129,864,880! to samo do nedelje...

[zakk]

Re: Machine gun


Ti si prva koja se javila pozitivnim utiskom o tom romanu. Oto, Phuzzy, Dolinka... razočarani.


Doći će valjda i to na red za čitanje -_-

[PTY]

 Da se razumemo, imam ja zamerki, i to poprilično. Konstrukcija može malko da te uhvati na prepad, recimo, vrlo brzo se otkriva ko je Lovac i posle toga njegov POV je paralelni tok romana, pa se tu otvara malko više no što bi možda trebalo. Isto tako, dosta samog zapleta je skoro pa ornamentalno, dobro stoji i lepo izgleda ali ništa konkretno ne radi, cela ta postavka kako je Tallow došao do Lovca je skoro incidentalna, a i rano se u romanu dešava, pa to skine jedan deo suspensa na koji maltene računaš, onaj whodunnit deo. Pa onda Ellis ima čudan manir zaskakanja, bože mi prosti, tempo je takav da ti on ponudi odgovore na pitanja i pre no što ih sebi postaviš, sve je pod njegovom kontrolom i ti samo kliziš kud je njega volja, ko bob na ledu. Pa ta neiskorištenost motiva, mislim, dvesta komada vatrenog oružja, dvesta, pa neki još i sa silnom ljubavlju preuređeni, pa to je dvesta komada ubistava, a Ellis ofrlje štrpne par intrigantnih (da sad ne spojlujem), pa ni to ne sjuri do kraja. Pa ta neujednačenost Lovca, vamo čovek hodajuća halucinacija, a tamo metodičan i sistematičan i praktičan, i zuji to malo u ušima, ali ajde, puštaš do kraja, sve misliš da je dobar mamac i tako to... Pa te Ellis onda pomalo i izradi, jelda, eventualno, ne da ti to maltene obećano, i osetiš se izmanipulisano, nije da nije, ali opet... zakk, ništa ti to meni nije ozbiljno zasmetalo, ništa, šta da ti kažem, slistila sam roman u cugu. Šibnuću mu četvorku na gudridsu, makar što me tako lako i pošteno izradio, računam da i to valjda nešto vredi... 

[PTY]

The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1990s     1950s – 1960s – 1970s – 1980s

The 1990s was the last decade of the century and the millennium, and although science fiction has been around for centuries, it feels like the genre blossomed in the second half of the 20th century.  By the last decade it feels fantasy flavored SF had overtaken hard science fiction in popular appeal, but many of the most successful science fiction books of the 1990s were about space travel.  Vernor Vinge, Iain M. Banks, Dan Simmons, and Peter F. Hamilton began paving the way for the New Space Opera of the 2000s.  Ben Bova, Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson used NASA's recent knowledge of the solar system to build new visions of interplanetary colonization.  And more than ever, science fiction is concerned with the post-human future.

SF writers of 1990s represents the centennial descendants of H. G. Wells, and his genre originating novels The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898).  Where Wells explored the impact of Darwinism, 1990s science fiction writers were inspired by NASA interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the many breakthroughs in contemporary cosmology.  It's quite amazing, but in the 1990s, both the scientific universe and science fictional universes are tremendously bigger than the objective reality of the 1950s and its science fictional universes.  Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke loom large in our history, but modern science fiction writers stand on their shoulders and see much further than they ever imagined.
Yet, I would claim by the 1990s that it was obvious that science fiction had forked in its evolution.  On one hand, we still have a branch of science fiction inspired by science, but on the other hand, it's all too obvious that the larger branch of science fiction is inspired by older science fiction.  New sub-genres like Military SF, seemed descended from 1959's Starship Troopers by Heinlein, and isn't the sub-genre of galactic empire romances descended from Asimov's Foundation stories?  NASA will never be able to send a probe to either of these universes.  Whereas, Kim Stanley Robinson and Michael Flynn are practically begging NASA to use their books as blueprints for its future budgets.
A handful of writers dominated the decade with their series books.  Lois McMaster Bujold, Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson and Vernor Vinge, all won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards as well as getting many nominations, and winning other genre awards.
Kim Stanley Robinson set the standard for hard science fiction with his decade spanning Mars trilogy.  He won two Hugos and one Nebula by writing about a realistic colonization of the Red planet.

Lois McMaster Bujold had so many award winning books in the 1990s that picking the best is impossible.  The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, Cetaganda, Memory, Komarr and A Civil Campaign are probably getting even more readers today than in the 1990s.  The Vorkosigan Saga just keeps on growing.  And fans debate whether new readers should follow publication order or internal chronological order.

Connie Willis won five Hugos and three Nebulas in the 1990s, with The Doomsday Book winning both.  Willis has carved out a much loved series based on time travel and history, blending two genres together, and like Bujold, Willis keeps expanding her series today.

Vernor Vinge picked up two Hugos and two Nebula nominations for A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, proving that fans still love a good space opera.

Some people have asked me how I make up these lists of memorable science fiction books.  The first one, about the 1950s, was more from personal memory, but eventually I discovered various resources I used for the later decades.  I start with Internet Speculative Fiction Database.  I use its advanced search and look up novels, language and type.   I only worry about books in English.  I go down their listings looking for books I remember reading or reading about.  I can right click on any title to bring up it's bibliographic record which includes how often it was reprinted and whether or not it won any awards.  Most valuable is whether the book made the Locus Poll that year.  That's the first indicator how popular a book was with the fans during the year it came out.
I also study various best of lists to discern long term popularity.  I look for books that get picked time and again.  This is how I create the short list called the Best Remembered books.  The longer Defining Books list are those books which got particular notice during the year they came out.  Most of these have been frequently reprinted and are often on some of the best SF of all time lists.  I avoided fantasy novels unless they won or were nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, or other SF award.
Best of Book Lists

   
• The Classics of Science Fiction By Year
• Top 100 Sci-Fi Books
• Next 100 Sci-Fi Books
• NPR Top 100 SF/F Books
• Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (David Pringle pre-1985)
• Locus Best SF Novels of All-Time (pre-1990)
• ISFDB Top Books by Year
• All the Lists at Worlds Without End

The Best Remembered Science Fiction Books of the 1990s

   
• The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1990)
• Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick (1991)
• A Fire Upon the Deep/A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
• Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)
• The Doomsday Book/To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
• The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
• Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler (1994)
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (1995)
• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (1996)
• The Sparrow/Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
• The Vor Game/Barrayar/Mirror Dance/A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1990s

	1990
	Earth by David Brin In the Country of the Blind by Michael F. Flynn Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson Redshift Rendezvous by John E. Stith The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons The Quiet Pools by Michael P. Kube-McDowell The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold Use of Weapons Iain M. Banks Voyage of the Red Planet by Terry Bisson
	1991
	A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton Bone Dance by Emma Bull Carve the Sky by Alexander Jablokov Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle and Flynn King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald Heavy Time by C. J. Cherryh Orbital Resonance by John Barnes Raft by Stephen Baxter Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick Synners by Pat Cadigan The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
	1992
	A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge A Million Open Doors by John Barnes Brother to Dragons by Charles Sheffield Chanur's Legacy by C. J. Cherryh China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Fools by Pat Cadigan Jumper by Steven Gould Mars by Ben Bova Quarantine by Greg Egan Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Sideshow by Sheri S. Tepper Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Steel Beach by John Varley The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
	1993
	A Plague of Angels by Sheri S. Tepper Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks Ammonite by Nicola Griffith Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress Crashcourse by Wilhelmina Baird Glory Season by David Brin Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford Hard Landing by Algis Budrys Moving Mars by Greg Bear Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe On Basilisk Station by David Weber Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler The Giver by Lois Lowry The Norton Book of Science Fiction ed. Le Guin and Attebery The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith Virtual Light by William Gibson Vurt by Jeff Noon
	1994
	Beggars & Choosers by Nancy Kress Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold Mother of Storms by John Barnes Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson Permutation City by Greg Egan Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan Remake by Connie Willis The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt Towing Jehovah by James Morrow Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott
	1995
	Brightness Reef by David Brin Chaga by Ian McDonald Distress by Greg Egan Far Futures ed. Gregory Benford Invader by C. J. Cherryh Legacy by Greg Bear Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams Sailing Bright Eternity by Gregory Benford Slow River by Nicola Griffith The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter Women of Wonder ed. Pamela Sargent
	1996
	A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin Bellwether by Connie Willis Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold Endymion by Dan Simmons Excession by Iain M. Banks Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling Memory Lois McMaster Bujold Reclamation by Sarah Zettel Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell Voyage by Stephen Baxter
	1997
	/ by Greg Bear A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson City of Fire by Walter Jon Williams Diaspora by Greg Egan Finity's End by C. J. Cherryh Fool's War by Sarah Zettel Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman Frameshift by Robert J. Sawyer In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick Signs of Life by M. John Harrison The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons Think  Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories by James Patrick Kelly
	1998
	Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson Children of God by Mary Doria Russell Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson Distraction by Bruce Sterling Dreaming in Smoke by Tricia Sullivan Factoring Humanity by Robert J. Sawyer Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
	1999
	A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card Teranesia by Greg Egan The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod

JWH – 5/2/13

[zakk]

Korisno!

[angel011]

Pročitala samo 14 sa spiska. 

[divča]

E, sad, malo su fejk te suze pred forumskom javnosti kada se uzme u obzir da je ta ista javnost (u to sam sto posto siguran) u proseku procitala mnogo manji broj od toga -- inkluding majself, dakle:



1990
   

   
    Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson *****
    The Quiet Pools by Michael P. Kube-McDowell ***
   

   
1991
   

    A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason tbrp
    King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald ***
    Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick ****1/2
   

   
1992
   

   
    China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh *****
    Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson *****
   

   
1993
   

   
    Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress ****
    Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe ****
    Virtual Light by William Gibson ****
   

   
1994
   

    Beggars & Choosers by Nancy Kress ***
    Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling ****
   

   
1995
   

   

   
1996
   


    Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling tbrp
   

   
1997
   

    Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson *****
   
   
1998
   

   
    Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh tbrp



1999

[Nightflier]

1990

Earth by David Brin
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

1991

All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

1992

Jumper by Steven Gould
Mars by Ben Bova

1993

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Moving Mars by Greg Bear
On Basilisk Station by David Weber
Virtual Light by William Gibson

1994

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

1995

Brightness Reef by David Brin
Chaga by Ian McDonald
Sailing Bright Eternity by Gregory Benford

1996

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Cetaganda by Lois McMaster Bujold
Endymion by Dan Simmons
Memory Lois McMaster Bujold
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

1997

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

1998

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson

1999

A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear


i da dodam da je potpuno licemerno što je Martin na ovom spisku.

[Melkor]

Ne znam bas koliko je korisno, tj. smisleno. Prodje se kroz spisak nominovanih i nagradjivanih romana i izvuce se kao neki zakljucak iz toga? Takvih spiskova ima na netu i vise no sto nam treba. I topik "Nagrade" bi, tako, mogao da se izdvoji kao mesto gde se mogu naci "definisuce" knjige u poslednjih par godina. Pokazalo se da vreme jeste najstroziji sudija i nagrade coveku mogu samo da posluze kao upute za citanje. 13 godina posle ocigledno je da su mnogi romani sa ovog spiska potpuno nebitni u sirem kontekstu fantasticne knjizevnosti (zanrovskog SFa cak) i spisak bi mogao mirne duse bar da se prepolovi.

(33, inace  bar mislim)

[Nightflier]

Ne znam bas koliko je korisno, tj. smisleno. Prodje se kroz spisak nominovanih i nagradjivanih romana i izvuce se kao neki zakljucak iz toga? Takvih spiskova ima na netu i vise no sto nam treba. I topik "Nagrade" bi, tako, mogao da se izdvoji kao mesto gde se mogu naci "definisuce" knjige u poslednjih par godina. Pokazalo se da vreme jeste najstroziji sudija i nagrade coveku mogu samo da posluze kao upute za citanje. 13 godina posle ocigledno je da su mnogi romani sa ovog spiska potpuno nebitni u sirem kontekstu fantasticne knjizevnosti (zanrovskog SFa cak) i spisak bi mogao mirne duse bar da se prepolovi.

(33, inace  bar mislim)

Pretekao si me za jednu.

Edit: I potpuno sam saglasan sa tvojim stavom.

[PTY]

@Melkor: znaš, mene baš ta dekada intrigira u ovom smislu, verovatno zato što mi je lično ostala pomalo konfuzna i slabo definisana, za razliku od dekada koje su joj prethodile i usledile. Moj SF skor na ovoj listi je prilično mizeran, a povrh toga, nije ni bio savremen, neke od naslova sam pročitala tek u sledećoj dekadi. I to je valjda jedan od najjačih razloga zašto su mi 90te ostale nekakva zona sumraka: pre njih, čitala sam selektivno, po sklonostima, uglavnom zlatno doba i kiberpank, a posle njih sam čitala uglavnom po preporukama, jer tad je već bila era elektronske knjige, sajtova i onlajn rivjuistike i tako to. Ali u 90tim sam bila prepuštena uglavnom sama sebi, pa je tu dominirao uglavnom komercijalni horor, valjda zato što je bio najpristupačniji u to doba. Zato me ove liste uvek pomalo uhvate u raskoraku, ne mogu baš precizno da se setim da li su ti današnji naj-izbori iz produkcije 90tih i onda bili ovako očigledni, to bez da se gledaju nagrade i uže nominacije.  Znam da bar meni nisu bili očigledni, ja imam uglavnom slabo mišljenje o tadašnjoj SF produkciji, ali polako dolazim do zaključka da je za to kriva uglavnom moja pogrešna procena, pošto se onomad iscrpnija informacija o žanrovskoj produkciji uglavnom mogla naći u žanrovskim magazinima, i to isključivo u papirnatoj varijanti. Sve u svemu, ostala mi je to intrigantna dekada, nešto kao sušni period neposredno pre poplave internet piraterije.



Dalje, zanimljivo mi je da i danas teško nalazim pošteno urađene pirate iz te dekade, bar kad su u pitanju manje komercijalna i poznata imena: ti pirati su uglavnom falični i felerični, pa ih ni ne skidam više a kamoli čitam. Danas mi je lakše da nađem perfektan pirat bilo kog broja magazina iz zlatnog doba nego, recimo, Trišu Salivan. Njen Maul sam čekala i čekala i ništa, pirati ga ignorišu, bog zna zašto. Na kraju sam ga kupila i eto, on konkretno vredi svojih para ali to baš i nije bio slučaj sa ostalim knjigama koje sam kupila na neviđeno, bez prethodnog overavanja pirata. Trenutno imam listu od nekih stotinjak naslova koji me zanimaju a koje ne mogu da nađem u pirat verziji, i paradoks je da su sve to naslovi iz užih nominacija za poznate žanrovske nagrade, ali naprosto, imena nisu dovoljno zvučna ni komercijalna, pa i interesovanje pirata izostaje. Slutim da zasigurno polovina te moje liste nije vredna čitanja a time ni kupovine, pa nekako uvek bacim pogled na ovakve liste, mada znam da nisu bog zna kako pouzdane, ali opet... kad je o žanru reč, šta je pa pouzdano?

[Berserker]

Hm, 25 komada, nije lose, pogotovo s obzirom da sve slabije citam na engleskom i da martina dosad nisam ni pipnuo


1990

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

1991

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald
The Summer Queen by Joan D. Vinge
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

1992

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Jumper by Steven Gould
Mars by Ben Bova
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

1993

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe
Virtual Light by William Gibson

1994


1995
Brightness Reef by David Brin
Chaga by Ian McDonald
Legacy by Greg Bear
Sailing Bright Eternity by Gregory Benford

1996

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Endymion by Dan Simmons

1997

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

1998


1999

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

[PTY]

  
Science fiction novels for economists

[PTY]

LM, dakle, ah zo, imamo za sada suverenog kandidata za knjigu godine!  

