Kallocain by Karin Boye

Kallocain

First of all, I want to thank Peter from Dystopiate for sending me a copy of this one. Coming home to a package from Sweden on my porch was very cool. Also, I don't like to read books online, but if you do, you can find the complete text right here. It's well worth reading in any format, honestly.

Kallocain pretty well sums up my biggest dystopian nightmare: not only are you being watched and listened to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from bed to bath to work and back again (yeah, no wonder the population is dropping with everyone knowing they're being watched and judged in the sack), but now the government can even access your secret thoughts!

It's amazing to me, sometimes (the rest of the time it's just depressing) how easy it is to convince so many people to assist in their own degradation or enslavement. Plenty of stick, a little carrot, a healthy dose of "it's for your own good," a double helping of "everyone does it, don't rock the boat" and you wind up with poor Leo Kall. Working his ass off, between mandatory service nights and pep rallies, to give the government new and exciting ways to control him and his loved ones.

Even in our society, if they (that nebulous they) could hear your hidden thoughts, of course none of us would be found innocent. As Leo's coworker and eventual breaking point says, "no one over 40 years old has a clean conscience." What do you think you'd confess? Weird sex fantasies, violent urges, racist leanings? Falling in love with the wrong person or people? Hating your parents? Kicking puppies, watching American Idol, voting for Bush? God save us.

final thought: This novel should be better known, right alongside Brave New World and 1984.

If you'd like a few words about Kallocain from a Swedish philosopher, check here.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Day of the Triffids

In a way, this novel struck me as being a zombie story as much as one of vegetables run amok. Same idea - slow moving, easy to avoid if there are few and you can see them, but gradually they overcome the survivors of whatever giant disaster by virtue of sheer numbers and blind (ahem) aggression.

And, okay, so it's not really a dystopia, it's post-apocalyptic, but it's close enough and I wanted to read it.

The last book I read before this was, of course, War With the Newts, and I found there to be many similarities. Man finds resource that he does not consider overly dangerous or sentient, spreads around world, is warned but ignores it, is later punished for his hubris. Newts delved much more deeply into the worldwide events and reactions, with Triffids being more of an adventure story, but as companion pieces they work.

As I mentioned before, I'm pretty sure this is one of Stephen King's favorite books. Not that I've ever seen him mention it, I just feel like he's adapted large chunks of it and used it to flavor most of his best writing. So, I just now looked up "Stephen King" Wyndham on the ol' google, and what's the first result? 'The famous American writer Stephen King has called Wyndham "perhaps the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced".' Yep, you can tell.

final thoughts: I've already loaned my copy out and suggested it to a few different people. Easily one of the top 5 novels I've read this year.

Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

Perelandra

Jesus isn't my god, but anyone raised in this society knows the Adam and Eve story well enough to follow along with this one. Honestly, even if you didn't, the book stands on its own feet as an adventure in the classic early sf style.

I'm fascinated by the image Lewis creates of the floating lands of Venus. A world-wide ocean topped with a few islands created by plants matting together, rolling with the waves, supporting animals and trees on their surfaces. A valley one second becomes a tall hill the next, as the flexible matting forming the "ground" skims along the ocean surface. I've always wanted to live on a little island - Florida kid, you know - and I can't help but feel drawn to this image of a watery world. Too bad we know now that Venus ain't a damn thing like that. Well, maybe somewhere in the universe.

When the plot slides from that sort of almost lazy beauty into the endless days of hate and evil, I have to admit it chilled me. I have this phobia of frogs, see, so when the possessed Weston is caught torturing and mutilating the frog-like creatures of Venus, I had to put the book down for a little while. They doesn't happen often, I'm usually pretty comfortable with gross out fiction.

Also, like I said - I'm no Christian. So I never spent much time considering the Adam and Eve myth. Lewis asks us, what if Eve said no? Would the devil simply have given up and slithered off? Wouldn't he, instead, have hounded her every day of her life, lying and tricking and bribing? And, honestly, no matter how long she put him off, he had eternity on his side - one of her children would eventually give in. I'm interested in the fact that the forbidden act in Perelandra - sleeping on the "fixed land" - is only slightly portrayed as being something that would impart great wisdom by its very action. Un-Weston makes a great deal of God wanting Eve to disobey him in order to stand as her own being, but Lewis never suggests that the fixed land is "the land of knowledge" or some such parallel to the apple. Different time, different tactic?

final thought: The Christian philosophy gets a little thick on the ground toward the end, but that's the nature of the novel. I'm looking forward to the third and final book in the series, when I can get my hands on it.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Neuromancer

This damn book took me forever to get through. Not that it's not great sf, by the way - because it is. Just as forward thinking and right on as the rest of his work. But I'm more interested in the odd little side details - the Sprawl itself, the people in the bars, Panther Moderns, 3Jane - than I am in all the tech forecasting.

Now, any book with Molly, the modern samurai with the embedded glasses and razor tip fingers, is worth picking up. Don't get me wrong - if I'd started the Sprawl series with the first one like I should have, I'd probably have enjoyed it more. But working backward put it in a different frame, and I got fairly bored halfway through.

