The Way: A Review of Greg Bear

All over the news is the talk  of asteroid mining in the very near future.  The CBC Saturday morning talk show is spending valuable air time to discuss how Canada can ensure that we as a mighty country can be one of the players in this new mining race. Although I find this fascinatingly improbable at this current time (How many of us have actually made it off planet? And of those where have they gone, the moon.  That is so 1960's already.) it does lend me the opportunity to introduce one of my favourite "asteroid" inspired SF novels. Asteroids play a major role in the SF diorama.  They can be hopeful, threatening, dominating, obscure, surreal, alienating and even sentient.  My favourites tend to be of the geod variety.  From the outside,  a large frozen mass of ice, rock and air.  From the inside, a cave of wonders with endless possibilities for survival and/or death. 

Eon, Greg Bear
To date I have yet to come across a more science laced, befuddling mind trip than Eon.  Eon, the first in The Way series is set in 2005.  The world is at the brink of WWW III when an object appears in the solar system from out of nowhere.  A team of Russian, Chinese and American scientists  begin to explore the Stone ( asteroid).  As the exploration widens it is discovered that the dimensions of the stone's exterior does not compensate for the vastness of it's 7 chambers.  What is found in those chambers I will let you discover on your own.  Trust me when I say this, do not check out wikepedia.  The plot is shamelessly laid out and to truly enjoy this book you should be as unaware of what lies in those chambers as possible.  

There isn't a book that I haven't enjoyed by Greg Bear. The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction considers him the best working writer of hard SF.  Eon, Eternity and Legacy contain some heady themes:  genetic engineering, post-symbolic communication, human augmentation to name a few.  I am not going to pretend, at times I had no idea what Bear was trying to describe.  That is the fun of hard SF, it  pushes you into thinking about new realities using mathematics and science.  Plus you end up feeling like a bad ass having been able to to make it to the end.  

Ruler of the Universe: A Review of The Sparrow

Jacket covers have been swirling through my mind over the past few days.   There are so many books that I have been dying to discuss. Now that I have initiated "Dune Girl's List of Hardcore, Slap You Off the Sofa SF Books", I really get to go there.  (Like you, I have no idea what I am referring to when I type "there".  The idea of a vaguely awesome, sparkly, ominous sounding place where all my wicked books reside really appeals to me.)  To be truthful, I am well aware of what the next theme and subsequent entries will be.  My brain decided and voilà, there it was. Brains are helpful that way.  They take over when you least expect it.

In an interview Mary Doria Russell was asked if science fiction is suited to exploring questions of religion, in the same sense that legends and folk tales do in other cultures? Here is her response,

...human beings have always told stories about alien beings, but in the past they were called angels and demons and elves and trolls. Folk tales and science fiction are often about what it means to be human in a large and terrifying and beautiful universe, so naturally they overlap a good deal. As for religion, well, the great monotheistic world religions address the same concern. And if God is real, and the ruler of the universe, then logically that sovereignty must extend to other worlds and their inhabitants. That's a perfect set up for SF.

Not surprising religion, and faith are consistent themes in SF.  Most to all SF books have dark shadows lurking in the plot lines with characters undergoing extreme emotional or physical crises.   Sure I admit that some of those crises are more ridiculous than terrifying;  The unfortunate whale in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams that plummets to its death, just as it realizes it is sentient is not only hilarious but rather sad.  That whale just got it, and then it was gone.  Sidebar:   If you haven't read (or better yet heard) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy then once again our blossoming friendship is on the line. You also have not lived.   Yes, you were just slapped.  

Then there are those books  that are straight up terrifying requiring some type of jeopardy

of faith to ground the crisis into a believable reality for the reader.  Even I, whose ability to suspend disbelief is abnormally high (I cried when I discovered that the Millennium Falcon was not a real ship.  It's not by the way.  Deal with it.) need some part of humanity to cling to when a SF story is truly alien. With this in mind let me introduce The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.   I once recommended this book to a friend not preparing him in any way for what he would be reading.  He no longer looks me in the eye.   It rather surprised me because of all the books I have read Children of God is the one that I continue to ponder on,  and cherish as if it was my own work.  These are not happy books but they are filled with beauty.  There is depth and eloquence in Russell's world that is so very near to our own but so very not.  Once read you will never truly leave these books behind.  

The Deep End

Sitting on my sofa, looking out onto a grey, wet spring day my mind wanders to all the stories I've read that sing to my imagination.    I have been toying with ideas of how to introduce some of my more hardcore Sf books.  And it came to me this morning, that these books that I  am finding the most challenging to recommend are also my most unique collection of books.  I always thought I was a character reader, having fallen in love countless times but in fact I am more in love with the stories swirling around these people.

 I am a sucker for a good old story, one that pulls me in and leaves me lonely once I've turned to the last page.  To me, a good book is marked by it's ability to force me to stop reading for a couple weeks.  I cannot just jump into a new book if the last effected me deeply.  Maybe this is why I reread so many of my books and more than once.  It doesn't matter to me that I know what is going to happen it is about being able to live again in those pages; feel what I felt during the first read.  

The first book to have this effect on me was Ronald Dahl's James and Giant Peach.  I remember exactly the library book shelf that I found this book on, even recalling the pure joy of discovering all the wonders within those pages.  In fact, it was through James and the Giant Peach that I discovered Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I have yet to meet anyone not smitten with that tale but for me I would hold hands with little James Henry Trotter over Charlie any day.  As with most great children's stories, James and Giant Peach has it's darkness to it.  James parents, dead thanks to a renegade rhino (it ate them!) is a sad, abused child living with his two awful aunts.  Luck would seem to fall upon James when he is given a bag of magical green-glowing crocodile tongues which if mixed with water and 10 hairs from his head will make him happy and provide him a  a life filled with adventure.  As with most wonderful things promised for sad little boys, fate takes a hand and those very crocodile tongues end up enriching a peach tree outside of his Aunts' house rather than himself.

I cannot tell you how amazing it was to be 8, and reading a book about a giant peach that is so big that a little boy can tunnel his way to the pit and then befriend the enlarged insects living in it.   The child-like amazement that strikes me every time I read a good story is really why I have this blog.  

Warning:  The books I am about to recommend in the next couple of posts are not for the faint of heart.  If you have an issue with aliens, spiders, time travel, folded space, and/or so much scientific jargon that you can gag on it, then these books are not for you.  And into the deep end we plunge!

A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge  

I am actually grinning ear to ear as I type the title out. I have been waiting impatiently to introduce this book to you all.  Of all the books I have read in the past 10 years it is this book that truly entertained me for the sheer ability to freak me into liking spiders.  That's right folks, the aliens in this book resemble arachnids, arachnids the size of people who live in a society similar to 20th century humanity.  Like all of the Vernor Vinge's books the scientific mumbo jumble is intense.  So not only have I introduced you to a book about spiders but a book that falls under the hard SF category.