End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

End of Eternity

Well now, that wernt half bad. Nothing like a little classic, 50s-style time travel sf to kill an afternoon. Asimov can spin a yarn, and I always enjoy his style.

So, time-as-place. I have to admit, I'm easily fuddled by the paradoxes of time travel stories. I follow along without too much problem, but I never can figure out the ending before running into it. I did enjoy this particular take on it. Just utopian enough to make the final actions slightly suspect, but still welcomed. I found the details, well, charming for lack of a better word. Smoking, and its place in history. The different fashions that each eternal learned to deal with. The ever-present class issues, even at play in the timeless world of the time travelers.

I always enjoy dipping into the classics. There's often a reliance on the Idea, rather than the Story, carrying the main burden. And that's a good thing! A few too many of the more current dystopian novels I read seem to think that all the ideas are set in stone, and the only thing that remains is to pile on (most gory) details in order to hide borrowed concepts. Sometimes that works out better than you would expect. And I'm not saying that all the sf classics are these amazing pieces of work that blow the new stuff away by any means. Just that it's a different style and I enjoy both in their turn.

Honestly, I'm sketchy on Asimov (I always preferred Heinlein and Bradbury), having mostly delved into his Robots and short stories I came across in collections. I haven't read the Foundation series, but this novel got me interested, so I'll be picking those up when I run across them.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games

The twisted government, the youth-violence-as-entertainment, the love match that takes on all odds - I enjoyed the hell out of Battle Royale. Oh wait, shit, I'm supposed to be talking about Hunger Games.

Seriously. People kept suggesting this book to me, knowing my tastes and reading habits. And it's not like they were wrong - it's a fun read. But Collins was dipping water from a well I've bathed in many times before. Again, maybe I just need to stay away from young adult novels for a while. I would have loved this at 13. I was always running around making weapons out of random stuff anyway, so I probably would have adopted chunks of the plot into my make-believe life. At this age, though, the way the author just passed right over certain plot holes and unlikely moments that should have been dealt with better bugged the crap out of me.

I liked the set up, the idea of the games as retaliation against formerly rebellious colonies. Of course, forcing parents to sacrifice their own children over and over is pretty much a textbook example of how to breed further revolution, but okay. Powerful governments have done stupider things. And that bit all smacked just a little too heavily of Jackson's "Lottery". I liked them prepping for the games, except that it all had much the same flavor as the pre-run parts of King's Running Man. Of course, I enjoyed the survival game itself, except, well, you know. Battle Royale and so on.

If the sequel turns up at my house, I'll probably read it one afternoon. But honestly, I barely expect to remember much about this one in a few weeks. I do hear that a PG-13, teenybopper movie version is being made. Oh, goody.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go

Yes, I bought this and read it last night. Didn't really mean to zip through it like that, but after the detailed, intertwined, techy plot of Mona Lisa Overdrive,it all flowed so well I didn't feel any compulsion to put it down.

For all the fog and blur he tries to put on the reality of his characters' situation in this one, the final reveal isn't all that shocking. I mean, if you've ever read much, you know what's coming. But, I say again, sometimes it's the story itself that matters.

Ishiguro tells us almost nothing about what the main players in this book - Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy, carefully mindful students of the sort common to much of the British lit I've thumbed through - look like. I caught a glimpse of a haircut here, a favored shirt there. But their settings, the school, the grounds, the cottages, the centres where they live out their last days, are given every loving detail. When you don't own your own body, I guess where you are matters more than who you are.

What struck me most, after so much dystopian fiction, is that they never fight or try to run. It's not so much Spartan stoicism as the pre-destined plod of cattle. Not only do the main characters simply go to their fates with a hope of being "good" at it, no mention is made of anyone else attempting to skip town, get the hell away, become their own master, survive. In every other book I've read so far, it's the main character vs. the frightful society or vs. the looming dictatorship. This isn't a book about struggle or the ability of human spirit to win out over all. This is about accepting what we are taught and told, even when we know it will ruin us. About getting hold of a little music or love or a quiet moment and letting that be enough.

final thought: Creepy, even if I knew what the end would be. I sort of wish it'd lasted longer, but, honestly, I can't see where you could put more of anything without fucking up the whole flow.

Oh, and just for kicks: Margaret Atwood's review of the book.