Review of Liking What You See: A Documentary by Ted Chiang

Beauty is one of the most fascinating subjects relative to humanity.  Both subjective (‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’) and objective (refer to the principles of advertizing), it is a quintessential aspect of human motivation, and conversely, de-motivation.  Playing with the idea as only science fiction can, Ted Chiang’s 2002 novella-length Liking What You See: A Documentary is an equally fascinating examination of the concept.  Dismantling beauty, then building it back up again in relation to other human characteristics, the novella remains unparalleled in the genre.

Liking What You See: A Documentary is centered around Tamara Lyons, a first year university student at Pembleton who has recently had her calliagnosia deactivated.  ‘Calli’ is a neurological means of turning off a person’s ability to see beauty in the human face, and Tamara, after spending her entire youth with the non-invasive procedure in place, is starting her undergraduate studies getting used to the idea of seeing the aesthetics of the people around her.  This is not to say everyone used to look like a lemming, rather that the specific node of the brain which registers beauty and ugliness was turned off, facial characteristics still completely visible.  Being in public, seeing her friends at school, and most importantly, looking in the mirror through the lens of beauty/ugliness are now entirely different experiences for Tamara.  It is thus when a student organization proposes that every student at the university be made to go through the calliagnosia process that Tamara is forced to consider whether she was better off before or after.

Review of In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was one of the great observers of humanity.  Writing non-fiction based on his experiences in various parts of the US and the world, the overwhelming majority of his novels likewise present people and situations in a wholly realistic manner.  Forever with an eye to the common man, much of his Depression era fiction examines the civil strife sweeping the land; seemingly everything was scarce for the majority of the population.  But with harvest time came an opportunity, albeit temporary, for migrant workers to collect the bounty of the season, that is, if farmers and owners were willing to pay fair wages for the work.  In almost every way a precursor to The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s 1936 novel In Dubious Battle examines the human side of labor strikes in the 1930s in both leftist and realist tones.

In Dubious Battle (title taken from Paradise Lost) is the story of Jim Nolan, a young man with no direction in life, and Mac, an experienced communist agitator.  Knowing the owners have banded together to lower wages, at the outset of the novel the pair arrive in a valley filled with apple orchards ripe for the picking and workers upset at having their pay reduced.  Slowly but confidently organizing the men and their families into a strike, events soon begin bouncing back and forth between the owners and workers as anger, scabs, and local political interests take over.  Escalating into a clash of violent proportions, the lives of Jim and Mac end up changed forever.

Review of 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment by David Loeff

Given the current state of market publishing, i.e. its eagerness to flood shelves with mediocre genre in the hope of making a buck, my willingness to take on self-published works has grown in parallel. Having had both good luck and bad (see William Rosencrans’ The Epiphanist for an example of a book that deserves house recognition, and vice versa, Escape the Bone Yard by R.C. Scott for a work whose talent doesn't rise to the ambition), it was with indifference I accepted David Loeff’s request to review his self-published 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment.  Falling somewhere in the middle, the collection will not set the genre afire, however, it remains a respectable entry which will appeal to readers who enjoy classic storytelling, particularly in the vein of 1,001 Arabian Nights.  The following is a review of the twelve (depending how you count) stories in the collection.

Lacking a framing device like Scheherazade, 1,001 Lightyears Entertainment instead opens with two quick, clever parables, “In the Bag” and “Life Changing Encounters”.  The former is the story of a man who tries to reclaim the handbag stolen from him after entering a new city, while the latter is the tale of one man’s encounter with Death on the street early one morning.  “The Dog’s Golden Dish”, a story appearing soon thereafter in the collection, has a very similar, mercurial feel.  It is one man’s hurried account to an expectant king about rises and falls from wealth, oscillating ever faster the closer it gets to the end.

Review of Protection by Maureen McHugh

Maureen McHugh’s 1992 China Mountain Zhang is foremost a personal novel of people confronting realities of life and dealing with them as humans do.  It is also set against a future that sees the West, predominantly the US, go through a Second Depression.  The Chinese jumping into the gap to take over the US culturally, linguistically, and economically the same way the US has other countries, the political backdrop is one rich with potential that is only partially explored in the novel.  Far heavier ideologically, McHugh’s 1992 novella Protection is set in the same US, but foregrounds the practical realities of socialism vs. capitalism, the personal stories coming in a close second.

