Book Review: Doomsday Book

Connie Willis
1992
Awards: Nebula, Hugo, Locus
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

SPOILER ALERT

There are many books I have enjoyed a lot. There are a few books that rise into a special category where I am completely sucked into the world of the book; where while I’m taking a break from reading it, at work or whatever, I’m still thinking about the characters and what just happened and what will happen next; and where I read more and more slowly because I don’t want it to end. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was like that for me, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, and Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Doomsday Book was one of these too. I just loved this book.

This book has some of the same characters as Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog. It is also a time-travel story set in England and involves some of the same Oxford historians, but takes place several years later.

Kivrin, a graduate student of medieval history at Oxford, goes back in time to the 14th century to do research. Unfortunately, as part of her preparation for the trip, Kivrin helped out an archaeologist digging up one of the medieval tombs near Oxford and caught a 14th-century flu from the buried remains. By the time she arrives in the 14th century, she is delirious with fever. She is taken in by the family of the local lord and they nurse her back to health; she grows attached to them and becomes a governess to their two children.

Kivrin was supposed to be sent back to the 1320s, before the bubonic plague got to England. But there was an unusually large amount of time slippage on the drop and she ended up arriving the year the plague arrived. At first everything goes okay but then, after the appearance of some out-of-town visitors, everyone around her starts dying of the plague.

Meanwhile, before Kivrin had gone back in time, she had already given the flu to several people in current-day Oxford. There is no cure for the flu in the present so the government shuts down all university operations and quarantines the town and Kivrin’s advisor is unable to get to the time lab and rescue Kivrin from the past.

Kivrin’s advisor’s struggles to get to the lab to find her and the small-time bureaucracies he has to deal with are funny in the same way the situations in To Say Nothing of the Dog were. And, at the same time, the plague striking Kivrin’s 14th-century family is horrific. The book was an expert combination of frustratingly funny situations and genuinely moving loss and sadness.

It was the small things about Kivrin’s experiences in the past that made them believable (and made the book particularly great). Her clothing is too bright and too finely woven and her fingernails and teeth are in far too good shape for the Middle Ages. The Old English dialect she had studied turned out to be wrong for the town she ended up in so the first person she is able to communicate with is the town priest, who understands her spoken Latin. The ringing of local church bells is, at first, a way of marking time during the day but gradually becomes a way to communicate how the plague is decimating the surrounding towns.


This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.

Space Dog's Concerns

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Book Review: A Deepness in the Sky

Vernor Vinge
1999
Awards: Hugo, Campbell
Nominations: Nebula
Rating: ★ - - - -

This book is a mile wide and an inch deep. And way, way too long.

It seems like Vinge has fun introducing new people, places, accents, terms, and technologies, and then is happy to abandon them, superficially outlined, when he gets bored or thinks of new ones.

To attempt to summarize the plot: two space-faring human fleets, the Qeng Ho (over-the-top free-market traders) and the Emergents (cult-like slaver-megalomaniacs) fly simultaneously to the mysterious OnOff star system which has one planet, Arachna. Arachna is populated with beings called Spiders who are on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and spaceflight. Upon arriving at Arachna, the Qeng Ho and the Emergents battle; the Emergents win and enslave many of the Qeng Ho traders with a kind of mind control. Then all parties sit and wait for the Spiders to advance enough for their purposes – for the Emergents, to use Spider technology to repair their ships and then enslave them, and for the Qeng Ho, to use Spider technology to free themselves and then to profit off them.

The story had about eight million characters and place names, none of which I cared about and many of which I confused with each other. Many of the characters had flashbacks which did little to explain their motivation and which in turn introduced still more characters and place names.

Just as one of the many story lines in the book would appear to be getting interesting, it would disappear into vagueness and switch to a different story. You never hear the guts of anyone’s ideas. For example, when Pham Nuwen (one of the many main characters) is talking about what he wants for his Qeng Ho fleet in the future, Vinge only gives us Pham’s introduction and conclusion and glosses over the content in the middle of his speech, saying only that his “words flowed.” This type of thing happens over and over.

