[Book Reviews] ‘The Space Merchants’ by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

"The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth

I love science fiction. I love marketing. So, I guess you could say The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth is pretty much one of my favorite books ever.

And you’d be right. This novel, written, in the early 1950s, envisioned a future where entertainment and advertising have become so entwined that ads are the dominant form of popular culture. Ad writers can become “Star class copysmiths” and be rich, famous and respected. Ad firms are like film studios, and ad executives are the most powerful people on the planet. One of these firms, Fowler-Shocken, is tasked with selling the public on the idea of colonizing Venus, despite the fact that it’s a terrible place where no one would ever want to live.

But in the midst of this consumer culture, a group of people called the “convervationists” is operating in secret. They’re sort of like environmentalists, believing in the preservation of natural things and renouncing the ideas of rampant consumerism waste.  It’s bad to be outed as a “consie”, especially if you work in an advertising firm. But unlike the secret so-called communists of the 1950s, the consies are actually intelligent and organized, with the plan to turn public opinion against Venus so they can take it themselves and turn it into a paradise.

The story itself is something of a fall and rise sort of adventure, where the main character, Mitch Courtenay, works his way to the top of Fowler-Schocken only to find himself framed by a rival and branded a consie. He moves to the evirons of society, discovers how he’s been framed, and outs the consie conspirators. There’s a nice twist to the ending that puts things in perspective, but the structure of the story is fairly standard stuff. Were I judging the book on the merits of its plot, I would probably consider it a readable, but mediocre title. (I certainly feel this way about the sequel, The Merchants’ War, which follows the pattern of the original while updating the book’s ideas for the 1980s.)

No, what makes this book so awesome is the world that Pohl and Kornbluth conceived. It’s frighteningly close to the world we live in today. Advertising is used not just as a means of persuading people to buy products, but to shape public opinion about real issues, like the scarcity of water and fuel, and to make people feel like their lives are better than they really are. Every piece of communication is persuasive; every idea has an agenda. Even the simplest slogan has been massaged by expert ad men. The world is a dark and frightening place, and yet society is kept under control by these resassuring messages that they should be happy because of the products they consume.

One of the most memorable and horrifying scenes in the book comes when Courtenay finds his way into the facility where “Chicken Little,” a processed chicken product, is packaged. What he finds is a giant, living mound of chicken tissue, where butchers come and cut pieces of flesh off to prepare for processing and packaging. The campaign around the product leads you to believe you’re eating normal chicken, but this genetically engineered, unthinking living blob of meat is all it is. The idea is that as long as people don’t know what they’re really eating, society will hold together.

A lot of science fiction looks to the future and sees exploration, space ships, aliens, and evolution. These things exist in a world where there is a single government, and poverty has been extinguished, and anyone can be an adventurer. That is not the case in The Space Merchants, where society is, instead, a glittering sea of false promises established to keep people from understanding how bad things really are. Happiness is not rooted in simple pleasures and natural living, but in consuming products and listening to advertising messages. Achievement is not rooted in social benefit, but in manipulation and half-truths. The ad executives have all the real power; public officials (even including the President of the United States!) are an anachronism. In many ways, The Space Merchants is more realistic than most of the science fiction you’ll find from the 1950s… or in the entire genre.

If you don’t want to read the book, CBS once produced a condensed radio version of it. It misses pretty much the entire point of the novel, but it does cover the plot.

I want to comment on one more thing, and that’s the style of this book. 50s sci-fi really has a certain feel to it — an idea of progress towards simplicity, an idea of buying shiny new things and discarding old ones. The future is a place much like the 1950s, where everything seems exciting and safe, and there’s no pain or suffering. More modern books have played with this theme and shown the rotten supports below this sort of lifestyle. The Space Merchants fits into this paradigm, and it was clearly far ahead of its time in its ideas. I fully expect this genre of “nostalgia punk” sci-fi to show up again down the road. I may even write some myself.

"The Merchants' War" by Frederik Pohl

Ironically enough, I’d place the 1984 sequel, The Merchants’ War, much closer in tone to the futuro noir style of Blade Runner than this nostaglic tone I’m referring to. I felt like The Merchants’ War was a lot closer to cyberpunk in tone, though it lacked the foresight to see the impact computers were having on the world. Pohl seemed a lot more concerned with critiquing collectible items and the cola wars than he was about returning to the themes of the original book, and it’s a shame. As I said, it’s not that the sequel is bad… just that it’s not nearly as groundbreaking or memorable as the original.

Sean’s recommendation: Track down a copy of The Space Merchants, read it, and enjoy it. It’s a fantastic book that was really forward-thinking 50 years ago, and which still has a lot of relevance today. The Merchants’ War isn’t too bad, either, if you’re craving more when you’re done.

You can get both in one edition if you’re really interested.

[Game Reviews] The Pandemic Games

Pandemic 2 from Crazy Monkey Games and Dark Realm Games

I’m a sucker for a game with a good concept, and the rush of protecting the world from micro-organisms is a great way to introduce your inner geeky scientist with your inner super hero. In fact, I’ve happily killed an hour here and there with the board game Pandemic, where you play as a CDC scientist trying to save the world from an onslaught of diseases!