Protection is the story of Janee, a tough-skinned, rebellious young woman who has been convicted of larceny and assault, and sentenced to 10 years at the labor camp Protection in Kansas.  Uneducated, she has trouble adapting to life at the camp, particularly its group sessions in which the prisoners discuss their crimes in the outside world and publicly confess what they did wrong.  Though forcing herself upon a weak ‘political’ named Paul for warmth in the cold bunkrooms and companionship in the vast sewing room where they spend their workdays, she finds herself flustered in conversation regarding the political ideals behind society outside.  The blue sky she comes to, however, is not what the reader expects.

Review of "Shades" by Lucius Shepard

Lucius Shepard’s collection The Jaguar Hunter features several stories set in a near-future Central America overrun by war, a fact exacerbated by US military intrusion.  With the jungles, trauma of war, drugs to blunt—or sharpen—the edge, and soldiers caught up in the death and fighting for which the purpose is unclear, the Vietnam War echoes strongly, and intentionally.  “Shades”, Shepard’s 1987 novelette about a war veteran still deeply affected by the conflict years later, drops the parallel and cuts right to southeast Asia in the 80s.

“Shades” is the story of Puleo, a Vietnam veteran who has returned to the country as a journalist to write a piece about a ghost soldier named Stoner local scientists have recently captured in a force field.  Weighted down with heavy emotional baggage arising from the traumatic memories of war, his return is contentious from the start.  Meeting a trio of other journalist at a bar upon arrival, the whiskey only releases more angst.  But nothing gets him more jittery than actually meeting Stoner.  A confrontation like no other, the aftermath sends shockwaves through Puleo’s life.

Review of "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang

Joy and anger flash like a fire, burning one moment, subsiding the next.  Regret, however, is a feeling that can stay with a person the length of their days.  Each person dealing with the pain and frustration it brings differently, Ted Chiang’s 2007 "The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate" would have the last word.

The novelette is the story of one Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a merchant of yesteryear Baghdad.  At the beginning of the story he sits before a caliph, recounting the story of his life.  One day he had been perusing a market when he came upon a strange new shop.  Selling items he had never seen before, the proprietor asks him into the back room to see the alchemy which produced the oddities.  The source a strange, rigid arch, what passes through one side has its time scale interrupted before passing out the other.  The proprietor possessing two such gates, one is seconds in length, the other two decades.  Having encountered many people in his lifetime, the man proceeds to tell the tales of a handful who have chosen to pass through the gate, both into the past and the future.  Hearing their tales, ibn Abbas is unable to resist stepping through himself.  What he finds on the other side, however, is not what he expected.

Review of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

With the strong backing of a confident publisher, Susanna Clarke’s debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell took the genre world by storm in 2004—and even turned a few literary heads.  Part historical fantasy, part alternative history, a mite sword and sorcery, and a touch Gothic, the lengthy novel won several awards and was reprinted numerous times in its first years on the market.  Imagination ripe, cultural commentary relevant, prose confident and stylish, and historical scope grand, books of such unique quality do not often come along.  The story of magic’s revival in Britain in the middle of the 19th century, it does not return in a form one would expect.  

At the outset of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, magic is thought dead in Britain—a facet of history only the legendary Raven King is said to be able to practice, and even he is commonly held as just an apparition of nightmares.  Quickly it is discovered, however, that a respectable gentleman, Mr. Norrell, has held himself in seclusion and been hoarding magic books for years.  In fact the only known practicing magician (as opposed to the horde of ‘theoretical magicians’ who eternally discuss but never apply their ideas), he is brought to London and introduced to high society as magic’s savior.  

Review of Cri de Coeur by Michal Bishop

  “Why, once, did moths singe the tapestries of their wings in candle flames? Why, once, did the cinder-laden parachutes of fireworks so excite us? And, again, why did certain crazies—fools or saints—sometimes steep themselves in petrol and torch themselves to carbon?

    Why, in short, do we long to blaze?

    Ever since I turned twelve, I've known. Only a minuscule fraction of the stuff of our universe glows. The rest, the bulk, drifts in darkness, unmoored or rudely tugged. The cold vast black of interstellar night cloaks it from our eyes, our telescopes, our roachlike searchings. We belong to the part that does not glow, to the swallowing dark.

    Why wonder, then, that a yearning to leap into the furnace, to god-fashion ourselves in fire, drives us starward on the engines of a mute cri de coeur?” (1)

Such is the brilliance upon which Michael Bishop’s 1994 novella Cri de Coeur (roughly translated to Cry of the Heart) opens.  A presentation of life onboard a generation starship and the hope for humans beyond the solart system, the poetic prose continues throughout, giving the story a rich flavor.