Da je Vudi Alen ikada osetio potrebu da se izražava kroz primarno prozu, ovo je vrsta romana kakvoj bi svakako stremio. Kažem samo stremio a ne i napisao  , pošto je za moj groš Vudijev humor odveć vulgaran u hiperintelektualiziranju trivijalnih mu opsesija, no dobro, to nema mnogo veze sa ovim, ionako. Jer ovom je pak momku to samo pošlo za rukom, nego k tomu još i bez vidljivog truda. Oh myyyy, rekao bi Takei i bio skroz u pravu  .



Ned Beauman je 2010 izbacio prvenca Boxer, Beetle, a sad, u nežnom dobu od ciglih dvadeset i osam godinica, proizvodi roman kakav bi ponudio najmanje dvostruko stariji i trostruko iskusniji neurotično žovijalni cinik. 


Glavni lik romana, Egon Loeser (hah!) startuje svoj životopis u Berlinu Vajmarske republike, i to u nekoj vrsti polusveta umetničke elite. Tačnije rečeo, Egon pripada onom maltene klasičnom podskupu tog polusveta, podskupu kojeg sačinjavaju odveć ambiciozni a očigledno nenadareni diletanti, što uporno gravitiraju ka kafanama,  pozorištima i generalno noćnom životu kojeg vode upravo ti popularni umetnici-boemi, te tako sebi stvaraju kvazi-imidž kvazi-karijere hobnobovanja sa istima. Egon je lako prepoznatljiv po tom pitanju, skoro pa kao entitet za poster: bavi se mišlju da piše roman, iako godinama nije napisao niti jedne jedine rečenice, niti ima blagu predstavu o čemu bi uopšte i pisao, osim neke maglovite i opsesivne premise o tragičnom incidentu sa Teleport mašinom kojom je Adriano Lavićini u doba Luja 14tog sravnio sa zemljom pozorište na dan boga premijere. A kako njemu bliski ostali članovi berlinske diletantske bratije izbacuju minorna prozna delca koja se čitaju u uskom krugu ljudi uglavnom zato što nude tračeraje o stvarnim osobama, Egon dolazi do zaključka da prepreka rađanju njegovog romana leži u činjenici da on sam nije dovoljno seksualno aktivan, pa shodno tome i nema dovoljno intimnih tračeraja sa kojima bi mogao da ispuni jezgro svoje pisanije. Ta frustracija odmah postaje Egonova primarna opsesija a objekat opsesije postaje Adele Hitler, osamnaestogodišnja nećaka izvesnog Adolfa, promiskuitetna devojka koja je intimno upoznala naizgled ceo Berlin, i koja izgleda jedino Egonov krevet uporno obilazi. Što je, naravno, u Egona smesta proizvelo opsesivnu reakciju koju on sam sebi prepoznaje i tumači kao iskrenu i bezuslovnu zaljubljenost. I kad Adele napusti Berlin i ode u Pariz a kasnije i u Los Anđeles, Egon je prati, krcat paukovom strpljivošću i psećom odanošću, rešen da će upravo ona biti žena njegovog života, makar samo zato što je tako teško osvojiva.


Naravno, ništa u Egonovom životu nije tako linearno i jednostavno kao što bi se moglo pretpostaviti iz njegove opsednutosti tom najbitnijom od svih njegovih opsesija. Egon oscilira između apsolutne posvećenosti sopstvenoj seksualnoj frustraciji i apsolutne nezainteresiranosti za svet oko sebe, to jednako u Berlinu kao i u Los Anđelesu. Egonova apolitičnost je od one bezvremene i standardno autistične vrste koju poseduju samo oni ljudi koji žive isključivo u svetu unutar sopstvenih slepoočica, tako da je upravo Egon otelotvorenje Teleport mašine u čijem centru sedi čovek apsolutno nedodirnut godinama i dekadama najtrubulentnijih zbivanja u ljuskoj istoriji. Tokom čitavog romana, Egon egzistira u samom centru zbivanja i srcu političkog, društvenog i kulturnog orkana koji je temeljito izmenio lice i sadržaj celokupnog sveta, pa ipak, Egon kroz njega prolazi sasvim nedodirnut i neizmenjen, na distanci koju može da ima samo čovek koji zbivanja ko sebe promatra kroz mali prozor teleport čaure sopstvenog bitisanja.


The Teleportation Accident je dosegao širi izbor za 2012 Booker Prize, ali naravno, taj skoro pa mijevilovski proizvoljan fantastični aspekt romana je svakako teško probavljiv za mejnstrim crevo, a ujedno je i isuviše metaforičan, to bar gledano kroz striktno žanrovsku prizmu, tako da... njegovi aduti leže uglavnom u besprekornom stilu, elegantnoj elokvenciji, impresivnoj narativnoj ekonomiji, savršenom dizajnu pojedinca koji predstavlja prepoznatljiv tip, maestralnom skiciranju pronicljive i sadržajne groteske bez i jedne mrvice posezanja za karikaturom i suptilnom, produhovljenom humoru koji proizilazi iz duhovne miopije protagoniste.


Malo li je?    gaddem magnificent štivo! 

[Gaff]

Joe Hill reads from NOS4R2

[PTY]

nego, evo malecke kontroverze: kopirajt u svemiru...   

The Economist explains    How does copyright work in space?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-12?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/how_does_copyright_work_in_space_




CHRIS HADFIELD has captured the world's heart, judging by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", recorded on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadian astronaut's clear voice and capable guitar-playing were complemented by his facility in moving around in the microgravity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copyright police? Commander Hadfield was only 250 miles (400 km) up, so he was still subject to terrestrial intellectual-property regimes, which would have applied even if he had flown the "100,000 miles" mentioned in the song's lyrics, or millions of kilometres to Mars. His five-minute video had the potential to create a tangled web of intellectual-property issues. How does copyright work in space?
The song "Space Oddity" is under copyright protection in most countries, and the rights to it belong to Mr Bowie. But compulsory-licensing rights in many nations mean that any composition that has been released to the public (free or commercially) as an audio recording may be recorded again and sold by others for a statutorily defined fee, although it must be substantively the same music and lyrics as the original. But with the ISS circling the globe, which jurisdiction was Commander Hadfield in when he recorded the song and video? Moreover, compulsory-licensing rights for covers of existing songs do not include permission for broadcast or video distribution. Commander Hadfield's song was loaded onto YouTube, which delivers video on demand to users in many countries around the world. The first time the video was streamed in each country constituted publication in that country, and with it the potential for copyright infringement under local laws. Commander Hadfield could have made matters even more complicated by broadcasting live as he sang to an assembled audience of fellow astronauts for an onboard public performance while floating from segment to segment of the ISS.

That is because the space station consists of multiple modules and other pieces (called "elements") under the registration of the United States, the European Space Agency (ESA) consortium, Russia and Japan. The agreement governing the ISS makes it clear (in Article 5) that the applicable laws, including those governing IP rights, depend on which part of it an astronaut is in. This is most relevant when astronauts conduct science or write accounts of their work, whether for public or private parties, although equally true during their off hours. The audio and video seem to have been recorded entirely in the Destiny module, owned by America's space agency, NASA, and the Cupola, which previously owned by the ESA (and would thus have been governed by European law) but was transferred to NASA in 2005. The video was transmitted to Canada (probably through ground stations around the globe), where Mr Bowie's former bandmate Emm Gryner added a piano accompaniment and others edited and produced the final product. But recording a private performance does not violate any laws; a violation only occurs if the material is publicly distributed. Had the song been broadcast from space, Mr Bowie's lawyers would have been entitled to seek redress in Canadian and American courts, in addition to any objections they might have raised based on YouTube views elsewhere. If Commander Hadfield's employer, the Canadian Space Agency, had been deemed to authorise the recording, transmission and distribution of the song while he was on the clock, Commander Hadfield might be off the hook for damages. But he would also, under Canadian copyright and employment rules, retain ownership in the work unless he had specifically assigned it to the CSA.

In this particular case the matter is straightforward because Commander Hadfield had obtained permission to record and distribute the song, and production and distribution was entirely terrestrial. Commander Hadfield and his son Evan spent several months hammering out details with Mr Bowie's representatives, and with NASA, Russia's space agency ROSCOSMOS and the CSA. The copyright issue may seem trivial, but the emergence of privately funded rocket launches, space tourism and space exploration hold the potential for more substantive disputes. If an astronaut were to travel to the Moon, an asteroid or Mars on a privately funded spacecraft, the situation would become knottier still, because the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 applies to countries, not companies or private individuals. J.A.L. Sterling, a London-based expert on international copyright law, anticipated all this in a 2008 paper, "Space Copyright Law: the new dimension", in which he lists dozens more potentially problematic scenarios that could arise, some seemingly risible at first. He asks what would have happened if, on a moon landing broadcast live by NASA across the world, two astronauts were overcome by emotion and burst into song—one covered by copyright. NASA might still be engaged in litigation 40 years later. More prosaically and immediately plausibly, Sterling considers space travellers who put copyrighted material from Earth on a server reachable from space, or engage in rights-violating "public performances" for crewmates. If the first person to walk on Mars decides to launch into "A Whole New World", the rights will need to have been cleared with Disney first.

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 Treći roman Lauren Beukes će joj svakako pribaviti horde poštovalaca i van fantastike, pošto je The Shining Girls ponajprije napet i odlično vođen psiho-triler kojem fantastični element tek dodaje ekstra tvist: Beukes svog serijskog ubicu nudi kao vremeplovca, i to sasvim doslovno. E sad, ja sam veliki skeptik po pitanju krosovera fantastike i krimića, meni to spajanje često izgleda pomalo nepotrebno a u većini primera i beskorisno, nešto kao uporno mućkanje ulja i vode, da bi se na kraju, i to uz mnogo truda, dobilo nit' ulje nit' voda koja ničemu ne služi a uz to još i ne radi. Ali u ovom slučaju bar, nema mjesta takvoj strepnji.



Harper je homicidalni psihopata. Harper živi u Kući čija se vrata otvaraju u vreme koje Haper poželi. Harpera fasciniraju devojčice pretpubertetskog uzrasta ali Harper nije pedofil: Harper se trudi da pretpostavi u kakve će žene one izrasti i da li će zadržati taj nedefinirani karakterni kvalitet kojim su ga i privukle. Otud Harper devojčicama daje na poklon igračku i obećanje da će se ponovo sresti, za nekih desetak godina. Naravno, to će biti desetak godina za devojčicu ali svega dan ili dva za samog Harpera, koji će odmah po povratku u Kuću otvoriti vrata u vreme deset godina nakon tog susreta, i krenuti u potragu za istom tom devojčicom koja će tada biti već mlada žena u ranim dvadesetim godinama.
A kad je najzad nađe, Harper će je ubiti na vrlo specifičan način: Harper će joj obavezno rasporiti stomak i razvući iznutrice, jer se Harper smatra haruspeksom. Na svakoj sceni ubistva, Harper ostavi nekakav token svog pregalaštva sa drugom žrtvom - suvenir iz drugog doba, uglavnom budućnosti. A onda Harper naiđe na Kirby Mazrachi i njenog odanog psa i zbivanja se otmu kontroli, čak i u haotičnoj konstrukciji vremenskog paradoksa.



Lauren Beukes zna da iznenadi, a to se mora prepoznati kao odlika majstora, kako god da se samo iznenađenje na kraju prihvatilo. Malo toga iz njenih prethodnih romana ostaje kao referenca za svedeni i brutalni The Shining Girls. U mnogim domenima je očigledno da se radi o napretku - samo tempiranje je perfektno, na primer. Iako je roman skroz epizodičan po svojoj konstrukciji (svako poglavlje je iz drugog vremenskog perioda), konačni utisak je prilično linearan i iznenađujuće lak za praćenje, a tempiranje po pitanju otkrivanja samog zapleta je zadivljujuće sinhronizovano kroz ogroman raspon vremena i likova. Isto tako, uverljivost samog detektivskog saspensa je očaravajuća, sa svim onim obaveznim ćorsokacima neshvaćenih dokaza i nesklopljenih delova slagalice, jer istini za volju, tako to i jeste u stvarnom životu, bar za nas koji smo žanrovskim prohtevima odavno prerasli 'Herkul Poaro' rasplete. Ali najveći paradoks kojim me roman oduševio leži u činjenici da mu je upravo fantastični element ponajviše osigurao uvjerljivost: ovo je osvježenje i dobrodošla promena od svih onih serijskih ubica-psihopata kod kojih se sama mentalna neuravnoteženost koristi kao jedino i isključivo opravdanje za ekstremnu bizarnost samih ubistava, jer vremeplov je u ovom romanu otvorio zaista ogromno polje kriminalističke podloge koju slični romani inače ne nude.
  Velika preporuka svim ljubiteljima hibrida SF/krimić, i neka vas ne zavara fakt da je ovaj roman potpisala žena, pošto je proza brutalna i stilski i sadržajno.

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Hot Book 'The Shining Girls' Acquired by MRC, DiCaprio's Appian Way (Exclusive)


MRC and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way are teaming up to adapt The Shining Girls, written by Lauren Beukes and generating buzz as one of this summer's must-reads.our editor recommendsCanadian Dennis Lehane Screen Adaptation Lands at Appian Way Cannes: Bidder Pays $1.5 Million for Trip to Space with Leonardo DiCaprioThe two companies, however, are not aiming for a feature adaptation but rather intend to develop the project for television.

MRC has picked up the rights with Appian executive producing. John Ridley, vp production at the shingle, identified the book and brought it to MRC. The project marks a rare but splashy foray into TV for Appian, which previously made the environmental reality show Greensburg.

Shining Girls doesn't come out until June 4, but it's already generating praise for its mix of historical fiction, gritty crime and sci-fi, including a favorable early review in The New York Times and strong buzz from librarians and booksellers who read early galley copies.

The novel tells the story of a serial killer named Harper Curtis who discovers a house in Depression-era Chicago that allows him to time travel through the decades. To keep traveling, he must kill "shining girls," girls burning bright with talent and potential.

One of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and teams up with an ex-homicide reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times in order to bring the killer to justice.

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Recent Novels That Use Time Travel to Great Effect
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/recent-novels-use-time-travel-great-effect/#continue_reading_post



Time travel is an old trope—Charles Dickens used it in 1843's A Christmas Caroland, more famously for science fiction, H.G. Wells popularized it in 1895 with The Time Machine. You would think that by now it would be out of fashion. Not so. Time travel is still used to good effect, as this look at recent science fiction novels demonstrates.


The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill
The initial hook of Alan Averill's The Beautiful Land is that there exist multiple, parallel timelines. They are similar, but in each one, the events have unfolded in such a way as to make them different in some way. The protagonist, Takahiro O'Leary, is hired to explorer these timelines by the Axon Corporation. Tak returns from one of these exploration trips with information that will maximize company profits by changing the past, present and future of our world. However, doing so means that the love of Tak's life, Samira, an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD, will cease to exist. Tak decides to be proactive and use a time travel device he discovered in another timeline to escape with Samira into another timeline. That's not as cut-and-dried as it would seem, however, because the inventor of that time travel device had other plans for it; namely, to find the timeline he calls the Beautiful Land and, once found, destroy all other timelines. Tak realizes that, in order to save himself and Samira, he must save multiple worlds.







What happens when the power of time travel falls into the hands of a serial killer? That's the premise behind The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, a haunting thriller that uses time travel to create a harrowing atmosphere in which the hunter becomes the hunted. Harper Curtis is the serial killer who stumbles upon time's doorway in a Depression-era Chicago. Harper uses his newfound ability to travel to different years and commit his heinous crimes. It's the perfect way to commit a crime: How can you find a killer who has the perfect alibi of not being there? After a series of successful kills, Curtis targets Kirby Mazrachi, one of the young girls he perceives as "Shining."  However, Kirby survives Curtis' attack, physically if not emotionally, and she becomes determined to find her would-be killer. She gets a job at the Chicago Sun Times, working with the reporter who covered her attack. Together they begin unraveling the clues of Curtis' crimes and discovering the truth behind them.




