I had heard for many years about how good Wool was and how I should give it a try. I finally bought a copy and it sat unread on my shelf for another couple of years until I made it far enough into my to-read list to start it. And the praise was right, it didn't disappoint. The world was interesting, the characters were interesting, and the division of it into shorter, smaller books made it more digestible and made the viewpoint transitions flow well.
Unfortunately, the second book, Shift, really went downhill. It continued almost none of the threads from the first and much of it is an extended flashback. This really crystallized for me when I was reading Descender but if a series needs an extended flashback season/volume/book then I think there was something wrong with the world building and plot at the beginning. There's some interesting stuff in here, and some questions get answered, but it doesn't seem worth the effort to read the thing.
However, Dust, brings the series to a roaring finish and is much closer to the quality of the first book than the second. If I could go back in time but was only limited to conveying information to myself about what I thought about this book series, I'd recommend I skip the second book and just read the wikipedia summary and then go straight to book 3. (of course, I would probably ignore that advice because I'm a completionist). However, please don't let book 2 put you off, all the best parts of book 2 made it into book 3 along with the enjoyable parts of book 1.
Lastly, for a donation to charity, I got an advance reader copy of Howey's short story collection Machine Learning. This includes three short stories set in the Wool Universe and they are the reason I'm writing this post. It was difficult to figure out where they are set in the timeline and when you should read them. I recommend treating them all as one story and absolutely not reading the last one before you finish Dust.
It is particularly difficult to find if there are any other stories in the Wool universe for two reasons. The first is that some people call it the Silo Series and others call it the Wool universe/series/trilogy. The other is that Howey has opened up his world to allow people to write and publish fan fiction in it under the Kindle Worlds banner which means that if you search for short stories you end up with a lot of things that may or may not be good but are definitely not by Howey.
Anyway, I'd recommend you read them in the order of Wool, Shift, Dust, and then the three short stories last. However, the books are divided into and were originally published as novellas and so if you were truly interested in reading them in chronological order you could read in the following order (ordered by the end point of the stories):
Shift: Legacy > In the Air > In the Mountains > Shift: Order > All of Wool > Shift: Pact > All of Dust > In the Woods.
Again, I don't recommend reading it this way (though I haven't tried) but it seems like it would be more of a slog going through most of what I liked less first before getting to the parts I enjoyed. That being said, perhaps reading it in this order would make the parts I didn't enjoy more enjoyable. If anyone ever reads it in this order (especially for a first time read) feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Friday, January 25, 2019
George Smiley books
I just completed a journey through all the George Smiley books by John le Carre. Overall, they were interesting reads and I would recommend everyone consider picking up one or two. Le Carre is very skilled at choosing words and, especially in the early ones, I was pleasantly surprised by his prowess.
Since there are 9(!) books now with the latest addition of The Legacy of Spies in 2017, I won't review them all in detail but there are a few tidbits I'll throw out there. Generally, the series follows the adventures of George Smiley, a member of MI6 during the cold war (though he retires almost every book and gets sucked back in). My favorite was probably The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, about a secret operation into East Berlin where the reader discovers more layers to the plot as the agent does. I think it is a well done story about the compromises that big government agencies feel that they have to make under pressure.
The one that I differed from the most from the general opinion in a negative way was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which is definitely the most popular. I don't know what's wrong with me but I could never really get into it. 80% of the book is one of the following: people remembering things, people talking to other people about things they remember, or people talking to other people about remembered conversations with still other people. I get that it is supposed to be a more reflective spy novel than James Bond or a traditional thriller but... it just never hooked me. In the introduction, le Carre says that he struggled a long time to make it a linear narrative but eventually gave up, choosing the current form instead. I think he might have been better off continuing to struggle.
The one that differed the most from the general opinion in a positive way was The Looking Glass War. It was the immediate follow up to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (though there are very few repeated characters). It is about a rival agency to Smiley's trying to gather information without any help from other agencies (the FBI and the CIA in The Looming Tower come to mind). The author says that he wrote it as a more realistic view into secret agencies after the previous book had filled everyone with more "romantic" notions.
