The Kindling Brother

So, did you hear that Amazon silently pulled off books by George Orwell – that is, erased them from the devices – purchased by people for their Kindles? The very nice guys at Amazon did that overnight without informing their customers because the current Orwell publishers/rights-holders decided they don’t wanna no electronic copies of the writer’s books circulating the extremely restricted, even constipated, Amazon Kindle tubes. As usual, I find the commentary republished by Slashdot the best: “Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, ‘We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.’” Q. Weary out.

My Introduction to Tony Harrison

Recently, I wrote (academically) about the English poet and playwright Tony Harrison; while doing that, I had to go through a lot of research and re-discovered a website I’ve visited before but have stupidly forgotten since. It’s called The Poetry Archive, and it hosts recordings of a great number of contemporary writers reading their poetry. Out of the four Harrison poems there, I’d say that two are absolutely required reading: “Timer”, on his mother and her cremation; and “Initial Illumination”, on the silent horrors of war, on the way some people exploit religion to justify and support their wars for wealth and power, on the power of poetry, and on several other things. If you have the time, do read and listen to all four, but do not miss these two. I don’t think I could do any better in talking about Harrison – his poems say much more than I ever could. Q. Weary out.

Brown Girl in the Ring

This novel, first one by Nalo Hopkinson, surprised me very much, and very pleasantly at that. It tells the story of Ti-Jeane, a woman in (presumably) her early twenties, who lives with her grandmother. Mami, the grandmother, is both a well-trained professional nurse and the local herbalist who treats diseases and aches in both modern and not-so-modern ways. She summons and talks to the spirits, and generally takes care of the populace of central Toronto after its economic and social downfall. In the novel, a lot of instability has led to riots and to the abandonment of central Toronto some years ago, which forms the setting and the premise for the plot. Governmental structures have moved out to the suburbs; no one guarantees the security and the welfare of the city-centre population any more.

In this world of insecurity, Ti-Jeane is looking after her young baby whose father is Ti-Jeane’s ex-boyfriend Tony, a member of the local gang who also uses buff, a rather powerful drug. Trouble walks in when Rudy, the boss of the gang, receives a contract to “find”, as soon as possible, a human heart for transplantation into no other body than that of Canada’s Prime Minister at the time. Rudy gives that task to Tony who has dipped a finger or two in the gang’s buff and has to repay his transgressions, this time in blood.

What follows is an indescribable adventure that involves murder, spirits, the return of people thought long lost, and a fight for life amidst the threat of eternal death and imprisonment and pain. Hopkinson manages to implicate all possible levels of society into her story. I was amazed at the way she renders the consequences of a decision both strictly local, then regional, then almost global, and also extant on several levels in between. From a very formal, academic point of view, this novel interweaves concepts and strategies from the three thickest branches of the tree of speculative fiction: fantasy, horror, and sci-fi. This results in a story one literally cannot put down. The stakes for all characters are very high at all times: they all fear things more sinister than death; they all experience both true horror before the unknown, and true stomach-churning disgust at the evil deeds of others; they all hope and fight for the best, and put every last piece of energy they have into that.

To cut to the chase, Hopkinson engages her readers with a story that is both very tough and very optimistic. She boldly goes beyond genre cliches and delivers a narrative about the power of the spirit and the enormity of change. After I read the final pages of Brown Girl in the Ring, I walked around stunned, with a smile on my face that didn’t disappear for hours. Such is the strength that this story gives its readers: I found that the transformative potential of the social decisions Hopkinson elaborates upon is not only immense, but also inescapable. It is in our hands and minds to take those decisions for the good of absolutely everyone, and not only of those hungry for more and more money and power. Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring clearly shows what the fruit of such careful, suffered-for decisions tastes like. Please believe me, for I tell you true: it is delicious.

The Calcutta Chromosome

Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome won him the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and rightfully so. It is a novel about knowledge, about people who want to find truth and understanding, about the secret of a chromosome that can travel from person to person. The plot unfolds in several time-lines, and in different places and narratives. The beautiful thing about the story is that all these threads coalesce into a peaceful but profoundly transforming climax in the end.