But every now and then, I get crabby and want to destroy human civilization instead of protect it. What’s more, I want to do it in such a way that no one will see it coming until it’s too late… with a minimum of personal discomfort, of course. And that’s why I love games like Crazy Monkey Games / Dark Realm Games’s free flash-based games Pandemic, Pandemic EoM and Pandemic 2, where you get to create your own infectious creation and send it off into the world to do some damage.

Pandemic 2 is really the best of the three, so I’ll discuss it for a moment. You start off by naming your virus, bacteria, or parasite, and begin in a randomly selected part of the world. Your job is to get the virus out and infecting the rest of the world before everyone catches on. Then, your job is to evolve the virus and kill as many people as possible before a vaccine is created. You accomplish both of these goals by upgrading your virus periodically with “evolution points,” which you earn as your virus does its damage and time goes by.

There are two ways to play the game, really: to try to get a high score (which seems to be related to how many people you can kill in how short a time) or to try to annihilate all traces of human life. Since you’re likely to have trouble figuring out how to accomplish either goal, here are some tips:

• High score: Pick virus, make your starting symptom “fever,” and quickly ratchet up your transmission stats so you can start infecting the world quickly. Focus on upgrading your drug resistance, and don’t really worry about the others so much. Instead, upgrade your killing power quickly to Tier VI and pick up a nasty fatal condition like heart failure or kidney failure. Your goal is to kill as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about how many you kill; just how quickly you kill everyone you infect.
• Annihilation: Pick parasite, sell your starting symptom, and then upgrade to “drug resistance II” and “rodent transmission.” Then, walk away for a half hour or so, and come back. Don’t do anything until all the islands (particularly Greenland and Madagascar) are infected. Then, ratchet up the four transmission methods, moisture resistance II (to activate “waterborne”) a fatal condition (like heart failure) and wait. If everything works out, you’ll overwhelm the hospitals, shutting them down before they can develop a vaccine, and you’ll kill every single person on Earth. Well done.

I really like this game — it’s a fun little simulation to have running in the background when I’m doing something more important, and it gives me an opportunity to cackle evilly when things go my way.

I do have some criticisms, though:

1) Transmission between regions only occurs through human means (borders, planes, boats, etc). This is not realistic at all, since birds, fish, foodstuffs, and other methods can spread disease. As such, it’s very irritating that island nations like Madagascar and Greenland can shut down their boats and be immune to disease. Unless they’re reverting to a primitive state, they’re still going to be somewhat vulnerable.

2) Vaccines take effect immediately across the world. They should spread from the region of discovery like a virus, coming to the Third World last.

3) The scoring system doesn’t make any sense. Why should you get fewer points for killing off humanity than you would from just killing off Europe?

Ah well… hopefully, these issues will be addressed in Pandemic 3. And I’m not going to gripe too much about a game that is free, fun, and flash-based.

Play Pandemic 2 on CrazyMonkeyGames

[Game Reviews] Upgrade Complete!

Upgrade Complete by Armor Games

In the realm of video gaming, it’s easy to get obsessed with the idea of “upgrading”. In fact, many great games are built around the concept of “play just a little further, and you can make your guys that much better and cooler…”. A lot of times, these upgrade experiences aren’t that exciting, especially when you’re working towards upgrades like “alternate costume colors” or “bad guys wearing funny hats” or the dreaded “extended credit sequence”.

So, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would go out and make a game where upgrading is the actual focus. Armor Games’s Upgrade Complete! is a free, flash-based game that’s all about upgrading to your heart’s content. The game starts off by telling you you need to upgrade so you can have a pre-loader. Then, you have to upgrade to get menu buttons, a logo, copyright information, a menu background, a progress bar, and so forth.

The actual game itself is a simple little Galaga-style shooter where you move your shift left or right and blast everything on screen. You start out with one gun, no sound effects and some Atari 2600-style graphics. But, of course, all of these things can be upgraded! You can put your money into improving your ship’s gun, but you can also add other weapons and useful components (you can have 12 modules in all) to make the game a little easier. There are 20 waves of enemy ships to blow up, but you never are actually penalized for losing. In fact, replaying levels over and over until you can earn enough money to upgrade your ship is a pretty sound strategy.

It only takes about 15 minutes to get your ship up to the point that it’s maxed out, and one of the achievements you can earn essentially says, “Oh yeah, there’s a game, isn’t there?” and rewards you for actually bothering to finish wave 20. Chances are good you’ll still be upgrading even after finishing that last wave — after all, you’ll still want to upgrade the graphics, the music, the logo, the copyright information, and the game’s ending.

Upgrade Complete!, along with another Armor Games titles called Achievement Unlocked (where you find yourself unlocking ridiculous achievements at a rapid pace), represent something you don’t see often in gaming — social criticism of game culture. It’s fun to be able to play some simple little games that mock both gamers and developers for being too focused on the mechanics of gaming and not enough on the gameplay itself. What’s more, since they’re flash-based, you don’t need any special hardware to give them a try.