I made a little table to track some of the similarities between the books:
Since there are 9(!) books now with the latest addition of The Legacy of Spies in 2017, I won't review them all in detail but there are a few tidbits I'll throw out there. Generally, the series follows the adventures of George Smiley, a member of MI6 during the cold war (though he retires almost every book and gets sucked back in). My favorite was probably The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, about a secret operation into East Berlin where the reader discovers more layers to the plot as the agent does. I think it is a well done story about the compromises that big government agencies feel that they have to make under pressure.
The one that I differed from the most from the general opinion in a negative way was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which is definitely the most popular. I don't know what's wrong with me but I could never really get into it. 80% of the book is one of the following: people remembering things, people talking to other people about things they remember, or people talking to other people about remembered conversations with still other people. I get that it is supposed to be a more reflective spy novel than James Bond or a traditional thriller but... it just never hooked me. In the introduction, le Carre says that he struggled a long time to make it a linear narrative but eventually gave up, choosing the current form instead. I think he might have been better off continuing to struggle.
The one that differed the most from the general opinion in a positive way was The Looking Glass War. It was the immediate follow up to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (though there are very few repeated characters). It is about a rival agency to Smiley's trying to gather information without any help from other agencies (the FBI and the CIA in The Looming Tower come to mind). The author says that he wrote it as a more realistic view into secret agencies after the previous book had filled everyone with more "romantic" notions.
I made a little table to track some of the similarities between the books:
| Book | Is George retired at the beginning? | Is George a main viewpoint character? | Subseries |
| Call for the Dead | No | Yes | The Mundt Trilogy |
| A Murder of Quality | Yes |
Yes
|
None, it is also skippable for both plot and characters |
| The Spy Who Came in from the Cold | No |
No
| The Mundt Trilogy |
| The Looking Glass War | No |
No
|
None |
| Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | Yes |
Yes
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| The Honorable Schoolboy | No |
No
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| Smiley's People | Yes |
Yes
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| The Secret Pilgrim | Yes |
No
|
None |
| A Legacy of Spies | Yes |
No
| The Mundt Trilogy |
As you can see, in the majority of the books, Smiley is retired from the service at the start of the story and also is not a main view point character. I have also broken with convention and declared that the the three books that most focus on the villain of Hans Dieter-Mundt are also their own trilogy. He probably has more page time in that trilogy than Karla does in his own trilogy.
If you are looking to get started, I would recommend at least the first two books in the Mundt trilogy as a jumping on point (the third one does spoil the big twist in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy so if you really love the work maybe stop and read that one before continuing on).
Programming note: As you can probably tell, I have moved away from reviewing every book I read here and are instead using it as a storage place for thoughts about literature that I can't find elsewhere and so am forced to produce. Happy reading!
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Revelation space
As you can see from my last post I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the Revelation Space series recently. I've liked Alastair Reynolds since House of Suns. I had heard that this was kind of his magnum opus but I had always been a little intimidated by the sheer number of pages involved. I finally decided to start last October... when I saw that, after years, he was writing a sequel to The Prefect which came out in January, so I decided to hold off for a little bit. Since there are 14 short stories and 5 novels, I'll do a series of micro reviews (in in-universe chronological order of course). Please see the above linked post for the collections where you can find the stories.
[I'll try to avoid character level spoilers but event level spoilers are going to be hard to avoid]
"Great Wall of Mars": This story is a great introduction to all the factions that are tearing apart the solar system at the beginning of the series. It really feels like you are in media res and there could easily be another story before this but Reynold's story telling is such that you can happily make do with what you have.
"Glacial": This one is basically a thought experiment/murder mystery with the characters from the previous story. Stories like this are basically why I read Alastair Reynolds. It has a totally unique idea and weaves it into an interesting story.
