highly recommend the book. I'm going to pick up one of her other books and try to read it in the original language and I'll definitely try the French edition at some point.

Here's a link to her Wikipedia page if you want to check out her other titles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maylis_de_Kerangal

Ready Player One and The Martian

I've been feeling under the weather and consequently spending a lot of time on the couch in the last few weeks. As there are only so many Friends reruns you can watch without going insane, it was a perfect time to catch up on my reading. I wasn't up to anything too taxing, so no classics or even science fiction classics this time.

From the books I read I especially enjoyed Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Andy Weir's The Martian.  Both are extremely addictive and I actually stayed up until two a.m. reading Player. If you're an '80s kid and a gamer like me, I'm pretty sure you'll love Ready Player One. In the novel's  dystopian world of poverty and overpopulation, most of the people escape the dismal reality into a virtual world called OASIS. The story kicks off when the creator of OASIS dies and sends a message to all users of a great Easter egg hunt hidden in the program, the winner of which will inherit his company and fortune. The main character Wade Watts, a poor kid from the slums, figures out the first clue, and off we go. This is a young adult title, but don't let that stop you. There are definitely no boring parts in this book. Despite the dystopia aspect, the book feels fun and optimistic. Loved it.

I probably don't need to say much about The Martian, now do I? If you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the movie. The movie was so great I was almost afraid to read the book, mainly because I read some negative reviews and I thought it might get too technical for me, but I didn't have any trouble. The science was mostly dumbed down for us regular folk, and Mark Watney is such an optimistic and resourceful protagonist that it's pretty much impossible not to like him, bad jokes notwithstanding. I actually liked the humour, because the story would have felt pretty dismal without it. Many people criticised Weir for creating flat characters, but this isn't really a character story; it's more about Mars, the technology, and the ingenious ways Watney handles whatever is thrown at him. The heart of the story is Watney and his quest to survive, of course, but I didn't feel that anything was missing here. Like action movies, sometimes science fiction gets by with less character development and we're fine with it. I felt Watley was an interesting and believable character, and very likeable, too. Sometimes that's enough. You should note that the book was first published in blog form by Weir, and it's his first novel, so the prose isn't always as polished as you might prefer, but Watley's voice comes through loud and clear, and that's what's important to me. And yes, I'm aware that there are problems with some of the science in the book, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for something this great.

I think we need more science fiction books with a hopeful feel. I'm tired of dystopia. I didn't actually realise how prevalent dystopia and apocalyptic futures are in pop culture right now until I watched some Star Trek reruns. Watching those felt like a huge weight was lifted from my chest. The future is bright! Humanity has made it! People are basically good and want to do the right thing! Star Trek inspired many people to invent new things and to pursue careers in science. What are the dystopias doing other than spreading hopelessness and fueling pessimism and every-man-for-himself attitudes? I can't see The Walking Dead inspiring anyone to make the world a better place. We need solutions, it's not helpful to just point out the problems and wail about how we're all going to die and there's nothing anyone can do. We need that Watney attitude, that we can think our way out of this mess.

Reading the Classics: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

I picked The Woman in White from my reading list because I wanted a book I'd actually enjoy after too many hard slogs. I loved Collins' The Moonstone, so The Woman in White was an easy pick. 

As I was reading it continued to amaze me how modern and clear Collins' prose is, especially compared to many of his contemporaries. I also admire how Collins draws his characters with a deft hand, transforming a collection of telling details and quirks into living, breathing people. Collins was very popular in his time, but the critics and the literati were harsh on him and considered his stories lurid melodramas. Reading his novels now you can see why he was popular; Collins has a knack for twisty plots, rising tension, and cliffhangers. The Woman in White was originally published in serial form in 1859 to1860, and I can just see people lining up for their copies of All the Year Round , slavering for the next instalment. 

The book tells the story of Walter Hartright, a young drawing master who falls in love with his pupil, Laura Fairlie, who is engaged to another man, Sir Percival Glyde, who is up to no good. The mysterious woman in white hints at horrible secrets to be revealed, and Walter and her sister Marion are caught in a desperate struggle to free Laura from her dangerous situation. On Percival Glyde's side we have Count Fosco, probably my favourite of the characters in the book, in a love-to-hate-him way. I also liked Marion, who is a very modern character for the time, in that she's strong and has agency, even though her options and actions are limited by the time period. The main couple, Walter and Laura, are actually pretty whitebread, but it might have been hard for the readers of the time to root for a heroine like Marion. 