Play Upgrade Complete! v. 1.5 on Newgrounds

Play Achievement Unlocked on Newgrounds

[Book Reviews] ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

There are a lot of terms on the internet we take for granted today. One of those terms is “cyberspace,” and it’s a word that derives from a 1984 novel by William Gibson called Neuromancer, widely regarded as the first real “cyberpunk” novel. What cyberpunk is and what it stands for is somewhat open to debate. But most people agree that Neuromancer and the 1982 film Blade Runner really established and popularized the genre in the minds of science fiction fans. Both featured near-future settings where the world was becoming a giant mishmash of Asian-Euro-American culture. Both explored the ideas of artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. Both featured heroes who were anti-heroes, in a sense; Blade Runner’s Deckard is a bounty hunter who murders artificial beings because they are not human, while Neuromancer’s Case is a hacker for hire who doesn’t seem to have much in the way of scruples. Both played an important role in shaping science fiction post-Star Wars, and both inspired a whole wave of Japanese comics and animation.

So, before I talk about Neuromancer, it’s important that we establish what a groundbreaking book it was when it came out. William Gibson envisioned a world where technology had created two alternate realities — a real world where people were increasingly using tech to enhance their human abilities, and a virtual tech world where humans could manipulate machines into doing what they wanted. Gibson didn’t really understand computers that well, and he didn’t know much about hacking. His hacker underground seems to be more inspired by punk rock and motorcycle gang culture than 1980s computer geek lingo.  But the ideas of Neuromancer are really, really cool. What’s more, they’ve shaped reality in some important ways.

But first, let’s talk about the novel itself. I first read Neuromancer when I was in high school, just as the Internet was beginning to catch on. To be perfectly honest, I found the book to be barely readable. Gibson’s minimalist style was really difficult for me to handle. I often had to re-read chapters to understand what was going on, and I had a hard time following his action sequences, which often lacked the necessary description for me to fully conceptualize where characters were standing in a room or what was happening to them. Even during a recent re-reading of the novel, I found it a ridiculously challenging experience. I tend to skim over description and focus on the meat of the story. You can’t do that with Gibson; it seems like every word is important. I found myself having to read each chapter slowly so I could absorb the sparse detail Gibson gives. There are some really memorable scenes in Neuromancer, but you can miss them if you read too quickly and find yourself ridiculously confused.

And that remains my chief criticism of the book — while I think Gibson is a good writer (and his later works are a lot easier to read), Neuromancer demands so much of my attention that it’s not something I could really read for pleasure. I suspect part of the reason it got so much attention when it came out was because people were persuaded enough about its cool concepts that they were able to look past the writing style. Perhaps the style commanded their attention. Whatever the case, I know that there are people in the world who absolutely love this book, and who have read it dozens of times. I also know that there are people who never make it past the first chapter. Some stop reading after the book’s opening line, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” This is just not a book for everyone. To put it another way, it’s an adrenaline rush that many won’t find welcome.

On the other hand, Neuromancer has some insanely cool concepts that are as exciting in 2009 as they were when the book came out 25 years ago. The virtual reality known as the “matrix” originated in Neuromancer, and while popular culture has taken the concept and turned it into many other things, the idea of hacker “cowboys” finding ways around “black ICE” while running around with “Razorgirls” with mirrored eye implants and retractable-blade fingernails is pretty distinct to this novel. Neuromancer’s other distinctive feature involves an AI called Wintermute manipulating humans so that it can achieve its own unusual goals… and while the rogue AI concept has shown up in other science fiction, it’s never been quite as cool or edgy as it’s been in Gibson’s novel. Hacking the matrix, too, is an exciting ordeal, with hackers jacking in through electrodes that connect directly to their brains and interacting with computer programs in a wireframe environment. In the world of the matrix, the hacker is powerful, but susceptible to death in the form of “flatlining” — having a jolt administered directly to his or her brain. One of the characters in the book has actually been killed by this, and finds a way to survive in the matrix as an AI RAM construct.

All in all, I guess you could say I’m torn in recommending this book to everyone. On the one hand, it remains one of the freshest, coolest novels in all of science fiction, and it’s served as a massive influence not only on media, but on the way we conceptualize the internet today. On the other hand, it’s one of the more challenging science fiction novels you can pick up and read, and a lot of people who have been spoiled by all the cyberpunk films, anime, comics and video games out there are bound to say, “why bother?” So, I’ll throw this out there — the sequel, Count Zero, is really good, and the final book in the Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive, features the return of Molly Millions, the highly memorable mirror-eyed, blade-fingered Razorgirl from Neuromancer. But you have to read Neuromancer for those other two books to make any sense, because Gibson doesn’t really slow down to explain things a second time.

So, there you have it. If you’ve got even a shred of curiosity about cyberpunk or how it all began, you owe it to yourself to read Neuromancer. But if you’re content to stick with more polished efforts from the 1990s like The Matrix or Ghost in the Shell, you’re not going to be missing a whole lot, because while Neuromancer was the original, those later efforts have taken Gibson’s ideas and turned them into stories that are more palatable to most science fiction fans.