"Night Passage": A totally distinct set of characters with a little bit of a haunted house story. Again, Reynolds' understanding of astrophysics shines here as he does some things (believably) that I wouldn't have even thought of.
"A Spy in Europa": Reynolds' version of a spy thriller. It is an interesting idea but I think that it is less well executed than some of the others.
"Weather": One part love story, one part pirate story, one part mystery this story is less concerned with ideas (though it has several) and more with the characters. The relationships and interactions all feel very true to life.
The Prefect: This is definitely my favorite novel in the series. It shows what human culture could achieve with, as Reynolds describes it, "Democratic Anarchy". Everyone is voting all the time through implants in their skulls. This combines it with a noir detective thriller where the technology is not just a sideshow, but an integral part of the story.
"Open and Shut": Basically just a check in with the main characters of The Prefect in the aftermath of the story. If you've read the story, it is a nice stop over between it and the sequel but nothing special by itself.
Elysium Fire: The sequel to The Prefect, another detective story. This one isn't quite as good, but it is still very good while doing a great job building on the events of the story, showing how they affect our main characters and the world around them.
"Monkey Suit": A ship fleeing a disaster and our narrator has to go out in a refurbished spacesuit. It's an interesting story about what happens as we give all of our appliances even rudimentary personalities
"Dilation Sleep": To be honest, I barely remember this story. It's one of the earliest written stories in the series and it shows. It is basically an exploration of how wealthy can fly around at near the speed of light to avoid current problems.
Chasm City: This is Alastair Reynolds tries to write Phillip K. Dick. It feels a lot like Minority Report, Total Recall, or Paycheck. Lots of interesting things with memory and mistaken identity. It's an interesting story of how far the mighty can fall.
"Diamond Dogs": Alastair Reynolds does Saw or maybe just a puzzle room. Basically a story that asks how much it is worth sacrificing to achieve goals.
"Grafenwalder's Bestiary": This has similar themes to "Diamond Dogs" with people in the upper echelons competing to own the rarest animals. It's an interesting epilogue to both that story and "A Spy in Europa".
"Turquoise Days": Alastair Reynolds' take on a vastly different alien life than ours. It's an interesting idea about how much of our thought processes are recordable and what people would do with that capacity.
"Nightingale": This story covers the aftermath of the historical parts of Chasm City and is the closest we get to a true horror story (a room with walls of skin!). This story makes me wonder if Reynolds is a pessimist about war and the costs of peace.
Revelation Space: We made it, the "first" book in the series! This book won Reynolds a bunch of awards and it is easy to see why. It is jam packed with interesting ideas and characters. It ties together a bunch of threads and ideas that have been built up in the other stories, while still letting readers who started here be able to follow the action. It also does some interesting things jumping around in the timeline to make sure that both stories hit the climax at the same time.
"The Last Log of the Lachrimosa": A spooky story where lust for treasure gets the better of a crew. It does some interesting things with perspective though, to make a mystery within the story.
Redemption Ark: Hope you read "Great Wall of Mars"! Those characters make their appearance into the main storyline like a hammerblow. They are suddenly, and for the rest of the series, very important. Despite that, it's another really enjoyable book and has some of the best space battles of the series.
Absolution Gap: I know a lot of digital ink has been spilled over how this book is not as good as the others, and I fully respect those opinions and see where they are coming from. However, I really enjoyed this book. Once the plot finally gets going, which takes a while, it has a lot of interesting moral dilemmas for the characters.
"Galactic North": This story goes from near the beginning of the timeline to the very end concerning a cycle of revenge between two former friends. It has what I consider to be almost a Reynolds cliche which is two ships chasing each other at very near the speed of light for an extremely extended period of time (due to relativity). It is a nice little coda to the story, showing that humanity always finds a way to persevere.
Overall, I'd highly recommend the series. The quality is, of course, a little variable but it is a chock full of great ideas and fun characters.