If you had the ability to travel through time, you could see all of human history and any historical figure whenever you wanted. But, admit it, wouldn't you travel backward and forward in time to visit your younger and older selves? Maybe impart some words of wisdom or learn how to avoid some impending mistakes? The main character of Sean Ferrell's Man in the Empty Suit is a time traveler who not only visits himself in time, but also parties with these versions of himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City (the city in which he was born) in the year 2071 (100 years after he was born) to celebrate his birthday with all of his former and future selves. However, things are about to get less celebratory for the 39-year-old version of the traveler when he finds his 40-year-old self dead with a gunshot wound to the head. How can there be older versions of himself at the party if he was shot dead at 40? The Elders aren't talking; it's up to the 39-year-old version to find out, and he has only one year to do so or else they are all goners.





Unburning Alexandria is the sequel to Paul Levinson's well-plotted time travel adventure The Plot to Save Socrates, which introduced graduate student Sierra Waters and saw her travel back in time to (1) learn the true identity of Heron of Alexandria, and (2) to save the philosopher Socrates from his tragic appointment with a cup of hemlock. Now she's determined to alter history yet again by saving one of the greatest sources of knowledge of all time, the ancient Library of Alexandria, from the fatal fire that destroyed it. In her trip to the past, Sierra will encounter old friends and other historical figures like Hypatia, Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe, Ptolemy the astronomer, and St. Augustine. A lot of time hopping can sometimes become confusing, but Levinson's stories are intricately plotted and avoid the tricky Gordian knots of paradoxes with skill and fun.

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http://flavorwire.com/395158/30-of-the-most-beautiful-sci-fi-book-covers-ever-made/30

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Obituary I was on holiday in the Mediterranean, finishing the third book in Jack Vance's Cadwal Chronicles trilogy, when I heard of his death at the age of 96. Vance hadn't written any major works for a few years, but readers and writers of science fiction will be nonetheless poorer for his passing on 26 May, 2013.

The first Vance novel I read was Lyonesse, back in 1984 and before it became better known as Suldrun's Garden, the first instalment of the Lyonesse trilogy. It was the author's 1983 take on high fantasy, a sub-genre back then undergoing one of its periodic revivals in popularity. I'd read Tolkien, of course, and a fair few of his more recent followers, David Eddings and Terry Brooks among them, but none of their worlds quite came so magically to life for me the way Vance's Lyonesse did.J
Jack Vance in the 1980s
Source: David M Alexander

It's one the least clichéd, certainly the most colourful, most sensual fantasy series ever written. It's packed with magic and mischief, crazy cultures and fantastic fashions, and populated with characters driven by any of a thousand motivations. It has the dreamy quality of a fairy tale, yet the same hard edge of historical context that makes The Lord of the Rings the trilogy it is. Unlike Tolkien's work, it feels populated by real beings not Anglo-Saxon archetypes or spectral horrors.

Think Blackadder meets Middle Earth.

And, years before Game of Thrones, there's a lot of sex, much of it vigorous and... unusual.
Lyonesse - aka The Elder Isles - itself is a large archipelago off the south-west coast of Britain, though it's a land that owes more to the islands of the southern Mediterranean than the storm-tossed eastern Atlantic. Lyonesse is ten per cent south-west Ireland, ten per cent rural England, 20 per cent Sardinia, 60 per cent Peloponesian Greece. If you've read Lyonesse, you can't travel to any of those places, especially if you step off the beaten track a little, without Vance's Inn at Twitten's Corner, the Tantrevalles Forest, the Troice countryside, or the Dahaut estuary springing to mind.

Vance was a native of California, grew up in San Francisco, and eventually settled in Oakland. He and his wife Norma, who passed away in 2008, travelled far and wide, particularly in Europe and Central Asia, and he lined the roof of his own-built home with Kashmiri wooden carvings; it's a traveller's eagerness to immerse themselves in the sights, sounds, smells and tastes - Vance's fiction is big on food - of foreign lands that most colours his work.

Not merely the medieval setting of the three Lyonesse novels - Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl and Madouc - but the space-travelling milieu of Vance's Gaean Reach stories and his other sci-fi worlds are all rich in cultural detail and idiosyncrasy not just incident.

If there's a weakness in Vance's fiction, it's that many of his principal characters tend to similarity. Lyonesse's Aillas of Troicinet, the Cadwal Chronicles' Glawen Clattuc, the Planet of Adventure tetralogy's Adam Reith, the Demon Princes series' Kirth Gersen, Maske: Thaery's Jubal Droad, Emphyrio's Ghyl Tarvoke - there's not a great deal of separation between them - heroes all, resourceful, intelligent and decisive, slightly standoffish, relying more on smarts than muscles.
His female leads are likewise cut from a similar cloth: whether it's Wayness Tamm or the ill-fated Secily Veder of the Cadwal Chronicles, Tatzel from The Green Pearl or Jean Parlier from Abercrombie Station and Cholwell's Chickens - novellas later combined into a single book, Monsters in Orbit (think what zero gravity might do for your waistline) - they are attractive, feisty, well-proportioned young women. Vance liked the ladies, though he rarely descends into crude stereotypes, and his female characters come in all shapes and sizes, and can be as mean, manipulative and self-obsessed as the men.

If Vance is a tad weak on heroes and heroines, his incidental characters take up the slack: from Lyonesse's scheming sorcerers, Machiavellian kings, surly inn-keepers, lordly fops, deviant knights and sexually predacious trolls to the failure-prone smooth-tongued rogue Cugel, who features in two of Vance's four Dying Earth books - set on a temporally far distant Earth where technology and magic really have become indistinguishable, and only echoes of current geography remain.

And all speak in Vance's baroque, mordant language. If the Coen Brothers made sci-fi or fantasy movies, their films would sound a lot like Vance's dialogue. Raising Arizona's "Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase" wouldn't sound out of place coming, not from Nick Cage's H.I. McDunnough, but from any number of Vance protagonists.

Little of Vance's work is overtly comedic - 1976's Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy-esque Maske:Thaery is perhaps a notable exception - but you can't keep the smile off your face reading any of the others - the deadpan humour and the rococo language always prompt a chuckle.

Not that Vance couldn't do serious: his 1969 novel Emphyrio is a case in point. It's the story of a young man driven to take action against a constrained but not repressive social structure - lords literally above, the masses below. Protagonist Ghyl Tarvoke is no earnest social reformer; his rebellion is mundane and motivated by the inspiring example of the long-dead peoples' hero.

Here, Vance's prose is less curlicued than it can be, allowing the story to be told directly, without the ornamented style that a more literary writer may apply. But Emphyrio is no less moving or lacking in insight. It's about many things: how we change our outlook as we grow from childhood to adulthood; our relationship with our parents; and oppression in many subtle forms, such as the economic circumstances society imposes upon us, and the weight of history - Brits should understand that - especially when history and legend diverge. It also looks at the pros and cons of the welfare state versus free enterprise, how heroes are as human as we are, and a lot more besides.
More to the point, it's also a cracking yarn.

Like most sci-fi and fantasy writers of his era, Vance began writing in the 1940s when science fiction was all about tall stories. He'd managed to avoid combat in the Second World War thanks to his poor eyesight - from the 1980s onwards he was all but blind, writing with the help of specially written software - but served in the merchant navy after memorising the sight test letters. He'd already worked as a Pearl Harbor shipyard electrician before the war, and as a rigger in the conflict's early months, and would enjoy boats and sailing for the rest of his life.

Unsurprisingly, his early work was short stories sold to the growing number of monthly story magazines, among them Thrilling Wonder Stories, Galaxy and Astounding. Many commissions followed, and like many writers, Vance adopted an array of pseudonyms in order to get more work. In the 1950s, he would branch out of science fiction into crime fiction, penning novels under his real name, John Holbrook Vance.

Vance pulled together many of his connected short stories into novels, but during the 1960s he focussed more on full-length works, the early ones first published in serial form. The late 1960s saw the publication of the Planet of Adventure quartet - one part of which, Servants of the Wankh, prompted so many giggles on this side of the Atlantic that Vance changed the name to Wannek when it was republished in the new century.

Indeed, the Vance Integral Edition project, established by fans upset by so many of Vance's books going out of print - the short stories by then only available in exceedingly rare 1990s hardback editions - allowed the author to make good changes imposed by magazine editors and to make corrections of his own
.
The 44-volume VIE, always intended to be produced in a limited print run, is now unavailable itself, but it lives on in the ebooks published in the UK by Orion's SF Gateway imprint and in the States by the Spatterlight Press.

Vance was lauded by the sci-fi community with Hugo Awards in 1963 and 1967 for, respectively, his novellas The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle, which was also granted a 1966 Nebula Award. Madouc won him a World Fantasy Award in 1990. Seven years later, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its fourteenth Grand Master - he'd already won a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, in 1984. And in 2001 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. ®

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Pošto je do dodele Shirley Jackson Award ostalo tek mesec dana, stigao je na red i Koji Suzuki i njegov Edge. Računam, ako je roman ušao u užu nominaciju preko faca kao što su Ellen Datlow, Laird Barron, Liz Hand, S.T. Joshi, Peter Straub, Ann VanderMeer – onda se svakako mora overiti, iako smatram da će tu Kiernanova lako da pokupi i šlag i trešnjicu pride. I mada se mene The Drowning Girl nije baš nešto naročito dojmio, teško da će ga Edge žešće ugrozi kao favorita za nagradu. Da stvar bude gora, Edge nudi odličnu vrst horora (to onaj omiljeni mi hibrid sa SFom, i to u tolikoj meri da su ga na amazonu krstili "kvantnim hororom" ), pa tu bez dileme odnosi prevagu nad Kiernanovom, ali ima podosta mana koje nije lako oprostiti kada se o nagradama radi. Digresivan ponekad preko svake mere, Suzuki tera junakinju da stalno prelazi iz sećanja u razmišljanja i obratno, i to u pomalo frustrirajućim dozama, komadić ovde i mrvicu tamo, sa svakim novim akterom izvlače se i svakorazna zbivanja iz prošlosti, pa je prva trećina romana pomalo gomila narativnog nesklada u kom se intrigantna zbivanja u stvarnom vremenu do te mere filaju reminiscencijama da čoveku prosto dođe da zajauče ajde više, obavi to, pa da pređemo na real-time zaplet.

Drugi veliki problem romana najverovatnije ide u velikoj meri na dušu prevodioca, zapravo para Nieh i Lloyd-Davies: njihov u najblažu ruku čudan izbor pojedinih rečiju rezultuje stvarno širokim dijapazonom čitalačke iritacije, to od odvlačenja pažnje zbog benignog štrčanja nekih izraza, pa sve do očigledno promašenih rečiju koje naprosto ubiju rečenicu svojim nepripadanjem u istu. Ne znam kakvu reputaciju imaju Nieh i Lloyd-Davies ali nekako ih neću baš pamtiti po dobru...     
   

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FORGOTTEN BOOK:  EARTHMAN'S BURDEN by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, 1957By Scott A. Cupp, on May 23rd, 2013FORGOTTEN BOOK:  EARTHMAN'S BURDEN by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, 1957

This is the 137th in my series of Forgotten Books.
Hoka! If you recognize that word you know what fun is. If not, I envy you. Great humorous science fiction is hard to come by. Particularly since humor is very subjective. I do not like the films of a number of the new comedians, but most particularly, I do not like Adam Sandler. I know this is a personal fault, but I have no desire to fix it. Others I can tolerate to some degree like Will Ferrell, but Sandler, NO! Not gonna happen. Perhaps one day that will change. But then pigs may fly also.

Back to the Hoka. "The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch" (the first Hoka story) takes place on the planet Toka where two species of sentient being exist, the reptilian Slissii and the Hoka who appear to be small golden furred rotund teddy bears. Mankind generally found itself attracted to the Hoka and a plan was made to help bring them up to galactic standards to attain full membership in the Interbeing League. Young spaceman Alexander Jones finds himself stranded on the planet in the middle of a B movie western thriller. The Hoka, it seems, have trouble separating fact and fiction and someone has inadvertently left a pile of pulp fiction on the planet. Every other young Hoka is named Tex or the Kid and they have gunfights in the street at high noon each day. Of course, no one is killed because that is not in the Hoka's makeup. They embrace every possible idea fully and believe it has always been that way, even if it changed only yesterday. Not so the Slissii! They can and will kill. And they would love to be rid of the teddy bears that share their planet. Jones, in a drunken mood from highly potent Hoka liquor, helps the cowboy Hokas defeat the Indians and finds himself as Plenipotentiary to Toka for the Interbeing League.

Other adventures follow as the Hokas embrace other facets of human history. In "Don Jones" they discover opera, more specifically, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and they cast Jones, much against his will, as the title character, referring to his amorous activities constantly and whenever it is most embarrassing, i.e. in front of his bosses. They later embrace space opera in "In Hoka Signo Vinces", Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound", pirate adventures in "Yo Ho Hoka!" and the Foreign Legion in "The Tiddly Wink Warriors".

Each story gets more absurd and a fun time can be had by all in reading there. There were two more Hoka books after this one HOKA! (four long novellas including the wonderful "Joy in Mudville" wherein the Hoka's embrace baseball, "Casey at the Bat" and Interbeing League play) and STAR PRINCE CHARLIE, a novel. All the Hoka stories can be found in a Science Fiction Book Club entry entitled THE SOUND AND THE FURRY: THE COMPLETE HOKA STORIES which is quite worth the effort of finding a copy.

There are five or six copies on the web that I found for under $20 (with several under $10) as well as numerous copies of the individual titles. EARTHMAN'S BURDEN has had multiple paperback editions so there are copies around.

These are worth your time and energy unless you have a different since of humor from me. Your mileage may vary.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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Pop Culture Facts You Probably Didn't Know Were Created by Science Fiction Writers

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Iain Banks: A science fiction star first and foremost

Iain M Banks led the 'British boom' of 1990s science fiction on the strength of a simple virtue: optimism. His mentor Ken MacLeod remembers a boundless creative mind whose place in SF is assured

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najzad, knjiga koju je bilo gotovo nemoguce naci:




Release date: June 18, 2013 | Series: Neversink    A vicious and brilliant satire of human vanity from the author of the classic bestseller The Group.

Long out of print, Mary McCarthy's second novel is a bitingly funny satire set in the early years of the Cold War about a group of writers, editors, and intellectuals who retreat to rural New England to found a hilltop utopia. With this group loosely divided into two factions---purists, led by the libertarian editor Macdougal Macdermott, and the realists, skeptics led by the smug Will Taub---the situation is ripe not only for disaster but for comedy, as reality clashes with their dreams of a perfect society.

Though written as a roman à clef, McCarthy barely disguised her characters, including using her former lover Philip Rahv, founder of Partisan Review, as the model for Will Taub. As a result, the novel caused an absolute explosion of outrage among the literary elite of the day, who clearly recognized themselves among her all-too-accurate portraits. Rahv threatened a lawsuit to stop publication. Diana Trilling, Lionel Trilling's wife, called McCarthy a "thug." McCarthy's friend Dwight McDonald (Macdougal Macdermott) called it "vicious, malicious, and nasty."

Never one to shy away from controversy, McCarthy's portrait of her generation had indeed drawn blood. But the brilliance of the novel has outlasted its first detonation and can now be enjoyed for its aphoritic, fearless dissection of the vanities of human endeavor.

In an added bonus, the renowned essayist Vivian Gornick details in a moving introduction the importance of McCarthy's intellectual and artistic bravery, and how she influenced a generation of young writers and thinkers.   Show more

[PTY]

 Ooohh, evo vesti koja mi je ulepšala ne samo dan nego i cela mi mizerna dva selidbena meseca! Ellen Ullman je sa svojim prvencem The Bug iz pepela izvukla moju ranu kiberpankovsku fascinaciju kompjuterskim programerima i bogami evo i dandanas vučem nešto malo recidiva tog oduševljenja, valjda zato što mi se čini da je sa vremenom esnaf postao sofisticiraniji a moje neznanje dublje i kompletnije, pa me taj magični zanat svejedno lako fascinira.
I eto, deset godina kasnije, Ellen ima novi roman... Life. Is. Truly. Beautiful.







