To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

 To Say Nothing of the Dog is a wonderfully irreverent time travel science fiction novel replete with absurdist humor and appealing characters. A stand-alone entry in Wills’ Oxford Time Travel series, this story takes the reader to Victorian England by way of World War II, looking for the bishop’s bird stump to complete the restoration of Coventry Cathedral. This is more difficult than one might think, given the iron whims of Lady Schrapnell, who co-opts the entire time travel department to complete her pet project. Unfortunately, time itself is threatened when something unauthorized is brought forward in time, and it’s up to our heroes , Ned Henry and Verity Kindle, to overcome advanced time-lag and put everything right.

 The author, Connie Willis, has been named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America and this novel lives up to her reputation. She was inspired by Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, a Victorian comic novel detailing the small adventures of three gentlemen boating to while away the summer. She translated the river into a Victorian country summer idyll filled with all the small pleasures of lawn parties, croquet, and church fetes, while reveling in the folly and fecklessness of the upper class. She then adds depth and plot by peopling it with professional time-travelers from the future who are forced to reconcile living a life of leisure with preventing a potentially serious catastrophe, while facing personal difficulties of their own. Throughout Willis maintains a light touch, riddled with humor and charm.

 I really enjoyed this read. I appreciate Willis deft touch with combining the serious and the absurd, and the story is laugh-out-loud funny. Her plotting is clever and her timing is right on. Her characters, including their faults, are relatable and lovable, and just a bit hapless, subject to the whims of the story. This is not a serious, in-depth time travel novel; if you’re looking for that try Willis’ Domesday Book. This is a book that uses time travel as almost a McGuffin frame for a confection of a farce.

Asimov's Robots - Delightfully Charming

 Isaac Asimov’s robot stories are a joy. I usually don’t have much patience with Asimov. While his ideas are great, I tend to be primarily a character-driven reader and a plot-driven reader second, and in my experience, Asimov’s not great at either. And don’t get me started on his women characters and stance on feminism. But his robot stories, especially those in I, Robot, are delightfully charming. His character writing skills are at just about the right level for robot personalities (and his robots do have personalities), and as for Susan Calvin, surely one of the most robotic human characters in fiction, her personality is just right for who she is and what she does. Unlike with many other “unfeminine” woman characters (in literature in general of the time, not just in Asimov’s writings), I don’t feel that Susan Calvin’s personality is written to account for her scientific career or lack of partner, or to punish her for something, or anything else. It’s such an asset for her, her company, and society in general that it just comes off as who she is, and that’s OK. Asimov obviously has a great affection for his robots, and I wonder how much Susan Calvin’s robot-likeness slips her in under that umbrella. She’s certainly one of his best-written women, in the admittedly small sample size of his writings I’ve read.

Becky Chambers' "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" - Tea Monk!

 A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is both filled with fascinating ideas and totally charming, an unusual combination in my experience. It’s certainly one of the most positive post-apocalyptic stories I’ve read (unsurprising for Chambers), and her take on robots, and robot-human relations is mind-boggling. I’m totally charmed by the idea of a tea monk, and I love the way her society works. So egalitarian and rural-feeling, but selectively pretty high-tech. Becky Chambers is a master at telling stories that focus on character interaction and individual responsibility that also resonate with implications and consequences on a much larger scale. Full-on space opera told on the level of the domestic. This novella is no different; though the large-scale geography is limited to a single continent, the temporal and societal expanses are vast. She has a definite talent for writing all four main SF bases – big ideas, world-building, characters, and action. Well worth reading and highly recommended. Can’t wait to read the sequel.

David Weber's Honor Harrington Series - Exposition Much?

I’ve picked up David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series again, after many years. This is a series (and an author) that I followed avidly for years and have reread again and again; one of my comfort reads, in fact. Paradoxically, I’ve also consistently skipped parts of his books again and again, to the point of never having read most of Short, Victorious War. I read him for his characters (which, even if many of them are not particularly well-rounded, are appealing), the action (which is well-written and exciting), and the good vs. evil (which is comforting, especially as the world around me seems to develop more shades of gray). What I don’t read him for is his plentiful exposition, which would be the parts I have habitually skipped. He has a lot to say about politics, military technology, and character motivations, much of which I find uninteresting, excessive, and/or redundant (this last would apply to the character motivations). The good news is that the action and character interactions still work even if you skip ahead, brother.

