Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas was apparently partially inspired by Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, which contains a series of first chapters of novels, all truncated at a cliffhanger. Mitchell takes this device but modifies it, so while there are six separate tales in Cloud Atlas, each has an ending, but also links to the other stories (novellas?). The linked palindromic structure is unique, but it works, particularly because each segment has a different style, which Mitchell segues between effortlessly. His skill here prevents each tale from reading as a pastiche, although the styles are identifiable.

The six tales are, in order: the journal of an American functionary on a voyage in the South Pacific (ca. 1850), the letters of a debauched and disinherited English composer (1931), the travails of a plucky female reporter working to uncover a corporate scandal, written in the form of an airport thriller (ca. 1975), the memoirs of an aging and broke English publisher (ca. today), the interrogation of a clone in a dystopic future Korea (ca. who knows), and a tale around a campfire of a tribesman's life in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

While the tales (often frustratingly) fail to gel entirely into a cohesive whole, this is one of the techniques that makes the novel work, as it prevents Mitchell from getting bogged down in explaining why or how this happened to Korea, to Hawaii, or exactly what Ewing was doing in the South Pacific, or how reliable of a narrator Frobisher is. This allows him to focus on the characters and the tale at hand, rather than spending too much time setting the scene, which is a hallmark of subpar science fiction.

For such an oddly structured novel, Cloud Atlas is a surprisingly easy read -- the only section that gave me difficult was the central section ("Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After"), as dialect with liberal usage of apostrophes and colloquialisms tends to make my eyes glaze over and my brain skip past sentences, much like the titular clouds. (Thankfully, the characters don't spend a significant fraction of their time watching the sky and engaging in pareidolia. Symbolism used is more subtle.) An absolutely worthwhile book.

Seeing

Seeing is a novel that opens in a rainstorm, but features a light, jocular tone, despite the fact that the events described darken significantly as the pages advance. It's a political parable without being overbearing, and possessing an ambiguous ending. While ostensibly a sequel to Saramago's earlier novel Blindness, no knowledge of the former is necessary to appreciate or enjoy Seeing, as the important points are explained when necessary.

One of Saramago's signatures as a writer is his refusal to delineate dialogue with paragraphs, indentation, the usage of quotation marks, or any other form of conventional punctuation. Instead, his dialogue is an endless series of commas. This is absolutely frustrating to read, but when one has a Nobel Prize, one can write how one wants. While I'd been familiar with Saramago's style, (I had previously read Death with Interruptions), it was still a frustrating experience, as it's easy to lose one's place, or switch the speakers up.

While the dialogue can be a chore to keep track of, it's a pleasure to read -- fast-paced, snappy, ironic, and full of characters questioning each other for their usage of vocabulary and various turns of phrase. The omniscient narrator also follows the same pattern -- apologizing for digressions, speaking in hypotheticals about the characters, and treating the plot as if he were observing it, rather than dictating it.

The plot of the novel revolves around the question of what would happen if a majority of the electorate were to cast blank ballots in a national election. This is exactly what does happen in the capital city of the never-named country -- first seventy-some-odd percent of the votes are blank, and then in the special runoff election, it's eighty-three percent. This is met by consternation and then terror by the government officials, who remove the government from the city and seal off the exits.

The government expects its withdrawal to foment anarchy, but are unpleasantly surprised when this fails to happen. Steps are taken to change this, but even a false flag terrorist attack fails to rouse the populace -- there are non-violent demonstrations, but societal calm prevails. Even when the members of the populace who hadn't cast blank ballots attempt to leave the city (and are turned back at the border), the rest of the population helps them return to their homes. As the government takes more and more extreme measures throughout the novel, several former underlings resign. This takes place both at the cabinet level (and results in the prime minister wearing several hats), but also at a more local level, as other functionaries quit.

It's ambiguous what point Saramago is making here -- it's not that democracy is a sham and society would be better off under a sort of collectivism, but more likely that in a democratic society which only has the illusion of choice (such as here, where the opposition to the party on the right is the party in the middle), people will want to throw the whole system out and start over. Of course, government will never allow such a thing, especially the one here, led by the power-hungry prime minister.

Seeing meanders for a bit before reaching its conclusion -- this is a function of not focusing on one character, but letting the narrative bring one or the other to the forefront as needed, then discarding them when their function is fulfilled. Sometimes this is quite literal, as in the case of the police superintendent. Despite all the meandering, the conclusion to the novel, while unexpected, can only be perceived as inevitable.

Writing Exercise #1

It's (supposedly) easy enough to conceive an idea and then elaborate upon it. It's another thing entirely to create something worthwhile from an external seed. That said, I'll be putting my preferred music player (iTunes) on shuffle, and attempting to write something based on what pops up in a short span of time -- say, 15-30 minutes. First result -- "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, which isn't exactly what I had in mind. A late '70s British punk song about teenage lust and/or love? Hmm.