Along the way, Ghosh has some quite perceptive things to say about the world today. He introduces us to a young man who works in the virtual world of computers, networks, and information reconstruction for the veiled purposes of big corporations; he follows a young journalist in India as she tries hard to pursue her professional goals; he tells the story of an ageing man seeking knowledge, a man who himself becomes the narrator in the novel very often, lifting the shrouds from the past; he places us under the gaze of a woman whose origins and powers are unknown and seemingly unknowable. Ghosh also ironically returns to the colonial past to recreate the discovery of the malaria virus which plays a major role in the history of the Calcutta chromosome. The novel, divided into two parts and 40+ chapters, somewhat deliberately confuses the reader by interweaving all these stories and several more, only to resolve the confusion at the end. This strategy allows Ghosh to hold the reader on a very tight leash as well as increase and maintain the suspense until the grand finale.

Finally, while reading and thinking about the novel, I deeply appreciated two general features of Ghosh’s writing. First, he is not afraid of transformation and change; he cannot be intimidated and forced back into circularity and rigidness by concepts of intentional “high-brow” literariness. His stories lead somewhere, his characters change, and that can only be good because it is such a heavy, substantial, material process. Second, Ghosh proves, and indeed not only in this novel, that there is more to be found out there, that the world still holds riddles and enigmas and wonders — all those things we can marvel at, and invest our passion in. The universe we live in possesses enormous breadth and depth, and we are the privileged ones who were given the chance to explore it. Let us do so, says Amitav Ghosh, and fear not, for the journey to understanding will change us forever.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

As always, spoilers ahead.

Oh yes they do. Basically, it’s what they dream of most of the time, at least in PKD’s world. Like any living beings, androids have many dreams, and their most coveted electric sheep is freedom. The trick, however, is to obtain your freedom while preserving that of others – and that is what they sometimes fail to do. Just as in the film, PKD’s main issue is with the humans who create thinking beings but then deny them the basic rights and liberties of any sentient life. In the novel, Rick Deckard is forced to kill those whom he perceives, on the one hand, as things, non-living, artificial, and, on the other, beautiful. A very tough choice since the escaped androids have also killed – and will continue to kill – in order to attain and keep their freedom. Finally, all things have their lives, as Iran, Rick’s wife, concludes, and we have to take care of them irrespective of their artificial or natural state of existence. Those who cannot understand that deserve no place in any society, even no place among the living.

PKD’s writing in this novel seems quite ambiguous. He is that rarer type of writer that pushes the reader to think for themselves rather than give ready, pre-cooked recipes and solutions for all the problems posed. Although the narrative is quite linear – it generally follows one day in Rick Deckard’s life of a bounty hunter who kills escaped androids for the money, the twists and explosions come from the ingredients of the story. One is rarely sure who is android and who not. At one central point, Rick is led to think that he might be an andy too. PKD’s poetic, bursting narration surprised me not once or twice; one very important moment comes when androids find irrefutable proof that Mercerism, the empathy-based religion in the book, is nothing but a falsification. Nevertheless, the role it plays is genuinely essential: it teaches human beings to care about each other, and about living things in general. Another such thread in PKD’s story is the exaggerated, often comical obsession with animals in the post-nuclear future he describes. We humans always learn to appreciate things when they are about to vanish, when they are on the brink of extinction. It is a sad and deeply ironic statement, but one that all of us have to ponder over more often.