 This time around I’m actually reading much more of the exposition. I still don’t have a lot of interest in the military hardware aspects, but the politics are more interesting, if a little slow going. I’m not sure how much of my new-found patience has to do with my being more politically aware these days versus the politics in the later books of the series being much more integrated into a story containing less action. I’m still not committed to reading every page, but I’m getting a depth to the stories that I didn’t before.

 The sheer tonnage of exposition in Weber’s books is also interesting because that’s typically seen as a no-no in fiction writing. Yet he was (is?) a very popular military SF author, so it apparently works for him. Is it that he’s managed to pick topics such that his lengthy ruminations become part of the attraction? Or is it that you can actually skip them and still enjoy the books, a la Victor Hugo. (Not that Weber’s writing skills are nearly to that level.) Regardless of my altered reading habits this time around, I think I’m still in the latter camp.

A Rose from Old Terra by Don Sakers

A Rose from Old Terra
Don Sakers
2007
Speed-of-C Productions
Series: Scattered Worlds
www.scatteredworlds.com

Source: ILL - Red Wing Public Library. I heard about it sometime during my online peregrinations.

Reason I got it: Librarians in Space. I'm a librarian by vocation and avocation, and I'm also a science fiction aficionado. Mix the two, and I'll for darn sure at least give it a try. From the dedication, it looks like the author is/was a librarian as well.

Thoughts:

This book worked for me. I'd recommend and will be looking for other books in the series.

It's multiple points of view were deftly handled, and the characters felt like real people, even when you didn't get much more than a glimpse of them. They had motivations and their emotional stories made sense.

Sakers made good use of the slow reveal for a number of underlying plot points, which made for a shift in perspective at points in the story.

I enjoyed his method of avoiding excessive exposition by inserting page long primary source documents - interviews, advertisements, government announcements, etc. to explain points outside of the narrative while adding flavor to the world building. I tend to enjoy these types of interjections; they appeal to the information junkie in me.

I almost thoroughly approved of his gender politics; practically speaking, there weren't any. Women and men were just people. I didn't see any gender assigned roles, and members of both genders had agency, took action based on personal motivations and ethics, and propelled the plot (and plotting!) forward. The "almost" comes in in one pivotal scene near the end of the book. Now, I don't necessarily disagree with the author's overall point in the scene or the emotional reality of the character's crisis. However, the author could have written the dialog more carefully so it didn't echo the age-old sexist dilemma of career vs. man, and almost always choosing the man, because they wouldn't be happy otherwise. I don't think that's really what's going on in this story, but the  phrase "It's you I want, not the Library" ripped me right out of the climactic moment and into sexism-fatigue.

The world-building was really good. The history and societies were intriguing, the technology simple enough to be mostly background and only rise to the top when needed for the plot, and the aliens interesting. Sakers' style made a fairly detailed universe seem everyday and simple, and yet complete

Age of Fantasy

In the chapter on awards, A Reader's Guide to Fantasy, published in 1982, makes the point that fantasy, "as a viable genre," is still pretty young.  The earliest award they have listed is the August Derleth Fantasy Award (in 1976 renamed the British Fantasy Awards) which began in 1972. The Gandalf Award, a "Grand Master" award awarded in conjunction with the Hugo, goes back to 1974.  The first World Fantasy Award was given at the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975.

The oldest SF award is the Hugo from 1955. WorldCon, aka the World Science Fiction Convention, awarder of the Hugo, was first thrown by the World Science Fiction Society in 1939. 

Of course fantasy's actually been around as long as there's been literature.   I wonder if it's this dichotomy that makes it so hard for a lot of people to understand?

Alternate History

I read an article recently about literary fiction authors writing genre so as to make a living, and in the comments a conversation about Science Fiction started up.  One commentator asked why alternate history should be seen as part of SF?  It's a fair question.  Historical fiction, for example, would seem to be a likely home based on the historical factor.  And alternate history doesn't necessarily fit into SF's brief involving technology/science, the future, outer space, etc. However, I think it generally fits in SF, even if it might also fit somewhere else. 

1.  Alternate History often involves technology and science - especially given that SF covers the broad range of science from the hard to the soft. What if the South had gotten advanced weaponry from aliens during the Civil War?  What if aliens visited ancient Britain?  What if the plague had never been, or had been much worse than it was?  What if there had been a gentler, kinder Genghis Khan? 