Like The Moonstone, The Woman in White uses multiple first person narrators. This is a good structural choice as it highlights Collins' talent for unique character voices. You can see it particularly well in the invalid Mr. Fairlie's (Laura's uncle) chapters, for instance. For me, the most memorable passage was the excerpt from Marion's journal where she draws a captivating portrait of Count Fosco.

I would recommend giving The Woman in White a try even if you usually find classics difficult or boring, because it's neither. There is a bit of rambling, as in most novels from this period, but this is a great and very entertaining read. 

For writers there's a great deal to learn here about character-building, plotting, and keeping the reader hooked. You can also learn about period style from reading Collins, especially if you're writing historical fiction or steampunk stories set in the Victorian era. Because Collins' prose is so clear and modern, I feel it's a good place to start when trying to get the 'feel' of an 1800s narrative without frustrating your readers with overly complicated prose. (If you try to emulate Dickens you'll probably end up sounding quite old-fashioned.)

Oh, and on a semi-related note: Dan Simmons has written a fascinating novel that has Wilkie Collins as the main character, Drood. It has horror elements and I love the way Simmons explores the relationship between Collins and Dickens. It makes a nice companion piece if you're reading Collins' and Dickens' novels. 

Classics read: 29/100

Terra Incognita

Reading non-fiction books is a great way to find story ideas, and Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton is a treasure trove of fascinating facts and places. Although you can visit many of the sites listed, this isn't a guidebook, not really; it's more like a collection of curiosities. Many of the descriptions are quite short, so if you get inspired you'll probably need to do more research, but on the other hand longer descriptions might tire you out while reading the book. 

Here are a few pages from the book. Some of my favourites included learning about a device that uses leeches to predict the weather, strange delicacies like the eggs boiled in the urine of young boys, and monks who try to embalm themselves. 

I also picked up these. You can never have too many atlases, right?

Storied Women and Book Recommendations

HWWF:SW ended last week. Great course, I already miss the community. It was a lot of fun, but now it's time to get back to my regular writing schedule. As you saw from Monday's post, I'm mostly doing editing, because it would be fun to submit a few more pieces this year.

The only deadline for December (for now) is for the Cosmos Pen short story, which is nearly done, anyway. I've got a week of vacation time coming up before Christmas, and though it will mostly be taken up by activities of the present-wrapping, gingerbread-baking, and glögg-drinking variety, I'm hoping to get some writing done, maybe finish one of the stories I wrote for Storied Women. It's only  got the opening so far, but I've got it all plotted out in my head.

And now onto the book recommendations.

I had the flu a few weeks ago, and the only good thing about being sick is that you get to stay in bed and read all day without feeling guilty. I was too tired for anything too cerebral, so I picked books from my "fun book" pile.

November is definitely the best time to read Jenna Kostet's Marrasyöt. The name doesn't translate directly. "November Nights" is the literal translation, but in Finnish it also calls to mind the twelve night after Kekri (Finnish version of Halloween), when the gates between the worlds of the dead and the living are open. The novel is a detective story with speculative elements, set in the Finnish archipelago. I enjoyed it a lot, read the whole thing in one sitting. It would have been even better to read it at the summerhouse in front of a roaring fire. I think I'll give it to my mom next so she can do that if they decide to go up for a wintery weekend.

I also started Katri Alatalo's new short story collection Älä riko pintaa, set in the same word as her fantasy trilogy Mustien ruusujen maa. (The Land of the Black Roses), and am enjoying it a lot. She's doing a series of posts on her website about how the stories in the collection came into being, which is fascinating to read.

Another one I tried was Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, and I absolutely loved it. Loved the main character who's literally been to hell and back, loved the character voice and dark humour, loved the gritty feel to it. This one's a thrill ride, if you want a vacation from reality.

What about you guys? Read any good books lately?

