beaconatnight's reviews
247 reviews

As you learn from its subtitle, this is the autobiography - and, as you will soon realize, also the diary - of the fictional Rabo Karabekian. In his younger years, Karabekian was an illustrator with close ties to some of the painters of the abstract expressionism movement, including Jackson Pollock and especially (the also fictional) Terry Kitchen. He was a soldier in WWII, in which he lost one of is eyes to a bomb. He had one big love and was married twice (in neither case to the before-mentioned big love).

But all this was very long ago. By the start of the book Karabekian is living in a big house and from the fortune his second wife left him after the passed away. The impetus to write the autobiography comes from a famous writer, who had just lost her husband and moves into the house immediately after Karabekian had met her on his beach.

The book is written in the belief that his entire life was a failure. He was never really loved, became estranged from his two children (in fact, he doesn't seem to know them at all), his painter-friends were mostly just suppliants and drinking buddies, and, most importantly, he didn't make really it as an artist. The only thing in which he had some sort of success was as an art collector, but this came about mostly by accident and he is hesitant to count this among his achievements.

So the book is written in this aloof and ironic style in which Karabekian portrays himself somewhat as a caricature that stumbles from one tragedy and ridicule to the next. This is certainly funny to read - not unlike Italo Calvino, Milan Kundera, Thomas Bernhard, or Umberto Eco -, but there is this subtle (or not so subtle) sadness and melancholy in his voice that makes this book quite beautiful at times. In fact, the way it comes together in the end almost brought tears to my eyes. Really, what a wonderful ending.

Rating: 3.5/5

'The Day of the Triffids' introduces a post-apocalyptic setting without much of an apocalypse coming beforehand. It is rather the result of different factors coming together. In the beginning there is some unpredicted spectacle in the sky. While certainly beautiful, like an event you should regret missing, a few days later the witnesses have to realize that its sight turned them blind. As most people around the globe saw it, this leaves a world of the blind.
Prior to this event, biological research domesticated a plant whose oil is quite valuable and which is resistant enough to be cultivated pretty much anywhere. These plants are the eponymous triffids. Not long and people start growing the plant pretty much anywhere, including private gardens and backyards. The people soon realize that it's a strange plant indeed, when it starts moving and the individuals also seem to communicate via some sort of drumming. More worrying, though, is the fact that this plant is armed with poisonous sting, something it uses in most effective ways. Finally, these things seem to be able to hear and learn! Nasty buggers, this.

This probably wouldn't have been much of a problem if people hadn't lost their sight. But now this really becomes a bit of a problem. The pandemic that soon infested the bigger cities certainly adds to the misery. Actually, it seems like the world order broke down pretty much immediately. Luckily, there are a few people that for various reasons hadn't seen what was going on in the sky, so they are still able to see. Among them is our protagonist and narrator Bill Masen.
Ironically, a confrontation with the triffids left Bill temporarily blind, so that he couldn't see when the event in the sky occurred. A couple of days later he wakes up in a hospital, and while he has regained his sight he walks around the London-area having a hard time finding anyone else who is able to see. It will be clear soon that what is left of humankind (at least in England) are small groups splattered here and there.

I think the overall theme of the story is how a situation like that would throw as back into more primitive forms of living, and that there is a good chance that it would be self-inflicted. Honestly, I thought the many mono- and dialogues on how to rebuild society after a catastrophe like this were quite exciting. How in some way the knowledge is still there, but there are not enough people there who are actually able to apply it, since they are not able to see, they don't have the means to apply it, or (for most people) who don't even have it in their heads. In fact, knowing that nature will reclaim even more of what is left of civilization, primitivization (the reversal of modernization) will continue to advance before we find our feet again.
There was also a strong motif of moral relativism. There were people in the story championing the idea that the principles that so far guided our lives are no longer applicable in the new situation, making it necessary to find a new moral footing. Interestingly, the book seems to make a case that in a setting like this only religious radicals seem to be able to uphold an ideal of absolute principles. These ideas are particularly interesting in the ethical decisions our hero finds himself confronted with: there seems to be little chance of survival if the people who are still able to see are taking care of all the blind; in some way it seems to be imperative to increase mankind's chances by... well, by looking after yourself. For many people (who were educated in the old world) this obviously won't be easy: it seems to take a strong character to leave other people to die, and confronted with this Bill isn't able to do what might be "the right thing to do".

