Olaf Stapledon isn't afraid to work on a big canvas. His "Star Maker" spans the life of our universe and beyond. Rather than searching for power, or money, or fame, or even love, the main character in "Star Maker" roams the universe trying to become aware enough to perceive and interact with a higher power. It's a spiritual book in which the universe is revealed to be both sublimely ordered and painfully uncaring. In this epic and amazing work, the life of humanity is a but a single thread, a few paragraphs in the larger story.
"Last and First Men" is more tightly focused, and follows the development of humanity over the course of some three trillion years. It starts in our own time, and moves forward slowly at first. As is inevitable, Stapledon's ideas about the immediate future date the work, but once modern civilization is safely past, the book hits its stride. Eighteen species of humanity come and go, rising to meet the challenges presented by the universe around them (or succumbing to them). Along the way, Stapledon explores ideas about longevity, higher consciousness, the proper goals of a world society, and imagines that larger patterns of rise and fall (for the world, for the species, for intelligent life in our solar system) might lie far beyond our own history.
The focus of "Last and First Men" is societies, states, civilizations, and species rather than individual lives. It's only toward the end that we learn the history of the narrator and find the full spiritual center of the book. "Star Maker" on the other hand, begins with the life of an individual and his core quest, and draws us in from the beginning. The later book ("Star Maker") seems more mature and complete as a result. I tend to pick lovingly worn second-hand copies of books in used bookstores, which doesn't always lend itself to reading things in the right order. In this case, I read "Star Maker" (the sequel) some months before "Last and First Men". "Last and First Men" holds up well, but if you get the chance, go through them in order, as the ideals of "Last and First Men" are expanded and played out on an even grander stage in "Star Maker".
Both "Star Maker" and "Last and First Men" are highly recommended food for the mind. If you find yourself getting a headache from the ultra-wide focus of both books, you could do a lot worse than Larry Niven's "World Out of Time", in which a single individual encounters the distant future (in two discrete chunks). I'd also recommend "Forever Free", by Joe Haldeman, which pans out toward the end to embrace some of the same scope, but keeps its focus more firmly on the individual.
Yet again I'm indebted to the Sci-fi Masterworks series for broadening my horizons to include Stapledon. Stay tuned for the few remaining installments ("Tau Zero" is coming with me on my next trip).
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Friday, 23 April 2010
"Search the Sky" by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
Hot on the heels of reading "The Space Merchants", I devoured "Search the Sky", another collaborative work between Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.
There's a long tradition of stories in which a man whose world (and world view) are close to our own travels through a series of (from our perspective) oddly unbalanced worlds. You could pick half of the plots of any of the Star Trek series as examples ("Ryker finds love on a world where everyone is androgynous and heterosexuality is a crime"). These episodic sketches are the bread and butter of science fiction. Take the world, put it a bit out of balance, give it a spin, and watch it crash down. "Gulliver's Travels" is another wonderful example. A man steeped in the ideas of his age has his beliefs tested as he experiences different societies in his journeys.
In "Search the Sky", we follow a space traveler (Ross) who travels from a relatively normal (if stagnant) colony and visits isolated Earth colonies in search of answers to his colony's problems. He jumps from one monocultural frying pan to another, testing ideas about age, gender, and diversity itself. He returns enriched, and vows to share that experience with anyone who'll listen.
Travel tests your limits, shows you different ways of viewing the world and handling even the simplest of questions common to all people ("What's for dinner?" is an example you could spend a lifetime mapping out). This kind of diversity is key to the strength of the human race in "Search the Sky", and I'd like to believe it's the same with life.
This is a fun book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.
There's a long tradition of stories in which a man whose world (and world view) are close to our own travels through a series of (from our perspective) oddly unbalanced worlds. You could pick half of the plots of any of the Star Trek series as examples ("Ryker finds love on a world where everyone is androgynous and heterosexuality is a crime"). These episodic sketches are the bread and butter of science fiction. Take the world, put it a bit out of balance, give it a spin, and watch it crash down. "Gulliver's Travels" is another wonderful example. A man steeped in the ideas of his age has his beliefs tested as he experiences different societies in his journeys.
In "Search the Sky", we follow a space traveler (Ross) who travels from a relatively normal (if stagnant) colony and visits isolated Earth colonies in search of answers to his colony's problems. He jumps from one monocultural frying pan to another, testing ideas about age, gender, and diversity itself. He returns enriched, and vows to share that experience with anyone who'll listen.