[I'll try to avoid character level spoilers but event level spoilers are going to be hard to avoid]
"Great Wall of Mars": This story is a great introduction to all the factions that are tearing apart the solar system at the beginning of the series. It really feels like you are in media res and there could easily be another story before this but Reynold's story telling is such that you can happily make do with what you have.
"Glacial": This one is basically a thought experiment/murder mystery with the characters from the previous story. Stories like this are basically why I read Alastair Reynolds. It has a totally unique idea and weaves it into an interesting story.
"Night Passage": A totally distinct set of characters with a little bit of a haunted house story. Again, Reynolds' understanding of astrophysics shines here as he does some things (believably) that I wouldn't have even thought of.
"A Spy in Europa": Reynolds' version of a spy thriller. It is an interesting idea but I think that it is less well executed than some of the others.
"Weather": One part love story, one part pirate story, one part mystery this story is less concerned with ideas (though it has several) and more with the characters. The relationships and interactions all feel very true to life.
The Prefect: This is definitely my favorite novel in the series. It shows what human culture could achieve with, as Reynolds describes it, "Democratic Anarchy". Everyone is voting all the time through implants in their skulls. This combines it with a noir detective thriller where the technology is not just a sideshow, but an integral part of the story.
"Open and Shut": Basically just a check in with the main characters of The Prefect in the aftermath of the story. If you've read the story, it is a nice stop over between it and the sequel but nothing special by itself.
Elysium Fire: The sequel to The Prefect, another detective story. This one isn't quite as good, but it is still very good while doing a great job building on the events of the story, showing how they affect our main characters and the world around them.
"Monkey Suit": A ship fleeing a disaster and our narrator has to go out in a refurbished spacesuit. It's an interesting story about what happens as we give all of our appliances even rudimentary personalities
"Dilation Sleep": To be honest, I barely remember this story. It's one of the earliest written stories in the series and it shows. It is basically an exploration of how wealthy can fly around at near the speed of light to avoid current problems.
Chasm City: This is Alastair Reynolds tries to write Phillip K. Dick. It feels a lot like Minority Report, Total Recall, or Paycheck. Lots of interesting things with memory and mistaken identity. It's an interesting story of how far the mighty can fall.
"Diamond Dogs": Alastair Reynolds does Saw or maybe just a puzzle room. Basically a story that asks how much it is worth sacrificing to achieve goals.
"Grafenwalder's Bestiary": This has similar themes to "Diamond Dogs" with people in the upper echelons competing to own the rarest animals. It's an interesting epilogue to both that story and "A Spy in Europa".
"Turquoise Days": Alastair Reynolds' take on a vastly different alien life than ours. It's an interesting idea about how much of our thought processes are recordable and what people would do with that capacity.
"Nightingale": This story covers the aftermath of the historical parts of Chasm City and is the closest we get to a true horror story (a room with walls of skin!). This story makes me wonder if Reynolds is a pessimist about war and the costs of peace.
Revelation Space: We made it, the "first" book in the series! This book won Reynolds a bunch of awards and it is easy to see why. It is jam packed with interesting ideas and characters. It ties together a bunch of threads and ideas that have been built up in the other stories, while still letting readers who started here be able to follow the action. It also does some interesting things jumping around in the timeline to make sure that both stories hit the climax at the same time.
"The Last Log of the Lachrimosa": A spooky story where lust for treasure gets the better of a crew. It does some interesting things with perspective though, to make a mystery within the story.
Redemption Ark: Hope you read "Great Wall of Mars"! Those characters make their appearance into the main storyline like a hammerblow. They are suddenly, and for the rest of the series, very important. Despite that, it's another really enjoyable book and has some of the best space battles of the series.
Absolution Gap: I know a lot of digital ink has been spilled over how this book is not as good as the others, and I fully respect those opinions and see where they are coming from. However, I really enjoyed this book. Once the plot finally gets going, which takes a while, it has a lot of interesting moral dilemmas for the characters.