Sean Recommends: Read this book if you’re looking for some serious, hardcore sci-fi. Otherwise, you might try some of Gibson’s later books first (like Virtual Light, which kicks off the Bridge Trilogy), since they’re actually a little easier to read, though they’re less groundbreaking in their ideas.

[Movie Reviews] – Gattaca

'Gattaca' written and directed by Andrew Niccol

I’ve been meaning to watch Gattaca for awhile now, but never gotten around to it for some reason. I’d heard it was a well-constructed science fiction film (it’s technically part of the “biopunk” subgenre), but I’ve been burned by so many sci-fi films that I really didn’t want to be let down by this one. Fortunately, it’s available on Netflix Instant Watch, and since I was in the mood to watch a movie last night, I finally gave it a go.

I’m glad I did. Gattaca was a fun experience, and a really well-crafted science fiction piece. I’d say it fits more in the vein of dystopian satire (like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or George Orwell’s 1984) than anything else, but it does have many biopunk elements about it.

In the world of Gattaca, genetic manipulation has resulted in an odd sort of fatalism — the moment you’re born, you are told what your probabilities for death are. It’s much safer, and much more socially beneficial, to create children through a lab, where the best parts of the mother and father can be combined and the genetic deficiencies can be eliminated. The main character, Vincent, is born with a probability of heart failure by the time he’s 30. His parents have a younger brother, Anton, who is designed to be superior to Vincent in every way. Vincent grows up in a society where there is a lot of predjudice against him for being a natural birth, and he is told that he’ll never be able to achieve his true dream: to be an astronaut. But Vincent doesn’t accept his fate, and when he realizes that he is capable of beating his brother in a swimming race by sheer determination and will, he leaves his family and finds his way into Gattaca, the mission control center for space shuttle launches.

Vincent starts off as a janitor, but eventually finds a way to infiltrate the organization. Gattaca conducts regular urine, blood and hair follicle tests to ensure that its people are legitimate — the best and the brightest, not genetic inferiors. Vincent’s way around this is to use a “borrowed ladder” – he partners with a man named Jerome who is genetically superior, but who has lost the use of his legs in an accident. (In this world, invalids are also looked down upon, particularly when they’re supposed to be genetically superior.) Vincent’s job is to pretend to be Jerome so he can become a navigator aboard a mission to the moon of Titan. Jermoe agrees to supply Vincent with all the genetic material needed to pull off the ruse in exchange for a cut of Vincent’s salary.

Unfortunately, a week before Vincent’s mission is scheduled to take off, a murder occurs, and a police sweep finds an eyelash that links him to the crime. His ruse becomes much  more tense as the police begin more aggressive DNA sweeps, and Vincent knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll be discovered. All he has to do is make it one more week until his shuttle takes off, and nothing will matter anymore. But unfortunately, one of the detectives has a suspicion about what’s really going on… and he’s determined to bring Vincent to justice, even if Vincent didn’t commit the actual murder.

Gattaca is really more of a cautionary tale than a futurist film, and while the sterile, harsh world of the film seems believable enough while you’re watching it, the idea of a society obsessed with genetic probabilities is a little far-fetched. But the idea of the film — that human achievement is greater than any probability determined by scientific understanding — is profound, and the way the film is constructed makes for an interesting series of revelations about the characters.

One of the more interesting things going on in the background involves a woman, Irene, who has the same heart condition that Vincent does, but in a much milder form. This condition doesn’t proclude her from working at Gattaca, but it does prevent her from going into space, no matter how capable she may be. Irene is so mired in the probabilities of death that she believes them. Once she learns what Vincent is, her entire world opens up to a new range of possibilities.

This film was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, and it’s the only one he’s done that’s been what I would call “hard sci-fi.” His follow-up film, The Truman Show, was also very good, though much softer and less realistic. S1m0ne, a movie about a film producer who creates a complete digital film star, was really lacking in plot development. I never got around to seeing Lord of War or The Terminal, though I’m told it neither has any hint of science fiction. I’m hoping Niccol delivers another film like Gattaca down the road — it’s one of the most consistent hard science fiction films I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it’s not based on a book or cribbed from another film makes it all the more appealing.

Sean Recommends: If you have Netflix, watch it instantly. It’s worth the 105 minutes you’ll put into it. If not, rent it or buy it on Amazon for a few bucks. It’s worth it.

[Book Reviews] – ‘Dune’ by Frank Herbert

I feel sort of silly reviewing Frank Herbert’s Dune, because it’s considered to be the bestselling science fiction book of all time, so chances are good that anyone who’s reading my reviews has already read it. And even those who haven’t read it probably have it on their list of books to read. So, in the spirit of making this review interesting and useful, I’m going to talk about the reasons why Dune, unlike a lot science fiction from the ’60s and ’70s, is still important and relevant today.