Travel tests your limits, shows you different ways of viewing the world and handling even the simplest of questions common to all people ("What's for dinner?" is an example you could spend a lifetime mapping out). This kind of diversity is key to the strength of the human race in "Search the Sky", and I'd like to believe it's the same with life.
This is a fun book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.
Friday, 16 April 2010
"The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
I'm continuing to work through the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, I was pleased the other day to finally find a copy of "The Space Merchants" by Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, one of the few remaining books in the series to have eluded me thus far.
Although there's a bit of corporate warfare and global overcrowding mixed in as well, this is largely a book about a consumer society grinding towards an end in which free space and raw materials can only be found on other planets (Venus in this case). Fittingly, we experience this material world through an advertising man.
Philip K. Dick wrote a lot about salesmen, both in his science fiction, and in his straight fiction like "In Milton Lumky Territory" and "Mary and the Giant". He focuses on the hopelessness, boredom, powerlessness of junior salesmen at stores, and the isolation of a travelling salesman driving from town to town. These men are a step above serfs in the commercial world. They're the tax collectors who feed money up to their betters and get to hold onto a bit themselves. The focus of "The Space Merchants" is advertising executives, who are much further up the chain. These are the men who craft the campaigns, who travel the world in style in constant contact with a team of people whose job it is to make their whims reality. Like any good royal court, they also fight for power among their peers.
We follow one of the princes of a major advertising firm (Mitchell Courtenay) as he is stripped of his power and forced to live as a wage slave in the world he helped create. Advertising is everywhere, and products are designed to introduce the consumer to a never-ending chain of addiction (finish a cigarette, have a drink, get a snack, have a cigarette, and so on). In his struggle to regain his power, Courtenay stumbles across conspiracies within conspiracies, which reminded me somewhat of the role-playing game Paranoia, in which no one is allowed to join a secret society, and yet everyone does. That's a roundabout way of saying the book has a good ear for satire, which is one of many things that make this an enjoyable read.
I have great hopes for collaborative works like this, as I've enjoyed Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's works (such as "Mote in God's Eye" and "Footfall") in the past. Whether their writing styles are largely compatible, or they review each other's work, or they have a good editor, the net effect is reading a single author with a single voice. I plan to keep following Pohl and Kornbluth's collaborations, I'll be reviewing "Search the Sky" by the same two authors shortly, and "The Merchants War" (the sequel to "The Space Merchants") as soon as I can find it.
Although there's a bit of corporate warfare and global overcrowding mixed in as well, this is largely a book about a consumer society grinding towards an end in which free space and raw materials can only be found on other planets (Venus in this case). Fittingly, we experience this material world through an advertising man.
Philip K. Dick wrote a lot about salesmen, both in his science fiction, and in his straight fiction like "In Milton Lumky Territory" and "Mary and the Giant". He focuses on the hopelessness, boredom, powerlessness of junior salesmen at stores, and the isolation of a travelling salesman driving from town to town. These men are a step above serfs in the commercial world. They're the tax collectors who feed money up to their betters and get to hold onto a bit themselves. The focus of "The Space Merchants" is advertising executives, who are much further up the chain. These are the men who craft the campaigns, who travel the world in style in constant contact with a team of people whose job it is to make their whims reality. Like any good royal court, they also fight for power among their peers.
We follow one of the princes of a major advertising firm (Mitchell Courtenay) as he is stripped of his power and forced to live as a wage slave in the world he helped create. Advertising is everywhere, and products are designed to introduce the consumer to a never-ending chain of addiction (finish a cigarette, have a drink, get a snack, have a cigarette, and so on). In his struggle to regain his power, Courtenay stumbles across conspiracies within conspiracies, which reminded me somewhat of the role-playing game Paranoia, in which no one is allowed to join a secret society, and yet everyone does. That's a roundabout way of saying the book has a good ear for satire, which is one of many things that make this an enjoyable read.
