The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road

I burned through this in a few hours while sitting in the waiting room while my sister was in labor. Maybe not the best choice to read while attending the birth of a baby boy, but it passed the time well enough.

This was one of those rare apocalyptic novels I throw into the dystopian mix to keep things interesting (that was, I say, that was a joke, son). And, boy howdy, McCarthy hit every square on that end-of-the-world lit bingo sheet. Cannibals? Check! Horrific environmental damage? Check! A trek through the rotting remains of our culture? Check! A taste of deus ex machina when things get too bleak? Check!

Which isn't to say that I didn't like it. Those things became tropes because we find them both likely and interesting. This is the first thing I've read by McCarthy, and he has a spare style that works well with this sort of story. It's bloody, but even the blood is shadowed, the reds muted and greyed out with ash.

The movie version comes out this month. I'm wondering if they'll keep the ending as is or go Hollywood.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

The Shockwave Rider

I enjoyed The Sheep Look Up so much that I had really high expectations for this novel. But where Sheep was a sort of free form, bloody, experimental warning about the USA's impact on the global ecology of Earth, Rider is more of a standard cyberpunkish story. Don't get me wrong - there are some very cool, bleak moments, especially those involving "therapy" for children. But it just didn't live up to Sheep's promise.

I think my favorite concept Brunner brings into this book is that of "Hearing Aid", a free number one can call to rant, rave, cuss, complain to with a promise that it is not recorded and no one but the person on the other end of the line can hear them. In these days, when our every keystroke is recorded and our phone conversations are easily dipped into, I sort of wish we had something like that available to us as a regular thing. Some stuff you don't even want to blog about.

By the end, the story just wrapped up too neatly. It was a happy ending all around (something, I'll admit, I haven't seen much these past 6 months). All the mutant dogs do their noble best. The revolutionaries pull one over on the government and manage to put out a powerful computer worm (this book is here the term comes from) that exposes all the secret data hidden from view, effectively bringing about a sort of socialist drive for freedom and love. But, see, I don't think that the average US citizen would actually care much who we've been torturing or why. I think we would find it interesting for ten minutes and then go back to their daily routine.

final thought: I'm too cynical for this novel, but it wasn't a half bad read. If you want true dystopian horrifics, though, go for The Sheep Look Up instead.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Parable of the Sower

This is one of those books I suggest to everyone, constantly. Butler was one of the greatest sf/speculative fiction writers of our time, and her death left us all bereft.

I first read PotS right after Katrina hit, and that gave the story a little added truth. When she talks about much of the south being devastated by hurricanes and floods, it's hard not to think of all the people crammed into arenas and camping on overpasses to try and escape the rising death.

Butler really pulls out all the dystopian demons. Gangs, drugs, kidnapping, rape, lack of water, lack of food, environmental damage, threat of fundamentalist dictatorship, refugees, race and class violence, war, lack of education, lack of medical care, lack of hope. And in times like that, what is the biggest horror? To be able to feel the pain of others as your own - double torture, two for the price of one.

The only chance we're offered for any sort of happy ending rests in bonds between individuals leading to communities willing to stand together, in kindness but also in strength, against the chaos, looking to the skies. And even that's not given much of a chance.

final thouht: Butler wrote this book in 1993. 15 years later, it rings more and more true. That's probably why I love it so much. I think it'd be mighty easy to make that slide into darkness. I think we're on the slope now, and I think it'll get worse before it gets better.

Doc and Fluff by Patrick Califia

Wiki doesn't even have a page on this one, but you could probably find a plot description out there somewhere if you feel the need.

This has got to be the only scifi, dystopian stroke book I've ever read. Queer bikers! Pulp novel dialogue! Lots of fisting! Pimps and hos! Separatist feminism! Some sort of vaguely religious Goddessy retribution! Seriously, I love this shit. Honestly, though, there could have been more sex, don't you think?

final thoughts: Jennifer Tilly, circa 1990, would have been perfect to play Fluff in the film version. Except I'm pretty sure the book didn't come out until '96. update: I've just been informed that the book was first published in '90. So there you go.

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.