Sep 14 2014

Lock In by John Scalzi

“Lock In,” while still well within the realm of Science Fiction, struck me as being a little bit off the beaten path for John Scalzi. In addition to the SF elements there was also some direct discussion of physical disability and how society deals with it, and a refreshing dollop of police procedural to make it all hang together.

The physical disability is that of the phenomenon known as Locked-In Syndrome. It generally occurs when someone has a very particular type of stroke that leaves all of the voluntary muscles completely paralyzed, but the mind unaffected. To get an idea of what life is like for these people, an excellent book to read is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was written by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby after he suffered such a stroke, and then Locked-In Syndrome.

Here’s where the Science Fiction bit of the book enters. A disease strikes the world that leaves a multitude of people with Locked-In Syndrome (called Haden’s Syndrome in the book), and some very interesting ways of getting these people active again in the outside world. There’s the ability to ride someone’s mind in a way, seeing through their eyes, and using their body, and there are also metal bodies that can be controlled with the mind alone, allowing the sufferer of Haden’s Syndrome to have complete control of themselves. (Mecha! my mind gleefully exclaimed, but no, not quite.) Scalzi glides a bit over how all this works so well, with neural networks and major brain modifications and such, but then this isn’t hard Science Fiction and I’m fine with that. It wasn’t egregiously unbelievable by any means; my suspension of disbelief worked perfectly well while I read the book.

The political and police procedural bit comes in with a character named Chris Shane who has Haden’s Syndrome and is also a newly minted FBI agent. Add a change to the Federal laws about how people with Haden’s Syndrome are to be treated and assisted by the government, and a truly unscrupulous business tycoon, and you suddenly have an action-packed story.

I enjoyed Lock In. I always enjoy John Scalzi’s books. He writes entertaining Science Fiction that occasionally forays into the thought-provoking but mostly stays solidly in the that-was-a-well-spent-two-hours category. Was Lock In the kind of book where I end up saving off all sorts of quotes and pondering something new to me for a while? Nah. But it was time well-spent for reading before bed and enjoying myself.

I did come away with one quote that I had marked, and I’ll place it here before ending this review.

“Making people change because you can’t deal with who they are isn’t how it’s supposed to be done. What needs to be done is for people to pull their heads out of their asses.”

Indeed, Mr. Scalzi, indeed.

4-stars

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/14/lock-in-by-john-scalzi/

Sep 12 2014

The Chronicles of the Black Company by Glenn Cook

“The Chronicles of the Black Company ” is a dark epic fantasy by Glenn Cook. It depicts the travels of the Black Company a band of ruthless mercenaries as they switch from side to side. It is told in the voice of the Company’s surgeon and chronicler who’s fantasies about the ruling lady take him and the company on a wild ride.

While initially disappointing that the character development did not include any back stories, it became clear that this was intentional to force you to see these mercenaries as who they are and who they become.

What was most enjoyable was it showcased fantasy from the perspective of the soldier on the ground. As with most epic fantasies the perspective is from the ruling class, however the Chronicles showcase the grunt point of view which is a refreshing change.

“The Chronicles of The Black Company” is a recommend read if you want to get your gritty fantasy fix while waiting for the next installment of “A Song of Fire and Ice”

One side note is this series has a companion series called the “Books of the South” while a good read it lost some of rawness of the original.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/12/the-chronicles-of-the-black-company-by-glenn-cook/

Sep 12 2014

Face in the Crowd

Just over a year ago now, I made my first trip to the United States of America. As I was heading to the East Coast, I had the ‘joy’ of an eight hour layover at LAX. As I wandered around the airport, looking at the shops, grabbing some food I noticed there was a lot of people of colour moving around me, doing the same ‘wasting time at an airport’ type of things. There seemed to be a higher ratio of black faces than I had expected. I assumed they were African American, but at the same time it’s a busy international airport so there could have been a vast diversity in country of origin. I momentarily wondered where everyone was heading, and then focused back on not getting lost. A few days later, I came to realise that the ratio wasn’t skewered by it being an international airport. American society was far more ethnically diverse than I had pictured.

