Review of "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card

There are very few “best of” sci-fi/fantasy lists that do not feature Orson Scott Card’s 1985 Ender’s Game near the top.  The story of a young boy’s rise through a space academy tantalizing and highly inventive throughout, the reasons are obvious.  Card hit upon an idea, mined it for every penny of entertainment, and cashed in—a wholly absorbing novel with humanist elements tacked to the end the reader’s reward.  

Ender’s Game is the story of Ender Wiggins and his often exciting, always visceral fight for place in a space academy.  Though he had a bit of trouble fitting in on Earth with his classmates, Ender proves himself more than capable of surviving in a system intended to separate the Darwinian wheat from the chaff.  But it’s at the price of his relationships.  The war games the children and teens play anything but light, laser-tag is only the appearance.  The challenges Ender faces in the game rooms—social, authoritarian, and strategic—break and mold him into a young man.  But what kind of young man does he become? 

Card’s imaginative span great entertainment, the scene is brilliantly set for one challenge after another at the Battle School.  Readers are constantly kept guessing how he—Card and Ender—will top himself, each new setup the next mission impossible.  Yet, it consistently happens, and in the process Ender must use every molecule of brain power to overcome the American Gladiator-like obstacles placed in he and his team’s path by the academy’s authoritarian overseers.  Card portraying the war games in video game fashion, the levels only get more difficult, creating a mountain of suspense in the process.  The war games, in fact, provide the main draw of the novel and are undoubtedly the reason it is regarded so highly by readership.

Aside from neither brilliant nor dull prose, the only other potential fault of the novel is its moods.  The story of a boy at a space academy innately juvenile, a young adult feel prevails throughout.  Card attempts to make the story more “adult” by splashing strong language here or there, adding some graphic details to the challenges at the Battle School, and moralizing at various points, but the overall effect is not very subtle.  There is the sudden prominence of a theme fully adult at the novel’s conclusion, but it doesn’t help.  The story retains a tone that could be either YA or standard.  

Love it or hate it, the most subversive aspect of Ender’s Game is its conclusion.  Events taking a major turn, readers can not expect things to transpire as they do.  Holding a mirror to the story, Card uses a suddenly new perspective to bring Ender to the next stage of his development.  The manner in which Card pulls the literary rug out from under readers’ feet to accomplish this, however, will either have people nodding their heads in better understanding of the novel’s true message, or shaking their heads, preferring such an adventure come to a more conventional ending, the plummet from action to anthropological sci-fi perhaps too quick to handle.  In a genre featuring all too much derivative, Card should be lauded for this, however.  

In the end, Ender’s Game is some of the most exciting entertainment readers of any genre can have.   The sharp left turn of an ending, while poignant to Card’s larger aspirations, may leave some readers disoriented, but will certainly interest those looking for sci-fi with more depth than the standard fare.  Enjoyable at many levels, character to setting, plot to theme, it’s difficult for this book to disappoint save the overall lack of maturity in tone.  Having some thematic points in common with Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and Forever Peace or Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, readers who enjoyed those two novels but have (somehow) never read Ender’s Game will want to check it out.  The same is true vice versa. 

Review of "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons

There is space opera, and then there is Space Opera.  Dan Simmon’s 1989 Hyperion is S.P.A.C.E. O.P.E.R.A.  From grand schemes to the most minute of details, vivid character portrayal to imaginative and original future technology, gorgeous scenery to a multi-dimensional, motivated plot, everything works.  Weaving his tale, Simmons proves a master storyteller, each of the seven tableaus presented begging to be devoured.  As a result, it is virtually impossible to read Hyperion and not want to follow up with the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion.  Thus, potential buyers be warned: this is only the first half of a highly engaging story.