Publication Date: 4 July 2013      A professor is on leave from his post-a leave that may have been forced upon him. It is 1974, a time when free love and psychedelic ecstasy have given way to drug violence and serial killings. Through the thin office walls, the professor overhears the sessions of a therapist and a patient, and without knowing the patient's name or face he comes to know the details of her life, her family, her lovers. He inserts himself into her search for her "mysterious origins": a deeply troubling journey through displaced- persons camps, stolen children, and hidden pasts.  Ellen Ullman was a computer programmer when very few women worked in the field. This experience led to her 1997 memoir Close the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents - a cult classic in the US - and also informed her acclaimed debut novel The Bug. Ullman is a regular contributor to a number of American magazines and lives in San Francisco. Ullman was adopted and is bisexual: the experience of both ties into certain themes in By Blood.
"Delicious and intriguing" Daily Telegraph

"A literary inquiry into identity and legacy ... A gripping mystery ... The storytelling is compelling and propulsive ... Ullman is also a careful stylist" Los Angeles Times    Show More 

[PTY]

A Brief History of the Dystopian Novel

[PTY]

Elem, dakle, nekada davno, davno, još tamo na početku dvadesetog stoljeća, počeci digitalnog univerza su definisani od strane male i probrane grupe vrsnih matematičara, fizičara i inžinjera, finansiranih, naravno, sa primarnim ciljem da unaprede nuklearno naoružanje. Što oni i jesu uradili, i to pošteno i sa dubokom zahvalnošću, pogotovo oni pojedinci koje je USA izvukla iz Starog Sveta jedva sekund pre no što su nacisti uključili kotlovnice krematorijuma. Bila je to neka vrst žetve intelekta kakvoj nije bilo ravne u pisanoj istoriji, pa su otud i njeni rezultati jednako unikatni.




U vremenskom rasponu od eksplozije u Novom Meksiku 1945 pa do eksplozije na Bikinijima osam i po godina kasnije, John von Neumann je našao dovoljno razloga za famoznu opasku: "I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers." Von Neumann je uspeo da Turingov jednodimenzionalni model komputacije implementira u univerzalnu dvodimenzionalnu matricu kakva je u osnovi  i svih današnjih kompjutera, a onda su se, u trećoj fazi i jedva dve decenije kasnije, pojavili kojekakvi gikovi i nerdovi koji su oblikovali trodimezionalni kiberprostor u kom svi mi danas obitavamo.




Ellen Ullman je prisustvovala tom lansiranju kiberprostora u nerdosferu, ali ne kao svedok koji se slučajno zatekao na mestu i u vremenu gde sofisticirana tehnologija naprasno pronalazi svoju uličnu upotrebu: Ellen Ullman je bila inžinjer sa sedamnaest godina akreditiva u svetu kojeg su oblikovali kompjuterski programeri čiji je životni vek bio jedva nešto duži od njenog akademskog. Otud i njena sveprisutna i pomalo dirljiva kontemplacija nad karijernim raskorakom u kojem se zatekla - eminentan stručnjak sa zavidnim akademskim akreditivima, stavljen da nadgleda programere koji se po pravilu nisu uspjeli izboriti ni sa srednjom školom, i čiji je ionako siromašan vokabular bio sastavljen isključivo od pojmova koje su sami imenovali, pošto su jedino oni i imalipotrebu za njima. Neko drugi bi na njenom mestu (neko pametniji, kako sama Ellen priznaje ) rađe napustio čitavu akademsku karijeru negoli se lomatao po takvim situacijama, ali Ellen Ullman je u svakom pogledu ekstraordinarna žena: ne samo da nije odustala, nego je i savladala čitav taj šabeng od apsolutne nule, krenuvši najprije od samog žargona, pa debagovanja softvera pre lansiranja, pa samog programiranja, pa onda i svega ostalog. Njena autobiografska dokumentacija ostala je zato jedinstvena upravo zbog njene unikatne pozicije: Ellen Ullman je najautsajderski insajder ikada, ona je strano tijelo u centru tkiva koje ga uporno ne prihvata a usput još upornije i bezuspješnije odbacuje, što je vjerovatno veoma nalik odnosu koji ima školjka sa biserom. I okej sad, možda ta paralela i jeste malko over the top, ali opet, neosporno je da dokumentacija te ere iz pera Ellen Ullman ima znatnu prednost nad onom iz pera, recimo, Billa Gatesa ili Paula Allena, jer priznajmo, ti konkretno ubergikovi i meganerdovi su ionako pokupili sav šnjur, to od patenata pa do ogromnih para, tako da već sama ta činjenica nudi određeni kontekst kojeg se oni sami ne bi mogli nikada ratosiljati, sve i da hoće. (A ne vjerujem da hoće, ionako.   )


Povrh i osim toga, Ellen Ullman fasciniraju upravo one stvari koji bi i inače fascinirale ljude sa strane, nas koji smo prostorno i vremenski beznadežno odmaknuti od epicentra u kojem se Ullman svojevremeno zatekla: nas ne zanima toliko sam tehnički aspekt te lansirajuće nerdosfere, nas daleko više zanima njen ljudski aspekt. Nas zanimaju programeri, a ne sam program, kojim se i sami danas služimo i za koji vjerujemo da ga zapravo znamo. (Što je fascinantna zabluda, ali opet, sve zablude po pravilu i jesu fascinantne, inače ne bi bile tako... zabludne.    )  Prvi od tih "ljudskih" aspekata je sam prevrat, odnosno, ta ulična (svakodnevna, mundana, za-zabavu-upotrebljiva i za-trivije-korisna) upotreba do tada veoma sofisticirane tehnologije čija je isključiva svrha bila da potamani ne samo što je moguće više ljudskih bića, nego i njihove mukotrpno sagrađene društvene i industrijske infrastrukture. Drugi "ljudski" aspekt je taj neobičan, neočekivan i sasvim neplaniran odnos koji je slobodno ljudsko biće sagradilo sa svojom mašinom, i koji je bio prvi lako prepoznatljiv iskorak ka transhumanizmu, svakako mali za svakog opisanog pojedinca, ali ogroman za ljudsku vrstu u totalu.




Ellen Ullman nam ne precizira najosnovnije značajke koje su omogućile oba navedena aspekta: Ellen Ullman naprosto iskreno i ultra-verno opisuje sve bitne karakteristike nekih ljudi koje je imala prilike upoznati, i dopušta čitaocu da na tim karakteristikama sebi sagradi model pojedinca koji predstavlja tip. A sama činjenica da se pri tome koristi jezikom i stilom visoko obrazovane, duboko pronicljive i široko tolerantne osobe koja je širom otvorenih očiju ispratila svitanje nove zore i ostala nadasve oprezna i beskompromisno kritična prema fenomenu, to i pored ogromne zadivljenosti koju je u njoj proizveo - pa, eto, o je vrlina kakva se teško nalazi među pragmatičnim dvonošcima koji trenutno dominiraju planetom. I mada su njene esejističke predstave tog svitanja daleko informativno preciznije i narativno ekonomičnije, njen roman The Bug nudi ono što terijske analize malo kad nalaze za shodno - nudi rukom crtan portret ljudi koji su stvarali istoriju bez da su toga sami bili svjesni: nudi fotografije ljudi koji su danas odavno već prah i pepeo, to u svakom bogovetnom doslovnom i prenesenom značenju.

[PTY]

A great science fiction story shouldn't be concerned with predicting  technological advances, but with exploring the forces that give rise to  technology, and its effect on individual and mass psychology. Great  sci-fi can also disguise dominant power, whether that of governments or  corporations, into characters or fictional groups and satirize  and critique them. The following ten stories do one of those two  things, and several others besides.
Just to address one thing straight away: one of your favorite science fiction  stories dealing, whether directly or indirectly, with surveillance is bound to  be left off this list. And 1984's a given, so it's not  here.
At any rate, the following books deal in their own unique way with  surveillance. Some address the surveillance head-on, while others speculate  on inter-personal intelligence gathering, or consider the subject  in more oblique ways. Still others distill surveillance down to its  essence: as just one face of a much larger, all-encompassing system of control,  that proceeds from the top of the pyramid down to its base.
Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

Human beings have traveled through a generation ship, the Star of  India, to a far-flung, Earth-like planet. Equipped with incredibly  advanced technology, they have set themselves up as the gods of the Hindu  pantheon. Anticipating William Gibson's interest in implants and other  types modifications, the humans have altered their minds and bodies.  They've also mastered mind transfer—the ability to technologically migrate  one's mind to a new body.
But there's a catch: the elite religious bureaucrats scan minds for  individual karma, which determines soul's new body. It is a rather  terrifying, existential form of surveillance. Into this world a Buddha-like  figure, Sam (an original Star of India crew member), comes to bring  enlightenment and technology to the masses.
John Brunner, Shockwave Rider

John Brunner is probably the least well-known of the authors here,  but he is absolutely essential and groundbreaking in so many  ways. In fact, I almost don't want to share him, but keep his work all to  myself and fellow Brunner devotees. Brunner first made big waves in 1968 with  his Hugo Award-winning masterpiece of speculative fiction, Stand  On Zanzibar, a novel that explores amongst other things future  technology, terrorism, corporatism, radical religion, overpopulation,  genetic engineering and, the West's favorite pastime, nation-building.
He followed that up in 1969 with The Jagged Orbit, a trippy  piece of dystopian fiction about technology and racial unrest in the western  United States. Then Brunner unleashed his absolutely  phenomenal The Sheep Look Up, which sprawls  like Zanzibar, but maintains a tighter thematic focus on future environmental devastation and the radical response to  it. With Shockwave Rider (1975), Brunner completed his  dystopian, proto-cyberpunk tetralogy.
Shockwave Rider centers on one Nick Haflinger, who was  part of the government program Tarnover, which trains gifted children to further  the interests of the state. Haflinger, skilled in the world of  data, escapes to become something of a shape-shifting, or  persona-adopting, hacker on the run from the government.
In his escape, he steals a personal ID code created for individuals who want  to live outside a vast network of data surveillance. And, like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, Haflinger is intent on spilling state  secrets with a self-replicating computer virus, which is called a "worm" in the  novel. A proto-Tor service called Hearing Aid also makes an appearance  in Shockwave Rider.
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

Another proto-cyberpunk novelist, or, more  accurately, a sentinel of New Wave SF, Alfred Bester is known for  his novels The Stars, My Destination and The Demolished Man. The  latter takes place in the 24th century, in a world where telepaths, or "Espers"  as they are called in the novel, occupy various societal strata.
Curiously, they're ranked according to how powerful they are. Class  3 Espers can hear thoughts that occur in real time. Class 2 Espers can  penetrate or surveill inner thoughts, while Class 1s (the most powerful) can do  all of the above, and also know the mindsets, motivations and urges  of people before they take action. Call it a form of superhuman data  mining.
Naturally, Class 1 Espers occupy the highest strata of society, from  corporate CEOs to government leaders and medical professionals, etc. Bester  didn't set out to write an anti-surveillance allegory, of course, but it  certainly is worth reading this bookin the wake of internet  privacy violations.
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

We was the speculative template for Aldous Huxley's Brave New  World and George Orwell's 1984. The novel's DNA is all over  modern speculative fiction in one form or another. Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russian  living in exile from Soviet control, achieves a sublime poetic  brilliance with We.
In its pages, Zamyatin tells the story of D-503, chief engineer of the  spaceship Integral, and his life in One State. The Bureau of  Guardians (One State's secret police) keep watch on all citizens by way of  clear glass apartments. Everything can be observed. Everyone in turn can be a  voyeur.
While Zamyatin's surveillance mechanism might seem primitive or even  laughable in this technological, hyper-connected age, our use of mobile devices,  laptops and desktops in connecting to the internet creates a panopticon  that is as clear as One State's glass homes.
William S. Burroughs, The Nova Trilogy

Deriving a plot or sub-plots from William S. Burroughs' work is an exhausting process. But, at  the core, a lot of Burroughs' work is science fiction, as well as deeply  inspired by spy novels. With his Cut-up or Nova Trilogy—The Soft  Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and The Nova  Express—Burroughs reached the apogee of cut-up incomprehensibility. With  Burroughs, as with Thomas Pynchon's work, its best to simply let the words  and ideas wash over you.
It was with The Nova Trilogy that Burroughs (often called a founding  father of both cyberpunk and cyberspace) communicated one of his great  ideas: the Reality Studio. While not strictly about surveillance, the  trilogy is about systems of control—multiple systems. The  goal being to fight the masters behind it, who know our thoughts and program  them, and retake the Reality Studio.
Grant Morrison, The Invisibles

Writer Grant Morrison might best be described as the William S.  Burroughs or Robert Anton Wilson of comics. His work  often deals with the occult, Discordianism, psychedelics,  and trippy, technological systems of control and paranoia. The  Invisibles follows a ragtag group of anarchist radicals (okay,  "terrorists") called The Invisible College as they fight the Archons of the  Outer Church, humanity's extra-terrestrial masters. The Outer Church are Earth's  global watchmen, hellbent on social engineering. They don't need an internet to  keep watch to shape the world to their liking.
Morrison doesn't use The Invisibles to confront surveillance  head-on. He doesn't need to—the Outer Church present an even more powerful  system of control than internet surveillance could ever afford national  governments. The psionic aliens are watching.
Neal Stephenson, "Spew"

Written in 1994 and published in Wired, Neal Stephenson's SPEW is pure cyberpunk. Or, rather, Stephenson's brand of  it. Written in epistolary form, the character Stark, a Profile Auditor  (basicallly a market researcher), communicates with a female hacker who is able  to navigate the SPEW freely. Imagine the SPEW as the internet plus all  other forms of data aggregated in a megolithic stream.
The SPEW (which features a virtual reality visualization of its data  stream, the Demosphere) has a built-in backdoor that allows corporate and state  surveillance. Stark is a cog in this surveillance wheel.
"Profile Auditors can do this because data security on the Spew is a joke,"  writes Stark. "It was deliberately made a joke by the Government so that they,  and we, and anyone else with a Radio Shack charge card and a trade school  diploma, can snoop on anyone."
Echoes of our current wired world?
JG Ballard, Super-Cannes

The British New Wave SF author JG Ballard always had a thing for gated,  isolated communities. The surreal, psychogeographical landscape, which would  later be termed "Ballardian," is there in its early form  in Vermilion Sands short story collection, but also in later  works like High-Rise.
This architecture of space and mind reaches its apogee  with Super-Cannes. The novel is set in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech  business park near the French Riveria—a place where capitalist  elites can dedicate themselves to nothing but work and excellence, all  under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras and a private security force.
A microcosm of our current world? Sure. Minus the mooching plebes.
Robert Sheckley, "Watchbird"

If any story anticipated the all-seeing eye of the drone, it is Robert  Sheckley's "Watchbird." The story begins with a meeting of seven  "watchbird" manufacturers. They've just learned that the President of the United  States has segmented the country into seven watchbird zones, with each  company getting a monopoly therein. Every city and town within these zones  will be equipped with watchbirds to prevent murder. Problem is, they have the  capability of becoming pseudo-sentient, which causes one of the watchbird  manufacturers to second guess the entire effort.
Shockley's prescience here is shocking. The US more than little resembles the  world in "Watchbird," with various drone manufacturers all vying to  get their equipment flying along borders and in cities.
Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found In a Bathtub

This isn't so much a novel about surveillance as it is satire of the paranoia  that state watchmen experience. It takes place in the third Pentagon, built  into a mountain. There are no masses here. No one for Big Brother to watch apart  from itself, the bureaucrats in the Pentagon. Many of the officials in Lem's  novel may or may not be spies, double agents or even triple agents.
This book makes the list because it lays bare the truth of espionage and  surveillance: that once this becomes the operating principle of any society, the  watchmen (and everyone else) descend into a looking glass world of  crippling, absurdist and ultimately false paranoia, where everyone is an enemy  and nobody is safe.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/10-great-science-fiction-stories-involving-surveillance

[PTY]

The Incredible Space Art of Russian Magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi

When the space race raged in the 1950s, fantastical visions of the future of travel were everywhere. Magazines like Popular Mechanics ran speculative articles about the rockets and space stations that would take civilization to the stars, and the accompanying artwork blurred the line between fiction and plausible reality. This art had a real affect on the space race in both the United States and Soviet Union; where Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, and Disney's Tomorrowland set the tone for the US space program, the Soviet Union's most influential art may have come from the magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi.Tekhnika Molodezhi, or Technology for the Youth, was first published in Russia in 1933. Throughout World War II, its covers would often depict the weapons and technologies of war. Then things changed. With the war over, the magazine began to mirror Popular Mechanics, depicting deep sea exploration, gyrocopters and rocket cars, space capsules and lunar missions.

http://www.tested.com/science/space/456670-incredible-space-art-russian-magazine-tekhnika-molodezhi/

[PTY]

Edge je roman kojem je ingeniozna premisa trebala biti najjači aspekt, a ispalo je da ga je upravo ona ponajviše zakopala & u crnu zemlju sabila. Naravno, to roman nije sprečilo da pokupi skorašnju Shirley Jackson Award, ali ta činjenica ne čini roman boljim, daleko bilo, nego samo pokazuje koliko su standardi za horor nagrade i dalje... hm, budimo učtivi i recimo samo - diskutabilni.