2.  The purely speculative nature of it seems to belong to a genre which is inherently speculative. Not many, if any, genres ask "What If?" as plainly and often as SF.  So it makes sense that a subgenre that is all about What If would find a home in a genre that's all about What If.

3.  Alternate History asks questions about the nature of our present by questioning our past.  Setting up alternate scenarios sheds light on what actually happened, as well as on the nature of humanity, history, and whatever else might be involved in that particular alternate world.  This is just a different aspect of the questions SF asks every day.

4.  Alternate history is arguably a sub-sub-genre of Alternate Universes - which also stands under the SF umbrella. Quantum mechanics - decision points - what if something went that way instead of this?  All honored aspects of SF. 

Again, this whole business of assigning labels and defining, etc. is fraught with peril.  Appeal is much more important, in my opinion. Alternate History has a broad appeal - for SF and History fans for sure, and beyond depending on what you add into the genre.  Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter - possible appeal to those who like vampires. Is it alternate history?  SF?  Fantasy?  Pure absurdity?

I think this defining genre thing works better as tagging than shelving. When you tag something you can put as many defining tags (or access points) as you'd like on it to find it from a variety of theoretical points of view and intellectual paths. When you shelve a tangible item, you can only put it in one place. (You could theoretically put multiple copies in multiple places, but that way potential chaos arises, especially if you need to pull every copy for some reason, so libraries just don't.) It's another way our intellectual constructs are defined by our experiences and limitations in dealing with the physical world, and it'll be interesting to see how that changes as we go more and more virtual with the data as well as the metadata.

Characteristics of Science Fiction and Why I Read It

I read SF for a number of reasons:

• I love that SF encourages me to look at the world differently.
• I love the sense of wonder that infuses so much SF.
• I love that SF stretches my mind and my heart.
• I love that it’s sometimes so bizarre and yet manages to stay believable.

Characteristics of SF:

• Literature of ideas, full of thought experiments.  'What if' is a very important question.
• Speculates on science - hard and soft - and technology, and humanity’s relationship to them.
• Explores ethics - often through a good cautionary tale. Perhaps just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
• Tells a good story with lots of interesting characters, settings, and events.

Ultimately, Science Fiction is about us - human beings - who we are, what we are, and our relationships to other life, society, technology, and the world around us.

Science Fiction Readers' Advisory

Doing Science Fiction (SF) RA can be intimidating, as can RA in any genre you don't read. SF is filled with concepts unique to the genre, but the place to start is to remember that SF is literature.  Therefore, a lot of the basic RA questions apply – especially those pertaining to emotion and style.

• Mood – humor, drama, etc.
• Length – long, short, series.
• Storyline - Character-driven vs. plot-driven, complexity of the plot.
• Pacing – fast-paced, steady, leisurely.
• Writing Style – minimalist, lush, extensive description, etc.
• Characters – strong female, children, pets, etc.

However, some of the questions and many of the answers are unique to SF:

• Storyline - Character-driven vs plot-driven vs idea-driven.  An idea-driven story is one where the story and plot are generated by an idea - generally a thought experiment the author wants to explore.
• Setting - Past, present/near future, future, all of the above, space, alien planet, alternate universe.
• Characters – alien, robot, artificial intelligence.

The point of the next several posts in this blog, which talk about SF tropes, is to give you the vocabulary and understanding to be able to ask those questions, and be able to come up with a meaninful answer for your patron when they ask "What SF book should I read next?"

Restoree by Anne McCaffrey

I read Restoree by Anne McCaffrey for the nth time.  I first read it as a teen, I think, and enjoyed it then.  It's aged well for me.

Sara, the main character, from Earth, is abducted by a nasty, rather faceless alien species, and is rescued by another group of aliens who are, on the surface at least, very human-like.  (This is not a very widely-scoped book - it deals with the situations it covers well, but it leaves a lot of the world-building incomplete.) Anyway,  Sara ends up on Lothar (the home of her rescuers), coming out of a period of unawareness, finding herself as an attendant to a mentally-absent man in a very untenable situation.  She ends up helping to end a nasty planetary political and military crisis and falling in love and marrying Harlan, the soon-to-be planetary Regent.

