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Book List: Dark Futures

There are a lot of people out there right now who are pretty scared and angry about what’s going on in the world, with reason. Our imaginings about the future can be pretty terrifying. Luckily, fiction gives us futures that, while they may be bleak, also leave us with a ray of hope for humanity. And, since they are fiction, we are only visitors there (and thank goodness). In this world, we still have libraries to help us escape and offer refuge. More than ever, I encourage you to use yours to find whatever stories or resources you need to keep your hope alive.

 


Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Twenty years ago, the great actor Arthur Leander had a heart attack and died onstage, the same night that a flu pandemic that quickly decimated civilization began to spread. Now a small band of survivors, calling themselves The Traveling Symphony, move from one tiny community to another, playing classical music and performing Shakespeare in a effort to keep the arts alive, as survival alone is not enough to keep us human. Station Eleven shifts back and forth between the pre-apocalypse storyline about Arthur Leander and his odd artist wife, and the post-apocalypse story of The Traveling Symphony and its often grim and dangerous path. It might sound like this is “literary”, and the jumping-back-and-forth does slow things down and keep you flipping pages, but it is a fascinating story about the power of the arts even in apocalyptic times.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

After a nuclear holocaust that led to desolation, death, and mutations, the scientists were executed, and technology and knowledge were destroyed. There is one tiny order of monks that has dedicated itself to preserving any possible scrap remaining: the Order of Leibowitz, named after a Jewish scientist. The book is actually a set of three novellas, all involving the Order of Leibowitz, at different times. The first novella tells the story of Brother Francis, who is convinced he has met Leibowitz in the desert, and discovers a cache of documents that belonged to him in a previously undiscovered fallout shelter. The second novella takes place as a secular scholar, Thom Taddeo comes to examine the collection of scientific knowledge assembled at the abbey, at the beginning of a new age of enlightenment. The third novella takes place another six hundred years in the future, when advanced technology is easily available and humanity is on the brink of nuclear war once again. It’s a brilliant, if dense, novel, well worth reading.


Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I’m pretty sure we all have basic knowledge about Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tale about the evils of trusting (and preferring) the trivialities we see on screens to the knowledge we can find within the pages of books. Guy Montag is a fireman, and his job is to burn books, but a neighbor’s distress on having her books burned causes him to have a crisis of faith. Spoiler: there are people out there trying to preserve literary culture in spite of society’s, and the government’s, dictates.

 


Article 5  by Kristen Simmons

Article 5 is the first book in a YA series that takes place after a terrible war has decimated most of the former United States. The government is now run by religious fundamentalists who have declared certain moral offenses punishable by death. Article 5 is the name of the provision condemning any woman who has sex outside of marriage. Teenage Ember is evidence of her unmarried mother’s transgression, and when the Moral Militia come for her, they take Ember to a “reform school” for girls in the same situation, to be educated into moral women, where they are punished if they violate any rules. Ember’s ex-boyfriend Chase, drafted into the Moral Militia years ago, breaks his training, and the rules, to get her out. While Ember is not particularly likable, and Chase’s character isn’t well developed (probably because Ember is the narrator, and she doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on), and the plot doesn’t make much sense, the bleak world that Simmons has drawn resonates eerily with what is going on in the world today.  She’s built a terrifying near-future, but not one completely without hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on November 12, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature edited by Jacob Weisman

Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature  edited by Jacob Weisman

Tachyon Publications, July 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1616962104

Available for pre-order: Paperback and Kindle edition

The title and cover art of Invaders are deceiving: this is not a collection of stories about alien invasions, although there are a number of stories of first contact. Instead, editor Jacob Weisman has chosen previously published stories by authors typically considered writers of literary fiction that “explore the essence of science fiction”, in an attempt to discover what literary authors do differently from science fiction authors (his answer seems to be that mainstream writers include more about sex and relationships, but I would argue that isn’t necessarily so). Authors represented include horror writer Brian Evenson, W.P. Kinsella, George Saunders, Junot Diaz, and Katherine Dunn.

So what is the essence of science fiction? James Gunn posits that it makes the assumption that the universe is knowable, and that humans, while products of their environment, are still evolving and adapting to change. Mainstream fiction, he says, is more focused on relationships between individuals. If we accept that, the question is whether these stories represent a science fictional point of view. Of the varied stories that appear in this volume, the majority do seem to do that, some with more of a focus on the science fictional world view than others. Some of the stories were truly fantastic, or playing on tropes, while others depended heavily on science fictional world-building. Most followed a traditional narrative structure, but some stories used a disruptive narrative style. A weakness of the anthology is that very few of the stories focus on outward exploration or interest in the natural world, or in conflict or politics. Aliens come to Earth, but humans have little interest in the stars. Instead, the majority of the stories are focused on humans’ exploitation and manipulation of themselves and each other, and the consequences of that behavior, both positive and negative.

