jasonfranks

Reviews of some of the books I've read in the last few months:

STAND ON ZANZIBAR, John Brunner
This monstrous, multimedia book deserves its reputation as a science fiction classic.

Written in 1968, STAND explores an overcrowded and increasingly corporate world through the eyes of a very large cast of disparate characters, some of whom intersect with the main story in only the most tangential of ways. Brunner's intent is mainly sociological, and he goes everywhere through these pages: the upper classes, the lower and criminal classes, the military, the corporate world. Initially starting out in an en-domed New York, the book follows threads about eugenics, colonialism, technology and anthropology out to two fictional countries, one in South East Asia and one in Africa, making detours through old Europe and Latin America.

Not all of Brunner's predictions are correct, of course. Information technology and AI has gone the opposite way to the direction that he speculated. Popular entertainment and fashions have become simpler and more backwards-looking, rather than moving to the avant garde he foresaw--likewise, the various Western governments are a lot more bolder when it comes to eugenics and fertility than our own have turned out to be. But, by an large, his predictions about corporatism and the world economy are uncanny. And of course the quotes from the work of in-text sociologist Chad Mulligan work are priceless.

My only beef with the book is that, despite the extremely liberal politics it espouses, there are no positive female characters. The women in this book are mostly either bit parts, never POV characters: betraying 'shiggys', objects of lust, or brood mothers. If they do have power and influence they are portrayed as montrous: GT, the half-cyborged old harridan who owns the world's largest corporation; Guinevere Steel, the megalomaniacal fashion maven; Olive Almiero, the baby broker--none of these characters are at all likeable. The male characters are also flawed, but they demonstrate good intentions or integrity. Not so the women.

MATTER, Iain M. Banks
Another iconoclastic and subversive epic science fiction action/intrigue novel with sociopolitical innards by one of my favourites, good old Banks. MATTER is full the cosmic scale imagination that somehow feels scientifically plausible with only a minimum to tech-babble. One of the pleasures of reading Banks' Culture books is that, while the stories are unconnected, there is a throughline in which you can see his galactic civilization (specifically, the human/AI empire called the Cuture) evolving and advancing in status through the hierarchy of Involved species. They are clearly much more advanced here than in CONSIDER PHLEBAS, the earliest book in the sequence.

There is some great stuff in this one, including the philosophical position espoused by the character Xyde Hyrlis from which the book takes its title, but for once the saga sprawls a bit too far: MATTER is a very large book that could have done with a lot of pruning.

Not Banks' best work, but worth your patience--especially if you are a fan.

THE STEEL REMAINS, Richard Morgan
Richard Morgan has definitely set out to kick over a few genre tropes in this book.

A fantasy epic that picks up ten years after winning the Big War with the Alien Menace (the Scaled Folk and their dragons), the trio of heroes are scattered far and wide. Ringil, the gay knight-aristocrat, has settled into a sulking existence way out in the boondocks, where he makes his living telling war stories in the pub and sneering at the yokels. Egar, the steppe barbarian, has bartered his own war hero status for leadership of his tribe and is having a midlife crisis. Archeth, the half-cast engineer abandoned by her own people, is a disliked and drug-addicted advisor in the Emperor's treacherous court. Various events drive the three of them reluctantly to the confront a new menace--and when I say reluctantly, I mean it. They are driven to trouble by circumstance and coincidence, rather than a desire to do what i right. In Egar's case it literally takes divine intervention to get him into position.

Full of interesting characters, violence that's much more realistically depicted than one expects in this genre and an overt dislike of authority (Morgan in particular has an axe to grind with religious establishments), this book is a fun and fast read that stops to challenge your preconceptions about what is going on as often as it can. But the plot is a bit thin and the end of the story isn't satisfying; most of questions that Morgan poses are unresolved and unanswered. Perhaps that's a bit unfair; I know there is at least one sequel in the works and I assume that this was planned from the outset, but... this book is all first act and I really think the book needed to be bigger, Still, I'll be there for the sequel.

HELL'S ANGELS, Hunter S. Thompson
One of Thompson's earlier forays into gonzo journalism, so this one, unlike his later work, is heavier on the latter part of the equation. Thompson did immerse himself in the Angels beyond the point of objectivity, but he's less of a stylist here and he presents He's clearly put in a lot of stringent research: there's a lot more meta-analysis of the media phenomenon than there are flights of speculative fancy. Insightful and gritty and annoying, but a gripping read nonetheless as Thompson debunks the myths and explains the legend. He leads us more or less earnestly through a series of anticlimaxes until we feel sympathy, even pity for the subjects... then he describes the beating he received that ended his association with the Angels once and for all.

