Reading Report: Retrospective 2011

Gerhard Kleinhans — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:48:00 GMT

OK, Time’s up. Let me throw some queries (do I still know any PLSQL?) at my database and evaluate my progress over the last year:

I exceeded my target of 100 novels read this year by a measly 1, thereby bringing the total number of works read since I started manically reading SF+ in 2000 to a disappointing 848. I thought it would be more.
The oldest work I read in 2011 was Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), the most recent Adam Roberts’ By Light Alone (2011). BLA therefore automatically becomes my recommendation for the 2012 awards. Funny thing though, it is good. It is very, very good and would deserve to sweep the awards this year. (Disclaimer: I’m a Roberts fan).
Although I did read works from every decade since the 30’s, 36 were published since 2000 and a further 22 in the 90’s. Still, I did read a few stunning classics.
I’ve judged my reading experience (note, I make no attempt to rate the work itself, this is completely and unashamedly subjective) of the following 8 novels to be worth 5 stars:

Brain Aldiss, Report on Probability A, (1968)
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, (1962)
M. John Harrison, Signs of Life, (1997)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, (1932)
George R.R. Martin, The Armageddon Rag, (1983)
Adam Roberts, By Light Alone, (2011)
Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream, (2009)
Gene Wolfe, In Green's Jungles, (2000)

In addition to the above I would also recommend Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road (1988) and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009)
My 5 favourite authors overall are: Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe and Robert Silverberg.

My reading target for 2012 remains 100 SF+ novels. I’m starting the year with China Miéville, Embassytown (2011). Go for it boy!

Belief and Knowledge

Gerhard Kleinhans — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 02:32:00 GMT

"Teran was dying. He said, 'My brother, my husband, my love, my self, you and I believed that we would defeat our enemy and bring peace to our land. But belief is the wound that knowledge heals, and death begins the Telling of our life'. Then he died in Penan's arms."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling, p.216

Yellow

Gerhard Kleinhans — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:20:00 GMT

Jealousy is malarial because:

It recurs.

It is unpredictable in both frequency and ferocity.

It causes you to hallucinate.

Nothing you think or predict or imagine, no conclusion you reach in a condition of jealousy, can be trusted. Jealousy builds a housing project of logic from a single brick. What can you do? Wander the ramps and serviceways of your private Broadwater Farm like any other puzzled debt collector. Every floor looks the same. Knock on the right door and there is a sudden tense silence inside. You want something from the occupant, but you no longer understand what it is, let alone how to get it.

- M. John Harrison, Signs of Life, p.211

Wolfe-ish Words of Wisdom

Gerhard Kleinhans — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:15:00 GMT

“It is far easier to get all the good things that our lives have to offer than it is to deserve them. We seldom have much joy of them, however, unless we deserve them.”

- Gene Wolfe, In Green’s Jungles, p. 89

7 Secret Lives

Gerhard Kleinhans — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:14:00 GMT

It is now more than a week since I've finished Galileo's Dream, and I am still contemplating the wisdom of this passage:

We all have seven secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else ever knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo´s Dream, 2009, p. 307

Reading Report: Poetry in Prose

Gerhard Kleinhans — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 09:32:00 GMT

Between the stools and the plastic buckets of catch and bait and jars of maggots and mackerel heads and the plastic tool boxes of hooks and flies and the butts of rods resting on the ground are many traps for fine shoes. But Ayse passes lightly and fleetly. God, they are good, these shoes.

- Ian McDonald, The Dervish House, p. 155

Reading Report: Catholic Pulp

Gerhard Kleinhans — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:40:00 GMT

Julian May’s 1980’s Exiles saga that started with the much acclaimed The Many-Coloured Land, is a prime example of Catholic religious dogma masquerading as science fiction.

The 3 LGBT characters in the series are shown to be either seriously maladapted villains or seriously maladapted comical diversions. So do not mistake the ‘many colors’ for a rainbow. The central message that suffering is good as it makes you a better person inevitably leads May into a plot that moves from one instance of mass slaughter to the next, supposedly to make better persons of her protagonists. (This is reminiscent of how Christian politicians have lead us into one war after the other). The more unfortunate cast get death in stead of enlightenment, but hey, that’s just God’s Way.

No wonder that rational readers (i.e me myself) see this as evidence that God’s Way must be the Wrong Way.

Reading Report: Love and Mortality

Gerhard Kleinhans — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:12:00 GMT

I know that the experience we take from all novels will always be the product of the efforts of both the author and the reader, but somehow, when describing and discussing that experience, we mostly seem able to emphasize the author’s contribution slightly more. With Christopher Barzak’s The Love We Share Without Knowing however I find myself unable to achieve that distancing. The emotions and feelings it unleashed in me are too directly related to my own private experiences of loss and mortality, of urban loneliness and displacement. I cannot hold Mr. Barzak accountable for that torrent, no, I’d rather thank him for his sensitive narrative and tone that rang true to the core of my being. It was a cleansing experience and was completely mine.

The Love We Share Without Knowing is a hauntingly beautiful novel.

Best April Fool’s Joke 2010

Gerhard Kleinhans — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:33:00 GMT

Having spent a lot of my online time last week chasing fraudulent stories, most of them being rather lame for that matter, I’ve decided to honor the time wasted by instituting the Parvus’ Best April Fool’s Joke Award, to be awarded a few days after April 1st, to the joke that would have blown my mind if it was real. There is no prize.

The winner for 2010 is:

Doctorow and Stross to Write Authorized Sequel to Atlas Shrugged

A brilliant joke! Can I nominate James Morrow to write the novel about Doctorow and Stross having written the sequel to Atlas Shrugged and the resultant confusion it creates in the Libertarian gun-crazy community? Long live Rejectivism!

Oh yes, by the way: if you have not seen John Stewart’s March 18th show yet you’ve missed one of the greatest satirical performances of our times. His impersonation of Glen Beck is superb, and as is often the case with Stewart, his underhand defense of Progressivism is worthy of consideration. But it was his Beckian chalkboard ~~deconstruction~~ misconstruction of Conservative Libertarianism that enshrined him as one of my personal saints. Do yourself a favor, watch it.

Reading Report: Communism, Fiction and UFOs

Gerhard Kleinhans — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:47:00 GMT

If you want to examine two diverse notions, that Communism and Science Fiction share a concern with emerging reality, and that the belief in UFOs is surprisingly wide-spread and tenacious, you could end up working your way through several interesting and erudite academic tomes. Or, alternatively, you could simply read Adam Roberts’ delightful 2009 novel Yellow Blue Tibia.

With an unreliable and compulsively ironic narrator, a score of misfit supporting characters, some of the funniest slapstick scenes I’ve read in years, a brilliant depiction of the paranoia that pervaded Soviet society, a barely disguised critique of the beliefs of Scientology, and of course Fucking Copenhagen and quantum theory, the novel not only tackles these questions, but ultimately examines how we bring new realities into being. Roberts succeeds to underpin all the romping fun and wit with scholarly concerns with philosophical questions and literary criticism, making this a complex and layered work that defies easy classification.

And therefore, dealing as it is with writing itself, this is the most quintessentially literary novel. And yes, it is extremely good.