Books Reviewed 2015

Here is  housekeeping post, collecting all the books reviewed here in 2015.

Looking back at this list, I see that this year saw Terry Pratchette’s last book (a wrenching experience), and new novels by old favorites Stross, Perry, Macguire, Holt, Gaiman, among others. I also read older but still good histories by Goodwin and Graeber. I read several books about banking, Papal and otherwise, and overlapping works about Italy, fictional and (supposedly) real.

Over the year, I reviewed a sampling of important books about contemporary digital life, including cryptocurrency, the “sharing economy”, social media, and “mind change”.   These works covered a spectrum from enthusiasm to dark worry, giving us much to think about. There are many more I did not have time or energy for. (I will say more on this topic in another post)

Throughout 2015 I continued my ongoing investigation of the question, “what is coworking?”, including reviews of two recent (self published) books about coworking by practitioners. (More on coworking in another post.)

Shall I name some “Best Books” out of my list? Why not?

Fiction:

There were so many to pick from. I mean, with Neil Gaiman in the list, how can I choose? But let me mention two that are especially memorable

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Very imaginative and well written, and, for once, not so horribly dark. This book lodged in my memory more than others that are probably equally good.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Published a few years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. A wonderful, intricate story. The flight of the parrot is still in my memory.

Nonfiction:

There were many important works about digital life, and I shall try to comment on them in another post. But three books that really hit me are:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
From several years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. Highly influential on the ‘occupy’ and other left-ish thinking. This is an astonishingly good book, and long form anthropology, to boot. Wow!

Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
An exlectic little self-published book about “home coworking”, which I didn’t know was a thing. Kane walked the walk, and made me think in new ways about community and coworking.

Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
Unexpected amounts of fun reading this short book. It does an old, graying nerd no end of good to see that at least some of the kids are OK. Really, really, OK.

List of books reviewed in 2015

Fiction

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
After Alice by Gregory Maguire
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick
Candy Apple Red by Nancy Bush
Chicks and Balances edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Corsair by James L. Cambias
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Distress by Greg Egan
Electric Blue by Nancy Bush
Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey
String of Beads by Thomas Perry
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine ed. by Jonathan Strahan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The Fortress in Orion by Mike Resnick
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
The Good, the Bad, and The Smug by Tom Holt
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler
Witches Be Crazy by Logan J. Hunder
Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

Non Fiction

Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
God’s Bankers by Gerald Posner
LaFayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
Let’s Be Less Stupid by Patricia Marx
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry
Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield
Mindsharing by Lior Zoref
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
No More Sink Full of Mugs by Tony Bacigalupo
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
Pax Technica by Phillip N. Howard
Peers, Inc by Robin Chase
Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney
The Next Species by Michael Tennesen
The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
The Social Labs Revolution by Zaid Hassan
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Twentyfirst Century Robot by Brian David Johnson
Women of Will:  Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays by Tina Packer

 

Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books Reviewed Third Quarter

Books Reviewed Third Quarter

A bit of housekeeping:  here is a list of all the book reviews that appeared in this blog in Q3 2015.  Mostly new or recent releases, with a few old but good thrown in.

Fiction

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick
Chicks and Balances edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 
Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore  
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine ed. by Jonathan Strahan
The Good, the Bad, and The Smug by Tom Holt
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley 
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu 
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis 

Non fiction

Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
Let’s Be Less Stupid by Patricia Marx
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield 
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
Peers, Inc by Robin Chase
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin 
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney
The Next Species by Michael Tennesen 

 

Book Review: “Aurora” by Kim Stanley Robinson

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

In this story Robinson lays out what we know about the challenges of generation ships. A generation ship is one of the classic theoretically possible way to get to nearby stars. The ship is a large habitat populated with a large number of people, which travels at a substantial fraction of light speed. The ship will take a couple of centuries to reach even the nearest star, so the people and all other organisms will breed at least a few generations (and many thousands of generations for the short lived species, such as bacteria).

This story follows one such journey, and shows us the deep problems of such a voyage. Constructing a sustainable biosphere in space is very difficult, and pushing it out from all sources of replenishment is even harder. What did you forget to pack? There is no way to go back or receive supplies. You’ll forget something, and that will probably be fatal.

