A Progressive on the Prairie » sci-fi

Book Review: Ephemera by Jeffery M. Anderson

Tim — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:09:49 +0000

Although the seeds were planted earlier, dystopian literature has flourished in 20th century nutrients — the rise of fascism, ideological conflicts, global industrialization, and seemingly limitless advances in technology. Pessimism isn’t a prerequisite to realize there is a potentially detrimental synergy in the coalescence of these changes. It undoubtedly provides plenty of opportunity to envision a future that may be more hellish than heavenly.

It’s from ground like this that an America a couple decades from now arises in Jeffery M. Anderson’s Ephemera. Having gone through recession, depression, collapse of its monetary system, and reorganization of its political structure, this is a society where people focus — or are led to focus — on the ephemera of life. City streets are flooded with digital advertisements, whether cast on the sidewalk, on air blimps or audio directed at passers-by. People can earn merchandise or credits, the basis of the monetary system, by working specific products into conversations with others. Urbanites walk down the street wearing “Web shades,” glasses with one opaque lens displaying a satellite feed to the Internet “for endless entertainment in the seconds between life’s other entertainments.” News reports occasionally mention substantive items, such as the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but even they fall by the wayside for important events such as the finals of of America’s Toughest Wrestler.

Government, meanwhile, reflects (or creates) society. The country’s first female president is little more than a figurehead, elected to office by reflecting and massaging public opinion. Real power rests in the hands of Secretary of Commerce Linus Stillman, who has been a mover and shaker in government since Ronald Reagan’s second term. The cabinet includes a Secretary of Advertising, tasked with representing the interests of advertising companies, and a Secretary of Media, who represents the interests of the country’s two media conglomerates. Media and advertising are the opiates of the masses.

Anderson’s protagonist is Nester Cab, a 38-year-old writer for The Reviewer’s Review. Rather than review movies, books and music, the magazine reviews those who review such items. As unlikely a candidate as he might be, Cab embarks on a search for a soldier after a mysterious message is left at his desk. Cab’s search brings him in contact with the Neo-Luddite Army, a grassroots protest group that seems to be growing more violent. The NLA essentially kidnaps Cab to convince him of the truth of its evidence of massive government conspiracies. The NLA’s leader clearly has psychological problems, adding to Cab’s concern over whether he can believe the organization. Yet NLA’s leader and members, Stillman’s supporters or Aida, Cab’s closest friend, never really reached the level of fully realized characters. Cab and Stillman are by far the most developed characters and, oddly, the antagonist, Stillman, is easier to grasp than Cab.

As its name indicates, the NLA is wary of the mind-numbing effects of certain technology but its true ideological roots seem akin to the Tea Party. “We were never meant to have full-time, ever-growing bureaucracy whose sole intent is to constantly crank out new limits on us,” one NLA member tells Cab. Likewise, the NLA’s almost inadvertent leader says it “uncovered the modern patriots. Conversations evolved from excessive property taxes to reclaiming the federal government.” Although far from as politically motivated or direct, the political foundations of the NLA and the government-driven conspiracies means Ephemera may bring last year’s novel by Glenn Beck to the mind of somewhat politically attuned readers.

Anderson, though, deserves credit for not expressly espousing or endorsing any particular political viewpoint. The dystopia is not shaped by aspects of society that concern only one end of the political spectrum. You can find elements that concern each side and, in fact, the book may suggest that, at times, the extreme ends are more closely aligned than they might think. Somewhat inconsistent pacing keeps Ephemera from a page-turning thriller. Still, Anderson hides the ball well enough that the reader remains intrigued about exactly what Stillman has up his sleeve and the purpose of some of the deceptions the NLA uncovered. This helps maintain the tension between who is wearing the white hats and who the black hats. Both sides are sufficiently gray throughout the novel, although when the ultimate plot is unveiled it is akin to that of a James Bond villain and one wonders about just how and why we got there.

Ephemera is a workmanlike dystopian set piece that finds a credible basis in modern America, particularly public infatuation with ephemera and diversions over substance and reality. While an entertaining read, it is ultimately unlikely to make anyone’s list of the best dystopian novels of the last decade or two.

When we bore people and the press to death with rhetoric, we can disguise anything significant within that rhetoric, and no one will notice.

Jeffery M. Anderson, Ephemera

Book Review: The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz by Jules Verne

Tim — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:41:06 +0000

You’re likely to get an odd look when someone asks what you’re reading and you tell them it’s the “new” Jules Verne novel. After all, Verne died 106 years ago and all of his work has been published. Yet therein is a tale itself.

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz is a novel Verne hoped would be published before his death. It is, though, among roughly half a dozen novels and a short story collection published after he died. The problem is Verne’s son rewrote many of them, recasting plots and adding characters. The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz is emblamatic of this. When first published, Verne’s son placed the story in the 18th century rather than the 19th and changed the ending. Now, though, Peter Schulman, a professor of French literature at Old Dominion University and a trustee of the North American Jules Verne Society, brings us the first English translation of Verne’s original manuscript.

