Literature

One of my regular webcomic reads, Garfield Minus Garfield, just signed a book deal. What I really find cool is that Jim Davis is entirely onboard with it, when he could have just as easily gotten all lawsuit-y.

I don’t know what the general trend is, but it seems like more than a few comic authors have a good sense of humor about their strips. Check out this entry from the Sally Forth author’s blog, along with the resulting awesomeness (scroll to the bottom of the entry). And of course, it’s a well-documented fact that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is awesome (no specific entry in mind… just a generally excellent blog).

So I guess that’s three authors. And we’ll count Bill Watterson and Gary Larson, too, because they must be awesome. Right?

I have committed to reading all books published by Michael Crichton and John Grisham. When John published The Innocent Man, a non-fiction story of a fellow framed for murder, I once again committed to read it but expected that it would not have much tension and grip.

During the first half of the book I was delighted to find that, even though it was a retelling of history it still had the interesting feel of a fictional Grisham novel. I assume the second half will also be a good read.

My only issue comes with the few pages in the middle … those fancy photo pages where they show photos of the people referenced in the book … those neato pages that put faces with the people you have been reading about … those glossy pages which give away the rest of the book in the captions. Seriously, just because it is not made up doesn’t mean I don’t want to wait to see how it plays out.

Grr!

It seems to me that as Michael Crichton ages, he feels more and more compelled to not only toy around with plausible scenarios based on modern technologies, but to contribute to the world by educating and encouraging critical thought in his readers. The trouble for me is that I view Michael Crichton novels as entertainment and, therefore, find the lack of transparency in his causes distracting.

State of Fear was, in my opinion, the poster-child for Crichton novels-with-a-cause. They story was not up to his usual standards and his message was blatant. I happened to identify with the cause and wound up appreciating that work more for its message/arguments than for the story. Still, a warning label would have been appropriate to set the mood.

The message/story balance in Next is much closer to a proportion that would succeed at subtle altruism. I do hope he finds a more successful balance in his next novel after this Next novel.

If you appreciate Crichton’s style and can relate to his ethics, I totally recommend Next. The guy can write a hell of a story.

The other day I read an article on I Am Legend and it described it as a remake of The Omega Man but made no mention of the original book. The article irked me, but after watching the movie I’m unirked, and find the disconnect appropriate, given the disconnect that is the new movie.

If they referred to the movie as “OTHER TITLE : A wicked loose ‘adaptation’ of the original, very sweet novel, ‘I Am Legend’”, I would be able to appreciate the movie for what it is … a Hollywood fun time money-maker. By using the original title, however, they set me up to expect some level of respect for the book. Not so much. In fact, the whole point of his being “Legend” in the book was completely absent.

So how is the move actually like the book?

1. It shares the name
2. The main dude is named Robert Neville
3. There is a lady and a dog, for what they are worth

How are they different?

1. Everything else

If you do not have high expectations you will likely enjoy this movie. It is a fun watch once you get past the ridiculous “lions eating huge herds of deer in NYC opening scene”. After you finish watching it, do yourself a favor and read the book if you have not already.

And now I will move on to The Omega Man and
The Last Man on Earth and see what they have to offer.

P.S. I enjoyed the trailer comments over at Digg.

When there is a soon-to-be-released movie that looks interesting I enjoy quick reading the book first, provided time allows, as I enjoy creating the visuals in my head and then comparing them (and the original story) to the Hollywood versions. I recently found myself with book-time and decided to prep for I Am Legend.

I quickly learned that there is a problem with reading a Hollywooded book-based-on-a-movie-that-was-based-on-the book format. That problem is that they don’t so much want you to judge the book by the cover, but rather judge your level of excitement over the movie by on the cover, so you will buy it. Hollywooded books do attract me, so I get it. In the case of Legend, however, it tarnished the experience. I was thrown a bit by the fact that the character was all scruffy and white as all get out, given that Will Smith was looking so suave and not white on the cover. I was further thrown by the references to the 1970’s until I later learned that the story was written in the 50’s. I was further, and most roughly, thrown by the fact that the book was apparently a collection of stories which Legend only amounted to about half. The latter confused the hell out of me until, towards the very end of the book, I wised up. Black Will on the cover I can deal with, not warning me that I was leaving Legend I cannot. Rude, Hollywood .. rude!

