Books - October/November 2005
One of my favourite books of the year, and, I think, the best novel that Gaiman’s done. It borrows a character from American Gods - other than that the books aren’t really linked - and tells the story of a man discovering that his recently deceased father was really an African trickster god.
Like a lot of his work it’s at least partly a story about stories. It’s about a lot of other things too, but it’s hard to describe them without giving away too much. There’s a very child-like air about the book and even though it skirts fairly close to horror at times I think it should still appeal fair range of people. Go read the book now, you’ll feel better for it!
Since most of the Discworld books are an excuse to package real-world issues into a humorous context, a short way into this one it seemed like it was headed to be the obvious “terrorism response” episode. That’s pretty much what it actually turns out to be (including the associated racial and religious tensions) but thankfully the rest of the book is nowhere near as heavy-handed and clumsy as the beginning.
I think it’s quite interesting to note how many of the recent books in the series have followed the ‘City Watch’ characters. This is most likely because it’s the most appropriate branch for following current affairs, which seems to be a large part of what he’s writing about these days.
Basically, I’m sure you already know whether or not you’re going to get the book, so this review is pretty much redundant. It’s not the place to start if you’ve never read a Discworld book before, and if you’re still interested in the series, then you’re going to get this regardless.
A huge, sprawling book following a group of characters back and forwards across their intertwining lives, in an attempt to encapsulate 40-odd years of American history. It’s the ultimate case of the journey being more fun than the destination. Nothing is really resolved and there’s no real overarching plot as such. It feels sort of like dipping into the timestream and watching for a bit before tuning back out.
By-and-large, it’s fantastic, but lots of the dialogue had me squirming in frustration. In a similar way to lots of his other books, lots of the characters tend to sound the same, and talk in a really strange, stilted way to each other. Repeating sentence fragments back at each other endlessly, diving off on different topics and basically ignoring each other’s half of the conversation. You get the feeling that this is how Delillo and his friends talk to each other, but it’s so jarring in the book because no-one else on the planet speaks like that. Thankfully, these bits are mostly short enough that you can plough through them and get back to the good stuff.
Essentially a guided tour the singularity. The story shows snapshots of the same characters as computational complexity in the universe increases massively over a short space of time, standard forms of value and worth break down totally, and humans meet an unimaginably advanced set of intelligences. Stylistically there’s a neat trick of showing branching versions of the same characters which have versions themselves at the very cutting edge and and also being left behind by the wave.
Early parts of the book feel a little awkward due to trying to describe the near future with minor advances to current-day tech by adding Californian hipster naming conventions to everything (one of the things that can be a bit jarring about Cory Doctorow’s stories too,) but this fades as the book progresses, so it’s easier to immerse yourself in the story.
Also, it shows exactly why you should never trust a cat.
The Clock of the Long Now - Stewart Brand
This is essentially another book about the accelerating future, only non-fiction this time. It describes the aims of the Long Now Foundation, who are trying to build a clock which will keep time for the next 10,000 years (roughly equal to the current span of human history.)
It’s largely concerned with the fact that the future seems to be shrinking. Early Science-fiction novels wondered what would happen in the year 2000, while current ones tend to only be looking a few years ahead. It describes the ways that societies need to ‘think’ at various different paces at various different levels in order to allow innovation but also maintain stability. The hope is basically that if people are given a tangible object which makes them think about the consequences of their actions over a much longer-than-normal time scale, then it will benefit future generations and reverse the arguably increasing sense of isolationism in the world.
Great stuff, and you can find loads more about the topic using the Long Now website as a jumping-off point.