U potrazi za vanžanrovskim motivima koji bi mogli osvježiti (nekome samo naizgled!) iscrpljene žanrovske postavke, Edge poseže za ništa manje do kvantnim SFom, nemilice grabeći motive iz prepoznatljivog idejnog asortimana i nabijajući ih u prolog zbog kojeg su neki rivjuisti već krstili roman kao "kvantni horor".  A to šakom i kapom grabljenje izgleda otprilike ovako:


U septembru 2011, Hans Ziemssen sa suprugom krstari po kalifornijskoj ruti 166. Pustinjski pejzaž dozvoljava besprekornu vidljivost kilometrima uokolo, i možete samo zamisliti Hansovu zapanjenost kada naiđe na napušteni automobil sa još toplim motorom i razbacanim inventarom koji ukazuje na skorašnje prisustvo najmanje četvoročlane porodice. Hans uzalud gleda na sve strane ali ne nalazi ni najmanjeg traga koji bi ukazao kuda su to putnici iz napuštenog automobila nestali. I dok tako razbija glavu nad misterijom, ustanovljava da je upravo u tom trenutku i njegov automobil postao decidirano prazan - da mu je supruga volšebno izvetrila iz sedišta u kojem je do malopre bila vezana još uvek zakopčanim pojasem. U maniru široko priznatih majstora saspensa, Suzuki tako u prologu ostavlja našeg zbunjenog i nadasve nesretnog Hansa, da mu se nikada više ne vrati.


Sledi rez na drugi misteriozni nestanak: četvoročlana porodica Fujimura je volšebno isparila u vazduh jednog jutra i stariji brat nesretnog oca te porodice Fujimura nemilice je ukazivao na činjenicu da su iza njihovog nestanka ostali samo nedovršeni mundani jutarnji zadaci - neko od njih je nestao u sred spravljanja doručka, neko u sred kupanja u kadi. Mi, već trenirani iskustvom nesretnog Hansa, sad već donekle i znamo kako ta misterija izgleda, tako da su njena mnoga detaljisanja uglavnom  prekomerna, izlišna i na momente zdravo dosadna. Mi već čekamo rasplet, pošto shvatamo da će sam zaplet biti uglavnom repetitivno iznošenje originalnog modela iz prologa, ali ne, ne, Suzuki ima u planu još sličnih (da ne kažem potpuno istih) gudiza, u istom "šaka-kapa" maniru, pa se ređaju slični incidenti koji nemaju ama baš nikakvu svrhu niti razlog niti uticaj na skasku, nego postoje samo da čitaocu kroz nozdrve uguraju sve ono što mu je već kristalno jasno otkako je u prologu sreo nesretnog Hansa.


Dalje, tvdi Edge, superkumpjuteri su pri izračunavanju matematičke vrednosti Pi sinhronizovano naišli na nepregledan niz nula, to baš nakon petstotog decimalnog mesta. A još dalje, neki tamo astronomi su ustvrdili da su najmanje dve ili tri zvezde nestale i to ne u tamo nekim banalnim supernova eksplozijama, nego naprosto u "puf-i sad me više nema" duboko naučnom maniru. NASA, naravno, to pokušava da sve zataška, tvrdeći da je njen JWST u orbiti pod remontom, ali ne lezi vraže, videli su sve to i drugi astronomi širom sveta, pa tako i nema nikakve zabune - bio je to upravo puf, kako bi to sami astrofizičari u svom žargonu rekli.


I dobro sad, tu već shvatite sa kime i sa čime imate posla, ali paradoksalno, to se ispostavi kao sasvim pristojna motivacija za dalje čitanje. Neki đavo vas naprosto tera da okusite svu širinu tog spektakla, svu dubinu te nesvesti, i, uopšte, svu dimenziju tog besmisla koji vam tekst tako straobalno raskriljuje pred umornim i pomalo suznim očima.


Sledi populistički dajdžest nekih renomiranih naučnih teorija i dela (koje će Suzuki isto tako uredno navesti u bibliografiji), dajdžest koji će vas do suza nasmejati i istovremeno probuditi u vama skoro nekontrolisanu zavist prema čoveku koji tako hrabro ogoljuje svu svoju bedastoću (ne, ne pada mi na pamet adekvatnija reč), sluteći da će mu za to neko negde zapravo dati nagradu. Dajdžest nalik onima kojima seoski popovi artikulišu svoju nadasve specifičnu interpretaciju Darvinove teorije evolucije vrsta, recimo, i 'nuff said sad o tome. Rečeni dajdžest je obilno garniran sličnim ekstraktom japanske kulture i istorije, čiji napor da reprezentuje zemlju veoma liči na uspeh sa kojim "havajska" pica sa ananasom reprezentuje talijansko kulinarstvo. A ako se ispostavi da nekome sve to nije dosta, tu su i ekstrakti o drevnim južnoameričkim civilizacijama nad kakvim bi i sam fon Deniken pohotno stenjao u ekstazi zavidnog sladostrašća. I još pride mnogočega, naravno, ali tu smo već zahvalni prirodnoj selektivnosti kojom se ljudski mozak brani od informativnog preopterećenja, tako da se većina njih milosrdno izgubi čim isključite čitač nakon brisanja knjige.


Nakon tog ekstraordinarno opsesivnog trpanja raznolike i uglavnom beskorisne informacije kojoj je cilj da stvori privid višedimenzionalnosti samog zapleta, na scenu stupa glavni lik odgovoran za rasplet. Ili se bar čitalac tome naivno nada, optimističan kakav već jeste pri čitanju nagrađenih žanrovskih romana. Na scenu stupa Saeko Kuriyama, novinarka kojoj je po zadatku dopalo da istraži misteriozni nestanak porodice Fujimura. Svi žanrovski trenirani čitaoci iskusiće tu moj nalet silovite nade u zdrav razum, jer po žanrovskoj konvenciji lik novinara obećava sistematsko istraživanje, analizu, procjenu činjenica i, eventualno, finalno objašnjenje početne misterije. Unutar konvencije žanrovske motivacije, novinar nam tu dođe kao nešto blaža, nekonvencinalnija verzija detektiva, i po svojoj prirodi taj motiv obećava nam ne samo neutaživu žeđ za istinom nego i beskompromisnu potjeru za istom. Uvođenje novinara kao glavnog lika čitaocu obećava ako već ne samo iznalaženje smisla u haosu, a ono bar bespoštedno traženje smisla, stoga, ko tu uspe - uspe, a ko ne... pa, taj će se barem doslovno satrti u rečenom traženju. To je, dakle, ta nepisana pogodba koju imamo sa proznim novinarima u žanru, ali alas, Suzuki ima isuviše problema u sopstvenom razmišljanju da bi bio u stanju prozno nam dočarati išta slično. 


Malo bi bilo reći da Saeko Kuriyama ima psiho-fizičke probleme. Bliže je istini reći da Saeko Kuriyama nema ništa drugo OSIM toga, i to uglavnom zato što Suzuki naprosto ne zna kako karakterizacija proznog lika zapravo funkcioniše, to van ekstremih deskriptivnih značajki. Saeko je tako sazdana od gomile krajnosti koje je, tako zbijene na gomilu, predstavljaju kao primarno grotesku, a tek nakon toga pobuđuju dublje sentimente, i to samo kod onih čitalaca koji su u stanju da preko rečene groteske pređu, uz to sačuvavši dovoljno interesovanja za sam nesretni lik. Saeko vuče traume zbog skorašnjeg razvoda za koji naprosto ne možete da krivite njenog supruga, iako o njemu skoro ništa ne znate, sem da nije uradio ništa što normalan čovek inače ne bi uradio, kad ga se životno upari sa osobom kao što je Saeko. Dalje, Saeko ima opipljivu kvrgu u dojci, za koju uporno ne traži lekarsku pomoć jer se boji loše vesti, recimo, boji se da je u pitanju, nedajbože, rak. Mene reči naprosto izdaju nad tom i takvom postavkom, pa bolje da dalje o tome i ne govorim, sem da uzgred napomenem kako zaista ne poznajem ženu koju bi u takvoj situaciji na taj način reagovala. Dalje, Saeko se smatra odgovornom za smrt majke, koja je umrla na porođaju od krajnje nejasnih komplikacija. Dalje, Saeko je izgubila oca ciglih osamnaest godina kasnije, i to u incidentu veoma nalik incidentima na kojima Suzuki gradi zaplet, ali izgleda da to niko ne zna, pa joj otud i daju taj konkretno novinarski zadatak. Dalje, Saeko je pre izvesnog broja godina gotovo silovana od strane mladića čiji su joj roditelji bili neka neka vrst surogata očinstva-majčinstva, a pri tom su bili i pravi, izistinski detektivi. Ukratko rečeno, Saeko je komplet najgorih trauma koje se nekome mogu u životu dogoditi i, shodno tome, Saeko u romanu ne rasvetljuje ama baš ništa, naprotiv, ona preko tih svojih obilnih hendikepa samo zamagljuje čak i ono što bi u drugačijim okolnostima bilo relativno jednostavno i jasno.


Pored te karakterizacije, Suzuki ni sa ostalim likovima ne prolazi ništa bolje: on jednostavno nije u stanju da konstruiše lik bez da posegne za krajnostima koje sačinjavaju primarno karikaturu, ako već ne i grotesku. No dobro, njemu ionako ne treba više od toga, jer sve što Suzuki ima u planu svodi se ionako na najjeftiniju moguću mistiku, i to od one najtrivijalnije vrste za koju se smatra da je opravdana najnižim nazivnikom žanrovske konvencije. Kad mlaka ljubavna vezica između Saeko i jednog od kolega ne odvede nikuda, Suzuki je prekine krajnje proizvoljnim aktom vanbračne griže savesti: jednom kad napipa kvrgu u njenoj dojci, ljubavnik se priseti da kod kuće i sam ima suprugu sa rakom dojke, i to je kraj te od samog početka neuverljive romanse. I kad medijum iz ekipe ne uspe da iz prvog pokušaja uspostavi suvislu konverzaciju sa duhovima koji bi mogli objasniti misteriozne nestanke ljudi, Suzuki odluči da je sasvim logično da rečenu nesrećnicu zavitla sa stene u more, jer šta sa njom dalje da radi, pobogu, kome pa treba medijum koji ne uspeva da komunicira sa duhovima?? I kad se najzad kobajagi otkrije da ljudi nestaju uglavnom u regionima duž tektonskih raspuklina, Suzuki naprosto ne zna kud dalje nego da za sve okrivi... pa eto, koga drugog nego glavom i bradom matematiku, i te njene gaddem iracionalne brojeve, među njima ponajviše gaddem konstantu Pi, koja je, naravno, nekako za sve kvantum-apokalipse kriva, ali Suzuki baš ne zna kako je to sirota matematika za sve kriva, a ako on ne zna, pa, onda ni njegovi čitaoci ne moraju to da znaju, jer bože moj, ipak je ovo samo tamo neki horor, i sasvim se podrazumeva da sam taj fakt daje dovoljno slobode da se lupeta na trista strana redom pa još i dobije nagrada za to lupetanje.


Da sumiram: Edge nije samo nehotična parodija žanrova, Edge je nesvesna parodija RAZUMA. Samim time, roman je beskrajno zabavan u svojoj neplaniranoj dimenziji čisto logičkog užasa - to dirljivo konfuzno, patetično nesuvislo i teatralno neartikulisano poimanje stvarnosti koje izvire iz pera autora nudi nekakvu nezdravu fascinaciju kakvu inače iskusite dok gledate ljude koji rade sve ono što vi samtrate da nikada ne bi: da se skinu do gola i mokre na javnim mestima krcatim slučajnim prolaznicima, na primer. Ili da glasno prde u liftu prepunom ljudi, recimo. Te konkretno aktivnosti su meni prilično veran ekvivalent književnog dometa ovog romana, ali opet, nije domet taj koji me fascinira, nego sklop svesti koja ga proizvodi. Ili, bolje rečeno, sklop nesvesti koji podrazumeva apsolutni nedostatak samosvesti, zadužene da kod dvonožnih sisara proizvede stid zbog sopstvene inferiornosti.


I, šta reći, možda upravo to i jeste ona najvažnija komponenta na kojoj se gradi proizvod oficijelno klasificiran kao "umetnički".  A ako je zaista tako, onda je Suzuki svakako jedan od najvećih žanrovskih umetnika koje sam čitala u poslednjih pet-šest godina.




Za kraj vas ostavljam sa jednim reprezentativnim odlomkom, mada, istinu govoreći, teško da u romanu ima odlomka koji nije reprezenttivan, ali eto, ovaj će adekvatno poslužiti svrsi, a ako ne posluži, pa, onda nikakve svrhe nije ni bilo.

He was attempting to lighten the atmosphere by telling tall tales that normal people could enjoy, but Saeko couldn't help wondering what it was that had got him so caught up in his thoughts earlier.


'So, what's got you so preoccupied anyway?' Presumably it was something fascinating enough to make him completely forget himself.


Isogai's expression changed immediately. Saeko got the impression that whatever it was, it was pretty important. 'Actually I find it a little hard to believe. Apparently, the value of Pi has changed.'


Pi. Saeko knew the basics; it was a number that continued randomly and infinitely beyond the decimal point, never revealing a pattern.


3.1415926535897932384626433832795028


Had he meant that some new discovery had been made about the number?


'A colleague of mine called Cyril Burt, good friend, actually, was given a report by another mutual friend I used to work with at the facility, Gary. He researches number theory at Stanford.


'Just three or four days ago he was running some generic tests on some new computers they were having installed. One of the tests was to have the computer calculate the value of Pi to 500 billion digits. It's a relatively standard computing test to check for errors in logic. We already know the value of Pi to a trillion digits, so it's easy to tell if the calculation goes wrong on the way.


'Now, the value of Pi is such that no matter how long we were to run a computer, we would never be able to finish the calculation. Pi is an irrational number and can't be represented as a fraction. Each number below the decimal point will be a number from 0 to 9, and at no point will anything resembling a numeric pattern appear. This has already been proven using mathematic theory.


'Anyway, Gary had set up the computer to sound an alarm if the calculation didn't produce the expected numbers. As I said, a simple test to check the computer's processing ability.' Isogai paused for a moment, eyes unfocused as though he were lost in thought.