Writer Crush: The Poetry of Edith Södergran

Edith Södergran (1892-1923) was a Finnish poet who wrote her poems in Swedish. She died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one and never gained much recognition in her lifetime, but is now seen as one of Finland's finest poets. Born in Russia, where she attended a German school for girls, Södergran's influences included French symbolism, German expressionism, and Russian futurism. She used free verse and strong imagery, which was not well received by the Finnish tastemakers of the time, causing her to be ridiculed and misunderstood. Her works include  Dikter (Poems, 1916),  Rosenaltaret (The Rose Altar, 1919), and Landet som icke är (The land that is not, 1925).

I only discovered Södergran a few years ago and fell in love immediately. There is a melancholy feel to many of her poems, and they also feel darkly romantic. I've only read them in Finnish, but I'm looking for a bilingual edition with the original Swedish text. There is an English translation  by Stina Katchadourian Love and Solitude. Selected Poems 1916-1923, and you can also read some of her poems on the Poetry Foundation website and at poemhunter.com. 

Here's one:

On Foot I Had to Cross the Solar System 

On foot 

I had to cross the solar system 

before I found the first thread of my red dress. 

I sense myself already. 

Somewhere in space hangs my heart,  

shaking in the void, from it stream sparks 

into other intemperate hearts. 

         --Edith Södergran, http://www.poemhunter.com

I have many favourites that weren't included in the translations (and I didn't like a few of the translations available), so here's my attempt at translating a few of her poems. I'm no poet and I'm translating these from the Finnish translation, so at best this is the whisper of an echo of the original, but maybe these will give you an idea of how powerful Södergran's work is.

In the Autumn

It is autumn, and the golden fowl
all fly home over blue waters;
I sit on the shore and gaze at autumn's jewels;
and farewells whisper in the trees.
A great farewell, a parting ahead,
but our reunion is certain.
That is why my slumber is light, when I doze, hand under head.
Feel a mother's breath on my lids
and a mother's lips on my heart:
sleep and dream, my child, for the sun is gone.

Dangerous Dreams 

Venture not too close to your dreams:
they are smoke and may fade away --
they are dangerous and may endure. 

Have you looked your dreams in the eye:
They are diseased and understand nothing --
they hold only their own thoughts.

Venture not too close to your dreams:
they are a lie, they should leave --
they are madness, they long to stay.

          --Edith Södergran/ Restless Dreams



Sources:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/edith-sodergran
http://runeberg.org/authors/sodrgran.html

Science Fiction Classics: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

Image from Wikipedia.org

                                             
Stand on Zanzibar has the worst opening I've ever seen, a bunch of out-of-context text extracts that read like gibberish. If the novel hadn't been on my Science Fiction Classics reading list, I'd never have gotten past the first chapter, and after I did I kind of wished I hadn't. This book annoyed the hell out of me.

Brunner's "innovative structure" of chapters is split into "continuity" (the so-called plot),  "tracking with closeups" (windows into the lives of minor characters/random people), "the happening world" short collections of descriptive passages, and "context" (scraps and bits of worldbuilding stuff like apartment ads, song fragments, newspaper headlines etc. etc.). It made the novel very hard to follow, especially as nothing much happened even in the plot chapters before about halfway through. I get that the structure is probably why Brunner won the Hugo award for the book, but I really, really hated it, especially the "context" and "the happening world" chapters. It just felt like Brunner had dumped his entire worldbuilding bible into the book. Thoughts like "why should I care" and "this is stupid" kept intruding on my reading experience. Apparently the structure is meant to mimic information overload, and I guess it succeeded.

It didn't help that the characters are unlikeable and the women are mainly there for sex, with the exception of the businesswoman Guinevere Steel, maybe. And nothing very interesting happened in the plot. And that annoying '60s slang: whatinole for what in hell (and different variations using "hole" for "hell"),  calling women "shiggies," and poppa-momma for p.m.. So, so annoying.

Okay, so anything I liked then? Well, the worldbuilding itself is interesting at times, with Brunner's exploration of how people would react to overpopulation. Brunner's future takes place in 2010, and on some counts his predictions feel eerily accurate. The muckers, people who go nuts and start killing everybody or plant bombs for fun, hit a little too close to home in this time of school shootings and terrorists, and people using drugs and alcohol to escape their unbearable lives feels believable. I also liked the concept of Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, a fictional couple on TV who travel the globe and attend all the most exclusive parties. The idea is that for a fee the TV fixes you and your partner's faces on the Everywheres, so you can watch yourself do all the things you can never actually afford to do.