I found myself impressed with how subversive it really is.  It was written in 1967, McCaffrey's first full-length novel, and was written for a specific purpose.  "“Restoree” was a once-off jab at the way women were portrayed in science-fiction. ... I have no need to write a sequel since it served its purpose of an intelligent, survivor-type woman as the protagonist of an S-F story." Sara sure is one kick-ass female protagonist.  She doesn't beat anyone up or perpetrate violence (which seems to be seen as a necessary component of a kick-ass heroine these days - playing like the boys), but she becomes a successful high-stakes player in an unfamiliar culture with a lot of false cognates and an often-distant support network, which is plenty kick-ass for me.

The sexual mores are also radical for a book designed for 1967 main-stream America.  She posits that Lothar is a fully-functioning, highly-moral society that does not appreciate the value of virginity; in fact Harlan is surprised and a little dismayed that Sara is a virgin at 21.  Lothar's conditions have been such that the population needs to be constantly refreshed, which produced a society that prizes lots of kids, doesn't ask who the father is, and has matrilineal inheritance and succession - except for at the highest level of planetary Warlord. 

Now this book would not pass the Bechdel Test, does not have very many women (in fact the only women I can think of are Sara, Lady Fara, Sara's maid (who is named), another lady who tries to cut Sara off in her political maneuverings, and Sara's fellow attendants at the asylum where she woke up), and does not mention women's role in the larger society.  So not necessarily feminist in the larger sense, but well done for its time, and not a total wash for the early 21st century.
 
I've seen "Restoree" listed as one of the first Science Fiction Romances.  It does have a romance as a strong theme (obviously), but it is one of the more important storylines, not the most important.  So it works for me as a SF Romance when so many don't because it's SF first, and romance second.

The limited world-building also works for this book.  It gives the book an intimacy that goes along with Sara's POV, which is, of necessity, of limited political and cultural knowledge.  You really see and understand what she sees and understands, and the amount of meaningful inference is minimal.

Pulp Art

I started on a book yesterday called "Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines" by Robert Lesser, which includes full page reproductions of the oil paintings created to be pulp cover art.  The basic thesis of the book is that pulp covers are legitimate art.  The opening chapter is all about populist art and how that is a right of the American people because of a specific prohibition in the Constituion against noble titles, the bearers of whom are often forceful arbiters of taste.  So pulp art is populist art, and just as much art as the contents of any art museum in the world.

When pulp art was being produced, most of the artists creating it did not believe that at all, let alone the public or the art elite.  Many saw it as common at best, and certainly a commodity, and many artists were actively ashamed to have created it.  For the most part you couldn't give the original oil paintings away.  A lot of it is very sensational, especially as the industry matured and the subject matter of the magazines sometimes reached into the frontiers of popular taste in search of new audiences. Sensational enough that Mayor LaGuardia of New York spoke out against some of the trends, and newsstand owners would tear some of the covers off because they didn't want them on their stands. There was a gangster line that had two covers printed for different markets so as to not offend the wrong sensibilities in the wrong places - that could be dangerous.  Some pulps were sold under the counter as much for the cover art as for the contents.  The thing is, it took more and more eye-catching, i.e. extreme, covers to stand out on a newsstand, which is how most pulps sold. And it seemed to be the common concensus that the cover is what sold a pulp.

"Pulp Art" gives examples of the covers from certain genres of pulp magazines and then explains how to "read" them and gives background information on the artist and their techniques.  Really interesting. 

The art from some of the more sensational lines is really disturbing, however. From what I gather, the stories never lived up (down?) to the art, which is a good thing, but the art was enough to leave me with weird dreams, especially with the interpretations.  Even though I can see the author's point that "on the edge" art is still art, I can see why some of it was censored, especially in the '30s and '40s and especially in public around children.

But I loved the science fiction covers - bright colors, often stylized, filled with the wonder of the future. The interior illustrations are in black & white and filled with detail and exciting technology and science.  Many of the illustrations are optimistic, and a real spur to the imagination. This is the art that set the classic SF esthetic. And the best artists were obviously having fun with it and perhaps doing it partially out of love. (They sure didn't get paid very much!)  This blog has a few articles filled with such art. I'd buy some of these magazines for the art - it put a smile on my face and a sense of wonder in my heart.

I enjoyed this book for the full-page, full-color reproductions of the paintings, and the essays written by folks involved in the pulps and their art.  I also valued the insights into the artists, and, no matter how disturbing they may have personally been, the art. It did get a little preachy in places, but still interesting over all. Again the SF section is lovely. I recommend this book, especially if you have a stronger stomach than I do.

Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback

Ralph 124C 41+ (one to forsee for many) by Hugo Gernsback was first published serially in "Amazing Stories" from 1911-2.  It was edited in 1925 and published in novel form in a small print run, probably also by Gernsback.  In 1950 it was printed again in a much larger print run.  I'm not sure if he edited it at all then - I'd guess not. The edition I read is from 2000 and has a forward by Jack Williamson, a writer who wrote for Gernsback's story pulps.  Published in 4 very different times; probably only edited once.  It makes me wonder what people thought of it with every printing.

Probable spoilers ahead.

A Science Fiction Contribution to English

OED Online Word of the Day

tinfoil hat, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌtɪnfɔɪl ˈhat/,  U.S. /ˈˌtɪnˌfɔɪl ˈhæt/

Etymology: <  tinfoil n. + hat n.

With sense b and uses in Compounds compare earlier tinfoil cap n. (b) at tinfoil n. Additions, and the following quotation taken from an early 20th-cent. science fiction story:

1926  J. Huxley Tissue-culture King in Yale Rev. Apr. 500 We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves.

 orig. and chiefly U.S.

 

A hat made from tinfoil.

a.  As worn at a party, celebration, etc.

1884 Life 2 Oct. 1/1 A tinfoil hat, a spangled shirt.

1947 Kokomo(Indiana)Tribune 23 July 6/3 A color note of pink and green prevailed in the appointments and favors were novelty tin foil hats and suckers.

1984  D. Unger Leaving Land 126 A television crew drove all the way from Rapid City to cover the party. Everyone wore a tinfoil hat. Everyone yelled and blew a paper horn.

1997 Times (Nexis) 10 Jan., I recall‥being on a train with A Famous Band, drinking champagne and celebrating their new Top Ten hit by wearing a very silly tinfoil hat.

 

 b.  With allusion to the belief that such a hat protects the wearer from mind control, surveillance, or similar types of threat. Frequently either extraterrestrials or the government are imagined to be the source of such threats.

1982 Plain Dealer(Cleveland, Ohio) 16 May 25/5 A Cleveland woman telephoned last year to complain that her neighbor was shooting an invisible death ray at her. She wanted the police to stop it. The dispatcher suggested she wear a tin foil hat and put tin on her windows to deflect the rays.

1986 San Diego Union 19 July d1/1 She told one reporter‥that the midgets and androids were spying on her‥. He advised her to line her attic with tinfoil and to wear a tinfoil hat. They can't penetrate tinfoil, he explained.

1994 Denver(Colorado)Post (Nexis) 23 Sept. b1 These folks stop just short of wearing tinfoil hats to shield them from evil government rays.

2007 Maximum PC Feb. 50/2 Have reason to believe ‘the man’ is watching your PC activity with a keylogger? KeyScrambler Personal will encrypt your keystrokes‥. Tinfoil hat not included.

 

Compounds

 a.  attrib. In sense b, with the sense, ‘deluded, paranoid; advocating or believing in conspiracy theories’.

1994 Denver(Colorado)Post 19 Aug. b1/5 A person can be right-wing without joining the goofball, tinfoil-hat brigade.

2005  H. Duncan Vellum 353 He's not crazy enough to think they're beaming thoughts into his head; he's not reached the tinfoil hat stage yet. But they're definitely watching him, following him.

2009  E. Emerson Cape Disappointment 158 ‘Is anybody looking into the possibility that the plane might have been brought down on purpose?’ ‘You mean a tinfoil-hat conspiracy?’

 b.  tinfoil-hat-wearing adj.

2000 Rush is Wrong in alt.fan.rush-limbaugh (Usenet newsgroup) 4 Feb., There are certain Posters on this site who will soon show up to call anyone who believes this article, kooks, loons and tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nuts!

2010  G. Beck Overton Window 81 According to network news, you're all borderline-insane, ignorant, paranoid, uneducated, hate-mongering, tinfoil-hat-wearing, racist conspiracy theorists.

Podcasts

I looked through Podcast.net, Podcastalley.com, and NPR, and found good content on each. There are a lot of library podcasts, including JJHill. I also searched under Science Fiction and found book reviews, old stories, a movie a week (vidcast), author interviews, etc.

You can use Bloglines to sign up for podcasts, and play them right from Bloglines.

I signed up for Nancy Pearl's weekly review show, and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I've also sent myself the links to a number of interesting sounding Science Fiction podcasts to sample before I sign up. With the NPR stuff you pretty much know what you're getting.

Melissa.