Before this trip my understanding of American society had mostly come from media portrayals. News reports, television programmes, and the occasional movie was my main access to what the country looked like, the cultures, the cities, the structures. As someone who works and studies in areas of social justice and constructions of knowledge, I have always made an effort to consider the ways we represent people and ideas. How media (re)produces constructions of ethnicity, gender, sexuality etc. Do we only ever see black men portrayed as angry, violent criminals? Is the homosexual man only ever seen as effeminate and promiscuous? And while I work, both professional and personally to challenge the dominant constructions and open up a greater range of possibilities, this trip to America made me realise a big part of the picture I had no previous awareness of.

There have been shows I’ve watched and loved that have had no black characters. Some shows may include a character of colour but then the ratio of often very high. Criminal Minds for example has one African American character and six European American characters. I had heard of the term ‘token black’ before, but always thought of it more in terms of identity construction, rather than a simply numbers game. And often this one character of colour is supposed to stand in for all non-Caucasian people. The one African-American actor is there to show diversity, as if his face will be a representation, a connection for everyone else, for the African-American women, for the Asian men and women, for the Hispanic women and men, those from South Asia, from Western Asia, for those Indigenous to the land. How can you complain you aren’t represented, see we have one face that is of colour.

Hiring actors that bring a diversity of ethnicities to the programme is good. Writing characters that explore those ethnicities would be even better.   But on an even simpler level, require the extras, the people you hire to fill the background, to have that range. I have watched a show set in DC, a city with a diverse population, and yet never once saw anything but a Caucasian face, not one of the actors, nor one person in the background was anything but Western European looking.

As a foreigner coming for a holiday, the lack of diverse representation was interesting and noteworthy. It stayed with me for months. But I can only imagine what it must be like to never see a reflection of yourself in shows set in your city, in your country. I imagine spending my free time watching television and never seeing a female face. How limiting that would feel, how separate I would feel from the world’s portrayed in my entertainment, in my media. If the only time I saw a female face was when there was a report of some violent crime, what would I see as my future.

There is an insidious nature to this. The lack of representation becomes common, expected. Damn media, and shrugged off. But eventually common comes to mean normal and true. The lack of representation becomes an accurate portrayal. I recently watched a couple of seasons of Arrow. In the first season roughly half the characters were of colour. These were regular characters, either in main roles or recurring supportive ones. And much to my chagrin, my first reaction was to be surprised they used so many non-Europeans. In the year that I had left America and once again only been immersed in television programmes, I had forgotten that there is a higher ratio of ethnic diversity that portrayed. I had returned to believing one or two people that didn’t look like me was the norm. And I do wonder why in season two, that diversity in Arrow was cut back. Is it blatant racism that restricts the diversity, or a pervasive insidious version that unless challenged is constantly creating a world where all but a few look Caucasian.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/12/face-in-the-crowd/

Sep 11 2014

Rome and Italy by Livy

Mostly this is a record of Rome’s interminable wars with the Samnites. War is hardly a trivial event, but Rome fought so many wars during this period that reading about one battle after another becomes wearying. The most interesting and unusual thing that happened during this period was that a Vestal Virgin violated her vow of chastity and was buried alive as a punishment. Other than that and a few plagues, this was mostly an endless catalogue of battles and was rather boring.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/11/rome-and-italy-by-livy/

Sep 11 2014

White Paper Review – Pew Research Center: Younger Americans and Public Libraries

The Pew Research Center has released an interesting white paper named Younger Americans and Public Libraries: How those under 30 engage with libraries and think about libraries’ role in their lives and communities, concerning Millennials and their reading habits. Contrary to what some might expect, the results are not all doom and gloom.

The researchers ended up dividing Millennials into three distinct age groups:

There are actually three different “generations” of younger Americans with distinct book reading habits, library usage patterns, and attitudes about libraries. One “generation” is comprised of high schoolers (ages 16-17); another is college-aged (18-24), though many do not attend college; and a third generation is 25-29.

I won’t fully quote all of the interesting tidbits that the researchers came across, but I will put a few of the finding headings here to pique your interest.

  • Millennials’ lives are full of technology, but they are more likely than their elders to say that important information is not available on the internet.


  • Millennials are quite similar to their elders when it comes to the amount of book reading they do, but young adults are more likely to have read a book in the past 12 months.