In order to deliver humans, and to have enough genetic diversity to be a viable colony the ship must carry thousands of people, and an associated diversity of plants and animals. Nevertheless, these populations will inevitably be a small and limited sample, and very close to genetic bottlenecks.

However well built initially, the living systems in the ship form an island ecology, which we know are difficult to sustain even on beautiful, loving Earth. If nothing else, the biome will continue to evolve, diverging and mutating. Everything evolves, but not at the same rate, microorganisms will evolve much faster than plants and animals, and so on.

Whatever was carefully balanced at the start will get out of whack soon enough. Life will probably survive, but not necessarily human life, and not necessarily life that could ever live on Earth. Just keeping things viable for a few centuries is going to be a desperate, close run thing.

Robinson also shows us that there is fundamental problem if and when you reach the destination. You may find lifeless world that can be terraformed. That will take additional centuries or millennia. You have more resources, and you can grow and spread out a bit, but it is still all “under glass” for a long, long time.

Yet, this may be the best scenario. If the generation ship encounters a world with life—any kind of life—then the colonists must try to fit into the new ecology that they are not evolved for. The Earth species will be invasive pests, and the natives will treat them as disease or just plain food. Earthlings will have no resistance to native predation at any scale, and could easily succumb to diseases, allergic reactions, and starvation.

Ultimately, the colonists will need to evolve to survive on the new world. That is a very long shot, and if successful, they will no longer be human.

Finally, Robinson expends a lot of time showing us that small island societies are likely to experience dangerous conflicts among the humans. With no safety valve, and resources near the limits of survival, humans will fuss and fight, even to extinction. Even if nothing else goes wrong, human conflict can end the whole enterprise very quickly.

The basic conclusion is that generation ships are essentially suicide missions. What does this tell us about the current generation of enthusiasm for Mars colonies? Hint: they face all the same issues, at a smaller scale. (And see pp. 381-2 for some Mars-specific issues.) “Not quite as suicidal” isn’t a huge endorsement for such projects.

Clearly, this is science fiction in the classic “big ideas” tradition.

Unfortunately, the story itself is less impressive than the ideas. (Alas, this is a classic failure for this style of classic science fiction.) Just because this is a centuries long mission doesn’t mean that the story should be so l-o-n-g. Sheesh. I think it would have been just as good at half the words. A tenth the words.

The story is supposedly told by the ship’s artificial intelligence (named, wait for it, “Ship”). As such, it contains a lot of stilted writing. Worse, it contains a lot of “learning to tell a story” exercises. There is also yick-yack about “consciousness”, “self-consciousness”, “sentience” and so on, as well as uninformative gab about story telling algorithms. This all may be interesting to the machine intelligence, but they were boring to read.

The tale follows the struggles of the generation that arrives at Tau Ceti, the troubles and challenges of those difficult years. Robinson takes the opportunity to educate us about generation ships (as noted above).  Unfortunately, he goes on and on. So many details of the essentially pointless bickering, devolving into fighting. On and on about the steady erosion of the technical and biological infrastructure.

I get it already.

Perhaps it is deliberate, but the non-human storyteller lacks much sense of what makes for human interest in a story. The characters and interpersonal relations are shallow sketches, lacking plausible motivations and emotions.

For instance, I didn’t find a single love story in the whole book. And the few relationships we do see are mysteriously washed out and uninteresting.

We know that these shortcomings are not due to lack of talent, given KSR’s other works. Perhaps they were a deliberate choice (“see if you can write like an artificial intelligence would write the story”), but I hated it.

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1. Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora, New York, Orbit, 2015.

 

Sunday Book Reviews

 

October Fiction Roundup

A roundup of recent fiction worth your attention, in no particular order.

Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday, 2013).

In this sequel to Damned (Doubleday, 2013), we get more of Maddy’s story.  Maddy, Madison Spencer, is a 14 year old, condemned to Hell in the first book, and returned to Earth in the second.  The novels are mostly first person descriptions of how she copes with these really bad situations, as well as recollections of here strange and terrible “pre-dead” life.