'So the alarm sounded?' Saeko prompted.


'Exactly.'


'Meaning, a pattern emerged?'


Isogai shook his head, looking genuinely disturbed. 'As I said, I find it hard to believe, but after a certain point, the numbers stopped. The computer just produced a succession of zeros.'


Saeko recalled part of her father's writing - he had also written about Pi:
Irrational numbers continue ad infinitum as a chaotic concatenation of numerals with no point of destination. Imagine if I were to suddenly find a repeating pattern in a number that had heretofore been defined as irrational!


'That must have been pretty terrifying for Gary.'


'Terrifying, yes?That's exactly what it was. He wasn't afraid at first because he didn't believe the results for a moment. I guess he swore at the computer for coming up with an error and set about reinitializing the test.


'But he couldn't find any errors in the program. He called on some friends to help. Pretty standard researcher thing, always trying to remain objective. He wanted a second opinion, probably thought he was just missing something obvious.'


'But they didn't find anything either, right?'


Isogai smiled a little, looking pleasantly surprised that Saeko was following the conversation. 'Do you want to see it? I've got the data from the test in my laptop.'
Isogai stopped suddenly and pulled his laptop out from his shoulder bag. He sat on the edge of one of the steps and booted up the computer. Saeko sat next to him and watched as a succession of numbers appeared on the computer's display. The stream of numbers quickly filled the screen. At a certain point, the numbers became a succession of zeros.


053944282039301274816381585303964399254702016727593285743666441109625663373000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000


Beyond the decimal point, some numbers reached a point where they became periodic, endlessly repeating a given digit or set of digits. For example, 17 divided by 7 yielded 2.428571428571428571. The 428571 pattern repeated endlessly. Numbers that terminated in a repeating decimal pattern were classified as rational. By contrast, numbers such as Pi or the root of 2 were defined as irrational since their decimal representation went on forever without ever terminating in a pattern. Yet, the number on the screen devolved into a clear pattern, a never-ending line of zeros.


Saeko scanned through the numbers on the screen. As she did so, she couldn't shake the feeling that the dividing zone between the random numbers and the succession of zeros represented an abyss, something beyond the realm of her comprehension. It seemed like a dividing line between life and death. The random numbers were life, dynamic and vibrant. In contrast, the procession of zeros brought to mind a frozen world where all forms of life were precluded by a boundless emptiness. The random numbers were full of color and variety, the zeros monotone and dull.


Is it an omen?


She felt awe, sensing a will that pervaded the universe. If it was the will of a god, though, what was this saying? Was it a positive message? Or a warning? Saeko couldn't believe that it was the former. She felt morbidly certain that this was not a good sign for the universe.


'Is it possible that the random numbers return later?' Perhaps it was just some astounding coincidence. Perhaps things just returned to normal.


'They thought of that and pushed the computer to continue the calculation. The zeros just went on and on, and the random strings of numbers never recurred. That was when they started to really worry.


'It wasn't a problem with the machine. They had professionals check it and nothing was found. When the results of the objectivity tests came back, confirming that the pattern of zeros was real, Cyril said he started to shake.


'It's happened everywhere, this is universal. Computers all over the planet are coming up with the same result once they hit 500 billion digits. The same pattern of zeros.'


So computers throughout the world were coming up with the result after exactly the same number of decimal points. Saeko tried to gauge the implications, yet each time found herself returning to the same basic question. Wasn't Pi just a value? Did the change have any impact for the everyday world?


But she knew better than to ask. From all that her father had taught her about math and physics, she already knew the answer. Pi was fundamental in a number of equations used to describe various phenomena of the universe. If the value changed, then it necessarily followed that there would be real-world impact. When numbers went awry, when mathematic theorems failed, it was nothing less than a sign of a collapse in the laws of physics. But even with that understanding, it didn't quite feel real. She had no yardstick; there were no precedents to help her contextualize it.


A chill crawled up her spine as she slowly became cognizant of the ominous threat. The revelation was so massive that it was simply impossible to process it all at once. Bit by bit, her physical reactions began to catch up with the information her mind had already processed, and she felt the hairs on her arms begin to stand on edge as fear began to penetrate the core of her consciousness.


Isogai closed the lid of his laptop and put it back in his bag, and they resumed climbing the steps. For a while neither spoke, concentrating only on the task of walking. A gust of wind blew across the path, strangely warm for the time of year. The wind died down as suddenly as it came, leaving the branches still and quiet.

[angel011]

 



Za preskakanje, onda?

Nego, što se ovog tiče:

Dalje, Saeko ima opipljivu kvrgu u dojci, za koju uporno ne traži lekarsku pomoć jer se boji loše vesti, recimo, boji se da je u pitanju, nedajbože, rak. Mene reči naprosto izdaju nad tom i takvom postavkom, pa bolje da dalje o tome i ne govorim, sem da uzgred napomenem kako zaista ne poznajem ženu koju bi u takvoj situaciji na taj način reagovala.

Ja znam takve. Ne konkretno za rak dojke, ali za karakteristične znake ovog ili onog raka, da. To jest, znala sam takve.

[PTY]

Pa vidi, ponekad loša knjiga može da ti pozitivno utiče na vidike taman koliko i dobra, a u tom smislu Edge ima neku vrednost. Recimo, da se zaključiti da je Suzuki duboko fasciniran stvarima koje ne shvata u potpunosti, što ga tera da o njima razmišlja i tumači ih na način koji nema baš odviše zdravorazumske kvalitete, ali zato ima na pretek svake druge, što ponekad proizvodi... recimo, vrlo zanimljive (s)misaone koncepte.    A to može biti zanimljivo u literaturi, nije da nije. Da se Suzuki držao onog više iracionalnog, da ne kažem apsurdnog domena fantastike, njegove ideje i postavke bi svakako bile interesantne ljudima sa sličnim sklonostima. Na žalost, Suzuki je više privučen prirodnim fenomenima i "tvrdim" naukama a tu njegove faličnosti baš onako, dolaze do izražaja, na nimalo pozitivan način. Da stvar bude gora, Suzuki ima i nesavladivu potrebu da "prosvetljuje", da "otkriva" drugima ono što sam smatra ingenioznim dosetkama, pa se otud i bavi toliko dajdžestima teorija za čije je ispravno shvatanje potrebno veoma specijalizovano i iscrpno znanje. Suzuki je neka vrst filozofa-laika, koji je čvrsto uveren da mu za razumevanje kompleksnih naučnih postavki i teorija nije potrebno nikakvo formalno i specijalizovano obrazovanje, nego mu je dovoljna bogomdana pronicljivost, za koju očigledno smatra da je njega favorizovala više no ostale ljude. Naravno da je tok takve svesti vrlo interesantan posmatraču, pogotovo kad se ovako razuzdano razmaše, bez ikakvih kočnica koje većina ljudi uglavnom koristi kad iznose svoja mišljenja o fenomenima sa kojima nisu dovoljno upoznati. To me kod njega i fascinira, ta apsolutna samouverenost i očigledno nehajanje za mogućnost da to što govori zapravo nema niti smisla niti razuma. A najsmešnije od svega - ništa od tih njegovih divljih pretpostavki koje nudi preko dajdžesta zapravo ima svrhe i potrebe u samom zapletu a još manje u raspletu knjige, to je potpuno beskorisan narativni višak koji je Suzuki naprosto morao da ugura u knjigu jer mu je stalo da to nekome kaže. Tako da Edge ispada nekakva platforma za skoro pa terapeutsko izlaganje nekih njegovih vrlo smušenih i zbunjenih misaonik koncepata. Dok nije odneo nagradu (sa onakvim imenima u žiriju, hej!) bilo mi sve to pomalo dirljivo, na način na koji mi bleskakste stvari ponekad mogu da budu, ali posle me sve to malko iziritiralo, pa otud i ovako hejterski rivju.     Mene Kiernanova nije oduvala sa nogu, to sam rekla, ali u kontekstu nominacija, žena je proizvela roman najmanje 4 reda veličine bolji od ovog, to u svakom domenu, od idejnog do zanatskog i preko pola tuceta između. Mislim da me i to dodatno iznerviralo, i eto.


Što se ovog drugog tiče, ja zaista ne poznajem osobu koja bi u takvoj situaciji slično reagirala. Ako išta, poznajem dovoljno žena koje se nalaze u onoj drugoj krajnosti, pa u sličnim situacijama reaguju kao krajnji alarmisti i hipohondrijaci, plašeći se najgoreg za svaku sitnicu. Pretpostavljam da su obe krajnosti podjednako otklonjene od onoga što volimo da smatramo za "normalu", ali svejedno, ako imamo prozni lik čiji je profil koncipiran kao samostalan i obrazovan, onda takvo ponašanje ostavlja utisak nedoslednosti u karakterizaciji.

 

[Perin]

Tako da Edge ispada nekakva platforma za skoro pa terapeutsko izlaganje nekih njegovih vrlo smušenih i zbunjenih misaonik koncepata. Dok nije odneo nagradu (sa onakvim imenima u žiriju, hej!) bilo mi sve to pomalo dirljivo, na način na koji mi bleskakste stvari ponekad mogu da budu, ali posle me sve to malko iziritiralo, pa otud i ovako hejterski rivju.       

Meni samo čudna ona pitanja na fejsu u grupi: da li će ovo remek delo biti prevedeno kod nas (wtf, jesi li ti možda pročitao prikaz uopšte?) i sa kojim japanskim klasikom bi se moglo to remek delo uporediti (wtf, jesi li ti možda pročitao prikaz uopšte?).




Hoću da kažem, čitajući prikaz, nisam stekao utisak da je to remek delo, čak štaviše

[zakk]

Perine, to je SOatlas1980, on tako priča

[PTY]

heh... ja inače ne poznajem te momke, pa nisam bila sigurna da li su ozbiljni ili u tim pitanjima ima oveća doza ironije. 


ps. zakk u međuvremenu objasnio. 

[PTY]

Rosemary's Daughtersby David Nickle

One evening many years ago, author and playwright Ira Levin paid a visit to his friend Rosemary Clooney. It was during her pregnancy, in the apartment she shared with her husband Jose Ferrer in the Dakota Building in New York City. As legend would have it, Ferrer was a lousy husband, and Levin worried about Rosemary both in the marriage and in that gloomy old building. He went away and set to work on a new novel, about a woman also called Rosemary married to a down-on-his-luck actor in a building very much like the Dakota.

The novel departs from Clooney's depressingly mundane reality, as Rosemary Woodhouse's husband Guy sells her uterus to a pack of Satanists living upstairs.  And as they wait for their little Dark Lord to gestate, the course of a difficult pregnancy turns into the nightmarish horror show of Rosemary's Baby — arguably one of the most influential and powerful horror novels of the 20th century.
Reportedly, Levin was dismayed by the most obvious influence of the book, in creating a genre of horror fiction that preyed on what he regarded the superstitious impulses of the reading public. But he ought to have been more pleased with the other big influence: the introduction of feminist themes into horror fiction. In particular, into horror fiction written by men.

It's an interesting, and interestingly popular, subset of a genre that can be anything but feminist. One of the frequent complaints about modern horror films is that they often treat women as simple victims, lasciviously oppressed and violated, and very often killed. In the original King Kong, Fay Wray is little more than a rape victim.  In The Cat People, Simone Simon's Serbian shape-changer is a creature whose womanly desires and fallibility turn her into a killer. The dead sorority sisters in the endless slasher movies of the 1980s are legion — all implicitly executed for simply enjoying their sexuality.
But Rosemary's daughters are a different breed. It would be wrong to call them properly feminist — because they're not really stories informed by the core experience of their authors. Rather, they're stories written by male novelists, using the tools they've got to understand, as best they can, the experience of their sisters and wives and daughters.

They don't always get it right. But they take an honest stab at it.

In Rosemary's Baby, Levin asks us to study the vulnerability of women who enter into marriage and embark on a life of child-rearing. As Rosemary's pregnancy progresses, she finds herself having less and less agency in her own life and care — much as was the case for most women with children in 1960s America. Levin went as far as acknowledging, and illustrating, the horror of that disempowerment. But in the end, the best he could offer was an expression of lurid despair.

William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist was also concerned with women — in particular, with the anxieties and vulnerabilities that he saw as intrinsic to women-led households in the early 1970s, when Vatican 2 denied the "wisdom" of the old religious patriarchy and a demon might slip in through the gaps to steal away your child. It would be wrong to call a novel feminist, in which that demon finally succumbs at the hand of one of the priests of that Old Time Religion.  But as previously stated — they didn't always get it right.

What they did was observe the changing world of gender roles, with as much empathy and as little condescension as they could.

Stephen King's debut novel was the story of Carrie White, a young girl whose abuse at the hands of her zealously conservative mother combined with her first menstruation unleashed latent telekinetic powers that literally destroyed the oppressive, patriarchal society around her. King, interestingly, depicted that patriarchy most brutally enforced by the women: specifically, Carrie's mother, and the mean girls who set up the Prom Night prank that leads to the pyrotechnic conclusion. 

King has been an enthusiastic, if imperfect, bearer of the flame in this little sub-category throughout his very prolific career. His novel The Shining takes a powerful look at domestic abuse borne of substance abuse, and ultimately delivers a kind of victory to Wendy Torrance, who escapes both the evils of the Overlook Hotel and the immediate threat of her abusive husband. But it's a victory delivered by men — the momentary mercy and regret of her husband, the 'Shining' powers of her son Danny, the sacrifice of Dick Hallorann, the hotel's psychic custodian.

But there are others: Rose Madder, Dolores Clayborne, Gerald's Game... to an extent, It and The Stand. They all take that stab at understanding and illuminating the human condition, as experienced by the double-X chromosome.
When I was putting together my latest novel, The 'Geisters, I paid less attention to King, and more to Levin. Initially, my novel of a woman haunted by a poltergeist, and pursued by men with a dangerously carnal interest in that poltergeist, was to be informed by another great Levin feminist-horror novel: The Stepford Wives.
That one's barely a novel at all — it's a tiny thing, really a novella. But Levin's slim tale has become in its way an even more prevalent meme than Rosemary's Baby: the story of a community of men, irritated by the rising tide of feminism in the early '70s, who respond with a horrible utopianism: a world in which real women, with their needs and desires and ambitions, are replaced by the servile sexual objects that these men had always desired.
It's a powerful meme, and like the horror at the heart of Rosemary's Baby, it's fundamentally hopeless. From his time and place, that's how Levin evidently saw the future for women in North American society. To paraphrase George Orwell, the likely future of feminist aspiration is a black-polished Oxford shoe, stomping on a woman's face — forever.
It's tempting to dismiss that assessment as dated. But to do so would be naive. Lawmakers in North Carolina and Texas are waging an all-out war of oppression on women as I type this.  In Dubai, Norwegian designer Marte Deborah has barely escaped imprisonment for the crime of having sex out of marriage, for simply having reported an allegation that she'd been raped in that country. Patriarchy may sometimes seem to be dissolving into history — but like the monster in a horror novel, it always seems to return, its powers undiminished.
When I wrote about The 'Geisters on John Scalzi's blog in June, I described it as Rosemary's Baby, where the part of Rosemary Woodhouse is played by Carrie White. My protagonist Ann LeSage has to take a lot of shit from some very bad men. But she has within herself the capacity to give it back, with interest.
In that sense, I hope that my addition to this continuum is if not a statement of naive hope, at least something of a battle cry.

[PTY]

Going through The Quarry, Iain Banks' final novel, was such a bittersweet experience. For the last 15 years I've spent my reading life safe in the knowledge that there is, without a doubt, a new Iain Banks novel somewhere not too far ahead. I've liked both his incarnations so it was with huge trepidation that I've opened this short book. It was so sad knowing that this might be the last new pages that I'll ever read from one of my favourite writers. Luckily, The Quarry is just as you'd expect it to be - funny, outrageous and clever.