"Galactic North": This story goes from near the beginning of the timeline to the very end concerning a cycle of revenge between two former friends. It has what I consider to be almost a Reynolds cliche which is two ships chasing each other at very near the speed of light for an extremely extended period of time (due to relativity). It is a nice little coda to the story, showing that humanity always finds a way to persevere.
Overall, I'd highly recommend the series. The quality is, of course, a little variable but it is a chock full of great ideas and fun characters.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Revelation Space Timeline (Updated 1/2022)
I just finished my journey through all the published Revelation Space stories in (in-universe) chronological order (review of the series in my next post). I am big on that ordering; my Narnia set starts with The Magician's Nephew and, when Winds of Winter gets announced, I plan to do a reread using the interleaved chapters from A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons.
However, I found that the resources to help someone read Revelation Space in order are in somewhat short supply and I found the ones present to be lacking in various areas. Some of what I used you can find at the bottom.
Official Alastair Reynolds timeline - Doesn't have events from every story on it, however I consider all dates on it gospel for the purpose of making my own timeline
Neal Ulen's blog - Almost perfect but I dispute a few of his years and the ordering
Wikipedia's timeline - Missing several stories and some of the years definitely don't make sense given the events in the story. Primarily used to encourage me to make this.
One last thing, if you are not a completionist and want to know if any of these will help your understanding of the Inhibitor Trilogy (the main three books), I would say the top 5 things to read, in order of importance:
Some notes on the timeline:
(Minor) Spoilers:
[0]: Not many hints on when this takes place but after 2350 based on the AR timeline. The other websites use 2358 so I will go with that
[1]: The story explicitly starts "a century and a half" after The Eighty but the melding plague hasn't hit yet which doesn't work with the AR timeline. 2500 seems to be about as late as I can put it while still leaving the ending early enough. The ending year is again, about as late as I can put it. I would argue that textual evidence implies that it is after the end of Chasm City and hints in "Turquoise Days" imply that that story takes place decades later.
[2]: Clearly after the parts of Chasm City that take place on Sky's Edge. The story says there has been 250 years of war starting immediately after their arrival on Sky's Edge which the official timeline says happened in the 23rd century. Given people's memories and skills, I think this has to be at most 10 years after the end of the war. Since Khouri arrives on Yellowstone in 2524, and the war was still going when she left, this means the range of possible years of the story is 2510 to 2559 (260 + 2299)
[3]: I know that this one is out of place but I think that it is better read after Revelation Space when you know what the Inhibitors are and their history. The year is almost entirely conjecture, some point after 2510 and before 2600 but closer to 2510
However, I found that the resources to help someone read Revelation Space in order are in somewhat short supply and I found the ones present to be lacking in various areas. Some of what I used you can find at the bottom.
Official Alastair Reynolds timeline - Doesn't have events from every story on it, however I consider all dates on it gospel for the purpose of making my own timeline
Neal Ulen's blog - Almost perfect but I dispute a few of his years and the ordering
Wikipedia's timeline - Missing several stories and some of the years definitely don't make sense given the events in the story. Primarily used to encourage me to make this.
One last thing, if you are not a completionist and want to know if any of these will help your understanding of the Inhibitor Trilogy (the main three books), I would say the top 5 things to read, in order of importance:
- "Great Wall of Mars"
- "Galactic North"
- Chasm City
- "Glacial"
- "Turquoise Days"
To be clear, I don't believe these to necessarily be the best or most interesting of the stories below, just the ones that add the most depth to the main trilogy. Obviously, the main trilogy can be read without any support but I highly recommend at least reading "Great Wall of Mars" at some point before Redemption Ark because it helps add some development and backstory to the main characters of that book. (Also, don't read "Galactic North" before the main series, it spoils a lot of what happens).