Hyperion’s success begins with world building.  Simmons put hours and hours of thought and planning into the background details of his universe and how these elements work together.  Fully functioning political, technological, and social systems, none of the superb far-future government structures, technologies, or sentients clash with one another—in a logical sense; there are wars and tension galore.  The tech not functioning cart blanche, Simmons took the time to think of how the various futuristic elements affect and offset one another, the result being a world portrayed more realistically.  Secondly, all of the created technologies serve a purpose.  There are no one-offs thrown in to impress the reader or because it felt good that moment tapping away on the keyboard.  Thirdly, and most impressive, is that Simmons is able to infuse the description and importance of all the futuristic motifs into dialogue and plot.  There are no blatant info-dumps—a plague of sci-fi.  Every element is revealed naturally in the flow of story.  From the post-human humans to inter-planetary communication, space travel to AI—especially the AI, Simmons worked out all of the details before setting out along storytelling road and the book does nothing but benefit for it.

If world building is the foundation of Hyperion, then storytelling is the palace atop it.  Other writers, including Iain Banks, Richard Morgan, and Alastair Reynolds, have stated their dreams of producing such an imaginatively singular yet archetypal story—their imaginations alone nothing to frown at.  Borrowing the structure of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Hyperion is a frame story broken into seven basic pieces: one for each of the pilgrims traveling to Shrike temple on the titular planet.  One by one, each pilgrim tells the story of how they came to the pilgrimage and their reasons for undertaking the potentially deadly journey.  Simmons uses the interstitial space of the individual narratives to describe segments of their collective journey to the temple.  Needing to be read to be believed, the ex-army general, poet, priest, detective, teacher, forest guardian, and diplomat all have the most amazing tales to tell.

And there’s a story for all interests.  Readers who enjoy the action/tech side of sci-fi will revel in the ex-general’s account, the space fights jaw-dropping.  Neuromancer fans will thoroughly love the cyberpunk homage Simmons pays to Gibson in the detective’s tale, complete with cyberspace and console cowboys.  Dick fans will nod their heads in appreciation of the priest and poet whose happenings are most spiritual and also most surreal, while fans of Le Guin or Aldiss will be satisfied by the sensitive yet alluring histories of the diplomat and teacher.  Save the detective’s tale—an acknowledged homage—the voice is Simmons’ own.  The stories, particularly the meta-story tying the characters’ lives together, are anything but derivative and prove sci-fi a powerful medium for storytelling.  

And what of the enigmatic Shrike temple where the pilgrims are headed?  The name taken from a real-life desert bird that impales insects on cacti spines prior to dining on them, the impossible-to-describe temple guardian named simply the Shrike is the most mysterious and fascinating idea Simmons has carefully laid into his story.  Appearing and re-appearing randomly, groups who visit the temple take their lives into their hands; only one member lives to tell about the visit, the remainder never to be seen again.  Killing at will, the Shrike is simply one of sci-fi’s greatest creations, its black, spiky visage haunting readers long after they’ve finished the novel. 

If the depth of imagination and storytelling or borrowing of Chaucer's framing device are not enough, then Simmons’ thematic grounding of the tale in the poetry of Keats will satisfy those looking for literary qualities.  Not a lengthy testament to the British poet, Simmons instead uses the eponymous poem by Keats as an allegory for the tension between sentient species and artificial intelligences.  Not blatantly a Star Wars, good vs. evil, situation, the scene set pits uber-intelligent AI constructs against the technically advanced beings inhabiting the universe, each fighting for autonomy.  Like the Greek gods warring with the Titans, this aspect of the novel puts the “opera” after “space”.

In the end, Hyperion is one of the best science-fiction books ever written, a real treat for the imagination.  The imagery, characters, underlying themes, narrative structure, storytelling, and flat out entertainment value leave 99% of sci-fi in the dust. The only fault is that readers must wait until the second half, The Fall of Hyperion, to discover the fate of the pilgrims.  A wholly unique creation, it’s difficult to compare Hyperion to any other author’s works, save the rough comparison of the individual pilgrims’ tales themselves.  Hyperion.  Read it.  The book will be remembered.