The name of the novel refers to overpopulation. In the twentieth century there was a claim that the world's population, standing, could fit on the Isle of Wight. Brunner's prediction of the world's population in 2010, seven billion people, would need a larger island to stand on, like Zanzibar.

All in all, I can't recommend this book to anyone but the most hardcore science fiction fans. As luck would have it, there's another one of Brunner's books on my reading list. And it utilises the same "revolutionary structure."  And it's six hundred pages. Oh, joy.

Science Fiction Classics read 44/193.

Science Fiction Classics: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Image from Wikipedia.org

I picked this book up with some trepidation. It was on my Science Fiction Classics list, and I knew I'd have to read it sooner or later, so I decided to get it over with. I've seen the movie, once, and while I'll concede that it's a work of art, I never want to see it again. The same with the book. This was a hard book to read, in the sense that it made me feel physically sick at times. (Some spoilers ahead, in case you haven't read the book.)

The main character, Alex, a total psycho who has no empathy whatsoever, goes on to commit horrible acts of violence with joy in his heart. Later he goes to prison and is subjected to more violence, just as hard to witness. Talk about unlikeable characters! But there is a difference in medium: to me, the book was easier to stomach And somehow you do want to read on, because Alex's voice is so unique, and his love for classical music creates a nice dissonance in the character, makes him interesting. Even though he's a horrible person, I did feel sorry for him when he was strapped to the chair for the behaviour modification treatments.

The edition I read had a foreword from Burgess, where he said that the meaning of the title was widely misinterpreted. Many people thought "clockwork orange" was a metaphor for a hand grenade, but it isn't: it means a fake orange with clockwork inside, a toy, I guess. It's a metaphor for Alex. The book is about the idea of choice. Can you really be good if the choice is taken away from you? If you're forced into acting like a good man without truly repenting and making a choice to be good, are you just a hollow thing, like that wind-up toy?

The question becomes, is Alex choosing to go through with the treatment a choice to be good? Probably not, considering how the book turns out. Another interesting thing I learned was that when the book was published in America, the publisher left out the last chapter in which Alex is shown growing bored of the violence and dreaming about a family of his own. So that's a different book, and that's the book Kubrick based his movie on.

Another thing that divides opinions is the Nadsat slang, a fictional teenage lingo that's a mix of Russian, Cockney rhyming slang, and Shakespearian English. If you've been reading the blog for a while, you might have noticed that I'm a language freak, so it's no surprise I loved it. It's so cleverly done: you can work out what the words mean from context, and Burgess is careful not to introduce too many new words at a time. I only know a few words of Russian, but I had no trouble following the story. The slang's function is to distance the reader from the violence, and I think it did help a bit.

Okay, writer trick time: one thing that jumped out at me was that Alex addresses the readers as "Oh, my brothers," which is kind of disturbing, like it makes the reader a part of the atrocities he commits. Burgess also used the phrase "What's it going to be then" repeatedly; first, when Alex is at the milk bar with his gang, thinking about what they're going to do that night; then when he's in prison being subjected to the treatment; and, finally, in the last chapter, which mirrors the first, except in Alex's attitude. Very cool.

 I do find the idea that people just grow out of teenage violence a bit unbelievable. Alex isn't a normal person; normal people don't do the things he does. There's something very wrong in his brain. When we feel empathy, what's happening to someone is reflected in our brain. That's how you can feel someone else's pain and empathise. Empathy's probably been a useful trait when people banded together for survival in humanity's early days. Nowadays we know that some people don't have normal responses to distress cues and don't feel empathy, even get pleasure from extreme stimulus, like hurting someone. That's one explanation for psychopaths. That's what Alex seems to be. So no matter what he wants, he probably wouldn't be able to have a normal life without serious therapy.

I can't really say I liked this book, but I can see why it's a classic. Be warned, you need to have a strong stomach to get through this one, but right now I feel that it was worth the nausea.