Some notes on the timeline:
- If multiple stories cover the same stretch of time, I sort them by their end date
- I kept all the books together with the exception of Chasm City because I think it is better to read the prologue before the stories that take place concurrently with it (at the same time, I think reading the short stories wholly after Chasm City robs them of a little emotional impact)
- If my reason for choosing a year contains spoilers for other stories, I'll put it at the bottom so that you can use this as a resource without seeing spoilers.
- If a story has an epilogue that takes place long after the story, I won't consider that as part of when the story takes place unless it spoils other events
- The Prefect has been republished in some places as Aurora Rising.
- "Quoted text" denotes short stories and novellas, italics denotes full novels, blue denotes stories with characters from Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies (a subseries), and green denotes stories with characters from the Inhibitor Trilogy (the main series)
| Story | Year | Book that contains story | Explanation for year |
| "Great Wall of Mars" | 2205 | Galactic North or Beyond the Aquila Rift |
From AR timeline |
| "Glacial" | 2217 | Galactic North | From AR timeline |
| "Night Passage" | 2338 | Infinite Stars or Belladonna Nights | From AR timeline |
| "A Spy in Europa" | 2339 | Galactic North | Clearly shortly before event in AR Timeline |
| "Weather" | 2358 | Galactic North or Beyond the Aquila Rift |
See note [0] at bottom |
| The Prefect/Aurora Rising | 2427 | The Prefect | Explicitly says year in story |
| "Open and Shut" | 2428 | Gollancz or Belladonna Nights | Clearly shortly after The Prefect |
| Elysium Fire | 2429 | Elysium Fire | Stated it takes place two years after events in The Prefect |
| Chasm City Prologue | 2510 | Chasm City | From AR timeline (technically takes place in 2517 but almost exclusively describes events in 2510) |
| "Monkey Suit" | 2511 | Deep Navigation | Clearly shortly after event in AR Timeline |
| "Plague Music" | 2512 | Belladonna Nights | Clearly shortly after event in AR Timeline |
| "Dilation Sleep" | 2513 | Galactic North | Clearly shortly after event in AR Timeline |
| Chasm City | 2502-2524 | Chasm City | Explicitly says year in story |
| "Diamond Dogs" | 2500-2527 | Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days or Beyond the Aquila Rift | See note [1] at bottom |
| "Grafenwalder's Bestiary" | 2530 | Galactic North | Said to be "two centuries" after the events in "A Spy in Europa" and shortly after the events of "Diamond Dogs" |
| "Turquoise Days" | 2539-2541 | Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days | From AR timeline |
| "Nightingale" | 2545 | Galactic North | See note [2] at bottom |
| Revelation Space | 2524-2567 | Revelation Space | From AR timeline |
| "The Last Log of the Lachrimosa" | 2530 | Subterranean Press or Beyond the Aquila Rift |
See note [3] at bottom |
| Redemption Ark | 2605-51 | Redemption Ark | From AR timeline |
| Absolution Gap | 2615-2727 [4] | Absolution Gap | Explicitly says year in story |
| Inhibitor Phase | 2791-2858 | Inhibitor Phase | Explicitly says year in story |
| "Galactic North" | 2303-40000 | Galactic North | Explicitly says year in story |
(Minor) Spoilers:
[0]: Not many hints on when this takes place but after 2350 based on the AR timeline. The other websites use 2358 so I will go with that
[1]: The story explicitly starts "a century and a half" after The Eighty but the melding plague hasn't hit yet which doesn't work with the AR timeline. 2500 seems to be about as late as I can put it while still leaving the ending early enough. The ending year is again, about as late as I can put it. I would argue that textual evidence implies that it is after the end of Chasm City and hints in "Turquoise Days" imply that that story takes place decades later.