Just in case you haven’t read Dune, I’ll give you a quick overview. Several thousand years in the future, humanity has spread to the stars, and culture has shifted away from machines (due to a machine uprising) and instead towards human achievement. People live longer and benefit from advanced medicine and technology. Human “computers” called Mentats are used for logistics, calculations and strategy. Women of the order of the Bene Gesserit oversee religion and evolutionary breeding. Space guild “navigators” are the only people capable of folding space, but do so at the cost of being hideously deformed and inhuman. Human warriors are trained to be much more ruthless and capable than any other warriors in history, and the Emperor’s Sardaukar troops and the culture of people known as the “Fremen” are among the most powerful fighters in the universe. Much of this advanced human achievement is made possible by a drug known as spice, “melange,” a substance found on a desert planet called Arrakis… also known as Dune. It’s said that whoever controls the spice, controls the universe. The great houses take turns running the planet of Dune, but their power is checked by the might of the emperor.

Duke Leto Atreides is given the opportunity to oversee the planet, and he brings his Bene Gesserit consort, Jessica, and his son, Paul, with him. Unfortunately, the emperor has been conspiring with House Harkonnen to knock the Atreides out of power, and a betrayal occurs that results in the death of the Duke and the stranding of Paul and Jessica in the desert. They are nearly eaten by the enormous desert sandworms before they are resuced by the Fremen, and Paul eventually discovers that his true destiny is to lead the Fremen to take over their own world and shift the balance of power in the universe. Paul is able to do this because he is the end result of the Bene Gesserit breeding program and is able to drink the spice-concerntrated “water of life” and live through it — granting him the ability to see any point in time. Paul and the Fremen take over the empire, and the book ends… though Paul’s eventual doom (and the  conquering of the universe at the hands of the violent Fremen) is spelled out in the sequel, Dune Messiah. The two books that follow, Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune tell the story of Paul’s children, Leto and Ghanima. The other two books in the series, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune are a little less readable, and ultimately end in Arrakis losing its special place in the universe and another home for the spice being created.

(Some other prequels have been written by Herbert’s son, Brian, based upon Herbert’s notes. Besides being unnecessary, they’re not very well-written compared to the original. I don’t recommend them.)

Dune is an important book in science fiction because it was the book that showed that science fiction and the sort of world-building you see in fantasy could work together to create a cohesive whole. Herbert didn’t just ask, “What if this spice existed?” and tell a story about it. He created a vast universe with many millenia of history shaping the views of his characters, and he developed a complex political intrigue that made his universe seem all the bigger and more magnificent. Even though 90% of Dune occurs on Arrakis, you always get a sense of the bigger scope and feel of the universe around it. The empire feels absolutely enormous, and the struggles of Paul Atreides are truly epic. Star Wars take a lot of cues from Dune, as do many of the sci-fi space opera series that followed in its wake. It’s an important turning point in science fiction, and it really established the modern genre of space fantasy (books that are set in space, but that aren’t necessarily science fiction) that was so popular in the ’80s.

But at the same time, Dune is hard sci-fi in the respect that it does offer plausible explanations for most of the things that happen in the story. Herbert really thought through space travel and human evolution, and he developed his galactic empire around the idea that humans, on their own, could not traverse the vast interstellar distances required and still have a cohesive civilization. His ideas about human beings serparating into different groups and becoming the ultimate fighters, ultimate navigators, ultimate computers, and ultimate breeders is quite different from much of the science fiction that followed. The only thing one might call “magic” in Herbert’s universe is the spice itself, and even then, he attempts to offer explanations into how it allows people to accomplish great feats.

Dune is also a novel with a lot of relevance to the world around us. Herbert based a lot of his ideas off his own experiences. The Bene Gesserit are based around the Catholic church. The great houses take cues from the idea of superpower nations. The spice itself is very similar to oil in some ways, and it’s no accident that the Fremen are modeled after the Bedouin people out in the Arabian desert. The ideas of Herbert’s books often centered around what it meant for humans to become gods in some fashion, and Dune shows the rise of a messiah only to bring him down in the sequel. Readers should even be left wondering if Paul’s rise was a good thing, or if his fall was inevitable. Even the “Golden Path” his son pioneers comes at a great cost to the rest of the universe. Again, you just don’t see this sort of philosophical debate going on in science fiction very often, and many of the imitative works (including the books written by Herbert’s son) have lacked the insights Dune had to offer.

I also want to take a moment to talk about Dune Messiah. If you read Dune and skip this sequel, you’re really missing out on the point of the series. I’ve heard that Herbert originally intended for them to be the same novel, but his editor did not appreciate the message of the second part since it did not embrace the heroism of Paul’s rise to the top. As a sequel, Dune Messiah is a big letdown, because it’s about the fall of Paul Atreides, not his continuing adventures. But if you read it as the rest of the story of the novel, it’s a bit easier to see how it plays a role in finishing the story.