Cri de Coeur is the story of Abel Gwiazda, a Tanzanian adopted to Polish parents (his last name means ‘star’ in Polish), and his time on the Annie Jump Cannon in its 100 year flight to New Home.  The planet thought to be able to support life based on astronomics research on Earth, Gwiazda, the soil scientist, hurtles through the blackness of space spending most of his time in the bioracks, woken one month of the year in cycles with the 1,500 other crew members to carry out the necessary tasks of life aboard the massive wheelship.  Desiring a child in flight, he contracts Lily Aliosi-Stark, and together the two give birth to a boy with Down’s Syndrome named Dean.  Life aboard the thirty-three mile long ship anything but utpoic, Gwiazda must deal with fellow crew members, the fear of space, and the uncertainty of their destination if he is to survive with heart and mind intact.

Review of Burn by James Patrick Kelly

Beyond math, physics, chemistry, etc., there remain numerous philosophies and ideologies underpinning science fiction: existentialism to Cartesian dualism, the eternal return to metaphysics, and many others.  But the transcendentalist ‘manifestos’ of Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and others of the Club in Concord are something I’ve never seen utilized in science fiction.  That is, until I read James Patrick Kelly’s 2005 Burn.  Fully in dialogue with Thoreau, the novella intelligently examines the juxtaposition of naturalist vs. progressive societies via a thought experiment, sci-fi style.  Though occasionally lacking subtlety, the novella challenges utopian thinking about nature, as well as nihilism that civilization is dying.

An interesting dichotomy, the setting of Burn is the planet Walden.  Initially colonized by a people called the pukpuks, the aggressive usage of resources and impractical implementation of economic and social programs caused their civilization to collapse.  Seeing the potential for a natural utopia, Jack Winter purchased the planet in the aftermath and converted it into the Transcendental State.  Strictly interpreting Thoreau’s views, the Transcendentalists disturb nature as little as possible, keeping their farming to a minimum while allowing the forest to retake the planet.  The problem is, the forests have regrown to the point they encroach upon the land of the remaining pukpuks.  Desiring a return to the ways of their technologically enhanced ancestors, the pukpuks resort to terrorist activity.  They intentionally start fires that re-open land for development and allow them contact with upsiders—people from other planets who have the technology they want to trade for.  Such clearing of land against the principles of the Transcendentalists, not to mention potentially deadly, conflict ensues.

Review of The Space Merchants by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl

The dystopian novel has become a tradition in science fiction.  And it’s easy to see why: the facets which separate the genre from the rest of literature are conducive to manifesting societies and ideologies at odds with whatever the current social reality is.  Brave New World presents a society in which nearly all humanity has been drained from humanity; Fahrenheit 451 takes books away from society; Nineteen Eighty-four envisions a world wherein personal freedom is lost to government control; We presents a scenario in which individualism is crushed beneath the sterility of conformity; and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, and The Sheep Look Up present different facets of allowing corporate influence to usurp political and social concerns.  Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress sees a society stymied by chemicals, reality always one hallucination away.  Unheralded yet fitting perfectly amongst these novels, C.M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl’s 1952 The Space Merchants is a dystopian novel that sees commercialism play out in a frightening scenario that stratifies society unhealthily.  Gaining prescience rather than losing it with time, the ideas of the novel are hurt only by poor plotting.  Otherwise, they ring loud and clear to this day.

The society Kornbluth and Pohl imagine is indeed all too realistic.  Set nominally in the 22 nd century, corporations have gained enough power to force political bounds to shift from the geographical to the commercial.  States no longer represented in government, business conglomerations and mega-corps instead compete and lobby fiercely on the highest stage to ensure products are consumed and profits high.  Playing the largest role in this are the advertizing agencies.  Able to use whatever methods they desire, the five senses are appealed to in commercials, billboards, etc., while the products themselves often carry addictive elements.  Wealth channeled to the top, the lower class grows while the rich prosper.  All services privatized, even a person’s ability to receive civil protection stems from their ability to pay—anything from Burn’s Detectives to Star Alliance Security available.  The poor having to subside on low quality nutrients, third world countries supplying labor for the wealthy, and many people wearing mouth filters on city streets, the world of The Space Merchants is exactly like ours in many ways.