Much has been said about the fact that in a cruel twist of fate, one of the main protagonists in The Quarry is dying from cancer. Life does imitate art in the worst possible sense. However, Guy, who only has months to live, has a son, autistic math genius Kit, who is the real star of the book. Kit lives with Guy in a dilapidated house in Bewford, situated near a quarry. Similar to Guy, the house itself is falling apart and will be destroyed in the near future to make way for quarry expansion. Similar to Guy, the house itself is filled with memories and one of these is the long lost video tape which might or might not be a sex tape made between friends once they were together at college. All of them come together for one last time to Guy's place, willing to say goodbye to their friend and, if possible, find the missing videotape. These events unfurl through the eyes of Kit, who is autistic and completely lovable character. Everyone is slightly worried about how Kit will manage once Guy is gone but somehow as the story progresses and you discover how lives of each and every character is flawed, you start to feel like Kit will manage just fine. At one point, search for the missing video tape turns into a huge clear out and almost everything Guy and Kit own is thrown into a huge bonfire. For me, this bonfire is the centrepiece of the novel, signifying what really matters in life - not materialistic things that we accumulate but just the fact that we're happy to be alive.

Now, Iain plotted the whole story and wrote about half of the book before he found out about the cancer but in his last filmed interview with the BBC, Iain mentioned that some of the Guy's rants were written in the hospital just after he found out about the prognosis. These definitely feel like vintage Ian letting it all out. Ian was a character larger than life and you would really appreciate this truly when attending one of his readings. As such The Quarry is the perfect ending. A lovely tale that is, perhaps, a bit rough around the edges but is a worthy full stop to both an extraordinary life and illustrious career.


Order "The Quarry" here:
Amazon US | Amazon UK

[PTY]

Kaže Benford na efebu:

GENES MATTER?

[/size]

I got a request from a Rothberg Institute for my DNA, since they want to "attempt to uncover common genetic variants among individuals who have demonstrated high level mathematical reasoning and abstract thought." among "500 of the best American theoretical physicists and mathematicians." I gave them the saliva and look forward to the reports in a few years. But really...seriously?! I don't think their staff analysis is right. Come now!

nije baš da to sad spada u "živimo SF" kategoriju, ali ima neke male primese reafirmacije njegove izvesne proto varijante, bar kad se radi o pretpostavkama eugenike i tome sličnih struja mišljenja, pa malko strepnje i zebnje skoro da je sasvim na mestu.
... a ni malko cinizma ne bi tu bilo na odmet, jer primećujem da je Benford ipak pristao na test, i pored svih ograda i deklarisane rezervisanosti. 

[PTY]

Set in the midst of polluted streets of Victorian London, this moody debut by Adam McOmber has all you would expect from a Gothic novel - oppressing and brooding atmosphere, a strange mystery at it's heart and a brilliant detective looking to solve it.






The basic premise is quite original as well. Story revolves around Jane Silverlake who lives on the family estate that is slowly falling to ruin. Jane lives with her father and has a secret. She can literary feel and see the souls of man-made objects around her and this strange gift makes her rather lonely. Her only friends are her neighbors Madeline and Nathan. However, as they grow up, both Madeline and Jane fall in love with Nathan but unfortunately Nathan is obsessed with cult led by Ariston Day. Ariston Day is one strange character and he actively participates with his followers in dream manipulation, trying to discover Empyrean, hidden world. However, year later Nathan disappears and together with the legendary French Inspector Vidocq, Jane uses her talent to unfurl the events and discover the truth. However, as thing progress, story becomes increasingly strange furthering the overall experience that you're reading a true Gothic tale in vein of HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe. However, despite the carefully crafted mythology, the place where The White Forest truly shines is the characterization. Jane is an unlikely heroine, but one to which most of the readers will instantly like. The boyish obsession Nathan holds over Empyrean will also feel frighteningly real for everyone who obsessively wished for something once in his life.The White Forest is brimming with rich and vibrant imagery, and when you combine that with such accomplished writing, you get something really special. I enjoyed it immensely and literary stormed through it in two days. For his debut novel, Adam McOmber has created something really extraordinary and I can't recommend it enough for readers who are looking for something completely off the beaten track.

Order "The White Forest" here:Amazon US | Amazon UK

[PTY]

I dobro sad, nagomilale se dobre knjige pa da ih i pribeležim, dok su utisci još sveži.    Najpre Ellen Ullman i njezin By Blood.





Ne, By Blood nije nikakva fantastika, ali, na neki uvrnuti način, roman je do te mere očaravajući i zapanjujući i toliko je suptilno strateški kodiran da proizvodi reakciju kakvu nam inače baš fantastika obećava. A povrh toga, roman svoju temu obrađuje na način koji upravo žanrovska fantastika najviše voli, pa ko tome da odoli?

A tema je, naravno, besmrtna i egzistencijalna - identitet. Muke sa njime, muke bez njega, patnje da se stekne, ili, još gore, patnje da se izbegne, to bar onaj najlakši i najteži ujedno - identitet po krvi. A pored i povrh toga - kao da to nije dosta - roman posredno govori i o vrlini eskapizma, ili barem procenjuje da li je sposobnost eskapizma vrlina per se, to bar u meri u kojoj se kvalitativno može izmeriti da li je ( i koliko) život lakši onim ljudima koji tu sposobnost imaju.

Naravno, kao i sve što Ullman napiše, i ovo je slojevito, mračno, opsesivno, brutalno, kodirano i nadasve vrlo, vrlo psihološki potkovano, što znači da najbolje komunicira sa čitaocem koji se sa tim zahtevima može da nosi, pa otud  i smatram da roman skoro pa obavezno štivo za Vladu, samo ako uspe da ga na sat-dva odvoji od igrica.   

Elem, pošto ovo uopšte nije roman koji počiva na zapletu (mada je sam zaplet priča za sebe, i to od one vrste koja čoveku skrvi led), sledi nešto malo spojlera, tek koliko je potrebno da se eventualno nadvladaju čari tog opijuma za narod, tojest tih kaksezovu... erm... kompjuterskih igrica (jezušmarijo, pupupu! ). Dakle, By Blood nudi tri aktera u životnoj drami (hmhm, tri!), od kojih su dva bezimena (da, zaista, krsna imena nisu potrebna za identitet), a onaj treći sa punim imenom i prezimenom je - psihijatar, Dr. Dora Schussler. Ona je kotva trougla kojeg osim nje čine Pacijent i Slušač.  Vreme je neposredno posle Niksona i Vijetnamskog rata, znači za vreme Forda. Mesto je... mesto je priča za sebe.


Slušač je univerzitetski profesor koji je suspendovan i pod istragom za neki nejasni (pa otid i mračni) seksualni incident sa nekim od svojih studenata.  Bežeći od skandala, profesor se sklanja u drugi grad, iznajmljuje jeftini stan i isto tako jeftini ured (kafkijanski sobičak, zapravo) u jednoj višespratnici, sve u nadi da će nekako pribaviti klijente za privatna podučavanja, tek da finansijski skrpi kraj sa krajem dok se istraga ne završi. Sudbina je htela da njegov ured deli samo tanki zid od ordinacije Dore Schussler, pa profesor tako sasvim nehotično i bez zle namere postaje Slušač, osoba koja iz prikrajka prisustvuje intimnim razgovorima Dr. Schussler i njenih pacijenata. A onda se pojavljuje Ona, pacijent sa velikim P, mlada žena čija duboka privatna tragedija uspeva da Slušaču zaseni njegovu, za koju je do tada mislio da je unikatno najveća na svetu.  Ona, Pacijent, je usvojena još kao beba. Njeni roditelji odbijaju da o tom usvajanju uopšte govore, ali Pacijent duboko oseća da jednostavno nije deo te idilične, protestantske familije koju čine, Otac, Majka i Sestra, tako različiti od Pacijenta, i po izgledu i po svetonazoru i po svim vaskolikim stremljenjima koji čine čoveka. Oh da, Pacijent je i lezbejka. Toliko o osećaju krivice.

Dr. Schussler navodi Pacijenta da suoči roditelje i da iščupa iz njih istinu o svom usvajanju, ma kako se oni opirali. Dr. Schussler smatra da je Pacijentu neophodno da sazna svoj krvni identitet, ne bi li tim saznanjem lakše izmirila, ili barem izbalansirala svoj društveni, kulturni, religiozni, poslovni i seksualni. Slušač, prisluškivanjem uhvaćen u kovitlac duhovnih potreba Pacijenta, odluči da joj u tome pomogne: to je tako... ljudski,  tako puno zdravog altruizma, pomoći bližnjemu svome, makar samo zato da kroz tu pomoć bolje osećamo, i makar na trenutak zaboravimo svoje probleme, zar ne? Naravno. Slušač istražuje Pacijentkinje korene sa daleko većim uspehom nego što to njoj samoj polazi za rukom, pošto on i dalje ima profesorski status koji mu omogućava da dopre do informacije do koje sam Pacijent nikada ne bi mogao. I tako Slušač otkriva i na tanjutru servira Pacijentu njegov krvni identitet. Identitet ratnog siročeta. Jevrejskog ratnog siročeta. Produkt silovanja i mučenja. Iz koncentracionog kampa.

Ako je Pacijent imao krize identiteta pre dolaska Dr. Schussleru i pre Slušačeve pomoći, ta kriza nije bila ništa u poređenju sa onom koja se kasnije razvila. E, tu negde sledi i pravi zaplet, a ovo do sada pomenuto može slobodno da se okvalifikuje kao uvertira, ili da budemo vulgarni - kao predigra.

Ellen Ullman je najjača savremena žena-pisac za koju znam, to u svoj limitiranosti sopstvenog neznanja. Nema spisateljice koja može da se meri da prodornošću seciranja kakvog Ullman ispoljava, bilo da piše od specifičnom autizmu ljudi koji najiskrenije komuniciraju jedino kroz svedenu preciznost kompjuterskog jezika (The Bug), bilo da govori o ljudima koji jednostavno nisu sposobni za ma kako sitan eskapizam, ma kako benigno izbegavanje čeprkanja po mračnim dubinama sopstvenog bića i bitisanja. Za takve ljude jednostavno nema bekstva niti azila, njihova potreba za autovivisekcijom (nadam se da ova reč zapravo postoji, pošto zaista ne znam za bolju ) jeste kamen temeljac njihovog duhovnog identiteta, iako razumom oni možda i slute da je čovek ipak nešto više od pukog (i zbrčkanog) zbira genetskog nasleđa.


Enivejz, ovo nije štivo za eskapiste po opredeljenju, ali jeste štivo za svakog koga zanima mračna strana mesa za koje smo doživotno vezani i od kojeg nema bekstva, sem u domenu duha. Što je eskapizam, naravno - za nekog nedostižan raj, a za nekog samo pakao samoobmane. By Blood će nekog možda i naterati da se postroji.

[PTY]

Dovrših i Cowl, najzad, zaturila mi se knjiga skroz, a bez razloga, totalno je opičeno štivo u pitanju, to za one koji vole... hm, pa eto, sulud i opičen sajfaj











onda, naravno, Patrick Lee trilogija:
















...i, trenutno sam na trećini finalnog naslova:











!Sto mu gromova!    odličan je Patrik, baš odličan! Ali pošto je trilogija od one strašno koherentne vrste, konačni utisak zahteva kompletiranje svih triju naslova, tako da...















ohoh, kako je ovo dobro!    ne znam zašto, ali mene svojevremeno Lindina trilogija The Bohr Maker nije dotakla ama nimalo, iako mi biotech jeste slaba strana, ali LOV je remek-delo, to najozbiljnije tvrdim. Ali otom-potom. 
























Laird i ja imamo skroz čudan relejšenšip, ali što je taj čovek stilista... ma prosto nemam reči. Svaka njegova završnica me temeljito i do koske razočara - nikad, ali baš nikad mi taj čovek nije pružio ono što tražim - pa opet, uopšte nisam u stanju da ne uzmem idući njegov naslov. Jedan od retkih pisaca čije sam sve knjige kupila, a to je vrlo, vrlo unikatan odnos, skoro pa intiman. Neverovatan pisac.











ne znam šta mi bi...    zapravo znam, knjiga bila za džaba a on kasnije folouapov ao na fbiju, no svejedno, taj romn nije ni upola loš no što bi se reklo na prvi pogled, mada ima roza-proza tendencije.















najzad i ovo dovrših... u životu mi se nije desilo da na neku knjigu tako reagujem: dva paralelna natativna toka, jedan sam intenzivno mrzila do poslednjeg znaka interpunkcije, a drugi isto tako intenzivno obožavala.

















a ovo je pravi dragulj.   

[PTY]

Tell All       By Robert Christgau

I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately, for two reasons. The first is the glut of rockbooks written by boomer musicians with time on their hands for boomer fans with memories deteriorating. The second is that I'm writing a memoir of my own, and always immerse in work that might clarify the project at hand. Ed Sanders's Fug You fits both bills: the Missouri-born poet, publisher, classics major, and peace creep who led the band that provides his title lived within blocks of me in the East Village for the entirety of the high '60s, and I knew him slightly. Originally published in 1988 and reissued twice since, Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water is a less obvious case. But science fiction meistersinger Delany, author of Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Triton, the beloved Dhalgren, and many others, is like me a product of the New York public school system, born in April 1942, and was also a Lower East Sider for much of the '60s. In his 1979 memoir/"essay" Heavenly Breakfast, he recounts his six 1967-68 months in a 2nd Street commune with the never-recorded band that provides his title. The Motion of Light in Water reaches back earlier. Although never more acute than when revisiting the Bronx High School of Science, its main event is Delany's four-plus years, summer 1961 to autumn 1965, in "squalid" apartments on 5th and then 6th between B and C with his wife, the poet and Bronx Science graduate Marilyn Hacker.
   
Two things about memoirs often annoy me: they go on too much about the nature of memory and there's not enough sex in them. Memory is indeed unreliable; memory does oft support alternate, nay, contradictory narratives; memory speaks loud and ineffable to our mortal selves' longing for an immortality that would drive us nuts if it proved our fate. Got it. As for sex, it's not because I like pornography, which I do, and which performs its arousal function quite well with no outside help. Nor is it because I'm nosy, which I am, and aren't you? It's because in my experience sex and the love that generally comes with it‑-a big qualification, I know, but even memoirists  who've had a lot more loveless sex than I have either include sex in their primary love relationships or should explain why they don't -- plays a determinative role in most lives. Trying to avoid this evasion in my own book, I soon came up against the logic of discretion -- however ready I may be to give up my own privacy, I don't have the right to demand that of anyone else. Nevertheless, it's a formal problem that cries out for a solution.
   
Rereading two classics I've long admired -- Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return and Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki -- I was struck by how thoroughly both authors ignored their wives, but those were troubled relationships in more circumspect times. Less acceptable is how few of the contemporary memoirs I've downed recently do justice to the power of sexual fulfillment and domestic partnership. Christopher Hitchens's Hitch-22, for instance, profiles so many bigshots I think I'll just can my Mick Jagger story altogether, but never reveals when or why he married either of his wives, the second of whom helped him through quite a lot as I understand it. Major exceptions are Richard Hell's tell-all, David Carr's scabrous The Night of the Gun, and Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters, which counterposes her affair with Jack Kerouac against auxiliary relationships I found just as interesting. And of these, only the supposedly titillating Hell provides much sexual detail.
   
Since the '60s Fugs may have been the raunchiest rock group ever -- Sanders's "Slum Goddess" intro began, "She's lying down in viscid, skooshy strands of cherry Jell-O, buttocks popping in arpeggios of lust . . . " -- one might expect Sanders to be like Hell, but no. He cheerfully describes the lost 16-mm footage he shot of couples copulating on the floor of the "secret location" where he mimeographed Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts -- a chip-on-shoulder poetry outlet that once designated itself "the magazine of street-fucking" -- and in the Allen Street apartment where he gave away speed to speed the filming of the never-seen Amphetamine Head: A Study of Power in America. He recalls many occasions musical and political when he implored his public to "grope for peace." But does he himself grope once in the pages of his "Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side"? He does not.
   