All in all, Dune is one of those books that I’d recommend to just about anyone. It begs to be read multiple times, and I’d argue it’s one of the most important works in the history of science fiction, and a novel that really changed the way science fiction is read and written today. Don’t settle for the David Lynch disaster of a film or the Sci-Fi channel miniseries; both lack the power and punch of the book itself, and both gloss over a lot of the important details that make the book so interesting. This is one of those stories that’s best told in novel form.

Sean recommends: If this one’s on your list of books to read, bump it up to the #1 slot. If you’ve already read it, read it again. And read Dune Messiah when you’re through.

[Book Reviews] ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson

"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

Every now and then, I read a book that makes me want to give up the idea of being a science fiction writer. Sometimes, it’s because the book is so popular, and yet so awful, that I don’t think it’s worth my trouble to write for an indiscriminate audience. Other times, it’s because the book is so good, and so far beyond what I could accomplish on my own, that I just want to curl up in a corner and sob while I reread it.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is definitely one of the latter books. How I’ve made it through 17 years without knowing that this book existed is a testament to the terrible science fiction I’ve been reading, I suppose.

I don’t think I could fully describe this book if I tried. It’s wonderful. It’s part cyberpunk, part dystopian satire and part linguistic primer. The story takes place in a future where government is broken down and people live in territories controlled by franchises sold by organizations like the Mafia, Mr. Lee’s Hong Kong, the nation of Nippon and yes, even the United States government. The world is a lawless place where violence reigns and the authorities are privatized. One of the main characters, a 15-year-old girl with the moniker Y.T. (“Yours Truly”), is a Kourier — a skateboarding delivery girl who catches rides on the back of cars with a magnetic “poon” cable. Her partner in crime is a half-Nipponese, Half-African man named Hiro Protagonist, the last of the freelance hackers and the world’s greatest sword fighter (if you can believe his business card, anyhow). Hiro and Y.T. are working together to gather information for the CIC (a combination of the CIA and the Library of Congress that has since become the backbone of the Internet) about a street drug called “Snow Crash” — a strange new synthetic drug that can wipe out a human mind like a computer virus. Their quest takes place both in the real world and in the Metaverse, a 3D virtual world where users interact with lifelike avatars and own virtual property (think Second Life, but keep in mind that Snow Crash was first published in 1992, long before most people were even talking about the Internet). The idea is like the Virtual Reality concepts of the early 1990s, but far more developed.

The “snow crash” virus turns out to be something that’s rooted in Sumerian mythology and linguistics, and Hiro spends a good chunk of the book investigating its origins. Y.T., in the meantime, gains the attention of the Mafia boss Uncle Enzo and is recruited to run several missions that involve a lot of danger and explosions. She also attracts the attention of the villainous Raven, a giant Aleut with homicidal tendencies. Raven is a unique villain in that there is a disincentive to stopping him — he lugs around a hydrogen bomb that’s wirelessly linked to his brain. If he dies, it detonates. Thus the private law enforcement tries to contain his killing sprees instead of taking him out.

Snow Crash has a great sense of humor about it, and the first chapter, while a little out of place thematically, offers a nice introduction to the world and the two main characters by chronicling the adventures of “The Deliverator,” a high speed pizza deliveryman who faces certain death if he misses that 30 minute delivery guarantee. As the book goes on, it gets a little more serious, and I was actually quite annoyed to see the main characters (particularly Hiro) start dropping into soliloquy mode towards the end. The near-final showdown between Hiro and Raven involves a long, drawn-out conversation between the two characters about their fathers which is seriously hard to believe. I suspect Stephenson was running out of room to cram in all the story he wanted to tell, and this was the only way he could do it. (His solution in more recent books is to just keep on writing, and reader be damned; his last series, The Baroque Cycle, was 2700 pages long across three volumes!)

Still, I’m stunned by the “big ideas” in this book, of which there are three: the idea of franchise-states, the idea of the Metaverse, and the idea of a linguistic virus. The third one is by far the centerpiece of the book, and something I find quite annoying because a) I came up with a similar idea a year ago and b) Stephenson did it so much better than I could have that I almost want to fold up my laptop and forget about writing ever again. I have to take consolation in the fact, however, that Stephenson’s first two novels bombed before he achieved success with Snow Crash, and despite the many, many great reasons for reading this book (if you haven’t read it, go get a copy right now and get started!), I still spotted minor grammatical errors, continuity blips and plot holes, suggesting that the novel still needed another pass in the revision phase. But those are microscopic gripes for such a magnificent novel. It’s one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read, and I highly recommend it.

I’ll be reading Stephenson’s next two books, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, once I finish off the stack of science fiction books I just picked up, so check back in a few months for reviews of those. Hopefully, by then, I’ll be over having my creative soul crushed by Stephenson’s amazing talent and back to working on developing my own ideas again.

SEAN’S RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoy science fiction of any kind, you should read this book.  It’s a bit on the “hard” side of science fiction, and cyberpunk’s certainly not for everyone, but it’s plotted well enough that it’s a rewarding read.

