Friday, December 28, 2012

Book Review: A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge
1993
Awards: Hugo

Nominations: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ - - -

As advertised on the cover, this certainly is grand-scope, universe-covering sci-fi. It is generally well crafted and many of the ideas are cool. But I found that I lost interest in most of the story lines.

Vinge divides the galaxy into concentric regions, from the core to the periphery: the Unthinking Depths, the Slow Zone, and the Beyond. The regions’ names reflect the level of technology that will work in them; as you go out from the core, you are able to use progressively higher and higher levels of technology. (Faster-than-light propulsion won’t work in the Unthinking Depths, for example.)

Outside of the galaxy is a region called the Transcend which is the home of entities that are so unbelievably powerful that humans can’t even comprehend their abilities. A group of humans living at the farthest edge of the galaxy accidentally wakes up an evil entity in the Transcend, and the entity starts to take over the galaxy, turning more and more worlds to its thrall as it makes its way inwards.

One group of humans is able to escape with a space-bending tool that can stop the evil entity. Unfortunately, they end up crash-landing on a planet in the Slow Zone and all the adults are killed by the planet's medieval dog-like indigenous residents so it is up to the human children to save the galaxy.

I found the adult humans in this story generally annoying. The kids were okay and I liked the dog-creatures a lot. Each dog-creature is actually a “pack” made up of anywhere from four to six individual living “elements.” By themselves, the elements can’t think well and tend to run around randomly, but when several are combined into a pack, they can form a single highly intelligent being. The book picks up when it is focused on the dog world but it definitely slows down when it switches to the human story lines (which, unfortunately, take up most of the book). 



This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Book Review: The Falling Woman

Pat Murphy
1986
Awards: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ – – –

The Falling Woman is set in Dzibilchaltún, a Maya archeological site near Mérida, Mexico. The main character is an archeologist, Elizabeth Butler, who can see the ghosts of the ancient Maya working and playing around her--often more realistically than she can see her own live workmen and graduate students.

Butler’s long-estranged daughter, who is going through a sort of a lost period following the death of her father, comes to see her and stays to work on the dig. Both mother and daughter then start to see the ghost of a formidable Mayan priestess who can see them too, and who has unpleasant designs on both of them, including wanting Butler to murder her daughter.

The book is clearly and straightforwardly written, the plot is decently exciting and well paced, and the subject matter certainly has potential. My major gripe with it was that there were so many, many details about both the Maya and the field work that didn’t sit right with me. And when I consulted with some Mesoamerican archeologists of my acquaintance, they confirmed that most of these details were either goofy or just plain wrong.

The first thing that jarred me out of the story’s dreamland ghost story vibe was when Butler, the head of the dig, actually puts her cigarette out on the wall of one of the site’s stone temples. Not only would a burning cigarette accelerate the disintegration of an irreplaceable artifact thousands of years old, but it would, as my experts pointed out, contaminate her charcoal and radiocarbon samples.

One of the other archeologists on Butler's crew is described as having a habit of putting any piece of pottery he finds into his mouth, straight out of the ground, and cleaning it off with his spit on the spot. My experts confirmed that you should use water; no one uses saliva because it's acidic and damaging. Also, it's gross.

One of Butler's graduate students explains that the best times to survey are at dawn and dusk, because you are better able to see regular lines and lumps in the ground that might signal human construction. My experts, who have used local history, vegetation patterns, and aerial photography to scout locations, and who know that lumps in the ground that form randomly over thousands of years can be quite deceiving, say: “Completely silly. Silly to the max.”

At one point, the archeologists in the book talk about there having been trade between Teotihuacán (in Mexico) and Guatemala, as evidenced by the fact that Teotihuacán pottery has been found in Guatemala. I had been taught by Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel to be wary of a lot of north-south trade in the Americas, so I questioned that as well. My experts said that, yes, there was indeed trade all over Mesoamerica. So some pottery from Teotihuacán did make its way to Guatemala. But it is not clear whether it was direct face-to-face trade or passed gradually from one group to another. In addition, most of the Teotihuacán-style pots in Guatemala are actually locally-made imitations.

And finally (or finally for what I have the patience to write here), the central plot of the book rests on the assumption that the Maya performed human sacrifices, in the form of throwing people into their cenotes (sacred wells). My experts say that this idea is based on a story that was published at the beginning of the 20th century, itself based primarily on one dubious statement made by a 16th century Spanish explorer.

I wanted to get into the story. I really did. And I might have been able to if it had been a little less serious about itself. I am willing to overlook a lot of flaws and suspend quite a hefty chunk of disbelief for the sake of a good story--as long as the story isn't pretending to be any more expert than it is. The main problem here is that the book purports to present a realistic portrayal of an archeological dig (aside from the ghosts), but that the inaccuracies poke too many holes in that realism and the whole thing thus falls apart.

Take Raiders of the Lost Ark as the best possible counter-example.

In Raiders, you have a guy whose primary tools, rather than a Marshalltown trowel and a whisk broom, are a .45 revolver and a bullwhip. He spends far more time punching out Nazis and romancing his lady friend than carefully sifting through ancient trash piles. It is a completely unrealistic portrayal of archeological field work. But it is an absolutely classic adventure, and doesn't pretend to be anything but.

One of my expert archeologists cited above is actually also one of the world's biggest fans of Raiders. We saw it together in the theater when it first came out; I remember him laughing heartily when Indiana Jones’s workmen are digging for the entrance to the Well of Souls with giant, artifact-destroying shovels, and they hit the roof with a huge thunk, ripping off a piece of the ancient wood.