Science Fiction Classics read 43/193

Reading the Classics: The Odyssey by Homer

                              

I finally finished reading The Odyssey, and I loved it. I picked the Fitzgerald translation because I had heard good things about it, but this particular edition doesn't have an introduction or any notes included, so if you're new to the Greeks, another edition might help provide more context. That said, I don't think you need to read a bunch of analyses to enjoy Odysseus' adventures. (That's Ulysses to those that prefer the Latin name). 

If Iliad is an Ancient Greek action movie, The Odyssey is an adventure flick. It's surprisingly captivating, especially the first half that tells of Odysseus' journey home. I might not be entirely unbiased in this, because I grew up with these stories; I had an edition that retold the story for children, and I also loved "Tales of Sinbad the Sailor" from One Thousand and One Nights, which were influenced by Homer's works. The Lotus Eaters and the Cyclops feel quite familiar, for instance.

I didn't love the part in Ithaca as much. Does anybody else think that massacring the suitors, even those begging for mercy, and the women of the household who had slept with them was a bit overkill? The rules of hospitality (and the suitors' abusing of them) is explored a lot in the book, so maybe that's why? And the constant testing of Telemachus, Penelope, and even Laertes, his father? I get that Odysseus is a cautious man, but that just seems cruel. Okay, testing is also a major theme, as you can see even from the cover of the book. That's Odysseus' bow, the one that none of the suitors are strong enough to string and shoot, and in the end Odysseus, in disguise, strings it and shoots the arrow through the hoops as indicated, then goes on a rampage, unleashing his fury on the suitors. So the story is also about vengeance. But is this justice, or only revenge? 

Telemachus almost manages to string the bow after a few tries, but desists after Odysseus gives him a warning look. Does this mean that even if Odysseus hadn't come home, Telemachus could have thrown the suitors out eventually? Maybe he wasn't there yet, but would have been, soon? The idea that this proves that he'll never be the man his father is feels quite depressing. 

Loyalty is another important theme. Penelope is the main example, but there's also the old swineherd  Eumaeus. The bit about Penelope feels unsettling, because I get the feeling Odysseus would kill her without remorse if she didn't pass the tests. And there's also the old double standard at work here. For women, sleeping around is a deadly offence, while Odysseus jumps in the sack with practically any nymph/temptress he happens to come across on his journey home and doesn't even feel bad about it.  

That said, the storytelling is surprisingly modern: a lot of the story is told in flashbacks. The description is vibrant and full of detail, and you can practically see what's happening. I also liked the way Agamemnon's story is used to mirror Odysseus'. Agamemnon fought in the Trojan War just like Odysseus, but when he came home he was murdered by his deceitful wife Clytemnestra and her lover. So a dark mirror, then. 

All in all, a fantastic read. Even if you think you know all about The Odyssey from pop culture references, it's very different to actually read it. 

Book Recommendation: The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

I bought this book after reading Neil Gaiman's introduction of it in A View from the Cheap Seats. (A dangerous book, if you're running out of shelf space: I bought five new books as I read it, and only one was a kindle edition.)  With The 13 Clocks, I'm actually glad I got the physical copy, because this is a gorgeous book. Just look at the artwork:  

When I opened the book, the first thing I saw was Gaiman's introduction; a fun coincidence that I ended up with that edition. I can't believe I've never come across this book before. It was love at first page. Just consider the opening:

Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn't go, there lived a cold, aggressive duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart.

And the descriptions! Here are a few of my favourites: 

His voice sounded like iron dropped on velvet.

She wore serenity brightly like the rainbow.

"The Todal looks like a blob of gulp,"he said. "It makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms."

If you like dark fairytales, you need to hunt down this book and devour it in one reading, preferably in a dark room with the wind howling outside. 

Science Fiction Classics: The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

Images from wikipedia.org

John Wyndham Parker Lucas Beynon Harris (1903-1969), or John Wyndham, as he was more widely known, was an English science fiction writer. He's famous for his "cosy catastrophes," disaster stories that take place in the English countryside. Three of his works are on my Science Fiction Classics list, so I decided to lump these two together. The Chrysalids, which some consider his finest work, is the third one, but I left that for later.