Review of "The Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons

Simmons having carefully woven each strand in Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion braids them together into a singular narrative that fantastically concludes the tale.  Whip-crackling energy throughout, the fate of the Hegemony, Ousters, and the Shrike are revealed.  All of the questions created—what will happen to Sol’s daughter?  Will Kassad get his revenge on the Shrike?  Will the Consul be able to open the time tombs?  And ultimately, what is the Shrike?—are answered in more than satisfying fashion.  Moreover, the mysterious disappearance of the tree-ship captain, Het Masteen, is not only explained, but fits perfectly within the framework of Hyperion to affect things as no reader could foresee.  With this and other details, Simmons shows the subtlety of his story’s design, and proves himself a master storyteller at work.

The narrative structure of Hyperion would be possible to duplicate in the sequel only if there were to be no resolve of the pilgrims’ stories.  All having converged at the time tombs, The Fall of Hyperion is where the rubber hits the road—a single road.  Told from two settings, one the galactic center at Tau Ceti and the other the tombs, the fate of the universe is finally decided.  Readers bounce back and forth between the two locations, learning the pilgrim’s fates on one hand and how the Hegemony is preparing for the imminent Ouster invasion on the other.  Action and plot non-stop, Simmons never takes his foot off the gas the length of the novel, driving the story all the way to a heart pounding climax that satisfies all of the build up of Hyperion. 

The players established and positions known, The Fall of Hyperion works within the parameters of Hyperion to conclude the story.  Save a second version of the android Keats (named Severn), Simmons avoids a major weak point of storytelling by springing nothing new—game changers or plot altering surprises—on readers.  There are no new overlords or super-weapons to step in and change the rules or extend the limits of possibility.  Everything fits perfectly within the playing space delimited in the first novel, and move by move, each piece works its way toward a showdown of colossal proportions—human, Ouster, AI, Shrike, and otherwise.

Hyperion such powerful storytelling, it’s unfortunate that The Fall of Hyperion must stand aside and be judged.  Like a meeting of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, everyone considers one better than the other, though both are mammoth.  Were it not for one’s brilliance, the other would be considered mightiest.  As such, the recent publication of the Hyperion omnibus editions is welcome.  The story able to be read from start to finish as Simmons envisioned it, readers do not feel such a sharp transition between the two halves, the need for comparison eliminated.  

Hyperion such a tour de force, most readers will find something amiss in The Fall of Hyperion, though they know not what.  The answer is: the end of the story.  With such a vast number of creative elements at play and interest generated in the characters and story, nobody wants the enjoyment to end.  However, it must, and Simmons finishes the tale in suitably epic fashion.  The good news is, the author also recognized the wealth of possibilities available and wrote a second duology in the Hyperion universe, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion.  

In the end, The Fall of Hyperion is a grand finale built on the solid foundation of  Hyperion.  The only disappointment readers could feel would be that the story comes to an end.  Epic in nature and epic in feel, Simmons has set a very high bar for sci-fi.  Readers who enjoy Iain Banks or Peter Hamilton but have not read the Hyperion Cantos will find upon reading it that many ideas are in common, particularly the scope of their universes, love of interesting tech, and the possibilities of far future.  Despite having source material of its own, Hyperion is the inspiration of space opera in the 21st century and beyond.

Review of "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick

In an afterword that reads like an epitaph, Philip K. Dick explains the impetus behind A Scanner Darkly.  He tells the reader that, having witnessed the death and onset of senility of many of his drug-abusing friends, the novel is a reminder to himself and others that the euphoria of narcotics has a flip side.  Largely autobiographical, Dick openly admits some of the characters—Barris, Luckman, and Arctor—are based on people who exist or existed in real life.  A tragedy in the Greek sense, A Scanner Darkly is as such a brilliant, drug addled story of the counter-culture in an anachronistic future, flower power not everything it was cracked up to be.  (Sorry for the pun.)