As in his earlier book, A Fire Upon the Deep, Vinge does the best job with the aliens (in this case, the Spiders). The Spider characters were more understandable, likeable, and consistent than most of the humans.

There were several typos (e.g. “precentage”) and incorrectly-used words (e.g. “runway” instead of “runaway”) in the edition I read, especially towards the end, which made me think that perhaps the editor was having a tough time that deep into the book as well.

It appears, however, that I am the only one who officially feels this way about this book. All the reviewers and two of Vinge’s cronies – David Brin and Gregory Benford, both of whom I like a lot – raved about the book like it was the next Foundation series. Asimov’s Foundation universe is just as grand in scope, if not more so. But I cared about Asimov’s characters and he described worlds and ships well enough that their names meant something to me. Anytime he introduced new technology, I felt like I understood it enough to see its import.

I think if Vinge had focused on any one (or three) (or five) of the places, characters, incidents, and/or technologies in this book and explored them more deeply, it would have made for a pretty good book.


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

Book Review: Neuromancer

William Gibson
1984
Awards: Nebula, Hugo, Philip K. Dick
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

I am of two minds about this book.

On the one hand, I very much appreciate it. It is the very best in cyberpunk writing. It was groundbreaking and radical when it came out in 1984, and it still reads like a fresh, contemporary story today.

Gibson is great at taking abstract technical concepts like computer viruses, hacking, ROM constructs, and artificial intelligence and describing them so that you can picture them; so that they seem physically real. He does this for many things that were brand-new and almost inconceivable to most people at the time.

He also coined the term “cyberspace” and used the word “matrix” to describe the virtual environment of the internet, even though the internet didn’t really exist fully yet for most people.

Neuromancer is fast-paced and slick. People go swinging around the matrix at the speed of light and also zip around physical space very quickly as well; it’s no big deal to go from one end of the BAMA (Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis) to the other, even just for dinner.

Its characters have talents and body modifications adapted to this new environment. The protagonist, Case, is a cyber cowboy with an enhanced nervous system whose trade involves jacking into the matrix and hacking around stealing information. Case meets up with a number of colorful people, including Molly, a sort of mercenary who has retractable razor blades implanted under her fingernails (like Wolverine, although Wolverine actually came first) and high-tech mirrored lenses embedded over her eyes that give her access to all kinds of real-time information.

On the other hand, I don’t really like this world. It’s hostile. Everyone seems high on something most of the time. No one can trust anyone else and no one is sure if they’re on the right side. You can't ever be sure if what you’re looking at is real or a hologram. No one has a home; Case just rents various “coffins” (cheap tiny hotel spaces) to spend the night.

I don’t like Case or Molly or any of the people they run into (with the possible exception of Wintermute, who is actually an artificial intelligence and not a person).

I also don’t understand anyone’s motivation for doing what they’re doing (with, again, the exception of Wintermute).

The premise of the story is that Case used to be one of the best cyber cowboys out there, but he made the mistake of stealing a piece of information from an employer, who then fried his nervous system so he couldn’t jack into the matrix anymore. When a mysterious new employer needs someone to do the most dangerous, complex hacking job ever, they hire him to do it and are willing to pay for the extremely expensive operations required to fix him. Yet I didn’t think that Case ever really proved why he was so good (like, for example, Ender Wiggin proved over and over).

Case develops a romantic relationship with Molly, who has been hired by the same mysterious employer to be the muscle on the hack job. But they seem to get together just because they’re in the same place at the same time, not because they really are interested in each other.

Neil Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, which came out in 1992, draws a lot from Neuromancer, both in its atmosphere and in its story line. But I liked the characters and the world of Snow Crash much more. 


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

Don't Panic

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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.

Klingon Kitteh

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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.

In Honor of The Hobbit

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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.