  • As a group, Millennials are as likely as older adults to have used a library in the past 12 months, and more likely to have used a library website.

    • It’s not a long read, and if you enjoy books and think reading is important, then it’s something you’ll want to take the time to check out. No pun intended.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/11/white-paper-review-pew-research-center-younger-americans-and-public-libraries/

    Sep 02 2014

    The Spanish Civil War by Stanley Payne

    All civil wars and revolutions are confused in their narrative accounts, but the Spanish Civil War is even more confusing than the French Revolution. Who, exactly, was rebelling against whom? The Leftists were supposedly the “revolutionaries,” but they actually supported the Republic. Franco’s Nationalists were the “counterrevolutionaries,” but they were dedicated to overthrowing the Republic. Throw in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and George Orwell, and you have quite a cauldron of conflicting parties. This books was heavy on facts and details but failed to give a coherent narrative rendering of this chaotic event. The significance of the war is still debated: was it the opening salvo of World War II? Was it the beginning of the Cold War? Was it the merely the culmination of the long festering tension between the forces of progress and reaction in Western Europe? And how does the war’s legacy play out in Spanish society today? This book is an introduction only.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/02/the-spanish-civil-war-by-stanley-payne/

    Sep 02 2014

    The Mission Song by John Le Carre

    In this book Le Carre succeeds in doing what he failed to do in Tinker Tailor: creating characters that the reader actually cares about, as a well as a plot involving a covert operation whose outcome is not merely a an academic move in a geopolitical chess game. I identify in some ways with the protagonist: he is biracial, good at languages, looking to make a difference, and concerned about his soul. The ending is pretty much what had to happen given that the arena for the covert operation is Africa and not Europe, but it still shocks one’s sensibilities and even provokes a bit of moral outrage. This book was a pleasure to read from beginning to end; Le Carre seems to have saved his best material for the post-Cold War era.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/02/the-mission-song-by-john-le-carre/

    Aug 25 2014

    The Secret History by Procopius

    Most later historians tend to dismiss Procopius’ account as grossly exaggerated, maintaining that Justinian and Theodora were just, able, and virtuous co-rulers. But if that is really the case, it is hard to see why he would have written this history, since it obviously posed great risk to himself. If Procopius can be believed, Justinian and Theodora were vicious, bloodthirsty, depraved, and greedy, and they were guilty of all kinds of sordid deeds and misrule during their co-reign. This hardly agrees with what I have heard from other sources, but the stories he reports do not sound fabricated. Yet I wonder if he merely had some personal axe to grind; it is hard to believe that the great legislator, builder, and administrator Justinian could have been such an immoral tyrant. I would like to know more about Procopius himself before I give his story too much credibility.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/08/25/the-secret-history-by-procopius/

    Aug 22 2014

    Misery by Stephen King

    I was familiar with the premise of this book before I started it, and it didn’t seem very interesting, but once I started it I was surprised by how engrossing the story was. In a way, this is King’s own story, the story of a writer whose formidable talent never fails him, not even during the greatest crisis of his life. Whatever his critics say, King isn’t writing for them or even for his fans, he is writing because he has to, because it’s what he does, and it’s what he would do if he were in Paul Sheldon’s place. In my more creative moments I fancy myself a writer, but I don’t have a fraction of the gift King was born with. Once again I bow to the master.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/08/22/misery-by-stephen-king/

    Aug 19 2014

    The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather

    This is a highly revisionist book that challenges the accepted conclusions, chiefly those of Gibbon, on why the Roman Empire fell. It was not, the author argues, the result of unchecked barbarian invasions, or the assimilation of disloyal barbarians within the Empire, or over-taxation, or Christian unworldliness, or political corruption, or moral decadence. The author asserts that in the end Rome’s imperial aggression led to over-extension and therefore, with poetic justice, led to its own downfall. Yet he demonstrates convincingly that even in the late fourth century the Empire was still a formidable world power that no barbarian tribe could hope to challenge, and there was no shortage of outstanding military leaders such as Constantine, Julian, Stilicho, and Aetius to defend the Empire against the encroachments of barbarians. Every generation of historians makes these kind of revisionist arguments, but this book is provocative and provides a fresh look at old data.

    Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/08/19/the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-by-peter-heather/