Triffids is a fun read, but the plot feels quite familiar. That's not surprising, because almost every zombie flick ever made owes it a lot. 28 Days Later has whole scenes that feel like they were taken almost straight from the book, and the opening of The Walking Dead probably has its roots here, also. The premise is interesting: what if almost everyone in the world went blind overnight? How long would it take for society to degenerate into savagery? Add to that the flesh-eating and walking plants, the triffids, and you have a recipe for disaster with all the fixings.

Cuckoos was a bit of a let-down for me, because I enjoyed Triffids so much. It explores another disturbing idea: everyone in the small village of Midwich loses a day and all the women find themselves mysteriously pregnant afterwards. They then give birth to strange, alien children, and creepiness ensues. For me, the execution felt a bit boring, and I didn't like the point-of-view shifts between the first person narrator and an omniscient view. There are also a lot of long conversations about morality and society and evolution, which slowed up the pace. The plot gets going when the children start to grow up, but it's still a bit slow. It was okay, but I probably wouldn't read it again. 

With both books, you can see the phantom of the Cold War in the distance: the triffids were genetically engineered by the Russians, and we also find out that the Russians had Cuckoos of their own, whom they kept alive in case the children would be an advantage in the arms race.

I think these books are considered classics more because of the ideas they explore than any literary merits. Wyndham's characters are a bit on the thin side and his style is clear and readable, but not very distinctive. That's the problem with the older science fiction classics: they tend to feel a bit cliché, because the idea has been recycled so many times since the classic was written. But you have to remember which was the original.   

All of the books mentioned above were published in the 1950s, so you have to take that into account while reading them. The attitudes towards women feel quite outdated. It didn't really bother me that much with Triffids, but considering the subject matter of The Midwich Cuckoos, I felt the full horror of what was done to the women went unexplored. I'd be curious to see what a woman writer would do with the same subject matter; it would be a very different book. While the "mansplaining" and how the women act can feel cringeworthy to the modern reader, I think Wyndham's attitudes might have been considered outlandish in the 50s, even progressive: women studying engineering, working outside the home, thinking for themselves; it's all there. It's like Wyndham's frustrated with how women won't help themselves and prefer to stay at home and have babies and mooch off their husbands. You have to remember Wyndham was born in 1903, so he was in his fifties when he wrote these books. I think that if he had been born later, all of this would have been handled differently.

So, I recommend Triffids for its fun B-movie high jinks, but maybe skip Cuckoos if you're not passionate about understanding the history of science fiction.

Science Fiction Classics read: 42/193

Book Recommendation: The Works of Leena Krohn

                               

Leena Krohn is a Finnish writer of speculative fiction. Her work is beautiful and strange and always surprising, so if you like weird fiction, you should definitely check her out. Tainaron: Mail from Another City, a series of letters sent from a city of insects, has been available in English for a while now, but a collection of her work was released last year, including some of her novels and short stories. Her work veers towards literary fiction, but don't let that put you off; this is the good kind of literary fiction, thoughtful but engaging.

I started reading one of her books, Hotel Sapiens, a story about people living in a hotel run by sentient machines on an apocalyptic Earth, and just fell in love. Then I picked up DreamDeath, which is also awesome. The protagonist is an anesthesiologist with insomnia, who works at a cryopreservation facility called the Freezer, the local hospital, and also DreamDeath, a euthanasia facility where you can go out with style. Dreams also figure into the narrative as she reads the dream journal of her great-great-grandfather (not sure about how many greats are in there).  We also meet some of her clients, who all have different reasons for wishing to die or to live forever. Then there's the real world that's crumbling into chaos and cruelty. It's an exploration of life, death, and the quest for immortality, but engaging and readable, not as heavy as you'd think from the subject matter.

I love how the books are structured. It almost feels like they're composed of short stories that explore different aspects of the theme and then all tie together in a greater whole. There's a delicious irony about her characters, like the blind ophthalmologist, or the anesthesiologist with insomnia, and some of the characters are just plain weird, like the shadow that leaves its human and lives on its own.

The real irony is that many of her books are out of print and hard to find in Finnish, while the English ebook is available to everyone. I've had Tainaron in English for a while now, but it felt wrong to read the translation when I could read the original. I actually lucked out, because I recently found it at a second-hand bookshop I popped into on my way to the library for said book. It was meant to be!