The book reads a bit old-fashioned at times (comparable maybe to 'The War of the Worlds'), and I didn't think the conflict of mankind against the triffids, or of men against men, was particularly exciting. But there are so many strong themes that to me this really is among the true classics of the genre.

Rating: 3.5/5

Wow, what the heck was this? So, there was this planet, very far into the future, which is mostly like Australia is today. Except that there was some sort of disease which befalls sheep and from which a drug can be produced whose consumption gives you immortality. Since they are the sole producers of this drug, the Australians are now the richest people in the universe. Oh, and they are also able to communicate telepathically. Except for some people, who are killed off for that shortcoming (as a measure of population control).
One of these "freaks" is Rod, the 151st (or so) descendant of one of the earliest farmers on the planet. Because he belongs to this traditional family he gets four chances at the "trial" that determines if he lives or dies, and on his last trial the judges vote in his favor. Also, there is this old rival who, like him, is also a freak, even though in a different respect: he cannot use the drug, so he is granted only a comparatively short life. For some reason he hates Rod for that and is determined to kill him. How do deal with this situation? Well, it would be easy to just leave the planet for a while and come back after his nemesis died; but this certainly isn't the novel's style. Instead Rod used his computer... to buy Earth? Yeah, this seriously is what happens. On the first couple of pages or so.

Compared to the sheer insanity of the setting, the plot itself comes along a bit dull. It becomes necessary for Rod to go to Earth, but to the reader, as well as to Rod himself, it's not really transparent why. The narration continues to convey a lot of information as to what is happening around their trip to Earth, but there is no impetus to Rod's adventure that is his own. In fact, not even with his big universe-shattering purchase of mankind's home planet he has much to say in the matter. Even when at a later point there are things that he would like to do, other people talk him out of it. So, things rather just happen to him, and this certainly contributes to the feeling that the plot rather drags along.
There is a cool twist to this, though. At about the halfway point there is an event that makes him reflect on his desires and ambitions and from which he returns by taking control of his life. Actually, the question of what makes you a person functions as something like an arc throughout the book, so that I felt that this turn was quite powerful.

What I loved about the book was the very lyrical style of writing. I guess print science-fiction isn't exactly popular for being exciting aesthetically (completely opposed to the medium of film, where you have the likes of "Blade Runner 2049", "2001", or "Gravity"), but 'Norstrilia' is genuinely beautiful at times. There are quite a few poems in there that are not only wonderfully written (are they written by Smith himself?), but which also add a depth to certain scenes and characters.

I cannot really say that I loved the book, though I feel like I should. I have to admit that I would have preferred a more conventional development of the plot, at least at times. But it's really a quite unique experience, and I would expect that many people would be all over this.

Rating: 3.5/5

After my recent venture into the world of Heinlein left me feeling quite underwhelmed, Arthur C. Clarke certainly delivers. In its 250 pages Childhood's End is packed with interesting ideas and it's amazing how well everything comes together in the end. Layer by layer of revelation the reader discovers what is really going on. And all of this while being a book that is so very easy too get into.

The novel begins with an Alien race, the Overlords, arriving on Earth (right when the US and Russia having their Space Race, both being on the brink of starting their first shuttle). Technologically way more advanced (the earthlings soon have to realize that even the attempt to start war is futile), the Overlords are taking control of the planet. However, this is only for the better, since hard word, disease, war, and all the other hardships of mankind soon are relics of the past. If there is one negative side-effect, then it's only that this new utopia does stifle men's scientific and artistic ambitions. Why bother discovering things, if everything that we could hope to find had been found by our new masters a very long time ago? And isn't strife the main impetus for being creative? So with the arrival of the Overlords, human evolution seems to a halt.

I thought it was quite interesting how the story was told. No character stays with you for long, but you learn enough of them to care, especially since they pursue the same questions that you are asking yourself. What do the Overlords look like? What is their agenda, why did they come to Earth? Where are they from? And there are certain events that certainly need explanation, and I love that the novel doesn't shy away from actually giving all the answers.