[2]: Clearly after the parts of Chasm City that take place on Sky's Edge. The story says there has been 250 years of war starting immediately after their arrival on Sky's Edge which the official timeline says happened in the 23rd century. Given people's memories and skills, I think this has to be at most 10 years after the end of the war. Since Khouri arrives on Yellowstone in 2524, and the war was still going when she left, this means the range of possible years of the story is 2510 to 2559 (260 + 2299)
[3]: I know that this one is out of place but I think that it is better read after Revelation Space when you know what the Inhibitors are and their history. The year is almost entirely conjecture, some point after 2510 and before 2600 but closer to 2510
[4] The prologue and epilogue of Absolution Gap take place in ~2950 and contain at least one character who is also present in Inhibitor Phase, spoiling their survival. However, Reynolds clearly made a choice to bookend Absolution Gap with this flashforward so I am hesitant to advise you to skip both until you finish Inhibitor Phase. Inhibitor Phase should definitely be read after the main body of Absolution Gap.
In addition, I came up with a dependency tree for how all the stories interact. I'll post it down here since it has minor spoilers.
In addition, I came up with a dependency tree for how all the stories interact. I'll post it down here since it has minor spoilers.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Angelmaker
After The Gone Away World took the spot for my favorite book read in 2014, I knew it was only a matter of time before I read the rest of the books by Nick Harkaway. Angelmaker is in no way related to the The Gone Away World but it is absolutely its spiritual successor.
Angelmaker is to thriller detective stories what The Gone Away World was to post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories. It takes a lot of the absurdist elements of his previous work, reins them in just a tiny, tiny bit, and casts them into a noir setting.
Angelmaker is to thriller detective stories what The Gone Away World was to post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories. It takes a lot of the absurdist elements of his previous work, reins them in just a tiny, tiny bit, and casts them into a noir setting.
Angelmaker takes a little bit to get going and its absurdism dulls the thriller elements a tad (a tradeoff well worth it in my opinion) but it absolutely has some great payoffs. Some fun moments include James Bond as an eighty year old woman, a heroic elderly pug, a clockmaker as the protagonist, and of course, a layered and thoroughly absurd conclusion.
When I finished it, I thought that it had perhaps a higher average quality throughout the book than The Gone Away World but lower highs but I also like sci-fi more than thrillers so someone with the reverse preferences might disagree.
Overall, I would give this book an 88%.
Monday, January 29, 2018
The Lucifer Effect
Since I was in high school, I have been a big fan of Phillip Zimbardo, his work with the Stanford Prison Experiment sounded so fascinating and troubling (despite replication issues etc). Therefore, his book, The Lucifer Effect, had been on my to read list for a while.
The majority of the book was a discussion of the aforementioned Stanford Prison Experiment. It goes into all the details about how even he, nominally a neutral observer, started to get sucked in to all the terrible things the students were doing to each other. As the general lesson of the experiment is that it doesn't matter what kind of people you have, if you put them into a bad situation, they will act badly, he spends a lot of time emphasizing how it was all random and anyone could have been on either side.
As someone who had read about the experiment somewhat extensively, this felt like preaching to the choir. Sure, it was interesting to get some intimate details about how the experiment worked, but I already got the core thesis and spending half of the book on this one thing felt like overkill.
The second large chunk of the book was on Abu Ghraib. The parallels to Zimbardo's experiment are obvious. So obvious, that was the context of most of the discussions I had heard about his work were about how it related to Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo spends time going into the history and actions of each soldier there and really makes you feel that it wasn't their fault, that it could have been you torturing those inmates if you had been there.
I'll be honest, I didn't finish this section. I skipped over some of the profiles because they seemed redundant given everything I already understood and believed. I get it, these kids were put in a bad situation. I get it, they could have been good kids if this hadn't ruined their lives. (Quick aside: neither this book nor I want to trivialize the horrors that happened in this prison. The American soldiers' lives may have been ruined but something far worse happened to the inmates). Maybe this section was more poignant when Abu Ghraib was younger but at 10 years past, I think I have seen and absorbed basically every take on Abu Ghraib before I read this.
The last section is the best section of the book and the most interesting to me. It is about how you can combat the titular Lucifer effect and learn how to be heroic in the situations presented in this book. Not to give too much away, but he founded a non-profit with the goal of spreading this idea called the Heroic Imagination Project.