He pulled his shirt off over his head, and with a big smile on his face, sat down on the bed, and lay back at its head against the wall. It had taken quite a bit of effort to get to this point, but here he was: he was finally going to get to fuck her. The approach, weeks ago -- the flirting, the teasing -- her smile and quiet acquiescence -- the first kiss -- and progressing beyond that -- it was all a happy blur in his mind. He bit his lip in anticipation of what was to come, already picturing her lithe body entwined with his -- and then she punctured his reverie by appearing in the doorway, holding a crossbow.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" a challenge
"What? What are you doing?" bewilderment
"I know about you and Kayla." surety
"I don't know what you're talking about." denial
THUNK
Off to his left -- it's her father's crossbow, and she's not much of an archer. No matter, he's already out the open window and sprinting across the yard.

Eye of Cat

Despite the fact that his protagonists often seem cut from the same cloth (loner who lives outside society, brought back in by an old connection for one last job, extremely competent, laid back, fond of wry humor and understatement, often a smoker), Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors. In Eye of Cat, the paint by numbers protagonist is William Blackhorse Singer, Navajo shaman and tracker, who has spent much of his considerable lifetime hunting alien beasts to fill a sort of zoo on Earth. (Ok, maybe "paint by numbers" isn't a fair characterization of Singer. Much of the novel is spent on his mental state/mystical experiences, which does set him apart from other Zelazny characters) He is the last surviving member of his clan, and no longer fits in with his society due to having lived around one hundred seventy years, owing to both advanced medicine and the time dilation effects of relativistic travel. (This is very significant, since family and clan are very important to the Navajo. One of the harshest criticisms one can make of a Navajo is "He behaves as if he had no family.")

The hook for Singer's one last job is pretty standard sci-fi fare: there's going to be an assassination attempt at a summit between humans and aliens, and the security forces all pulling out all the stops to combat it. Singer is merely one of many lines of defense. Since the potential assassin is a shapeshifter, Singer's mind turns to Cat, a shapeshifter he had captured years ago, who he has long suspected of sentience. (Singer reflects on this prior to visiting Cat -- while he realizes he may have done a great wrong, he would have preferred to live his life not knowing, in ignorance and cowardice) Cat agrees to stop the assassination, but his price is Singer's life -- during Cat's imprisonment, his planet's star has gone nova, so Cat is alone in the universe. (This part seems a bit fishy to me. Cat has been at the zoo for ~50 years -- I'd imagine a star ~50 years away from going nova would have already changed significantly, to the point where life that evolved millions of years ago would be under significant pressure, and possibly in a hostile environment. Even adjusting for relativistic travel, I have trouble imagining where even a star ~200 years from going nova would be comparable to the same star millions of years previous)

After the assassination attempt is resolved, we get the real plot -- Cat hunting Singer. Most of the novel is devoted to the hunt, with everything prior serving to set the scene. While the chase continues, we delve deeper into Singer's mental state, and he's forced to come to terms with his past, his ancestry, and his potential future. There's also an increasingly important side plot involving psychics hired to help stop the potential assassination. All in all, it's not my favorite Zelazny novel (that would be Lord of Light, or one of "Home is the Hangman" and "The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" if we're counting novellas.) Regardless, very fun, and Zelazny remains one of my favorite sci-fi writers. His language can be as evocative as Bradbury's.

The Power and the Glory

I was at first tempted to read The Power and the Glory as entirely allegorical, that the travails of the unnamed whisky priest are the persecutions of the Church in Mexico, and that his weaknesses represent the failures of the Church, due to it being an organization made of fallible men, as hard as they try to do good. However, this doesn't work particularly well, (with the exception of the final chapter) although the novel is not without allegory -- the half-caste mestizo as the Judas figure is merely the most obvious. While the priest's suffering and persecution is not Christ's, or that of a saint (contrast the whisky priest with the story of Juan, a martyred priest who certainly could be a saint that a devout woman reads to her children), he is unequivocally a man of God, despite his very human failings -- he had been proud and self-satisfied prior to the persecutions and outlawing of Catholicism, and afterwards, he turned to drink, even fathering a child in an alcoholic stupor. He is unable to regret this unconfessed sin, as he loves the child, so how can he truly repent for a sin he is not sorry for? (Not that it matters much anyway, as a renegade priest, one does not have many opportunities to attend confession.)

The novel is spent in squalor, among the poor towns of that certain Mexican state where it is set. (The setting is meant to evoke Tabasco, but Greene changes some of the geography. All place names are real, as far as I am aware. There are certainly towns with the names mentioned in the novel in Mexico.) All of the characters that we meet share a certain hopelessness with the priest -- there's Tench, the dentist, who wants ether, drink, and to be elsewhere -- although not necessarily back in England with his family. There's the lieutenant, an atheist, a self-described "man of the people" who can't relate to anyone and commits atrocities. There's Fellows, the happy-go-lucky banana salesman, his hypochondriac wife, and his precocious daughter, Coral. The only one of them who feels real is Coral, she's likely dead at the end of the novel. While the people don't always feel real or fully fleshed out, the settings do -- like jump cuts in a movie, each place is realized.