Actually, I thought that the ending was quite similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, at least in so far that the human race is about to get integrated into the community of way more powerful beings. I have to admit that at first I wasn't overly impressed by this dawn of homo superior turn of events. However, it was certainly made way more interesting by the twist that the Overlords themselves are not among the beings whose evolutionary purpose lies in joining this collective mind. I also quite liked how this moment of the plot was introduced by involvement with the occult (well, telepathy mainly).

I find it hard to define this book. It certainly has the eerie atmosphere of a Gothic horror novel and there is a certain tension in the air; in fact, at one point I wondered what the girls are if they aren't werewolves and at another point I assumed that the narrator might have been be dead all along. There is this crime that casts a shadow over the entire book; but solving who did it seems to be only a minor concern of the story. Actually, with all the morbid mental imagery it probably won't take the reader long to identify the culprit.

What I very much liked was how alive the world felt - this tiny world to which the girls withdrew. The strained relation to the villagers, the believes of magic and thoughts of dirtiness and cleanliness, their ideas of happiness and constancy. I also quite liked how a faint longing for change is introduced, a development that culminates in the almost destruction of their world.

This collects the first six issues of Matt Fraction's run of 'Thor'. Fraction is obviously among the most celebrated writers in comics right now (and I seriously need to pick up 'Sex Criminals'). So far 'Hawkeye' is the only story of his that I've read (at least the first two or three TPB), and (shameful confession) it didn't click this much with me (though I certainly liked it). I feel somewhat similar about the 'The Galactus Seed'-arc.

This is set after the 'Fear Itself'-crossover (also written by Fraction, but of which I don't know much) and the Asgardians now reside on Earth, close to a town called Broxton. The people there feel quite uneasy with the Gods around, and led by a priest (who actually is written quite interestingly) petition against their settling there. In the beginning, Odin sends Thor to collect some powerful thingy (a MacGuffin if ever there was one), and Galactus wants that thing. Even though it would satisfy his hunger for pretty much all eternity (stopping his quest of devouring planets for good), Odin refuses his request (for... reasons).

These things in place, the story amounts to not much more than one issues-spanning fight of Odin and Thor vs. Galactus and Silver Surfer. However, it's certainly among the more inspired (well, not entirely dull) way of clashing big names, and Olivier Coipel did some great job on the artwork. What certainly added to my enjoyment of this story was the kid-version of Loki, who's actually a bit of a hero here, getting Thor (whose somewhat stricken) off the hook in one of the central scenes. Actually, I vaguely remember reading Kieron Gillen's take on the character, which I liked quite a lot. This one certainly isn't amazing or anything, but fun read for sure.

Frankly, this was a huge disappointment. I think that one aim of science fiction is to develop new ideas and to flesh out familiar ideas by exploring them in unfamiliar settings, and in this respect the book certainly succeeds: the perils of ethnocentrism in interplanetary (and interspecies) communication, polyamory and new understandings of partnership and marriage, Fair Witnesses that report events exactly as they occurred to their senses (without giving their interpretations), and the means of contributing to a better world - this book has great ideas and motives in abundance.

I somewhat liked were to plot went towards the end. Everything became way more structured and I was more able to grasp what was going on in earlier parts. However, I think the story would have worked better as a short story (I read that the most popular version of the book is heavily abridged; I doubt that I would want to read the intended version). There are many scenes that drag on and on and of which I'm really not sure what their function in the greater narrative was. Is this supposed to be funny? This really escaped me to be honest.

Unfortunately, what is worse is that the book feels so dated that it was very difficult for me to actually like it at all. I guess you could see past the occasional faux pas (Indians and black people as being closer to Cannibalism? the Muslim as being the weirdest among the weird religious people?), but old man's jokes about the relationship of men and women on about every single page? That was really too much for me. Heinlein doesn't seem to think that a woman has any existence independently of men; in fact, most relationships in the book were more similar to master-slave-relations rather than a relation between autonomous persons. At one point of the book a main protagonist says something among the lines of "In matters of taste you should be able to look past your education and upbringing granting other people their way of living", but this certainly doesn't apply to moral matters of justice and equality. I see that today there is some headwind against unconditionally accepting Heinlein's status among one of the three or four greats. But maybe people should be even more outspoken about this.

I'm not sure if it's due mostly to Rieu's translation (I had my problems getting into Voß's popular German translation), but in this edition the story felt so fresh. Like some modern fantasy book (though some scenes might feel familiar, d'oh). In fact, for the most part it was a real page-turner for me.