I am not reviewing Hollywood book presentation, however, but the riventing story of I Am Legend, which was outstanding. Initially I expected a tale of man vs. vampire comprised of the usual long fangs, exciting chase scenes, lots of bloody fighting, and probably a hottie love interest. In fact, while there were graphic encounters, it was not about simple horror or action but rather a man dealing with a life of fear, loneliness, and a grim existence. Consider this following snippet if you will:

… it had slowly dawned on him that intense hope was not the answer and never had been. In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last …

This book is about emotion and man vs. his own mind in terrible circumstances. The author does an amazing job of describing the insanity, neurosis, depression, self-doubt, loneliness, and suicidal tendencies which are described in such a way that I found myself being the character and totally empathizing.

Eventually Will the white dude resolves to rationalize the plague? with science, which provides a fun explanation for why vampires? are they way that they are and how reality compares to the … Legend. The rationalization was fun and well done.

So now it’s on to the theater to see what’s what. Usually at this point I dread what will happen to the story when it falls out on the big screen, but in this case I do not demand a visual reproduction as I do not believe that is possible without a fantastic director who is willing to go out of the box to tell the story accurately … which I assume was not in the plan for a movie which previews Will Smith, looking very metro, speeding around in a new Mustang, and watching lions ravage deer in the corn-filled streets of some big city. As I read this book even I, with my wild creativity (in my opinion), often stopped to imagine how the heck the deep introspection, emotion, and wild thoughts would even begin to translate visually, and many times I had no answer. Even if fantastic, out-of-the-box director was at the helm I’d be skeptical.

The portion of the book containing I Am Legend was brilliant. I could hardly put it down. The other stories in the book ranged from boring to cute. The movie?

John Scalzi’s newest sci-fi novel, The Android’s Dream, isn’t about androids or dreams, but it is about sheep.  And aliens.  And a little about politics. 

Scalzi has been recognized as an up-and-coming sci-fi author for a while now, and I think The Andoid’s Dream is his best effort yet.  Scalzi combines a Robert Heinlein-like (Star Troopers) future with a penchant for the brilliantly irrelevant tangents of Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon).  Fast, fun, action-packed.  I just have two complaints:

1.     Sometimes when I’m watching a movie or reading a book, I think to myself, “That sounds like something I would write.”  And I never mean it as a compliment.  I occasionally have that thought when I read Scalzi.  But just occasionally.

2.     In the hardcover edition of The Android’s Dream that I read (Tor Books, 2006), there were at least 10 typos–misspellings, wrong words.  That’s just unacceptable from a major sci-fi author and publisher. 

If you are prone to wanderlust or escapism, as I am, there are two books that are a must read at some point … ideally on your metro commute to a big city for a long day of intimacy with your small monitor and rapid-fire meetings. These books will affirm your belief that American life has a few voids that need filling (perhaps with void) while also providing a few rationales against the greener grass of the concept of leaving it all behind for a idyllic existence on a remote Pacific island.

J. Maarten Troost recalls his time spent on remote islands in the Pacific with a relaxed flair and a casual, witty style. In
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific he shares his experience in deprivation on the small atoll of Tarawa and in Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu he relives another remote, yet different experience over in Vanuatu.

Both are hilarious accounts involving the naturally comedic elements involved in living simple in simple locations that happen to include bloated pigs, being trapped by pooping natives, racing feral dogs, and much more. Both also give a bit of tentative love to both the pros and cons of being owned by nature.

Getting Stoned sets the mood early with this wonderful summary of Maarten’s need to get back to the island:

In Washington [D.C.] , we lived in a place where everything was available, for a price, and yet I couldn’t recall the last time I had really savored something – a book, a sunset, a fine meal. It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated. I’d find myself inside a Whole Foods, and remember that not long ago I would have engaged in all sorts of criminality for a chance to skip down these heaving aisles, yet now I found myself feeling a mite peeved that the cheese selection wasn’t quite as expansive as I would have wished.

Wonderful reads for like-minded individuals.

First, a confession: I’ve read almost nothing by King in many years. After binging on his novels in college, I just burned out on his style; and the last few King novels I read before calling it quits were… not so good (Rose Madder, Insomnia…). But when Cell came along recently, and word reached me that King was returning not only to the all-out-horror genre but to a monster type that he’d not yet used (zombies!), I was intrigued. And when I found a copy at the library bookshop for $1, I knew that it was time to revisit King.

Cell is Stephen King’s crack at the Zombie Apocalypse genre. (He’s done the Apocalypse before in The Stand, but that book lacked zombies.) Within the first few pages of Cell, an unexplained pulse sent through the world’s cellphone infrastructure causes a large portion of the cellphone-using world to become mindless, slavering cannibals, and things go downhill from there. The novel follows the adventures of a small band of survivors as they try to navigate zombie-infested New England.