I was sad that these very important ideas occupied such a small percentage of the book. I wish he would have spent more time on this rather than profiling every person charged at Abu Ghraib.
Overall, I would give this book an 81%.
The majority of the book was a discussion of the aforementioned Stanford Prison Experiment. It goes into all the details about how even he, nominally a neutral observer, started to get sucked in to all the terrible things the students were doing to each other. As the general lesson of the experiment is that it doesn't matter what kind of people you have, if you put them into a bad situation, they will act badly, he spends a lot of time emphasizing how it was all random and anyone could have been on either side.
As someone who had read about the experiment somewhat extensively, this felt like preaching to the choir. Sure, it was interesting to get some intimate details about how the experiment worked, but I already got the core thesis and spending half of the book on this one thing felt like overkill.
The second large chunk of the book was on Abu Ghraib. The parallels to Zimbardo's experiment are obvious. So obvious, that was the context of most of the discussions I had heard about his work were about how it related to Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo spends time going into the history and actions of each soldier there and really makes you feel that it wasn't their fault, that it could have been you torturing those inmates if you had been there.
I'll be honest, I didn't finish this section. I skipped over some of the profiles because they seemed redundant given everything I already understood and believed. I get it, these kids were put in a bad situation. I get it, they could have been good kids if this hadn't ruined their lives. (Quick aside: neither this book nor I want to trivialize the horrors that happened in this prison. The American soldiers' lives may have been ruined but something far worse happened to the inmates). Maybe this section was more poignant when Abu Ghraib was younger but at 10 years past, I think I have seen and absorbed basically every take on Abu Ghraib before I read this.
The last section is the best section of the book and the most interesting to me. It is about how you can combat the titular Lucifer effect and learn how to be heroic in the situations presented in this book. Not to give too much away, but he founded a non-profit with the goal of spreading this idea called the Heroic Imagination Project.
I was sad that these very important ideas occupied such a small percentage of the book. I wish he would have spent more time on this rather than profiling every person charged at Abu Ghraib.
Overall, I would give this book an 81%.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
The Phillip K. Dick Reader
The Phillip K. Dick Reader is a selection of 24 Phillip K. Dick stories. It collects mostly earlier stories from the mid 1950's with the exception of the inspiration for Total Recall (which was published in the 60's). As with many short story collections, the quality varies, especially for a collection early in an author's career.
All of the stories have the seed in an interesting idea. One that is particularly memorable to me is about aliens fishing for humans and what sort of lures they would use. Other ideas include marketing bomb shelters and robots that try to sell themselves, various post apocalyptic situations, and questioning mental states. A short story collection like this is a great way to experience the author's work because he had so many interesting and unique ideas, even if they weren't always executed perfectly.
My favorite story in the book is the basis for the movie Paycheck (which I didn't know until I started writing this blog post), which I haven't seen (and from the rotten tomatoes rating, maybe I shouldn't). It follows a man who has lost his memory and put himself in a perilous situation. However, he has mailed himself a few items which are all critical in the present time. It's a fun deduction game to determine how the pieces are going to be used to help the protagonist.
Overall, I would give this collection an 89%.
All of the stories have the seed in an interesting idea. One that is particularly memorable to me is about aliens fishing for humans and what sort of lures they would use. Other ideas include marketing bomb shelters and robots that try to sell themselves, various post apocalyptic situations, and questioning mental states. A short story collection like this is a great way to experience the author's work because he had so many interesting and unique ideas, even if they weren't always executed perfectly.
My favorite story in the book is the basis for the movie Paycheck (which I didn't know until I started writing this blog post), which I haven't seen (and from the rotten tomatoes rating, maybe I shouldn't). It follows a man who has lost his memory and put himself in a perilous situation. However, he has mailed himself a few items which are all critical in the present time. It's a fun deduction game to determine how the pieces are going to be used to help the protagonist.
Overall, I would give this collection an 89%.
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