A Scanner Darkly is the story of Bob Arctor and his duel life.  One half narcotics agent, one half drug dealer, he is a user as well as dealer of Substance D, and all confusion as a result.  And Arctor’s friends don’t help.  Barris is either an intelligent man solving the world one riddle at a time or a complete crackhead.  The more the story progresses, the faster the reader oscillates between the two possibilities, his antics like a puzzle piece that fits in two different places at once.  No such discernment is needed with the luckless Luckman whose brand of sentience has its area code in another dimension.  And Donna, Arctor’s would be lover/always dealer, forever hangs on the fringes, teasing and haunting just as he’s ready to give up on her.

Captured as only Hunter S. Thompson can, Dick perfectly portrays the rigid paranoia, dementia, and eccentricity of the drug riddled mind.  The dialogue, while surveying the stratosphere for looniness, never loses touch with reality.  Dick guides the deranged banter with an unfailing hand, into wonderland and back, shaping a wholly unpredictable yet highly readable narrative in the process.  Trusting that conversation amongst the main characters is based on objective message is truly the most interesting aspect of the novel.

 A Scanner Darkly is one of Dick’s more realist works.  There are a few sci-fi elements, e.g. scrambler suits which disguise people’s identities, holoscanning, and synthetic drugs, however, the remainder is as real as apple pie--even out-dated to some extent.  The cassette tapes and rattletrap cars the characters drive (Arctor has a boat of an Oldsmobile) lend the story a strong retro feel.  Not a sterile, clean future, the grittier, dystopian side of America is portrayed.  Sagging porches in run down suburbia, poorly mown lawns beside old shopping malls, and people living under the threat of petty theft are redolent throughout the story. 

Sadly, it is the realist elements which highlight the only real fault of the novel.  The grand reveals of Now Wait for Last Year, Ubik, and especially The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch all fit their respective stories despite stretching the imagination, .  Dick is, after all, read to expand the mind.  The conspiracy theory denouement of A Scanner Darkly, however, fails slightly.  The main reason for this is because of its contrast with the message Dick was trying to drive home.  Without spoiling anything, the larger forces at work give the characters an escape route from the responsibility of drug use—the theme Dick was trying to cultivate in the first place.  That being said, the softened ending does not fully dilute the social agenda, various other points in the novel portraying the negative effects of extended drug use as good as any novel has.  

In the end, A Scanner Darkly is one of Philip K. Dick’s greatest achievements.  Poignant to a culture still dealing with drug problems, Dick’s imagination on the nature of narcotics induced mental health issues, government watchdoggery, and general discontent amongst an otherwise functioning group of people is social commentary not to be ignored.  That Dick is able to focus what few writing abilities he possesses into a consistent, enlightening and a well-paced narrative is also to be lauded, the opportunities rare.  The scrambler suit, for example, is an amazing literary parallel to the identity problems Arctor faces.  The conspiracy theory ending unnecessary, readers will forgive Dick his whims given the powerful statement that is the afterword.  Simply put, readers cannot call themselves a Dick fan without having read A Scanner Darkly.  Of all his novels, perhaps this has the greatest chance of standing the test of time.

(The opportunities to applaud a film adaptation of a novel rare, the following note should be made.  Richard Linklater’s film version of A Scanner Darkly is superb.  Perhaps the best adaptation of any Dick story, Linklater omits only a few minor details while clinging tightly to the novel’s characterization, dialogue, plot and theme.  Keanu Reeves the weakest point, Robert Downey Jr. is a perfect Barris, however, just as Woody Harrelson and Wynona Ryder portray Luckman and Donna as I imagined them while reading.  The rotoscoping effect of the film serves to make the film not only unique in appearance but it also more vibrantly displays the hallucinogenic aspects of the story, the scrambler suits especially.) 