Finally, when all the murderous androids have been retired, there are several things to be discussed. I find that the essential problem here is that of creation. If you create another intelligent being, but deprive it of the power to empathise and of the right to be free, you have actually created a dangerous monster that has nothing to lose. This situation probably stems from the practise of total possession, of absolute ownership – anything you create is always and forever yours; any creation of yours remains unfree unless you decide to liberate it. There can be no sharing; there can be no commonness. Rachael, the Rosen company android, perceives herself as property which, if damaged, has to be repaid. The only person in the novel that seems to be an exception is J.R. Isidore, the so-called chickenhead. He is the only one to give and share without much thought as to whether he helps dangerous andys or not. J.R. seems to be rewarded for this by the surreal incarnation of Mercer who gives him another spider (after the one J.R. finds is mutilated by Pris and Roy). And eventually, he is the only one unscathed by the events. Rick Deckard, on the contrary, has to carry the stone of his mission: destroy the killing andys, although he doesn’t want to do it anymore and, in fact, discovers beauty in them.

The last thing I have to say about this book has to do with the edition I read. The Library of America has republished several PKD novels in several volumes. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is in their first volume from a couple of years ago. That book – the softness of the thin paper, the hardness and flexibility of the cover, the typesetting and the beautiful font(s) – is simply awesome. I wish more books were produced with that standard in mind, but I guess it’s not cheap, so I don’t expect to see such volumes every day. If you get your hands on such a thing, hold on to it – it will last very long and it will make every re-reading an amazing pleasure.

It Does Matter – Always

As always, spoilers ahead.

Today, I finally managed to finish Matter (2008) by Iain M. Banks. The experience was, contrary to my expectations, not overwhelming; it was calming, soothing. I find it difficult to describe my overall reaction in other terms. The novel itself is built like a journey, an outward search and a return home. Along the way, there are many stations to be seen, and many revelations to be had. Some of the topics include war and its barbarism, the development of civilizations and the uses of technology, complicated situations and problems in inter- and intra-species relations, the self-destructive lust for more and more power, the ultimate sacrifice to save many people and one world, and the understanding that all life is precious.

Many scenes in this novel become unerasable even after just one reading. A man who, after becoming pathologically paranoid, starts regarding the material world (specifically all the matter in it) as the best simulation engine in existence, to be used for wars simply for the entertainment of those who enjoy having real blood at stake, of those to whom pain and suffering are part of everything and everything can become a game when it’s time to play. A small girl and her encounter with one of the hugest naturally developed waterfalls in a whole galaxy, her dread and her trembling and her understanding. The shockingly pleasant, needed freedoms of the Culture – change your biology as you wish, change the deepest levels of your brain and mind, sleep for a thousand years, roam the Galaxy for fun. A prince who does not listen to his own God’s warning. A special agent who, despite having the pinnacle of technology at her disposal, cannot be sure of success. A machine who gives its multiple lives to save a world it never knew but loved nonetheless.

Banks is here at his best. You can encounter all his magical wit and the small way in which he ridicules this or simply makes you laugh heartily at that. Just as in The Algebraist (2004), there are magnificent turns that dwarf the ideas you have been nurturing up to a second before that, and the story explodes in your face with a small piece of information that turns half the world upside down. Probably these are the moments that make me feel so calm, so at peace with the universe. There’s still many more surprises out there, says Mr. Banks; we will not run out of wonders so easily, there is still even more to discover and see and live through.

In a way, Matter is a very long book; in another, it’s actually pretty brief. I could say that the main questions it poses can be summarised in the following: even if your technology allows you to slip by death, even if you can live anywhere in billions of star systems throughout the galaxy without toil and suffering, even if you need not care about anything but yourself, would you die to save a world and its inhabitants? And the answer to that question is all that really matters.

Q. W3ary

Moore, Pynchon, Peart, Joyce

I find myself reading too many books at once. Not a recommended experience… usually. One of them I started several months ago, but am still somewhere in the beginning; the title says it all: Gravity’s Rainbow. Another book I will probably be reading for just as long but which I began a couple of days ago is Ulysses.

Third, there comes Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. I have already managed one fifth, but this is a slow book. Its subject matter also doesn’t very much contribute to fast reading, although it does bring up rather serious things one wouldn’t definitely come up with on one’s own.

Finally, I’m going fast through Watchmen. I know I am too old to be reading this for the first time, but it simply has to be. Impressions and opinions after I finish any of these.