The title character is the son of a famous German scientist, one many near his home regarded as possessing close to supernatural powers. The scientist’s rumored secrets bring people to his grave on the anniversary of his death, many expecting him to rise from it. Yet it seems his son has possession of those secrets, one of which is the key to this blend of science fiction and fantasy.

The story is told by Henry Vidal, who travels from Paris to a fictional city in Hungary, where his brother intends to marry Myra Roderich, the daughter of a highly respected family. Myra and her family spurned Storitz’s earlier marriage proposal. He invokes one of his father’s secrets to prevent the marriage and take his revenge on the Roderichs. In fact, one of his misdeeds might shock even the modern reader. Who can imagine the effect it would have had on an early 20th century audience?

Naturally, The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz carries the style and tropes of the time in which it was written (1895). Thus, women who suffer an emotional shock must take to their bed until they recover their constitution. Geopolitical emotions and biases into play. Hungarians are portrayed as being prone toward superstition, far more ready to accept supernatural explanations than scientific ones. It also is not coincidence that Storitz is German as Verne displays an anti-German sentiment that set in following the Franco-Prussian War. For example, when Henry Vidal unknowingly encounters Storitz en route to Hungary, someone comments that Storitz “might be German twice over, as he’s got to be a Prussian.” Vidal’s response? “And that’s already once too many!”

Verne’s style frequently incorporates references to contemporary scientific advances, artists and authors. Schulman does an excellent job footnoting names and terms that are of little or no significance today. These and more general footnotes also help explicate Verne’s literary style, occasionally referring to Verne’s life or other writings.

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz may show its age to the modern reader. But there is never anything wrong with having something “new” from a classic author, particularly when earlier versions deviated from the author’s original work.

But when it comes to unenlightened minds, everything is explained by the intervention of the devil.

Jules Verne, The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz

Book Review: Death as a Side Effect by Ana María Shua

Tim — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:48:05 +0000

Dystopian literature stems from no particular geographic boundaries. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell were British, Margaret Atwood is Canadian, Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were American. Thus, while Ana María Shua sets Death as a Side Effect in her native Argentina, the conditions that beset that future society are perhaps universally possible.

Survival is one of the underlying themes here, both personal and economic. The rich live in gated neighborhoods with 24-hour surveillance and security guards. The average person lives in “no-man’s-land,” avoiding the “occupied zones” controlled by criminals and dangerous thugs. Marauding gangs make the streets of Buenos Aires so unsafe the average person takes armored taxis to get around town and to go to protected areas for walks. Thus, when “vandals” break into the apartment below him, Ernesto Kollady’s reaction is ingrained:

When I heard the banging and explosions, I did what we all do: I made sure the security features in my apartment were working. I played music full blast so I wouldn’t hear the screams. I locked myself in the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Ernesto, like others, must deal with life in a society where life seems cheapened. Paparazzi with video cameras crowd around hospitals hoping to get footage of someone dying. The Suicide Channel is one of television’s more popular offerings. Only the poor go to hospitals, where, to ensure a profit, the “franchise owners” require patients’ families to provide the food. Both physicians and families, meanwhile, are required to report the declining health of older people so they can report to “convalescent homes,” paid for by selling what property the individual has. As a result, older and ill people pay doctors under the table to be their “secret” physician because an “official” physician would be required to report them.

Yet while Death as a Side Effect has abundant social commentary, Shua does far more with the narrative. At bottom, the dystopia she envisions is essentially a stage upon which a larger and more common literary theme plays out — human relationships. Told in the form of Ernesto writing to the mistress who abandoned him, this slim narrative examines family relations, particularly that between Ernesto and his father. Although impacted by this society’s mandates, particularly the convalescent homes, the family issues here are not necessarily unique. Ernesto is a seemingly ineffectual everyman. His father on the other hand is a powerful, controlling figure who seems to have always found joy in humiliating Ernesto. Yet Ernesto has a somewhat kinder view of his father than his sister, who never really had a life outside the family home and in whom a searing hatred has grown. Their mother, meanwhile, has descended into Alzheimer’s-type dementia.

When a large intestinal tumor forces Ernesto’s father first into a hospital and then a convalescent home, his mother’s dementia and his sister’s enmity leave Ernesto responsible for his father’s fate. Thus, although Ernesto’s own children are no more than passing references in his writing, he is required to come to grips with the archetypal father-son conflict. Despite his father’s long history of demeaning him, Ernesto also confronts the preservation of personal dignity in a society seemingly devoid of the concept.

Originally published in 1997 and translated into English for the first time by Andrea G. Labinger, Death as a Side Effect uses dark satire to effectively meld societal and personal tribulations. Although the Spanish edition of the book was selected by the Congreso de la Lengua Española as one of the 100 best Latin American novels published in the last 25 years, its themes and issues are universal.