Review of "Now Wait for last Year" by Philip K.. Dick

Like a mad dream of himself, some Philip K. Dick books seem more autobiographical than fictional.  One can almost see him, hunched over the typewriter, taking his wacky visions and delusional experiences of the afternoon and plunking them into a story.  Bad marriages, paranoia, experimental drug use, precogs, suicide, etc., etc., are landmarks navigating his novels.  Written in 1966, Now Wait for Last Year has all of this and more, and leaves the reader asking: how many different ways can Dick combine his favorite motifs.  The answer: at least one more.

Containing the ambiguous leader concept of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the reality-altering property of drugs from FlowMy Tears, the Policeman Said, and the surreal mood and broken relationships of every seemingly Dick book, Now Wait for Last Year has little new to offer well-read Dick fans in the way of ideas.  The writing beginning broken and jumbled but settling in after the first few chapters, Dick’s poor prose is also present, but not in spades.  Thus, from being nothing special through one glass, to a representative sample of PKD’s work through another, the verdict is ho-hum.

The year is 2055 and Eric Sweetscent, an artiforg (artificial organ transplant surgeon), is employed by one of the richest men in the world keeping the centuries old businessman alive.  When not at work, he spends his time in constant disharmony with his wife, Kathy.  She a drug addicted, emotional wreck, their domestic life alternates awkwardly between hurtful disagreements and tender sensitivity—a lifestyle which does not well suit the mild-mannered, highly passive Sweetscent.  But when the UN Secretary General, leader of the Earth’s government, recruits Sweetscent to be his own personal physician, events start rolling. 

In Dick’s 2055, earthlings are the third wheel in an interstellar battle between the power hungry ‘Starmen and the insectile reegs.  The Secretary General, Gino Molinari, spends his time trying to sidetrack the ‘Starmen, with whom Earth has signed a peace treaty, in order to prevent humans from being sent to the front to fight.  Molinari’s main method of redirecting ‘Starmen requests for soldiers is not so subtle: he plays dead, literally, and Sweetscent must keep him alive.  But when Sweetscent finds both an assassinated version and a younger version of the ageing Molinari in the white house, questions arise.  Further complicating events is the appearance of a mysterious drug named JJ-180.  Having the ability to send people back and forth in time, things really lose touch with reality when Kathy slips Sweetscent some of the strange drug.  Highly addictive, Sweetscent is forced to abandon his relaxed life to escape the mysterious shifts in time, possibly just saving Earthlings in the process.

Now Wait for Last Year of the middling grade in Dick’s oeuvre, diehard fans will undoubtedly enjoy it despite the lack of anything truly fresh.  A direct analogue of Dick’s own relationship troubles (Wikipedia states he was married five times), Sweetscent’s broken marriage is perhaps the strongest aspect of the novel.  The dialogue that occurs between he and his wife, particularly the hurtful vitriol hurtling across the room in the opening scenes, is especially realistic.  Dick’s final resolution of the relationship—almost a note written on a mirror to himself—is touching and closes the novel in affective fashion.

Time travel a gaping hole just waiting for writers to trip and fall into, Dick handles the motif with ease.  Perhaps too lax, its effect on the reality of the novel is poorly thought through.  In the same vein as the drug effects of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, if a large number of people are able to modify reality simply by taking a pill, one would expect reality to be in constant, chaotic shift, rather than responsive only to the main character’s actions.  This selfish personalization, while effectively focusing the plot on the main characters, fails to deliver a message at any logical or social level, thus diminishing the idea’s credibility.

In the end, Now Wait for Last Year is an average read.  Readers who enjoy time travel will like the book, however, there are several other books which portray the motif in more convincing fashion.  (The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers or Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys’ film are good examples.)  Fans of the author will find nothing to complain about; all the typical Dickian elements are present in quantity.  One of his stronger examinations of a broken relationship, readers should expect domestic turmoil to heavily affect the plot.  However, when contrasted against the larger conflict occurring in space, its depth gets lost solving the mystery of who or what Molinari really is .  There are better Dick stories out there, but there are probably more that are worse.