Probably the most outstanding and memorable story is Ben Loory’s “The Squid Who Fell In Love With The Sun”, with its extraordinarily optimistic and unselfish main character, who evolves and learns through sheer will. Another favorite of mine was Max Apple’s entertaining story “The Yogurt of Vasirin Kefirovsky”; the main character’s obsession with yogurt and reminisces about an earlier time hit very close to home. “LIMBs”by Julia Elliott is a powerful story that will leave anyone who has ever dealt with dementia with hope: in it, an elderly woman’s memories return when she receives electrical stimulation for a new, artificial limb. “Lambing Season” by Molly Gloss is a gentle tale of first contact set against a shepherd’s long months in the mountains of the Southwest United States that wakes her sense of wonder. “The Region of Unlikeness” is a rambling tale with unsympathetic characters that raises the question of whether we can escape our future by the choices we make in the present. “We Are The Olfanauts” by Deji Bryce Olukotun and “Escape From Spiderhead” by George Saunders address complex characters being forced to make difficult ethical choices in settings that emphasize the banality of horrific behavior in a technological, corporate world. Jonathan Lethem’s “Five Fucks”and Brian Evenson’s “Fugue State” were deliberately disorienting, making unexplained leaps through nonlinear narrative, and using unreliable narrators. These stories, while memorable, weren’t necessarily enjoyable, and they required careful reading (in Evenson’s case an ironclad stomach is also helpful). One story I found frustrating was Junot Diaz’s “Monstro”. Diaz does a great job of developing his protagonist and portrays the Dominican Republic so vividly I could almost see it, but the end is dissatisfying. As a survivor of “the end of the world”, what happened? I felt that the story cut off before it was over.

If you are looking for a straightforward collection of stories about first contact and alien invasions, this anthology will not be your cup of tea. If you are hoping to find science fiction/horror hybrids, you will find a few– “Escape From Spiderhead” and “Fugue State” are both pretty terrifying, and “Monstro” has some frightening moments. The best audience for this collection, though, is the curious reader interested in seeing what “literary” writers produce as science fiction. It might not convince dedicated science fiction readers to join the literary mainstream, but it could be that readers of some of these more mainstream, contemporary authors, might be convinced to stick a toe into the deep waters of science fiction. For that reason, large public libraries will want to consider it, and shelve it in the regular fiction collection. Recommended.

Contains: adult situations, sex, murder, violence, suicide, drug use

Posted on April 27, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight

The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight
HarperCollins, May 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0062359094
Available for pre-order: Hardcover, Audible, Audio CD, Kindle edition

 

High school junior Wylie has always had anxiety issues, but since her mother’s death four months earlier she is unable to even leave the house. Her father, a researcher in emotional intelligence, unsure of how to handle her problems, buries himself even further in his work. Cassie, her best friend for six years, has exhibited increasingly destructive behaviors, and due to an argument the previous month, they are no longer speaking to each other. Wylie is sinking further and further into isolation.

When Cassie goes missing, she breaks that isolation by texting Wylie with cryptic directions and demanding that Wylie team up with Cassie’s boyfriend, Jasper. Although Wylie dislikes and distrusts Jasper, and her friendship with Cassie has been seriously damaged,  Wylie overcomes her anxiety, agoraphobia, and suspicion of Jasper in order to track Cassie down. From then on, their journey only gets stranger and stranger; over and over, it turns out that things are not exactly what they seem. The story races along so fast, and with so many twists, that readers will find it hard to keep up, and impossible to put down. In many ways, I was reminded of Gone Girl, although the context and storyline are very different.

I found the major characters to be implausible, however. Wylie is the first person narrator, and she describes herself  believably as having an anxiety disorder and agoraphobia. Her attempts to cope with the combination of grief, anxiety, agoraphobia, and anger are the most solid, realistic, and overwhelming parts of the book. Her portrait is so well drawn that I couldn’t buy her ability to break through her anxiety and agoraphobia and put herself in an uncertain situation with an unfamiliar person she doesn’t know or trust in a short time. Central to the author’s concept for the book is that anxiety and emotional intelligence are closely tied together, but research on the topic shows that the exact opposite is true, and the actual story doesn’t really bear that out. While there are times when Wylie successfully reads someone’s emotions, there are many times when she doesn’t (in fact, many of the plot points depend on her misinterpretations). Jasper is practically a stereotype, he’s so predictable and two-dimensional. From the very beginning, Cassie does not seem like much of a friend– she’s an admitted liar, manipulative, and frequently expects Wylie to step in and “save ” her in difficult situations– and in this case, she also puts the two people who care most about her, Jasper and Wylie, in considerable danger. Wylie is not exactly a reliable narrator, and the events are so unlikely that I almost wonder if all of this is in her head.

Despite the implausibility of the characters and their motivations, and the questionable premise that anxiety is a result of emotional intelligence, if you decide to suspend your disbelief, you are in for a wild ride, and, given the adrenaline-inducing ending, should get prepared for another one.

Highly recommended for ages 10 and up.

Contains: suicide

 

 

 

Posted on April 23, 2016 by , Reply
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