If you want something different, Krohn is definitely that. I just hope the power of her work isn't lost in translation. Have you tried something of hers? How was the translation?

The Proust Project: Round Four

Yep, started reading Sodom and Gomorrah, and I'm back in that special sweet spot between frustration and exhilaration. I want to like the book, I really do, but Proust doesn't make it easy. Between the tedious simile about the bees and flowers that goes on and on, the impregnable walls of text (Dude, have you ever heard of paragraph breaks?),  dialogue hidden inside long paragraphs, and pages-long sentences, I just want to throw the book at the wall and never pick it up again.

But then this happens:

"Although it was after nine o'clock, it was still the daylight that was giving the Luxor obelisk on the Place de la Concorde the appearance of pink nougat. Then it diluted the tint and changed the surface to a metallic substance, so that the obelisk not only became more precious but seemed more slender and almost flexible. One felt that one might have been able to twist this jewel, that one had perhaps already slightly bent it. The moon was now in the sky like a segment of an orange delicately peeled although nibbled at. But a few hours later it was to be fashioned of the most enduring gold. Nestling alone behind it, a poor little star was to serve as sole companion to the lonely moon, while the latter, keeping its friend protected but striding ahead more boldly, would brandish like an irresistible weapon, like an oriental symbol, its broad, magnificent golden crescent."

- Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust 

Wow. Just, wow. That's some gorgeous description.

Guess I'll shut up and keep reading then.

Science Fiction Classics: Ringworld by Larry Niven

Image from wikipedia.org

                                             

Ringworld is probably Larry Niven's most famous work. It's a mix of adventure story and hard science fiction novel, with interesting aliens and some really cool concepts. The book was published in 1970, and it won the Nebula award that year, and the Hugo and Locus the next.

I enjoyed parts of the novel, but it didn't suck me in, like my favourites do. The Ringworld is a very interesting idea, and I did like the explanation of the Dyson sphere, but the technobabble went on a bit too long for my liking. A lot of the book is just Our Heroes exploring Ringworld and getting in trouble. Mostly it didn't feel that urgent, and I didn't get the feeling they were actually in trouble or stranded until the end. There's a line after the crash about the ship not needing to fly for them to get off Ringworld, and that kind of zapped the excitement for me.

The characters are mostly fun, like the Pierson's Puppeteer Nessus, who's a coward (all Puppeteers are), but is introduced acting extremely reckless and pissing off two kzin, nasty catlike beings with predator ancestors. When he falls back into his normal behaviour, the contrast is hilarious. We find out that he's been suffering from a state of temporary insanity. Apparently any Puppeteer that leaves the safety of their world is considered crazy. Imagine, that other beings only ever meet the insane members of a race. That's an interesting idea.

Nessus recruits the others for the trip to Ringworld. The main character, Louis Wu, is a 200-year-old man, bored with his boosterspice-elongated existence. He's the intelligent adventurer, the person whose eyes we see through. The kzin, Speaker-to-Animals (yeah, that means us), is a lot of fun, and never feels like a trope. The ship names are also hilarious, like the Lying Bastard.

But then we get to the problem: the female characters. The book is over forty years old, so I'll give it some leeway, but this bothered me enough that it interfered with the reading experience. The only woman among the Ringworld explorers, Teela Brown, is naive and stupid, picked because she's lucky. Because she's so lucky, she's never been hurt, and that is used to explain why she is the way she is, almost a child in a woman's body. But then the idea is put forth that she doesn't even have free will, because her luck makes her choices for her. Breeding for luck is an interesting concept, but the execution bothered me. The only other woman is a ship's whore they encounter on Ringworld. Nessus conditions her to fall in line with the tasp, a weapon that stimulates the pleasure centres of the brain. The tasp as a weapon is a cool idea, but, again, this bothered me. And the characters joke many times about Teela being there to sleep with the main character. Add to that a few sentences about every woman possessing a tasp of her own, a rape joke, and the info that the kzin females (and the puppeteer breeders?)  aren't sentient, and I started to feel a bit icky.

So, all in all, neat ideas, but I won't be reading this again. Have any of you read Niven's other novels? Should I try something more recent?


Science fiction classics read: 40/193.