We were introduced to Maddy in the first book, but we now discover that there was a whole lot left out of here story.  A whole lot. She is the nexus of huge cosmic forces and conspiracies, and it seems her whole life was predestined for great and/or horrible things.  (We all secretly believe that, but it may actually be true in Maddy’s case.)

Palahniuk’s stories are weird, gory, violent, sickening and maybe sexy.  I wouldn’t be able to stand them at all, if it weren’t for the fact that his characters are so human, and struggle so valiantly.

Maddy is by far my favorite character from Palahniuk, one of my favorite fictional characters ever. I would love to talk on about her, but I really want you to read her for yourself.  I’ll just say, how can I not love someone who can overcome Hell better than most of us dealt with middle school?  I’m rooting for you, Maddy.

The Truth by Michael Palin (St. Martin’s Press, 2013)

Palin is familiar to everyone as one of the creative Pythons, as well as many other productions and non-fiction books. The Truth is his second novel, and he does a decent job even if this isn’t his best medium.

The novel seems to have some autobiographical elements:  the protagonist (Keith Mabbut) is an aging writer, based in Britain, travelling the world.  Why do writers like to write about characters who are writers?  One reason is revenge:  you get to savage sponsors, editors, agents, and publishing companies, which he certainly does in this book.

Anyway, the story is sort of sad, though not without a few humorous touches.  The plot revolves around a mysterious international do-gooder activist, who the protagonist is hired to write about.  Noone’s motives are clear, and everyone seems to have hidden agendas.

The Incrementalists by Stephen Brust and Skyler White (Tor Books, 2013)

A secret society with semi-magical ability to persuade (“meddle with”) people, which has existed since the stone age.  They are dedicated to (slowly) making things better—though, of course, it can be hard to know what is better, or how to get there.

In addition to uncanny persuasive skills, this gang has a sort of shared, external memory space, somewhat like lucid dreaming, called “The Garden”.  The mechanisms for this space is not completely clear, but it gives then a permanent, group memory extending back centuries.

Oh, I forgot. They are immortal.  They can reincarnate by inhabiting new hosts.  The personality may persist in the Garden (as a “Stub”), and then take over a new body.

What could possibly go wrong?

The story follows Renee as she is recruited, and then discovers she is in the middle of a dangerous plot which could kill her and take over the Incrementalists. (What?  A millennium-old secret society has mysterious conspiracies?  Never!)

With Stephen Brust involved, I should be surprised that it is a reasonably entertaining book.

Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit Books, 2013)

Robinson has written more than a dozen novels, include a series about Mars, and a series about near future climate change.  His books are based on real science and I suspect autobiographical details of real life science.  Very California, to my Illinois eyes.

Clearly passionate about planetary science, and therefore, climate change, Robinson has revealed a definite interest in “living Paleo”.  This novel goes all in, envisioning actual paleo-human living.

Robinson obviously works from the known archaeological evidence of the anatomy, behavior, and social structure of humans and Neanderthals, including skeletons, tools, and cave art.  There are many mysteries in these data, cases we can never interpret or understand. For instance, we know of hundreds of cave paintings, yet we can never know who made them or why.  And we have remains of many individuals, some of whom lived long lives, surviving broken bones and other debilitating injuries.  But how did they live?

The novel is a attempt to imagine the whole life of a group of humans, remaining consistent with everything we know from remains, and from history and anthropology.  He imagines a small local group, amid many such groups.  He creates a believable culture, with plausible motivations and behaviors for its members.  Everyone is recognizably human. He even takes a stab at the vexed question of human-neanderthal relations.  This point is “underconstrained” by the archaeological evidence, so who knows?  His reconstruction is interesting, even if I find it implausible.

There are many memorable events, including a rendition of how cave painting was done and experienced, some beautiful pictures of life very close to nature, and some interesting group dynamics.

Contemporary readers will be particularly struck by the psychology of scarcity, Loon and his people facing desperate hunger–to the point of death–every  winter, and even during long travel from home.  Other forms of catastrophe can hit at any time.  This routine suffering is beyond imagination today.  Yet the people are recognizable as human, and have their share of joy.

