The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

The First Men in the Moon

First off, I have to say that one trick of Wells' I truly admire was that of having a narrator who is not the main scientist of the story. That allowed him to present an idea like cavorite, an antigravity metal, without having to dive too deeply into a practical explanation. The narrator just says something like, "Oh, and I don't know how it worked, but then, I'm just a businessman," and then get on with the more important stuff like fighting moon-based insect beings or traveling millions of years into the future.

(I hear this bugged the crap out of Jules Verne, who was quoted as saying, "I get my voyagers to the Moon with gun cotton - something you can buy in any store - and Mr Wells uses a totally mythical substance. Pah! Where is this Cavorite? Let him produce it!" Which is probably why I prefer Wells to Verne.)

You know, I'm glad we've been to the Moon and all, but we have lost a certain opportunity to simply guess and invent what might be happening up there on our nearest neighbor.

Anyway, things don't get good and dystopian until the last few chapters, when Wells managed to hide a creepy little statement on colonization and specialization in his adventure yarn. The image of the young Selenites cramped into bottles with just their arms protruding in order to be modified to perform their assigned life task squicked me out the same way stories about comprachicos do (no shock - it's basically the same idea, and I have to guess that Wells was at least partially inspired by Victor Hugo's take on it in "The Man Who Laughs", which was published in the 1860s).

final thoughts: Did Cavor deliberately tell the Grand Lunar about humans' taste for violence and war? And if he did, was it to save us from them or them from us?

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.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Perdido Street Station

First of all, the wiki entry for PSS is particularly bad. But then, by the nature of wiki, that may not be true by the time you see it. Who can say?

Second, I think about this book daily. Maybe hourly. The beauty of the writing is only matched by the cruelty of the story. This wasn't a lecture, this isn't Ayn Rand or even South Park preaching at me. There are lessons about the dangers of a fascist government, of exploration without prudence, of what desire can do to individuals or whole worlds. But those morals are embedded in the story as cleanly as the ones you come across in your own life (thank all that's holy that this book is not my life).

I've been reading since I was three. I have run across books that were difficult to follow because the vocabulary employed was almost over my head, but usually those writers are covering up for a lack of writing ability. This is one of the very, very few novels I've ever come across where reading one passage several times just to make sure I have the sense of it was purely a pleasure.

I don't even know if this is science fiction that feels like fantasy or fantasy that employs science fiction or both or reality somewhere else. It's a feast. It's so casually nasty that I can't believe I love it so much.

final thought: Just read the fucking thing.