THE HOT KID, Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard's Depression-era gangster drama set in Oklahoma brings all the good stuff you expect from the master: the leanest, lightest prose holding together a story that is almost completely dialogue-driven. I love Leonard's books because they skew so heavily towards character: there's no red herrings or whodunnit turns, because he writes from the point of view of characters on all sides of the story. Because of this you hardly notice the the plotlines, which are rambly and natural. There's never question of plausibility or motivation; you really can't prise Leonard's work apart and divideg it up into writing school constructs.

This one is a pretty simple story: US Marshal Carlos Webster, the Hot Kid of Oklahoma, is in pursuit of rich-kid turned -psychopathic-outlaw Jack Belmont. Belmont and Webster get just about equal time as their conflict leads them to tangle with the Kansas City mob, oil companies, former hookers an the KKK. A number of supporting characters and bit characters get a fair bit of play as well: both Webster and Belmont's fathers are important players.

Although Leonard is best known for writing contemporary crime stories set in Detroit or Florida, he has, throughout his very long career, made frequent and memorable excursions to places as diverse as LA, Cuba, and Israel. Leonard started out writing westerns bewfore switching to crime, so the HOT KID is a sort of a halfway point for him and it's interesting to see those genres coexisting here. This book also has more gunplay than I recall seeing from Leonard in recent years, but it still doesn't feel like he's going for an action piece. Highly recommended.

My read pile is, as always, growing, rather than shrinking, but next time I expect I will review some books by China Mieville, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman and... well, who knows?

-- JF

Got a break in my schedule finally, but I'm too fried to do any real work, so... some capsule reviews of books and comics I've read lately.

I AM LEGEND (Richard Matheson)
I'm a Matheson fan and I've been wanting to read this for years. When I saw the film previews I had a small panic: have to read the book before Hollywood ruins the story forever (yeah, I know they've adapted it before, but this time they're keeping the proper title). And, guess what? It's fucking great. Psychologically convincing, disturbing, and relentless. It's a short book, but if it was a boxing match it's be even shorter; Matheson sets you up and nails you time after time without ever cheating or deceiving you. A deserved classic.

X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX (Ed Brubaker)
I dunno why I picked these up, I have never been a regular X-Men reader and even Grant Morrison couldn't get me to read the book. I was bored, I guess, and I like the Brube. But this, I'm sorry to say, is just crap. Depsite the barrage of Big Events that have taken place in the Marvel Universe over the last 5 or so years (haven't followed any of it) almost nothing has changed from whe I did briefly read this book in the nineties. The dialog is okay, but the pacing is flaccid and the plot is utterly uninteresting. Brubaker is writing less densely than he does on Daredevil (which I read) and Captain America (which I've sampled)--both of which are less dense than the unbelivably awesome CRIMINAL--but despite the fewer panels there's just nothin driving the story from page to page. Eh.

I KILLED ADOLPH HITLER (Jason)
The first fully dialogued Jason GN I've read, and it's just beautiful. Jason's storytelling is understated but razor sharp, his deadpan "unfunny animal" characters are endlessly entertaining and his sense of structure is second to none. It's additionally weird because it feels like a story that I could have put together with J. Marc--the situation, the storytelling, the mood--only way fucking better than I could manage. The setup is a bit convoluted: in a world where hiring assassins to take care of your mundane problems is accepted and apparently quite legal, one such killer is hired by a scientist to go back in time and kill Adolph Hitler. But that's really not at all what the book is about. Must read.

In progress:
Two more ooks in progress, which I've been trying to save for the endless plane ride home HEART SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill and HIT PARADE by Lawrence Block. I have started both books and I'm dying to get back into them. HIT PARADE is the third Keller novel/story collection, and, while so far it's not as engaging as the previous entries, it's like crack cocaine. Just damn good writing. As for HEART SHAPED BOX... well, it's really doing Joe a disservice to compare him to his father, but Papa Hill's presence looms large. A few chapter's in, this reads like one of his father's books, but hipper, tighter and more engaging. I actually think Joe is shaping up to be the better writer.

-- JF