With no access to the real dirt, I'm certain that sometimes he was just kidding, as when a police sergeant who hates him on principle fails to find "the Ankh symbol tattooed on his penis" and "the first 53 hieroglyphs of Akh-en-Aten's Hymn to the Sun Disk on his nuts" even though both delights were attested to in his pornrag. I'm also certain that in later years, after the successfully revived Fugs had recorded an extraordinary 12-minute suite on polymorphism, mortality, and mating for life called "Dreams of Sexual Perfection," he had second thoughts about the band's sexy bits, just as Fug You regrets the needle imagery he fooled with. And I note that a special hero of the memoir is his wife of 52 years, Miriam. Three times she talks him down from bad trips, and though she appears seldom elsewhere, Sanders's last paragraph begins: "The 1960s had ended, and Miriam and I were still together. We had survived the Revolution. I was very grateful for that."
   
A pack rat taught by Allen Ginsberg "to clip articles. I mean oodles of articles," Sanders holds his meditations on memory down to a prefatory pledge to settle no scores; after all, "I was sometimes imperfect in my behavior toward others, tending at times toward arrogance and egotistical smugness." His approach is flatly factual, based on his archive and broken down into hunks of a page or a paragraph rather than flowing narratively or developing thematically (and illustrated with the "glyphs" he used to draw freehand on mimeo stencils). Expedient though this method might seem, I loved the bite-sized pieces myself -- as with pistachios, there's a just-one-more effect. I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Sanders's longtime bond with Andy Warhol. A radical pacifist turned rabble-rousing anarcho-utopian who's now a "European-style social democrat," he also admired JFK and RFK. Having helped found the Yippies, he was appalled to hear Jerry Rubin call RFK's assassination "good news" because it meant the absurdist politicos could proceed with their Chicago plans. That was a turning point. But it didn't stop him from immersing in Chicago or testifying in Rubin's defense.
   
As regards memory, Delany is Sanders's opposite -- from its title on, The Motion of Light in Water is bound up in instability, stepping aside to undermine its own reliability with disquisitions on "parallel narrative" that come naturally to a creator of imaginary worlds who's immersed in structuralism and its brainspawn since the '60s. He's Sanders's thrice-dislocated opposite in other things too -- homosexual (although polymorphous enough to sleep with women and marry one), African-American (although middle-class and light enough to pass), and acutely dyslexic (although he too has studied Greek). And as regards sex, well, he leaves Sanders behind. As a lifelong erotic adventurer who believes sex is always "personally difficult" and usually "socially difficult," of course Delany writes about it. The Motion of Light in Water is full of explicit encounters, most of them gay and what some would call impersonal, a characterization Delany vehemently denies, but warmest and also hottest in a menage he and his wife share with a rough-hewn male friend. Around when Sanders was introducing "Slum Goddess" in 1968, Delaney followed the nine science fiction novels and novellas he'd then published with Ace Books by concocting the semiotic, arousing child-and-death-porn minisaga Equinox.
   
Although I myself value the Fugs' legacy not much less than, say, the Byrds', history will probably rank Delany's art higher than Sanders's. But he's never made much of a living writing -- long an academic without B.A., he teaches because he needs the money -- and although each man proved himself a titan before the high '60s even began, they were very different status-wise back then. Where the Peace Eye Bookstore was a community center, the Fugs the first indie-rock band to breach the Billboard album chart, and Sanders's unflinching 1971 Charles Manson report The Family a bestseller, Delany's feat of selling his first novel at 19 left him neither rich nor famous, and for most of the '60s he got by busking in folk clubs and buckling down to straight jobs. From their different vantages, both writers recount everyday kindnesses and heroic shows of mutual support that seem more historically significant in retrospect than the counterculture's inevitable destruction by war creeps zeroing in on its weaknesses, and both praise rent control, a left-populist leftover that succored hungry artists as watered-down rent stabilization would not. Still, it's Delany who has the kinder and lower-rent tale to tell.
   
At its core The Motion of Light in Water is the story of two young artists who marry long before they're ready -- Hacker gets pregnant, then miscarries -- and try to love each other in an open relationship that even a doctrinaire monogamist like me finds emotionally credible. It's a book about no lock on the street door, about reading Middlemarch in a day to forget how scared you are, about the man doing the housework, about sexism in jeans design and the book trade, about the endlessly courteous W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman coming to dinner, about how many truckers you can suck in a night, about visiting your wife's lover's much nicer place, about shutting down an argument by talking literature, about stolen goods and health crises and the rat on the sink and friends dropping by to mess up your night or your life, about not being able to stand her another day and hanging in for four years because you love this now-blocked poet so much you quote her published and unpublished work 25 times (and it's all good too). It's exceptionally novelistic and more evocative than Fug You. I only got to East 9th Street six months before Delany left Marilyn -- with whom he later had a daughter -- and flew to Europe. But the marginal life he celebrates feels like the East Village I moved to.
   
By 1967, many things had changed, for me and the neighborhood, and I expect I would have been unconvinced by a visit to the commune Delany reconstructs from his notebooks in Heavenly Breakfast. But though some may find this benevolent microcosm harder to believe than Triton, I feel enriched to have encountered it. Delany has said that one incontrovertible social benefit of literature is that it teaches compassion, and compassion, often for human beings most readers would do their best to ignore, rises to the surface of almost everything he writes. In yet another memoir -- the charming, sexually explicit Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York, illustrated by Delany's friend Mia Wolff, first published in 1997, and now reissued by Fantagraphics with illuminating addenda -- Delany tells how he got together with the love of his life, a homeless bookseller with whom he's now lived for 22 years. Three of its 44 pages are devoted to how filthy Dennis was when Delany brought him to the Skyline Hotel the first time they had sex -- the innermost of his three pairs of socks had decayed to oozy shreds on his feet. Yet Dennis -- like Sonny and Bob, nice guys some would dismiss as rough trade who play major roles in The Motion of Light in Water -- comes alive as both sex object and autonomous subject. He's a good man and an appealing love partner. I hope I can write as well about the women I've loved. It's part of the job.

[Mica Milovanovic]

Polako ga "otkrivaju"... 

[PTY]

Reci ti što hoćeš ali on jeste silni kulturni i svakakvi drugi šok. Ni sama nisam načisto da li je svo to njegovo šokiranje dovoljno opravdano, imam utisak da se poenta mogla efikasnije doseći upravo sa manje takve konkretno provokacije, bar kada govorimo o Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Najsmešnije od svega, eksplicitni seks je tu još i najmanji problem - sve to sa pedofilijom, incestom, koprofagijom i svim ostalim alternativnim erotskim egzibicijama nakon izvesnog broja ponavljanja eventualno izgubi glavninu svog šok-efekta. Ali tek tada vidiš da tu ostaje sasvim dovoljno pitanja koja baš i nisu adekvatno odgovorena, bar za nekoga van tog ekstremno alternativnog lajfstajla. Mislim, u čemu je poenta identificirati sa tako selektivnim i relativno minornim delom ličnosti kao što je najkonkretnija seksualna preferenca? Ispada da kad ih strejt establišment maliciozno svodi pod taj minimalni zajednički nazivnik, onda je to šovinizam i homofobija, a kad sami sebe svode na isti taj nazivnik, onda je to lično oslobođenje, epifanija, ekstremna sloboda ličnosti i već u tom smeru. I nije da to ne razumem, čovek je čudna zverka i svaki ular mu postaje maltene nakit kad ga sam na sebe stavi, ali objektivno gledano, meni se čini da je nesrećnik jednako zaularen, ovako i onako. Kako god - imam ozbiljnih problema sa Dilejnijem. 

[Anomander Rejk]

Završio sa čitanjem Kroninove Dvanaestorice, pa evo malo da sumiram utiske.
Dvanestorica nipošto nisu loš roman, niti ćete tokom njegovog čitanja zevati od dosade ili proklinjati sebe što ste dali pare. Naprotiv, zanimljiv je i dinmamičan i tera vas stalno na još i još čitanja. Međutim ukoliko ste nakon Prolaza ( a posebno prvog dela Prolaza) očekivali mnogo više, nešto sjajno i briljantno, onda ćete ostati nezadovoljni, da ne kažem razočarani.
Dvanestorica počinju kao neki postapokaliptični zombi roman ( doduše ovde su vampiri mesto zombija) ; virusni na sve strane, pratimo sudbine nekoliko likova koji se probijaju na razna odredišta ; takav pristup uz izgrađen Kroninov stil daje dinamiku priču ali istovremeno dovodi i do niza problema. Na neke likove tokom knjige Kronin kao da zaboravi, pa se pitamo zašto su uopšte i pokazani na početku. Neki drugi se pak, nasilno dovode u vezu. Najviše mi je smetalo, po meni potpuno izveštačeno ubacivanje Lajle, bivše Volgastove supruge u priču sa virusnima. Neubedljivo mi deluje i stvar sa dobricom među virusnima, Karterom. Odnos Ejmi i Volgasta koji je Kronin sjajno prikazao u Prolazu, sa suptilnim finesama i pun topline i emocija, sada je prerastao u pomalo patetičnu ,,volimo se svi u sutonu idemo u raj'' priču. Prosto imam utisak da je priča iz Prolaza strašan potencijal, strašan, ali koji jednostavno nije najbolje iskorišten. Kao da je svu svoju kreativnost i stvaralačku magiju Kronin istrošio u prvom delu Prolaza : razvoj bolesti, virusni, sveštenica, odnos Ejmi i Volgasta-sjajno, briljantno, puno tajanstva i misterija. Sve pre same apokalipse napisano je za čistu desetku. Svet postapokalipse, međutim...kao nastavci epske fantastike, svelo se na čiste tehnikalije i odrađivanje. Šteta, jer je ovo moglo biti nešto baš briljantno.
Ako bih ocenjivao po knjigama, od jedan do deset :
Prolaz ( prvi deo )- 10
Prolaz ( drugi deo)- 7
Dvanaestorica - 7-
Ukupna ocena za ceo serijal do sada : 8

[PTY]

ti si vrlo dobrostiv čitalac, Anomandere.    ja sam od 12 odustala još na prvoj trećini, učinilo mi se da je to postaje upravo ona vrst trilogija od kojih zazirem: udica dobre ideje u prvom delu, prazan hod u drugom i dve trećine trećeg, i eventualno, ako nam se posreći, okej završnica. Ali ima dosta ljudi koji se slažu sa tvojom procenom drugog dela, tako da...  ko zna. ali i dalje slutim da će na kraju trilogija isporučiti taman dovoljno idejnog materijala za samo jedan pošten roman.

[PTY]

Hark, a taille!

The Red Knight (2012) is Miles Cameron's debut novel. The titular Red Knight is a young (20ish) mercenary commander. He's mysterious, and known even to his friends as "captain". Still, he's good at his job and his men ('lances, men-at-arms and archers') are all glad to follow him into battle. The captain's latest gig is garrison duty: taking very good money to defend a remote Abbey against possible incursions from monsters of the Wild. The Wild doesn't scare the captain, nor his men - they've faced beasties before. In fact, if there's a problem with the job, it is the tempting presence of so many lovely novices...

Or, er, not.

It turns out that the Red Knight isn't facing a few monsters, he's facing a lot of them. The critters are all united under the rule of a fell sorcerer. Boglins, irks, wyverns, daemons, bears, trolls and more have all stopped their long-standing tradition of in-fighting and turned into an army. It has been over a generation since the last major incursion of the Wild, and humanity may have forgotten exactly how nasty this sort of war can be.

Tis a storie noble and uh, prithee tis ripe for plucking!
SIEGEPORN. I'm a sucker for it. And, lest the 'murder mystery' setup of the first few chapters of The Red Knight  fool you, this book is a blow-by-blow account of a big ol' siege. Lots of knights come to a castle. Lots of monsters come to a castle. SMACKDOWN. The monsters try things, the humans try things. There are big war machines and little war machines and daring midnight raids and trench combat and tunnelling and sneaky patrols and magical whoopsmacking and pretty much all possible forms of combat that could take place between Point A (in the castle) and Point B (not in the castle). This is a book that doesn't shy from action, and Mr. Cameron tells a fight scene extremely well.
As well as being a personal weakness, siegeporn also provides an extremely convenient narrative platform. First, you've got everyone in a tight space: your characters are under pressure, they're thrown together; this gives permission to unnaturally accelerate the character development - romance, revenge, etc. Second, there's a natural clock: everything has to resolve before a) reinforcements arrive or b) you run out of food. Third, everyone has a clear objective. And it isn't just "win", although that provides the basic structure of "two competing sides". Some people want to win more than they want to live, others the reverse. Some folks have empathy for the opponent; some are downright treasonous. Having an obvious us-and-them situation is something the reader can immediately recognise, which allows the author to layer in additional moral complexity as they see fit...

Continue reading "Underground Reading: The Red Knight by Miles Cameron" »

[PTY]

Today's recommendations are by James Knapp. James Knapp's first novel, State of Decay was a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and won the 2010 Compton Crook Award. He's since completed the Revivors trilogy and written the first novel of a new series, Burn Zone, under the pseudonym James K. Decker.
Here are James' picks!

   
• First up is T.C. McCarthy, author of the Subterrene War trilogy which includes Germline, Exogene, and Chimera (Germline won the 2012 Compton Crook Award).  He weaves stories of very broken people in very dangerous environments, and he does it all with a poetic flair that really stuck with me.  It's much more than just futuristic war.   A struggle over rare earth elements has come to a head under the mountains of Kazakhstan, where soldiers sealed in suits of armor fight in tunnels under tons of rock.  In Germline, an embedded reporter quickly is forced to turn soldier, and the way it changes him so completely makes for compelling reading.  McCarthy explores the human psyche, what we're willing to do in order to survive, and the effects that the horrors of war can inflict on us.  He introduces genetically engineered soldiers, but explores the ethics of that (or lack thereof), and the mindset such soldiers might have, or be forced to have.  He wraps it all in a great series of novels, and he does it all believably and memorably.  His short story "Somewhere it Snows" proves that he's equally good at exploring other worlds, too, and I sincerely hope that he does.  Writers like him are the type that we want to stick around, and so I'm recommending him to anyone who likes hard science fiction – even if military fiction isn't usually your thing, give him a try.
• Next is Alex Hughes, author of the Mindspace series, which so far includes Clean, and Sharp.  I'm a big fan of science fiction and also noir, and her work has strong elements of both.  I likened Clean to a fun blend of Blade Runner and Chinatown, but that doesn't truly do it justice.  Her vision of a future Atlanta feels real, a hot, steamy place where a talented but damaged telepath named Adam uses his abilities to help track down criminals.  The handling of 'mindspace', the sort of psychic residue left behind by people, is something I'd like to see a lot more of.  Telepaths are able to perceive it, almost like an additional sense, and can use it to sort of look into the past.  Adam struggles with an addiction that Hughes handles perfectly, a fight that occurs day to day, minute to minute.  I'm really hoping this series turns into a long running thing.
• Lastly, although I don't read a lot of fantasy, I want to give a shout out to fantasy author Myke Cole whose work I was introduced to at Balticon (his debut novel Control Point won the 2013 Compton Crook Award, and the second novel in the series, Fortress Frontier, is out now) – he writes Military Fantasy so it's a mixture of bullets and spell slinging.  His real-life military experience brings a lot to the table, and really pushes his work from just guns and explosions into a much broader examination of what it means to be in the armed forces.  You'll learn a lot of military jargon, and my fantasy-loving friends assure me that his magic system is top notch.

I realize that two of the authors on this list have won awards for their work.  Have they been recognized?  Yes.  Have they gotten the recognition they deserve?  Not in my book – not yet.  I'd like to see all three on the best sellers list, so give them all a read.  You won't be sorry.

[PTY]

Samuel Delany & Mia Wolff discuss Bread & Wine