[Book Reviews] ‘Childhood’s End’ by Arthur C. Clarke

"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

Humans often think of themselves as the acme of evolution. But what if we’re simply a transitional state – an incubator, even – for a much greater consciousness that will appear in future generations? And what if everything we thought we knew about deities, angels, demons, and spirits, was simply a vision into what the future held for mankind?

This is the premise of Childhood’s End, a wonderful classic science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. The beginning of the book will seem familiar, since the strong visual Clarke envisions has been used elsewhere in sci-fi since. Alien spaceships appear in the sky, and hover over all the major cities. But the aliens don’t reveal themselves immediately, and they communicate with humans through a series of psychic messages. These aliens judge humanity harshly, forcing the world to disarm its weapons and to stop its violent ways. They take a particular vengeance on those who harm animals in a cruel way. The aliens guide humanity to become better, and as the generations move forward, the aliens gradually reveal themselves, and it’s clear why they have been so hesitant to show themselves. (I won’t spoil the surprise, but let’s just say they have to wait for Western civilization to outgrow some of its medieval mythology.)

At first, it appears that the aliens are on Earth simply to make it a better place, and humanity enters a golden age of peace and prosperity. But as children begin exhibiting strange behavior, it’s clear that something more is going on. These aliens aren’t ambassadors, but midwives… waiting to take humanity from its fetal state into the birth of something new, and something wonderful… but something downright terrifying as well. Humanity’s era is over, and in one generation, everything on Earth will change forever.

And that’s where Childhood’s End is different from other science fiction stories like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, V, Independence Day or The Day The Earth Stood Still, where mysterious aliens make first contact with humans –  these aliens are not on Earth to warn humanity about its impending doom, or to feed upon the humans or destroy the planet. No, they’re motivated by a higher purpose, with a higher understanding of events that really is beyond anything humans will be able to understand. What winds up happening in the end is so intense, so awe-inspiring, that it’s like watching an act of God occurring. And since the change into the next state occurs in human children, there is no way that human parents could have been informed without getting massively over-protective.

One of the great things about science fiction is its ability to question what it really means to be human, and, in fact, whether being human is such a great thing to begin with. Other genres of literature would simply accept the idea that humanity is a good thing, and stop asking questions then and there. But in science fiction, the idea that humanity is not the greatest point of evolution can be put forth. In Clarke’s view, humans are simply the primitive ancestors of the wonderful, powerful, terrible things to come. The universe is waiting not for humanity to arise and voyage to the stars, but some other entity that began as human, but which became something different entirely.

Childhood’s End is a great read. It’s short, it’s interesting, and it’s full of twists and turns. There are a few places where it’s a little dated (it’s pretty clear that it was written in the 50s due to the gender attitudes and ideas that show up), but the themes are fairly universal. There is a sense of wonder and amazement in this novel… but also a profound sense of melancholy. I’d recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in science fiction, because it’s very readable, with interesting characters and clear explanations of what’s going on… but at the same time, it represents the biggest of big ideas that science fiction can put forth.

GENRE: Hard Science Fiction
STORY: ****
CHARACTERS: ****
CONCEPT: ****
RE-READABILITY: ****

[Book Reviews] ‘The Forever War’ by Joe Haldeman

"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman

What would happen if we really waged interstellar war? One thing Star Wars and Star Trek don’t take into account are the effects of relativity when people travel fast enough that they’re approaching the speed of light. What might seem like weeks to the travellers could seem like years to the people back on Earth. And that’s exactly what happens in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, a book where the main character, William Mandella, is enlisted to fight in a war against an alien menace known as the Taurans (named after the constellation they’re believed to be from). As Mandella goes off on campaigns, he returns to find Earth increasingly more alien as the years go by, until finally, it is a place so different that he can no longer even call it home.

Haldeman says in the prologue that he intended this book to be an analogy of the Vietnam War, but that he was surprised that readers who weren’t familiar with Vietnam could still read it and understand it. That’s a very interesting point, because had Haldeman not brough up Vietnam, I would have never made the connection. For one thing, he does such a good job of distancing himself from the politics of the 1970s (when this book was written) and describing a military that is evolved from what we have today.  Only the best and the brightest are conscripted into the military, and training conditions are harsh — many die before it’s even over. There is a rule that every solider must be given a mate of the opposite gender if he or she wishes, resulting in a 50/50 split of males and females and forced couplings among non-romantically-involved soldiers. The military operates so much like a machine that the human element is often forgotten. This is very evidence when the soldiers return home and experience “future shock” — something the military never accounted for and does not seem concerned about. In fact, the military becomes the one constant in their lives they can count on.

One of the interesting ideas of the book is that the soldiers are only briefly effective due to the effects of time dilation. The Taurans are unprepared, at first, but quickly up the ante with more deadly weapons. Soldiers who are sent out to fight with the latest and greatest weaponry return home with the equivalent of peashooters since things have changed so much by the time they get back. It makes for a frustrating battle — the soldiers are far less effective than the technology they wield.