Overall, I have to be about the ten thousandth reviewer to conclude that this is an excellent novel, that Greene manages to write a pro-Catholic novel without it being merely an apologia. This, of course, makes it infinitely easier to read. The ending of the novel seems more allegorical than anything, which is satisfying, because on a real level, there can be no happy ending.

The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers' collection The King in Yellow is an unusual anthology -- the first four stories ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") are considered classics of horror, and some of the themes and characters have even been incorporated into H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The remaining stories in the collection are unconnected to the first four and are French-influenced romances. I took the opportunity to read the first four stories (which are in the public domain, and hence, all over the Internet. The remainder of the collection will have to wait until I either come across it in a used bookstore, or until I exhaust much more reading material.)

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

-The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2d

"The Repairer of Reputations", the first and best-known story, is a subtle tour of the mind of a madman. Hilbert Castaigne is not a stable individual, and he knows it -- as he introduces himself, he acknowledges that he hasn't been the same since has fall from a horse four years earlier. He then proceeds to mention that while convalescing from his fall, he read The King in Yellow, a fictional play that is the common thread that links these stories. Castaigne says of the play: "although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked." Prior to his accident, Castaigne had been a wealthy playboy and man-about-town; as the story unfolds, he's a recluse, keeping the company only of his cousin Louis, a soldier (in a very mid-19th century army), Hawberk, an armorer, and Mr. Wilde, an elderly eccentric who appears just as mad as Hildred.

Throughout the story, Hildred's companions often humor him -- while he is generally aware of it, and manages to turn the tables on his interlocutors at least twice, it's unclear if this actually happens, or only in his imagination. The mysterious Mr. Wilde is the eponymous repairer of reputations (he hangs out a shingle with that title at the halfway point of the story), and convinces Hildred that he has vast influence in society as a whole, with hundreds of members of the upper class in his sway. Additionally, Wilde holds a manuscript titled The Imperial Dynasty of America -- in it, Hildred is second in line to the throne, after his cousin Louis.

After poring over the manuscript again and again, Hildred confronts his cousin with two demands -- first, that he must give up his claim to the throne, with Louis does, laughing. The second demand is colder, in that Louis can't marry his fiancee, Hawberk's daughter. When Louis refuses, Hildred responds that it doesn't matter, he's hired an assassin. Louis and Hildred run to Hawberk's shop, where Hildred finds Mr. Wilde with his throat torn out by his feral cat. Without Wilde, Hildred will be unable to ascend the throne. As he mourns, he is placed in a straight-jacket by medical personnel, and led past a weeping Hawberk, his daughter, and Louis. It is unclear which of the events have occurred, and which have only occurred in Hildred's head.

Of the later stories, "The Mask" and "The Yellow Sign" feature The King in Yellow more prominently, while "In the Court of the Dragon" only mentions the play in passing (the unnamed narrator is troubled, because he's been reading it). Despite this, we never get much of a sense about what the play is about, other than a strange, otherworldly setting, and a vague sense of kinship with Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." I feel this is for the best, as often overtelling would make the play less ominous and more ridiculous. Other authors actually have written a play based on the fragments and clues left by Chambers, but since none of them shatter the human mind, what is the point?

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

-Cassilda's Song, The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2d

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

Physics of the Impossible

Fourteen year old me would have loved to have had access to Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible -- it's a handy science fiction encyclopedia, dealing with the feasibility of many of the standard sci-fi tropes. Time travel, teleportation, superluminal velocity, and telepathy are all here, and are explored and explained in detail. This is an invaluable book for the layman, as it glosses over the underlying math while expounding on the effects of said math. I would have liked more rather than less math, but I realize that Maxwell's Equations aren't easy reading for those who haven't taken a few physics courses.

The book is divided into three sections: what Kaku terms "Class I, II, and III Impossibilities." Class I covers things that are technologically impossible today, but do not violate any known laws of physics. This category includes "Force Fields, Telepathy, Starships, and Antimatter," among others. (As an aside, some of the chapters here are a bit disappointing. For example, the chapter on telepathy is mostly concerned with MRIs and the electrical activity of the brain, rather than telepathy without the aid of technology.) Class II covers technologies that "sit at the edge of our understanding of the physical world. If they are possible at all, they might be realized on a scale of millenia to millions of years in the future." Examples of these include superluminal travel and parallel universes. Finally, Kaku classifies Class III impossibilities as technologies that violate the known laws of physics. These include perpetual motion machines and precognition.

This book really is a pleasure to read -- each chapter unfolds quickly and logically, with Kaku laying out the issues with the subject, adding possible plans of attack, difficulties to overcome, and adding examples from science fiction, or from research in that area. The only complaint I have here is that an inordinate amount of examples seem to be from Star Trek, but so it goes. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in physics or science fiction.