I have great hopes for collaborative works like this, as I've enjoyed Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's works (such as "Mote in God's Eye" and "Footfall") in the past. Whether their writing styles are largely compatible, or they review each other's work, or they have a good editor, the net effect is reading a single author with a single voice. I plan to keep following Pohl and Kornbluth's collaborations, I'll be reviewing "Search the Sky" by the same two authors shortly, and "The Merchants War" (the sequel to "The Space Merchants") as soon as I can find it.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
"A Leg to Stand On" by Oliver Sacks
I finally read "A Leg to Stand On" the other day, and have been thinking about it off and on. I enjoy Dr. Sacks' writing, from short case studies like "An Anthropologist on Mars" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", to autobiography like "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Childhood". He has an easy, engaging mix of science and storytelling that just works, and he has a zeal for his topics that's infectious.
"A Leg to Stand On" is a case study and autobiography in one. It describes Sacks' experience recovering from a serious injury to his leg. In the 1970s (when his injury occurred), it was more common for patients to experience protracted convalescences, and to have their injured limbs completely immobilized in heavy casts. For many patients, this resulted in an alienation for the casted body part, and it's this sense of alienation from a part of oneself that's the focus here. This sense of alienation was not well understood at the time, and generations of patients were unable to convey their experience in a way that brought understanding to their doctors, caregivers, friends and family. Patients were physically injured, their injuries were addressed surgically, and over time they were physically better. The physical wellness was the desired outcome. That they were baffled and terrified during their convalescence was beside the point.
Sacks is an articulate man who is blessed with an eye for detail and a good memory. He emerged from his convalescence with the desire to document it for the outside world (doctors and laymen alike), and his years of experience documenting similar experiences with his patients put him in a unique position to tell the story and explain the science behind it. As with all of his case studies, it's the human experiences that shine through amidst the notes on neuroscience (and its history).
An engaging, insightful, and very human story that's well worth reading.
"A Leg to Stand On" is a case study and autobiography in one. It describes Sacks' experience recovering from a serious injury to his leg. In the 1970s (when his injury occurred), it was more common for patients to experience protracted convalescences, and to have their injured limbs completely immobilized in heavy casts. For many patients, this resulted in an alienation for the casted body part, and it's this sense of alienation from a part of oneself that's the focus here. This sense of alienation was not well understood at the time, and generations of patients were unable to convey their experience in a way that brought understanding to their doctors, caregivers, friends and family. Patients were physically injured, their injuries were addressed surgically, and over time they were physically better. The physical wellness was the desired outcome. That they were baffled and terrified during their convalescence was beside the point.
Sacks is an articulate man who is blessed with an eye for detail and a good memory. He emerged from his convalescence with the desire to document it for the outside world (doctors and laymen alike), and his years of experience documenting similar experiences with his patients put him in a unique position to tell the story and explain the science behind it. As with all of his case studies, it's the human experiences that shine through amidst the notes on neuroscience (and its history).
An engaging, insightful, and very human story that's well worth reading.
Monday, 8 February 2010
A Weekend in Brussels
It was Elaine's birthday on Friday, so we went to Brussels for the weekend. We've been to Belgium before, but never as far south. Almost immediately, I was struck by the shift to French as compared to the Vlaamse-heavy north. It was a perfect chance for Elaine to work on her French and for me to learn to embarass myself less in French, but we could still take advantage of our Dutch as well.
We stayed at the Welcome Hotel, which had a nice atmosphere, a good location, and set the right mood. We stayed in the Silk Road suite (it was her birthday after all), and the jacuzzi was a nice way to relax after walking the soles off our shoes per the usual.
We ate a few notable meals, including frites and mossels (of course). Our favorite meal of the trip had to be at Comocomo, a Tapas restaurant where the dishes come out on a conveyor belt as soon as they're made. It reminded me of Frying Fish in L.A., good variety, good quality, and reasonable prices. They have about 45 dishes on the menu, and we tried 15, I guess we'll have to try again at their Antwerp location.
We spent most of our time at three museums. First, we spent an afternoon at the Koninklijke Musea, wandering through their ancient and modern art collections. My favorites there had to be the statue of Father Damian (it hasn't been retitled since his canonization), Matthieu Kessels sculpture "The Deluge", and Paul Delvaux's "Crucifixion". If you'd like to see more items from the collection, there's a large group of them on Flickr. We also visited the comic strip museum, in a lovely Art Nouveau building, and caught a small but wildly popular Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Musee de Beaux Arts ("Bozart").
