3 posts tagged “book”
I knew of PK Dick, as any reader of scifi or watcher of scifi movies does, but had never actually read any of his works. I knew he was about paranoia and drug use and government oppression. I was always worried about the fandom associated with authors who are known for the mental breakdowns and their drug abuse. I worry that the noteriety comes not from their writing but from their notorious quirks. I was so wrong.
This is a reader, a selection of short stories, some adapted into movies, some old and some more recent. The annoying thing is that they are not credited so I have no idea when they were published or in what context. Context is often very important in short story collections as it allows you to see where the author was when they wrote a particularly dated story. But really, it was not needed here. His writing stands out so much that even when you can tell that it is about 30 years behind the times (lots of references to rocket ships and the distant future of the 90s) the more tangible elements of his opinions on technological advancement, the sentience of robotic life, government vs corporate control and just the window into his own extreme paranoia is just... astonishing. In the first few stories, that reminded me of B&W monster movies from the 50s, you can see a man who is scared of something. There are monsters out there just waiting to get you, bug-eyed and extra terrestial and they haunt him. Later on we get worlds where robots are common place, sentient creatures of steam & wire & oil & electrodes. But they scare him, their capabilities and our reliance on them. Even later we are told of futures where wars are fought for faceless corporations and goverments but the powers of the stories are his speculations on the future. He might have been very frightened of his world but he could see so much wonder in the coming decades, even if many of his futures were smoking piles of ashes. Atomic fears, hiding under desks anyone?
He just had skill that was a joy to read. It is what makes an author great, the wonderful combination of writing style and ideas. To be able to compress such detailed worlds into short stories is something I envy but understand greatly -- the exposition of a novel and the details to round out characters can be dispensed with. The meat of the story telling without the dross of 900 pages is all you get here. Now I am curious at how he makes a novel and will be finding some of them soon. Any suggestions, anyone?
I am fond of apocalypses. I like near futures where things have gone wrong. I like reading about people dealing with The Fall and the exposition of how that fall came about. This time it was about losing the ability to have children. Men & women can no longer have babies and I am pretty sure I remember the blame being put on women, not that any real reason is given, as that is a focus of the book -- we don't know why it happened, just that it happened and was not able to be fixed. It's now a couple of decades later and the world has given up hope. The world, and England in particular, is depressed, despondent and settled into the lethargy that lack of hope brings. But there is hope.
This is not the book I expected. I must admit I saw the movie teaser before reading it and had some expectations of a more gritty, world-decaying plot line. I expected anarchy and chaos but what I got was a depressed view of a totalitarian nation. In a V for Vendetta style, England's troubles allowed for a ruthless leader to take over and create quite the dominant state where immigrants are controlled, old people are forced to commit suicide and criminals are all banished to the Isle of Man. The similarities with V are probably why that element was eliminated from the movie. The book is sedate, dark and really, really low key. We are accurately given the feeling of these people losing all motivation, that an entire race could just give up because their future days are numbered.
I am not sure if I enjoyed the book. The strong theme or emotional tag in the book was strong enough to taint my view of the movie. It's weird because I wanted the book to be a certain way because of a movie trailer and then was disappointed when the movie wasn't what the book was. As many of my friends know, I do not remember details of a book very well, more I remember the emotional state the book puts me into. This state was eerily familiar, reminding me of my own emotional response to my time at The Store where I gave up hope of ever changing my situation and the lack of motivation it carried with it. I guess it's all about not having a future.
I am not sure what Vox will be to me but it might be some reviews. With that said, I shall start the process by a review of the book I just finished -- Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell.
A friend gave this to us, during his un-reading phase, as one of his favourites. He described it as somewhat disconnected but that it gathered threads the further you read. The book is written as a series of short stories, I would say in the format of pure story telling. The stories travel around the world introducing characters and lives to us with cameos from characters in previous stories. The overall theme becomes apparent as more people bump into more important people until a rather chilling end.
Brilliant story telling that allows you to not just find favourite characters but find favourite stories. I enjoyed the ones in Ireland, England, Mongolia and Japan. He dances around genres going from love story to espionage to slice-of-life to even science fiction. Each story has it's own voice and I envy the author that has so many inner dialogues to draw upon.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book but I found the bleak ending somewhat disconcerting. I wanted my butterfly's wings beating in Okinawa to have a positive impact.