Another interesting idea is the way the Earth changes. Haldeman’s vision of the Earth is that it grows so crowded that the government begins to encourage homosexuality as the norm. Mandella eventually finds himself commanding a regiment of people who find him the deviant, and even has to rebuff the advances of one of his officers. Humanity continues to change until it is something so different, so alien, that Mandella is forced to join a team of people from his era who set out to colonize a new world.

There is, of course, a surprise in the nature of the war that’s being fought as well. The Taurans are not what they seem, and the premises of the war are not exactly what the military originally claimed. There is a real sense of betrayal at the hands of the military, something that echoes Haldeman’s own experiences in Vietnam, but also the broader theme of any military, from any time, having a secret agenda. Wars are not fought over big ideas, like freedom and safety; they are fought over little things, like wealth and land.

Some see this book as a response to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and there are certainly some parallels. Haldeman has always played this connection down. I suspect it was an influence, but not his sole motivation for writing the book. For what it’s worth, The Forever War is a much better book than Starship Troopers. I’m not sure that I feel the same way about the sequels (direct sequel Forever Free and thematic sequel Forever Peace), though. While they’re similar in some ways, they just don’t have the same feel to them that The Forever War does.

There’s a 1988 graphic novel adaptation of this book that’s faithful, but condensed, and Ridley Scott’s working on a 3D film that probably won’t be any good at all. There’s also a parallel short story (“A Seperate War”) and a connecting comic (A New Beginning). But the original is the best, and well worth reading.

GENRE: Hard Science Fiction
STORY: ****
CHARACTERS: ****
CONCEPT: ****
RE-READABILITY: ****

[Book Reviews] ‘Lizard Music’ by Daniel Manus Pinkwater

"Lizard Music" by Daniel Manus Pinkwater

Note: Today’s book is also available as a free audiobook for download, read by the author. It’s worth listening to, and great for car trips! Get it here.

Rounding out my trilogy of Pinkwater reviews is a book called Lizard Music. This isn’t to say I’m going to stop reviewing Pinkwater books; it is to say, however, that I’m going to move on to other authors for awhile and come back to Pinkwater books down the road. Plus, Lizard Music is probably one of his best.

The story is about Victor, a twelve-year-old boy who is left home alone when his parents take a vacation and his older sister sneaks out to go camping with her hippie friends. This suits Victor just fine; he’s smart enough to take care of himself, and has plenty of money and TV dinners to get him through solitude. Plus, this means he can watch TV, explore the local city, and go swimming whenever he wants.

When Victor stays up late one night, he sees a band of lizards playing music on his set. He’s pretty sure this isn’t supposed to happen. As the days go by, he sees more weird lizard shows on TV. He also starts seeing lizards everywhere, in connection with all sorts of strange things. He asks a local eccentric known as “The Chicken Man” to help him find the lizards. The two eventually wind up on an island where a large number of friendly, humanoid lizards are living, and Victor has an incredible adventure as he explores their civilization.

There is no villain in this book, and no sense of doom or destiny or anything like that. It’s somewhat of an adventure, somewhat of a coming-of-age story, and somewhat of a hero’s journey all wrapped into one. Victor’s conflict is in understanding who he really is, and why he’s special compared to other people. He begins the story as a normal person who is surrounded by a lot of people who seem crazy. He emerges as someone who is equally as eccentric, but who understands the reasons why someone might be a little different.

When I read this book as a kid, I enjoyed the journey. It didn’t always make a lot of sense to me — there are a lot of dated references to popular culture from the 1970s in the book, particularly in Victor’s obsession with news anchor Walter Cronkite — but I got the gist of what was going on. One of the best running gags in the book is when Victor stays up and watches a movie about pod people (people who have been eaten and replaced by alien plants that look just like them), and reasons that all of the people around him must be pod people as well, because there’s a certain unreality to the way they behave. The lizards confirm his theory, and tell them they’re at war with the pod people. The gag never develops into anything tangible — Pinkwater may have been holding it back for a sequel — but one gets the sense that part of the story’s deeper meaning is that Victor is protecting himself from becoming a pod person by becoming a friend of the lizards. In other words, Victor is giving up the lifestyle of trying to blend in, and taking on the persona of the misfit.

Misfits are really important in Pinkwater books, and I can only assume that his goal in writing books for children was to let them know that being unusual, eccentric, or even crazy is OK, and even preferable to being dull and trying to fit in with the popular kids. Lizard Music is one of those books that really rewards the hero for being curious and willing to accept new ideas… and it challenges the reader to think about the world a little differently as well.

If I have a complaint, it’s that the end of the book is a little hurried, as if Pinkwater meant to spend longer having Victor tour the island, but ran out of time. The Lizards are too nice, and too friendly, and there’s no conflict other than the ticking timer that indicates that Victor will eventually have to leave. There is an interesting little subplot about chickens, but it hatches (hah!) into something fairly unexciting, despite the fact that the lizards themselves are very excited about it.

While this book is intended for children, I’d recommend it for adults as well. The free audio book is a really fantastic listen, and great for a car trip.

GENRE: Magical Realism / Fantasy
STORY: *** 1/2
CHARACTERS: ****
CONCEPT: ****
RE-READABILITY: ****