Much of the novel works very well–much better than I expected, in fact. I was braced for the standard zombie-movie plot (the one that goes like this: zombies appear; group of survivors band together; they take refuge in some sort of organized [often military-ish] compound; in the end humanity’s own All Too Human flaws result in the zombies breaking in; everybody dies). But King manages to put in some genuinely new twists on the genre. I won’t spoil things for you, but in a number of ways–and in one big plot twist in particular–King puts a unique stamp on his zombie story. That was a pleasant surprise; I like the Standard Zombie Plot and would have been satisfied with a simple King-style retread of it, but it’s more fun when you can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen and who’s due to die next.

But what sets Cell apart, in both good and bad ways, from King’s other novels is that this isn’t just a zombie novel; it’s a self-consciously post-9/11 zombie novel. “Post-9/11″ is a descriptor that’s been so overused as to be nearly meaningless, but in this case it’s accurate. Zombie stories have long had (mostly unsubtle, but sometimes clever) political subtexts, from George Romero’s Living Dead movies to this year’s 28 Weeks Later, so Cell’s political angle is firmly in-genre.

So does the political angle work, or does it come across as awkward and preachy? Well, a little bit of both. It works best when King taps into the nagging, difficult-to-answer moral questions that have become especially important since 9/11 and the Iraq War. Much of the more interesting political elements center around the question of violence (and Cell is a very violent story). Is violence done for a good cause necessary or praiseworthy, or is it ultimately self-defeating? If well-intentioned, morally-justified actions result in violent reprisals and unexpected consequences, should you refrain from acting? Given a choice between fighting hard (and possibly futilely) for an ideal world and settling for a worse world, which would people choose? These are somewhat vague questions, but King distills them into concrete plot elements, and while he hypothesizes about the correct answers, he does not definitively answer them. That’s King at his best.

Unfortunately, King sometimes slips into more preachy territory. This doesn’t tank the book by any means, but it gets old after a while; it doesn’t help that King’s explicit political lessons feel clumsily tacked onto the story. For example, less than a day after the Zombie Apocalypse has broken out, two survivors have a surreal conversation in which they agree that while the Zombie Apocalypse was certainly bad, think about how much worse it would have been had their state’s gun control laws been less strict and citizens had had easy access to firearms during the zombie takeover. (Er, wouldn’t that have meant that people might’ve been more able to defend themselves against the zombies?) Little asides like that, as well as the appearance of several over-the-top Red State stereotypes, feel awkward and out of place. And the whole semi-Luddite “cellphones are turning us into a nation of zombies” gag gets stale by about page 10; fortunately King does not press this too much.

Beyond the political elements, Cell shares the good and bad qualities of most King novels. On the downside, the characters are fairly forgettable; the somewhat-witty dialogue gets old after a while; in places the writing feels sloppy and in need of a second editing pass; the ending is anti-climactic; and while it’s very violent, it’s not really very scary. (Also, Cell includes that most annoying of characters: the obligatory Teenage Computer Expert whose main job is to sit around and spout painful computer analogies: “You see, the human brain works a lot like a computer’s hard drive…”). On the plus side, whatever flaws you can find in King’s writing style, the fact is that he can write a damn good story. It’s a cliche, but I had a hard time putting Cell down. When King is on a roll, it feels petty to stop and fret about minor annoyances.

All in all, I’m very glad I decided to revisit King with Cell. It’s not in the same league as his earlier works, but it’s satisfying. For the most part, he’s managed to write a novel that’s informed by current trends and fears without letting them overshadow a plain old good story. It’s not King at the absolute top of his game, but he can obviously still tap into some of that old magic.

I bet none of the other Zappers ever review any books in this particular genre
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Rainbows End is the newest book from SciFi author Vernor Vinge.  Publisher’s Weekly says the story “lacks dramatic tension” and “feels like a textbook introduction to Vinge’s near future world”.  I agree entirely.  But let me say this:  It might just change your life.  (So in that way, I guess you can say it’s a lot like Battlefield Earth.)

Some background–Vinge is a seriously smart dude.  He’s the winner of four Hugo awards (the top prize in SciFi lit), but is equally well known for propounding the theory of the Technological Singularity.  Rainbows End is set in San Diego in the year 2025.  The best I can tell is that the story encapsulates Vinge’s idea of what the world will be like in the farthest time frame that we can reasonably predict right now (i.e. before the Singularity).  It’s an amazingly different world, but its entirely plausible.  There are no aliens, no interstellar warships, no wormholes–just current technological trends taken to their logical extremes.  It’s the plausibility that has me thinking this is a deceptively important book.  (It looses one star from me for the weak plot.)