Review of "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" by Philip K. Dick

Adhering to the nature of its title, Philip K. Dick’s 1974 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is a cipher.  Events unfolding in typical Dick fashion, which is to say in a way that actively propels the plot into the unknown, one irreconcilable event after another, the resulting story creates suspense effectively but at the expense of inter-connectivity.  So many concepts come to underlie the dynamic paranoia that the novel ends up suffering an identity crisis of its own.  

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said begins with the story of variety show host Jason Taverner and his attempts to re-place himself within the context of a reality he was once positive of existing within.  Waking up from a most obtuse and bizarre murder attempt—death by cuddle sponge—Taverner quickly finds things are not as they were.  Colleagues, lovers, and business partners he once knew intimately do not recall his face or even his name.  The setting strongly Orwellian, pols and nats (police and nationalists) patrol the streets, controlling checkpoints, and taking those without proper ID away to work camps, causing Taverner to have trouble leaving even the run-down hotel he’s awoken in.  An underground of sorts exists, and it is with their help he sets out in search of his identity.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s focused efforts.  Taverner’s troubles related in acute and sympathetic detail, the story starts strong as readers quickly develop a relationship with the protagonist.  Slowly but surely, however, things unravel.  More and more characters are introduced, and a river delta of storylines forms.  Some occupy significant stage time only to be discarded abruptly.  Still others hold little of the spotlight, but later play an important role in the overall outcome.  By spreading events in such random fashion, the reader loses track of the story’s purpose and plot direction.  One character, police chief Buckman, is in particular poorly drawn but unfortunately a major player.  One moment kind and logical, the next a deranged lunatic, he closes out the novel as the main character, meek as a lamb, and in late night stranger-hugging mode.  From the attentive outset to the narrative delta of an ending, Dick’s inability to focus the narrative really hurts the novel, leaving readers to wonder: what’s the point?

But plot can be argued.  Dick’s writing style, however, cannot.  Famous for often producing bad prose, the novel is a prime example why.  Sentence structure abominable, at no time is a rhythm established to settle into.  Dick switches randomly between internal monologue, 3rd person narrative, and almost a fourth wall form of address.  As a result, the action scenes are blunted, and worse yet, the moments of emotion that are supposed to affect the reader lose impact in the jumbled mess of text spilled across the page.  The titular tears are the result of syntax rather than character empathy.

Unfortunately, there is a another major issue with the book that must be addressed: the reveal. Without spoiling things, suffice to say the manner in which Dick explains Taverner’s identity problems not only heavily contrasts the mood of the novel, but likewise does not fit the reality underpinning the setting as a whole.  The reader’s willingness to suspend their disbelief is really tested.  Ursula Le Guin in The Lathe of Heaven would later take Dick’s idea, modify it slightly, and apply it in a style allegorical rather than mimetic.  Throughout her story readers are fully aware that Le Guin’s book is a thought experiment and ignore the larger portent.  With his inclusion of so many “real” aspects of society, including celebrity-ism, 1984-ish government induced paranoia, and child molestation, things only become more confused when the source of Taverner’s troubles is revealed.  Satire, allegory, social commentary, personal musing—none know Dick’s intentions, probably not even the author himself, creating a confused narrative in the process.

That being said, the social ills Dick portrays are one of the few strong points of the novel.  There are strong indications that he was attempting to use the darker side of being a celebrity to elucidate his own ideas concerning multiple identities.  This, and a few moments when the narrative congeals into emotive locution are the only positives of the novel.

In the end, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is not one of Dick’s stronger efforts.  From the alien murder “device” in the book’s opening pages to the conspiracy theory reveal, the inclusion of sex with 12 year olds to genetically modified humans, late-night stranger hugging to celebrity-ism, Orwellian tyranny to philosophizing on love, jumbled prose to character development, nothing about the book seems to fit within an identifiable umbrella concept.  Thus, the book is not a good starting place for a peek at Dick’s strengths as a writer and is in fact recommended only for fans forgiving of his faults.  How the book won an award is based on something I don't understand.