I may have to revisit this one later. I suspect I am simply burned out on Gibson's cyberpunk view of our future/now. Which is why I jumped into some classic Harlen Ellison stories last night, changing directions for a new view.

final thought: You have to really admire that so much of it has already come true. I wonder what else will.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time

Back when I was a wee nerdlet in the grade school gifted program, this was definitely a Series To Read. I think I read all four, but honestly, at this point that's a little hazy. I only really remember this one and A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

This past week, I lost an aunt and an uncle, in unrelated circumstances, which made for a pretty damn crappy time. I'm glad I was rereading Wrinkle, which is a hopeful little book, and not some Russian soul-killer.

L'Engle doesn't bother to specify one misery as the main villain driving the dystopian elements. Yes, IT ("the Happiest Sadist" - a great phrase) powers the conformity of Camazotz culture, but IT is only one face of that larger pall. Look at the names given as examples of those who have fought the good fight against this universal enemy: Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Bach, Einstein, Euclid. Discovery, love, peace, empathy and affection for your fellow beings. It's no wonder that so many of the hippie-raised kids I knew growing up were given this book early on in their reading.

And it's just a great story. You've got all the right elements for a kid's tale: missing parent, daring rescues, strange creatures, wide travels, new thoughts, misfits finding their places. Now I want to find a grade school student with a quick mind and hand over my copy.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

Back to straight up, state control dystopia.

People USED to imagine that knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. ...People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled -- after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness.

Anthrax bombs as an excuse for state control. You know, what makes classic dystopian fiction powerful is the ability to apply it to any generation's reality and still come up worried.

I'd honestly never read Brave New World before now. It's one of those classics I just never got around to. I read it right after First Men in the Moon by, more or less, accident, but it worked out well. Both concern societies in which the citizens are made, body and mind, for their alloted tasks in life. This prevents the longing and hustling that creates societal tension and individual angst. Of course, it also robs us of free will, creates a slave class, and prevents the striving and work that can carry us to the loftier heights.

You know, I'm going to look around for written defenses of the World State as outlined in BNW. It's no good for me simply to say, "This is obviously a horrible and frightening vision of the future," with no one offering any of the other side's arguments. I suspect such defense will just make me either disgusted or angry, but at least it would help solidify why it's such a disturbing image of society to me.

final thoughts: Beats the hell out of Rand any day.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine

I'd read this one many years ago, but it's short and easy to page through, so I gave it another turn. I'm glad I did. I remembered most of the main plot points - the Morlocks, the Eloi, their relationship, the machine itself - but not most of the language or Wells' final image of the dying Earth.

What I, as a modern reader, find missing from TTM is space travel. The whole theory on why the Eloi and Morlocks have become what they are is that man tamed the Earth, and then lack of challenge led to devolution. Not surprising, given that manned hot air balloons were pretty much the flight of the day. A more recent novel would have to work around the idea that man could turn to the stars for adventure and meaning when he's made the Earth into a garden.

final thought: Let's see. The science is still vague enough to be reasonable, in its way. The Morlocks are still creepy fuckers, the Eloi still pitiful, and the end of the world is still a depressingly bleak vision. I'm glad I reread it.

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

Harrison Bergeron

This story FUCKED ME UP as a kid. I don't remember what grade I was in, but they had us "gifted kids" read and discuss it some time around 8th or 9th grade. My introduction to Vonnegut, and I couldn't ask for a better one. That's when I really started thinking about the difference between equality of opportunity and forced equality of experience.

I think about the different methods used to handicap people all the time. The loud noises played in your ear to keep you from concentrating - is a glass being smashed by a ball peen hammer really all that different from keeping your phone attached to your head the whole time you're awake? (Also, note: you people with those ear piece things look like dork-ass cyborgs.)

And in the end, of course, the state wins. Beauty and grace and intelligence are literally shot down, because they do not support the system in power. That was a warning I took to heart. Not that you must hide your light, never stick out, never rise above - but watch your damn ass, and don't go dancing with pretty women while they're still out to get you!

final thought: It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange

The first time I read ACO, back in high school, I struggled for the first third (just about wore myself out flipping back and forth between the text and glossery), but the it clicked and I just sank into the language. That's still the main pleasure here - I mean, the story is well worth it, but Alex's rolling nadsat places a layer of beauty over the rape and ultraviolence. Without that, Burgess would have had a hell of a time getting any sympathy for his hooligans.

I could sit and discuss ACO for hours, but I also feel like pretty much everything's been said. Which is more desirable - the evil of the individual or the control of the state? I imagine your opinion depends on whether you're putting in the boot or catching it in the yarbles.

As a side note, some of the my favorite oi songs reference ACO, but I suspect that lingering association has more to do with the Kubrick vision than simply the novel. The book (1962) predates the rise of the skins and punks by a good 5 or 7 years, but the movie (1971) was made right when gangs of skinhead yobs stomped around much of urban England. Their image and nonpolitical violence drips from every frame.

final thought: You don't have to love it, but it probably ought to read it.

Anthem, by Ayn Rand

Anthem

There's a reason I didn't read this one before now - it's a yawn. Blah blah blah, the individual above all, blah blah blah. In another time (either in my life, as in middle school, or in the world, as in when it came out) Anthem might have made a bigger impact on me. As it is, I'm old enough to be fairly sure that there's a world of ground to cover between nazi/commie state-owned marching in lockstep pure collectivism and I-as-God navel gazing ego worship.

I couldn't help but note that, in nearly the same thought, the main character goes from basically "I am alone myself, I will not be ruled, no one shall make laws for me" to "your name is Gaea, my beautiful woman, and you will bear my sons." Again, product of its times, but jarring as hell today.

final thought: Meh.