The Anachronist

Hugo Quest: A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, Vernor Vinge

It feels important to me to keep cataloging my experiences as I try to read all of the Hugo Award-winning books.  Before, I was kind of reviewing them, but I think it should be a little different than that.  I’m beginning to see these books as my sensei in becoming a fully trained science fiction writer.  Instead of having one master to teach me the techniques I need to learn, I have many.

Vernor Vinge is one of the masters who I feel a close affinity with.  Like me, he is a scientist who balances his science fiction writing career with an actual academic science career.  I see certain flourishes within his writing that betray both the commitment to detail as well as the appreciation of wonder which is common to many scientists.

But I also see other things, hard-won lessons that I can learn not only for my writing but for the kind of person I want to be.  Let’s get it out of the way: I think both of these books are fantastic.  They are in the same series, and share a charater.  A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY is a prequel to A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, and set 20,000 years earlier.  Still, I recommend reading them in publication order.  The experience is more satisfying, and when you’re dealing with space sagas this sweeping, you don’t want to blunt the full force of the awesome.

But there are two characters who really struck me, one from each book, as different sides to the coin of having broad-based interests.  In A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, the “Tines,” a race of pack-animals whose minds are spread across a pack of multiple creatures, one of these packs, Scriber, is a dilletante with bunches of actually rather good ideas, but who is ultimately ineffective and a tragic joke.  They look crazy to his contemporaries, who are stuck in a middle ages level of technology, and he’s too unwise himself to bring them to fruition.

In A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, there is the spider-creature Sherkaner Underhill, the veritable Einstein of his race, who has as many ideas from as many realms as the Scriber of the previous book.  Except that Sherkaner has certain advantages that Scriber lacks.  For one thing, Sherkaner meets people who have both the willingness and the wherewithal to research his ideas.  So much depends on who we meet in life.  For another, Sherkaner is careful, and patient.  He sticks to his guns when it matters, and he knows when to admit he is wrong.

I’m a person who often has these “flights of ideas,” almost like a neurology patient with a tumor pressing on the part of his brain where stupid inventions come from.  I am a scientist, and a writer, and a founder of an organization that seeks to be a public commons for information.  Each of these characters is something I could become, if I make the right (or wrong) choices.  It’s not the inherent dilletante creativity that makes Scriber so ineffective, nor is there something particularly special about Sherkaner that makes his ideas more likely to work.  The difference is in how they approach actualizing their ideas.  Through these two characters, I’ve learned an important lesson.

Hugo Review: AMERICAN GODS

Okay, so, I think before I begin this one I have a little disclosure to make: I didn’t actually read this one for the Hugo quest, but instead read it a couple of years ago because I wanted to read it.  Generally speaking I’ve been skipping books that I’ve already read in the interests of time and not reviewing them because I felt my impression of them was too long ago to give a good review.  For AMERICAN GODS, though, that’s not really true, as I read it during the winter of 2009 and I can remember it well enough to review.

A lot of people really love this book.  I liked it a lot, but I can’t say I really loved it.

From a viewpoint of cultural discourse, AMERICAN GODS is a really fascinating document.  American Gods is about American culture, and about how the beliefs that immigrants brought on their boats with them and the beliefs of modern America can appear to be at war at times.  It has a bit of ancient culture, a bit of nostalgia for the lost traditions that wander about our world, and a bit of traveling salesman/world’s largest ball of twine Americanism.  It’s a wonderful mosaic of the ingredients of this country.

It’s by Neil Gaiman, who started out his career in the UK as an author of prose stories and comics and has since earned a place as a literary rockstar, moved to the US, and written too many fantastic things to count.  Well, actually, you could probably count them, but let’s just finish by saying he’s a legend instead.  There’s a great profile of him that The New Yorker did a year or two ago, and if you want to know more, read that.

The point that I’m trying to make with the history is that only a guy like Neil Gaiman could have written this book.  I feel kind of confident saying that, but let’s be clear: a lot of what I’m about to say is just guessing.  Neil Gaiman was born in the UK to Jewish parents, and his family had some ties to Scientology.  Then he moved to the US.  He’s got “outsider” written all over him, or at least, he came to US culture as an outsider.  I’ve got some of that in my own life; I’m a Canadian-American Jew.  There are times when I’d thought about how a book like AMERICAN GODS could be written, before I knew it existed, because there are certain things you see when you feel like an outsider that are hard to see when you’re steeped in the culture.

If the United States is a melting pot, some pieces melt a little slower than others, and Neil Gaiman had that advantage of objectivity when looking at how the US is put together.  He researched the hell out of this book, and it really shows.  It’s a beautiful work in that respect, showing you a lot of where the US came from in a contemporary style.  If you’re looking for what it means to be an American on a deeper level than what you hear from politicians, this book might just show that to you.

A few of these things weren’t so new to me, so maybe some of the mind blowing effects of the book were lost on me, and in the end, I found something lacking in the characters.

The supporting characters, the gods who were created by the cultures brought to the US by immigrants, are all very full and wonderful and exciting, but there’s something about Gaiman’s earlier novel protagonists that I’ve found missing.  Shadow and Laura both have a very flat affect, meaning that their emotions do not seem to break the surface of their overall character.  I cannot tell you what these people are like, because I do not know if they are really like anything or anyone.

This is a problem I see a lot in novels written by comics authors.  It’s also true in NEVERWHERE, of the protagonist Roger.  My theory is that comics authors come to rely on the art to convey emotion, and their viewpoint character comes to serve as a “window” onto the other characters that replaces the comic panel.  This leads to viewpoint characters being very flat by necessity, because any affect on their part would result in tinting of the window.

It’s the biggest problem—it may even be the only problem—that AMERICAN GODS has.

Either way, I strongly recommend it.  It has a good story, it is an important cultural document, and it’s fun to read.  Shadow may be a bit empty, at the end of the day, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading AMERICAN GODS.

Hugo Review: PALADIN OF SOULS

I continue with my quest to read all the Hugo award winners for best novel.

PALADIN OF SOULS is a lovely book by Lois McMaster Bujold.  It’s the sequel to the also excellent THE CURSE OF CHALION, which did not win the Hugo, but which I had to read in order to have the full context for this book.

PALADIN OF SOULS can be read on its own, but I think having read THE CURSE OF CHALION made it a richer experience.

Both books take place in a medieval high fantasy world that Bujold has created.  One of my majors was medieval history, so I have to say that I truly love how well she has simulated a country with the feel of medieval Spain.  The religious system, a cornerstone of both books, is also quite remarkable and something that will get you thinking about the nature of loyalty and belief, if those are topics that interest you.  Overall, the worldbuilding is very reminiscent of the classic Earthsea books (also must-reads).

But without a doubt the best thing about these books is the character development.  It’s richer than I’ve seen in many, many other books.  The main characters in both books are spectacularly believable.  They are like fine sculptures that show both features and flaws in stunning detail.

The bottom line is that these books are going to make a fantasy fan a happier person after reading them.  So get on that, fantasy fans.

Quick Book Review: SPIN, RC Wilson

Cover of Spin

Right, so the quest to read the Hugos continues.

I finished SPIN, by Robert Charles Wilson.  Great book!  It’s a mixture of hard science fiction and literary fiction.  Strong characters and a world that obeys normal laws of science.

Unfortunately, this is often the exception in SF.

Beyond that, Wilson is a master of information control and when you turn the corners in his book, you see something of what you expected, but it’s never quite what you were bargaining for.

On to Sawyer’s HOMINIDS.