Madness is a lot like death.

Ana María Shua, Death as a Side Effect

Book Review: The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville

Tim — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:05:20 +0000

Book publicity frequently is an exercise in the art (or artifice) of puffery. So, when a book is described as a “genre-busting” work, I tend to approach it with a bit of caution. Generally, though that term is a fair description of The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, Patrick Somerville’s collection of short stories. Some of the stories could be described as science fiction while others defy categorization. Granted, genre-spanning could also be used to describe the stories. Despite their variety and at times unusual subjects, common elements and themes connect most of the stories.

For example, the opening tale, which gives the collection its name, introduces us to the School of Surreal Thought and Design. SSTD makes an appearance in other stories that do not involve the characters of the first. Similarly, the random stabbing of a young man on the street plays a role in at least three of the stories. Characters, meanwhile, make an appearance in seemingly unrelated stories, serving to provide a common thread. More important, virtually all of the stories are at heart about their characters, characters often broken in one way or another. Those who are damaged often are, as one says, “stuck in time” or, in the words of another, represent “the human mind trapped by itself in a vacuum but there’s a very small window somehow within this empty and airless prison.”

Thus, “People Like Me” is about a mercenary trying to return to normal family life but who is being recruited for another job (one which will play a crucial role in a later story). How far he’s been removed from normal life is reflected by the fact that after returning home from an anger management class he sleeps in a closet holding an assault rifle. “Pangea,” meanwhile, consists of the supposedly therapeutic journal ponderings of a man in a mental health facility. For Tom Sanderson, the central character in the novella “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” self-hatred and a descent into alcoholism aren’t as recent as his second divorce and losing his job as a corporate attorney.

On the surface, the book is somewhat reminiscent of Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories. Somerville’s characters, however, provide an edge that gives his work its own character keeps the stories from becoming perhaps too precocious.

Although the book contains 30 stories (including a closing novella), a couple are vignettes of moments or events in two pages or less. That includes “Mother,” on a per word basis perhaps the book’s strongest piece. In it, a mother recalls the day her son was killed in that random stabbing. Not quite a stream of consciousness, the story traces her thought process from shock and dread to anguish and pain. (Later brief stories give the perspective of the son, a police officer who walks past the assailant shortly before the stabbing and the killer himself.) Immediately following “Mother” and nearly as strong is “The Wildlife Biologist,” in which a high school girl learns through her parents’ separation and her biology teacher of the failed dreams and compromises that can accumulate over the course of a life. In fact, Somerville’s frequent reliance on generally strong female narrators helps give the collection a breadth of perspective one might not expect a male author to carry off quite so well (or well from the perspective of a male reader).

As with any collection, not everything in The Universe in Miniature in Miniature will not resonate with every reader. In fact, this is the type of work where a group of readers can quite legitimately differ on which are their favorites and which stories are stronger than others. The closing novella, though, will likely provoke every reader into considering which stories tie together and in what fashion. Some may also wonder about the significance to be attached to any perceived connection between or among any two or more stories. Combining a light touch of science fiction with greater emphasis on the characters, “The Machine of Understanding Other People” also helps epitomize Somerville’s “genre-busting.” Yet it also reminds us that the work as a whole may be its own machine of understanding other people, one that tends to give insight into not only the empty prison but, more important, the window.

He had just enough imagination to make great failure possible.

Patrick Somerville, “The Wildlife Biologist,”
The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

Microreview: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Tim — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:41:23 +0000

Okay, I’ve read THE novel of the summer. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s THE novel.

Justin Cronin’s The Passage has plenty of hype. But when you get right down to it, it’s really an over long post-apocalyptic SF novel. (Although for some reason the local library stuck a “Mystery” tag on the spine.)

I don’t want to take anything away from Cronin. After all, I did read the nearly 800 pages over the course of about four days (although they were mainly rainy and dreary ones). Yet it isn’t a book I would call “unputdownable.” The storyline isn’t anything new: U.S. Army experiments with virus on a dozen murderers on death row to create vampire-like super-soldiers. They escape and eventually infect almost all the U.S. population, turning 10 percent into creatures like them. Some 90 years later, a small group of survivors leaves their protective colony and battles against all odds to see if they can combat the creatures, accompanying a mysterious young girl who became the 13th test subject and has barely aged over the decades.

Admittedly, Cronin does a good job not only with the backstory but with describing survival in the aftermath and developing the characters. Yet parts of The Passage simply drag on a too long and, especially for this type of book, slow the pace. While many will find it an enjoyable read, it needed more blue pencil work. I know that will keep it off my books of the year list.

Of course, with all the hype, this is just the beginning. Two more volumes are planned and the film rights have already been sold. Given the recent popularity of post-apocalyptic and vampire lit and we may well be looking at a new franchise.

…the world beyond the Colony was an open grave of history no one even remembered.

Justin Cronin, The Passage