He went out and bought a fedora the next day.


An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Book Review: The Moon and the Sun

Vonda N. McIntyre
1996
Awards: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

SPOILER ALERT

The Moon and the Sun takes place at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. The main story revolves around a minor lady of the court, Marie-Josèphe, whose beloved brother Yves is one of the king’s scientific explorers. On one of Yves’ ocean voyages he manages to capture two humanoid sea monsters. One of them dies in the process but he brings them both back to Versailles, installing the live one in a pool and conducting a dissection of the dead one under observation by the king.

The living sea monster becomes the attraction of the summer at court, with nobles coming to gawk at her in her pool. Marie-Josèphe is the only person willing to pay enough attention to the sea monster (and to spend time with her outside of gawking hours) to realize that she is an intelligent creature and thinks like a human and can communicate (through song).

Unfortunately, of course, no one believes Marie-Josèphe about this. And, in fact, the king wants to cook and eat the sea monster at a banquet. So Marie-Josèphe and her brother have to engineer an escape.

This is actually a novel of alternate history, but you don’t know that until the very end. The idea is that this all really did happen; there really were intelligent sea monsters living in the ocean in the 1600s, and two were brought back to Versailles. But in our version of history, the sea monster was eaten by the king and the world was never any the wiser and all the sea monsters went extinct, most killed by sailors who didn’t know what they were killing.

In The Moon and the Sun’s version of history, Marie-Josèphe and her brother saved the sea monster, humans found out that they were not the only intelligent species on earth, human-sea monster diplomatic relations were established and it changed history right down to the modern day.

The story itself was so-so. But it served as a great vehicle for embedding you in life at Versailles. I thought the best parts of the book by far were the everyday details and nuances of court behavior – including how the women did their hair and handled their periods – which really made the era come alive.

I liked how every little part of the king’s life got blown up into something unbelievably ceremonial and elaborate. The very highest-ranking nobles at court, for example, had the dubious honor of being required to get up super-early, dressed to the nines, to attend the "awakening" of the king each morning. (The king actually woke up several hours earlier and had his hair and makeup and clothes done, so what the courtiers saw was really his second awakening, but you can’t have the king looking disheveled.)

There are also some great king-related moments around the otherwise sad scenes of the dead sea monster's dissection, which the king insists on attending in person. One day he is unable to come, so the men-at-arms bring in a portrait of the king instead and put it on the king's chair, and everyone has to act like the portrait is the actual king.


This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Book Review: This Immortal

Originally published in serial form as ...And Call Me Conrad
Roger Zelazny
1965
Awards: Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –

The funny thing about this book is that it is not a terrifically complex story, and it is pretty short – 216 pages in my 1989 paperback edition – but it shared the 1966 Hugo award for best novel with the mighty Dune.

And I have to say, I agree with the Hugo voters. It’s a really good book.

I think the main reason it is up there with Dune, in spite of its plot’s relative normal-ness, is because of Roger Zelazny’s great character development and writing technique. He writes in a combination of styles: plain-spoken narrative that occasionally switches into the elaborate, archaic language of religious texts and ancient legends with total smoothness. This can be really funny and also oddly, unexpectedly moving. (Zelazny exhibits this talent to the hilt in his other Hugo-award-winning novel, Lord of Light.)

This Immortal takes place on Earth several hundred years after a three-day nuclear war wiped out most humans and destroyed most continental mainland. The few humans that survived fled to islands or to off-world colonies on space stations or other planets.

Since the war, humans have met the Vegans – that is, blue-skinned humanoid aliens from the planet Vega. They are far more advanced and civilized than us (which is especially obvious given that we have blown up our own planet) and have basically taken over Earth, buying up most of the remaining quality Terran real estate and turning the absentee human government on the planet Taler into a puppet regime.

At the beginning of the book, the Vegans send an emissary down to be led on a tour of Earth’s greatest places. He is supposedly there to write a travelogue, but some humans – especially those in the anti-Vegan resistance movement known as the Radpol – think he is there to figure out how to put the final nail in humanity’s coffin.

Fortunately for us, the puppet human government has assigned the Vegan a native Earth guide and bodyguard: Conrad Nomikos, the narrator of our story. Conrad is none too pleased about acting as a Vegan’s protector and pretty much just wants to be left to himself to lounge around on his Greek island with his wife. He is ugly, proud, grumpy, and cynical, but also a natural leader and an excellent fighter. He is also cool-headed and sane, unlike just about everyone else he runs into.

He also happens to be immortal (a side effect of a radiation-related mutation). He does his best to conceal this from his acquaintances but sometimes it just, well, you know, comes out. Especially when he runs into one of his great-great-grandchildren or someone who knew him in a previous life, or when somebody, like, for example, the Vegan emissary, takes the time to do a computer search on humans with Conrad’s unique physical characteristics and comes up with four or five matches spread out evenly across several hundred years.

Because Conrad's long lifespan, as it turns out, is why the Vegan chose him as his bodyguard and tour guide in the first place.

The story is basically just the tale of Conrad accompanying the Vegan on his mysterious tour and trying to prevent various Radpol agents from assassinating him until Conrad can figure out if the mission is for good or for ill. They run into plenty of dangerous mutants – human, animal, and combo human/animal – who want to do them both in. It’s a bit of a parallel (overtly referenced by the author) to the twelve labors of Hercules, with Conrad as the Herc.

The story is fun and plenty of the other characters and beasties are entertaining. It's simple. But what it lacks in depth and length (compared to Dune, at least), it makes up for with the quirkiness and appeal of the main character and the writing.


An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.