Altogether, this book is best enjoyed if you have already studied paleontology (which I have).  Certainly you should consider reading up on cave paintings (e.g., The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis (Anchor Books, 2006).

The Circle by Dave Eggers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)

This is a highly topical book, set in a near future in which all the social media have merged under the control of a single giant company, The Circle. In the distopian spirit of perennial favorites such as Animal House or Gulliver’s Travels, The Circle goes over the top to make its point.  Eggers does a good job of point-making, portraying all the things we should fear:  distraction, dependency, loss of privacy.  All in the name of efficiency, transparency, in order to serve you better. And, he wants to argue, loss of freedom and humanity.

The story follows Mae through her induction and career in The Circle.  She experiences steroid-pumped versions of contemporary “connectivity”, including a stream of messages (“the chute”), multiple conversations, millions of “followers”, continuous online polls, and total surveillance.  Furthermore, The Circle is constantly expanding its reach, obtaining and exploiting legacy data, as well as ever expanding real time surveillance.

As The Circle moves toward “completion”, we wonder who is in charge and what they want.

This is broad and crude satire, which makes it hard and painful to read.  How can I enjoy such horrors, watching people behave idiotically—hoping all along that I would do better in their place?

One problem I had with this book is that the atrocities are so absurd, and so viciously portrayed, that I left the room before page 50.  I would have walked out the door before they even finished the first day ingest.  It was a long, long slog through the cascading abuse and ratcheting sadism, page after page.

Another problem is that there isn’t much art or humor here.  At it’s best, as in Orwell and Swift, satire contains biting humor and recognizable caricatures.  If The Circle contains such, they were too subtle for me to catch.

There, then, is the main problem. This would be a killer story, if refined to 50 pages. But the novel is just plain too long for the story it tells, and, worse, there is a lot of repetition.  (I realize he is making a point about the triviality and distraction of Internet life, but really. Hundreds of pages of descriptions of the same thing is just unpleasant.)

Nevertheless, with its flaws, this is a book I wish young people would read. Here is a cautionary tale about the reality of Big Data and its use.  The Circle whacks you between eyes, and you will surely recoil in horror as you recognize yourself in these situations.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)

The latest from Hiaasen is just what I’d expect and hope for.  A bunch of crazy people, down in the Florida keys.  Evil developers. Heroic native Floridians. Endangered wildlife. Gory vengeance on the deeply deserving bad guys.

As per usual, there are good people trying to cope with an insane and dangerous world. Andrew Yancy is on a downward trend, though he prefers to relax on his porch to watch the sunset and the Key deer come out after dark.  Of course his life gets far too interesting, as wicked and weird outsiders won’t leave him alone. (Warning: this book has some barf-inducing, probably realistic description of the life of a restaurant health inspector, which could put you off dining out.)

A former news reporter, much of Hiaasen’s fiction is based on real news stories from South Florida, a native Floridian’s sense of loss, and a newsman’s twisted sense of humor.  I note that he is not the only such writer. He is joined by Dave Barry and Tom Dorsey, also former news writers in South Florida, also creators of twisted comic novels set in Florida.  Dave Barry has designated Hiaasen to be the master of “the Bunch of South Florida Wackos genre”.

I have loved all Hiaasen’s stories, and this is no exception.  Read everything by Carl Hiaasen.  And stay away from Florida.  Seriously.

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh (Orbit, 2013)

This is a strange and disturbing novel of the next century, with several frightening technologies including broad use of Augmented Reality to assure the world is clean and beautiful—if you can afford it.  Also, real time life coaches act as directors and writers to make your online life look a lot better than you could yourself.

The main technology is a cryogenic preservation (the “minus eighty” in the title is “degrees”) from which one can be resurrected.  Real, honest to goodness, back from the dead.

Of course, preservation and resurrection costs zillions, which only the fortunate can pay their own way.  In other cases, exceptionally attractive people (mostly young women) may get someone to buy them a new life. These “bridesicles” will then be indentured slaves. But most consider it worth it.  Being dead is really, really bad.

We follow the story of people coping with this society, struggling and sacrificing for love and survival.  The characters are well drawn, and I cared about them.