We took a few pictures while we were in Brussels, click Elaine's picture below to see the set on Flickr:
We stayed at the Welcome Hotel, which had a nice atmosphere, a good location, and set the right mood. We stayed in the Silk Road suite (it was her birthday after all), and the jacuzzi was a nice way to relax after walking the soles off our shoes per the usual.
We ate a few notable meals, including frites and mossels (of course). Our favorite meal of the trip had to be at Comocomo, a Tapas restaurant where the dishes come out on a conveyor belt as soon as they're made. It reminded me of Frying Fish in L.A., good variety, good quality, and reasonable prices. They have about 45 dishes on the menu, and we tried 15, I guess we'll have to try again at their Antwerp location.
We spent most of our time at three museums. First, we spent an afternoon at the Koninklijke Musea, wandering through their ancient and modern art collections. My favorites there had to be the statue of Father Damian (it hasn't been retitled since his canonization), Matthieu Kessels sculpture "The Deluge", and Paul Delvaux's "Crucifixion". If you'd like to see more items from the collection, there's a large group of them on Flickr. We also visited the comic strip museum, in a lovely Art Nouveau building, and caught a small but wildly popular Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Musee de Beaux Arts ("Bozart").
We took a few pictures while we were in Brussels, click Elaine's picture below to see the set on Flickr:
Friday, 5 February 2010
"Spock Must Die" by James Blish
James Blish is a great writer. Each of his books is a carefully considered meal prepared for the reader, complex, but balanced and enjoyable. His "Okie" novels are like a fusion chef's take on cowboy cuisine, full of pioneer spirit, but nuanced. His "Black Easter" is a solid meal which is made memorable by the dessert at the end of "Day of Judgement".
"Spock Must Die" (one of Blish's novels set in the Star Trek universe) reminds me of a gourmet hamburger, unabashed entertainment mixed with style and intelligence. Blish uses only the freshest ingredients (his firm grounding in philophy and science, the moral center of his characters), but he's still aiming for something tasty and accessible to the mainstream.
If you have any interest at all in Star Trek, "Spock Must Die" is a great way to encounter Blish, and if you have any familiarity with Blish, it's nice to see him having a bit of fun with the material. Highly recommended.
"Spock Must Die" (one of Blish's novels set in the Star Trek universe) reminds me of a gourmet hamburger, unabashed entertainment mixed with style and intelligence. Blish uses only the freshest ingredients (his firm grounding in philophy and science, the moral center of his characters), but he's still aiming for something tasty and accessible to the mainstream.
If you have any interest at all in Star Trek, "Spock Must Die" is a great way to encounter Blish, and if you have any familiarity with Blish, it's nice to see him having a bit of fun with the material. Highly recommended.
Saturday, 30 January 2010
"Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon
Midway upon the journey of our lifeIn many Science Fiction novels, there is a central conceit, a fantastic and key difference, an idea that shapes the world we explore through the printed page. Works like Richard K. Morgan's "Market Forces" and his Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy explore the passions of our present amplified through technology. These are enjoyable works, engaging works, but are the red meat of Science Fiction in all its lusty, escapist glory.
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
--Dante, "Inferno", Canto I
"Star Maker" is a different kind of novel, that presents a central philosophy, a central question, and strives to answer it. The question could be phrased as "What motivates God?" or "What is the nature of the universe that we experience and the creative force that caused it to come into being?".
In "Star Maker", there are no ships, no obelisks, no buried artifacts, no portals to other worlds. It is only awareness that makes the journey possible. The story begins with a man who is deep in thought outside his home on a starry evening. Like a dreamer becoming lucid, he slips in an instant beyond ordinary reality and travels to distant worlds by means he doesn't understand and can't fully control. Over time, we learn that he has become caught up in the search for the Star Maker. He and his eventual companions explore and increase their awareness, which makes it possible for them to perceive more, explore more, until they eventually are capable of perceiving the whole of the universe and beyond.
Stapledon's wrote "Star Maker" in the period between the two world wars, and World War I is a central player in the introduction to his "Modern Theory of Ethics" (full text online). Among many things, he believed that each of us has an underlying "real will" that takes into account the goals of consciousness itself. "Star Maker" is a broad stage on which this idea is played out.
This is an exhilliarating and at times exhausting book, but is truly great and worth reading. Now on to a bit of red meat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
