The Haul of Books 2.0: Books Received Vol. 3
It’s time for yet another edition of the Haul of Books! I’ll have one more edition after this (and more in the future). I’m still playing catch-up. The last few weeks have been busy busy with school and teaching American Lit (and lots and lots of science fiction), so the pages on this blog have been relatively quiet. But no more! I’ve got two weeks off, lots of books to talk about, and lots of rants to assault your eyes with. Now I’ll shut up and get to the books: Bricks by Leon Jenner (Hodder and Stoughton) This is the story of a bricklayer. A master of his craft, he keeps its sacred teachings secret. For him a house is the dwelling place of a soul, and a house must be built in the right spirit or the soul inside it will suffer. The building of an arch is a ritual to obtain a right relation with the earth and a connection with the truth. The bricklayer also recalls his previous life as a Druid priest. He talks about the creation of the sacred landscape of these islands; how even a simple stick lying on the ground would tell people the direction they needed to go in; how when people stared at the stars, they were staring at their own mind. This Druid was also a builder of worlds, one of a group of higher beings able to move in an infinite number of universes that create and end constantly. These higher beings are eternal, know everything, and hold everything together. The speak mind to mind. They can prevent battles simply by walking between the two charging armies. The reader sees the world through the eyes of this great, magical being at the time of the Roman invasion, and learns how he tricked Julius Caesar and set in train the series of events that would lead to Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March. But as the bricklayer continues, he worries he is losing his ancient, sacred powers. The vision begins to fray at the edges as we learn how he has recently taken violent revenge on yobs who have mocked him. Is he really connected to a once living Druid priest, or is he gradually losing himself in his own fantasies? The Unincorporated Woman by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin (Tor) There’s a civil war in space and the unincorporated woman is enlisted! The epic continues. The award-winning saga of a revolutionary future takes a new turn. Justin Cord, the unincorporated man, is dead, betrayed, and his legacy of rebellion and individual freedom is in danger. General Black is the great hope of the military, but she cannot wage war from behind the President’s desk. So there must be a new president, anointed by Black, to hold the desk job, and who better than the only woman resurrected from Justin Cord’s past era, the scientist who created his resurrection device, the only born unincorporated woman. The perfect figurehead. Except that she has ideas of her own, and secrets of her own, and the talent to run the government her way. She is a force that no one anticipated, and no one can control. The first novel in this thought-provoking series, The Unincorporated Man, won the 2009 Prometheus Award for best novel. Future Media edited by Rick Wilber (Tachyon) This startling exploration of the mass media age uniquely combines complex nonfiction and prescient fiction from the best and brightest visionaries of the future. Essay contributors include Marshall McLuhan, who posited that the medium is the message; Cory Doctorow and his re-visioning of intellectual property in the digital age; and Nicolas Carr, whose cautionary warnings include that Google is making us stupid. The thought-provoking short stories are authored by science fiction luminaries including James Tiptree Jr., whose pseudonymous cyperpunk preceded all of her peers; Joe Haldeman and his wars where humans fight through cloning and time travel; and Norman Spinrad, who has pitted the media against an immortality conspiracy. Offering a blend of predictions for the course of communications, Future Media entertains while it informs and challenges readers to consider the implications for a society dealing with networks that are alternately personal, public, pervasive, and powerful. The Moon Maze Game by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes (Tor) The Year: 2085. Humanity has spread throughout the solar system. A stable lunar colony is agitating for independence. Lunar tourism is on the rise… Against this background, professional “Close Protection” specialist Scotty Griffin, fresh off a disastrous assignment, is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to shepherd the teenaged heir to the Republic of Kikaya on a fabulous vacation. Ali Kikaya will participate in the first live action role playing game conducted on the Moon itself. Having left Luna–and a treasured marriage–years ago due to a near-tragic accident, Scotty leaps at the opportunity. Live Action Role Playing attracts a very special sort of individual: brilliant, unpredictable, resourceful, and addicted to problem solving. By kidnapping a dozen gamers in the middle of the ultimate game, watched by more people than any other sporting event in history, they have thrown down an irresistible gauntlet: to “win” the first game that ever became “real.” Pursued by armed and murderous terrorists, forced to solve gaming puzzles to stay a jump ahead, forced to juggle multiple psychological realities as they do…this is the game for which they’ve prepared their entire lives, and they are going to play it for all it’s worth. Low Town by Daniel Polansky (Doubleday)(two copies, actually) Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town. In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its champion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden
An Addendum: Categorizing Fiction
One of the things I wanted to talk about in yesterday’s post on why the best fiction fits somewhere was my personal take on dividing books by generic category (in bookshops and elsewhere). But then I thought: why not offer my brief take and then see what you all think about the issue in general. And that’s what I’m going to do. What do you think about the way in which books are divided in most bookstores? Do you like that there is a YA section, a science fiction and fantasy section, a general fiction section, a mystery section, and so on? Do you find them useful as a book shopper? Do you find them inadequate? Let me know in the comments. As for me, I find the categories in bookstores useful, but inadequate. One of the things I think publishers should do is label books by their most obvious categories, which bookstores would then use to place books which clearly cross generic lines in multiple places. I don’t see the point in saying a book like 1984 by George Orwell or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell or July’s People by Nadine Gordimer (etc. etc. etc.) shouldn’t be placed in both the general/literary fiction section and the science fiction section. Likewise, a book like Farthing by Jo Walton (and the other books in her series) should be in the SF/F section and the mystery section; the fact that it’s not is a failure to recognize how it plays with the alternate history and mystery genres so effectively. Cross-pollination is crucial to the success of literature. I think people who love SF/F would also love David Mitchell or Nadine Gordimer, or Murikami and Ishiguro, or Rushdie and Ghosh, or Jackson and Winterson. Books that cross genres should be in both places so that people with particular reading tastes can find them. I don’t generally go to the “general fiction” section in the bookstore, in part because it’s impossible for me to find anything at all that I would want to read in there. General fiction is the most disorganized “genre” bookstores have. But if you had put Cloud Atlas in the SF/F section, I might have picked it up well before I realized academics were talking about it. I might have recommended it to all my friends. But that’s my take. I like the idea of cross-pollination because it opens up the reading circles of, well, readers. And that’s a good thing. Now it’s your turn!