This is less a biography than an introduction to Einstein's thinking. I felt that it really hit the mark of being informative without overwhelming the uninitiated. Obviously, Einstein must have been a very interesting character, and anecdotes (some amusing, some more serious) are used to lighten up the more theoretical focus. In fact, while I certainly would be lying if I said I understood everything, this was pretty easy to read through.

After an Introduction - whose purpose within the rest of the book escapes me, as I have to admit - the book is structured according to the three principal fields to which Einstein made his main contributions, i.e. special relativity, general relativity, and quantum theory. My knowledge of physics (or the natural sciences in general, for that matter) is very limited, so most of the principles discussed here were new to me. Sure, some things belong to the stock-in-trade of science-fiction, but it still was a very exciting book for me to see the ideas developed in a more systematic, and historically structured, way.

Actually, it's not only about mind-bending ideas such as gravitation influencing light (and in this way bending space and slowing-down time); I was surprised to find many interesting contributions to the philosophy of science. In fact, especially in the years leading to the special theory of relativity, Einstein's unique feature seems to have been that he did conceptual work rather than conducting experiments. His use of thought-experiments certainly must feel more familiar to modern (analytical) philosophers than to scientists. So, a priori thinking might lead to better understanding of the empirical world after all. Moreover, the ideas on the role of observable properties and the soundness of non-observable theoretical entities (such as atoms) goes to the heart of my philosophical interests.

I was also quite impressed about Einstein as a person. I love to think that there really was this unseriousness and cynicism to his social demeanor, with no regard for authority and social standing, talking the same way to everyone. Also, you cannot but admire those starving artists who live their "normal lives" in day-time (working a full-time job in a patent-office, in Einstein's case) and investing all their energy to self-set goals and ideas at night. Incidentally, I remember that in primary school already kids were pointing out that even Einstein wasn't that good at math in school - I was surprised to find that there actually was some truth to it. At the university he was a middling student and pursued mathematics only so far as it really seemed necessary. So, his more conceptual musings are seldom accompanied by heavy-duty formulae.

The quote that maybe impressed me the most, and that maybe casts a negative light on this somewhat voyeuristic last paragraph, came near the end of the book: "Because of a peculiar popularity which I have acquired, anything I do is likely to develop into a ridiculous comedy." (in a letter to the Queen of Belgium) Oh, and it turns out that he actually did say this thing about the dice and of God not throwing it.

Rating: 4/5

I've seen this being promoted as "Harry Potter in space", so at first I was slightly disappointed that there wasn't more world-building to it. However, the book gets better and better the further you progress, culminating in a spectacular ending.

The story focuses on a little boy, Ender, who the government picks for a program that prepares children to become military leaders in the upcoming battle against an alien invader. Ender seems particularly promising, so soon a lot of hope is invested in him. This hope stems from Ender's impressive skills in the battle games that form the center of the children's military education. Along the way, Ender has to overcome the usual challenges of bullying and pressure, made much more urgent and dangerous by being used by his superiors as a means to form the character they need.

The game battles are just awesome. To teams fight against each other in a room of null gravity, with futuristic firearms that freeze the body parts were you hit. I loved how much strategy there was to it. There are stars spread out the battlefield, different ways to win the game, you have to learn how to move through the environment effectively, the advantages and disadvantages of formations and patterns, how to spin, in what pose to approach the enemy, freezing your own body parts strategically. And there is this constant pressure of a ladder on which the teams rank, including individual statistics of all players.

What was really cool about this was the different ways of thinking that the game requires - proprioception, as this way of seeing your environment is called (as I just learned from Stephen Baxter's World Engines: Destroyer). We are used to conceptualize the space around us in egocentric terms while the axes stay mostly fixed. In null gravity, though, you constantly have to reorient yourself, finding new ways to localize objects and to think about your position and directions. As one of the first boys, Ender is able to use these factors to gain advantages in the battles.

There are other great ideas in there, too. Like the video games that the children play in their computers individually and that are to support their character-building (very similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age). I also loved how the children constantly had to acquire new skills and to find ways to effectively teach each other. Also some ethical questions are interwoven into the plot quite elegantly, all surrounding the basic idea if it's acceptable to use someone (a child moreover) as a mere tool, not consider him as (or allowing him to be) a person in himself.