sf signal

Just thought some of you might be interested in this. There's some pretty good writing on dystopian fiction going on at SF Signal. If you click there and check out the comments, you can find a link to a few of their other columns on the subject.

a year off is probably enough

Things are going to shit here in Florida and all around the US due to stupid people managing to get more power than they should be trusted with. Things are going to shit across the globe due to forces both natural and calculated. And Big Brother is definitely watching us!

I find myself drawn back into the dystopian world. Sort of like where I live now, except with the possibly of hope usually shining through somehow in the end.

watch this space

I've kept up with the reading, if not with the blogging. I think I might redevote myself to this project. Keep an eye here if you're interested.

Dear Journal:

Froom what I can tell, keeping a journal is pretty much the most important thing an individual can do in the face of an oppressive regime. 1984, We, Camp Concentration, Anthem, Kallocain, Level 7 - whether the frightened citizen hiding his notebook under the bed or the prisoner writing at his captors' request, dystopian authors just love their diaries.

Seriously, though, is this just lazy writing, an easy way to get in plenty of explanation without having to come up with realistic dialogue? Is it the echos of an older style? Classic works having their patterns borrowed through the decades?

To me, I guess it's like anything else. I like it when it's done well (Kallocain, We), but after I've seen it over and over it just serves to remove me from the action. Your feelings?

2010, where to begin

I've read about 2/3 of these over the last two years, but that still leaves enough beautiful books to make me drool a little.

Just a little.

Where should I start? Dayworld? Feed? Camp Concentration?

2009, and what I found there.

- The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
- Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Voinovich (Владимир Войнович)
- Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
- Kallocain by Karin Boye
- When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
- The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
- Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove
- Sea of Glass by Barry B. Longyear
- We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
- Halting State by Charles Stross
- Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Marching Through Georgia by S.M. Stirling
- Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

Favorites: We, Gun, with Occasional Music, Sea of Glass
Most Boring: Halting State, The Plot Against America
What I should have ready decades ago, because it was excellent: The Lottery and Other Stories
Stank like patchouli: The Fifth Sacred Thing
Goriest: Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom, Altered Carbon

I'm looking forward to another year!

Another year, another round.

Well, I've been at this a while now. I've read everything from porn to philosophical musings. Aside from a handful of more apocalyptic tomes (and a few Discworld novels to clean the palate), it's been dystopia 24/7 in my literary world. And I'm still enjoying the hell out of it! Expect some tweaks on this blog and a whole new crop of reviews and discussions.

Hey ho, here we go!

updating links

Just a note: Peter from Sweden, who sent me the excellent novel Kallocain, has a new location for his guide to dystopian fiction, Dead Future. So check it out.

so much gained

You know, I've read some terrible books over the past year and some odd. I've had some funny interactions. I've bored my friends to the point that they flat out refuse to talk literature with me anymore. But, really, I think this whole dystopian reading quest has been the most interesting thing to happen to my book habits since high school.

For all that the books I've read are tied together by one loose adjective, there's a whole world of difference between the future-noir of Gun With Occasional Music, the classic, draining horror of Brave New World, or the scattershot what-the-fuckery of Naked Lunch. And, you know, I can't swear I would ever have taken enough time from the sf/fantasy row I mostly hoed for so many years too read these books. Either the ones I missed that everyone else caught onto in high school or the newer ones I would never have heard of.

Anyway, I'm still plugging along and enjoying the hell out of it (even if The Fifth Sacred Thing is so hippyish it should drip patchouli). What are you reading these days? Is it rocking your world?

To 2009 and beyond!

I started with a list and a vague goal at the beginning of this year, and I'm amazed at how far I've come. I worried a little that confining my reading to dystopian fiction would narrow my horizons and get repetitive and boring after a while. Amazingly, I feel like this project's lifted me out of a fantasy/sf rut that I traveled in for a few years.

I dipped into older stories I'd never heard of, classics I just never got around to, cyberpunk you-gottas, and novels that I'd only experienced as movies.

In the meantime, my dreams got freakier, my politics got a little more paranoid, and my friends started saying, "If you mention dystopias one more time, we're going to kick your ass." All in all, a hell of a year.

So, is this the end? Am I ready to give it up and read a little fluff, range a little further afield?

Hell no!

In fact, I want to spread the wealth. Comment to this post. Tell me something about your year, what you read, if you dipped into the dystopian pool at all. Tell me what you'd like to me to blog about aside from the actual books themselves. Include an email address and name with your post, and I'll put it in a hat on 1/5. If I pull your name, I'll send you a book I've read and reviewed this year. I'll start doing this once a month - gotta clear room for this year's books!

payday

After a very impassioned urging comment to my last entry, I went out today and picked up a used copy of The Dispossessed by LeGuin. After I finish Gathering Blue, which I should roll right through in the next day (it's a young adult novel), I'll start in on that one. I'm going camping this weekend and look to plenty of down time for drinking beers and reading.

So, it's been almost a year. I'll start doing look back sorts of entries soon. Although I started this as a one year reading challenge to myself, I'm enjoying it too much and there are too many books left on the Big List to quit any time soon. Viva la Dystopia!

10 months in

I just switched images at the foot of this blog. The top shelf is what I have read (minus a few that were borrowed here and there) and the second shelf is "to read". I've been loaning them out more often, too - people are starting to ask for suggestions when they come over.

big times in the big town

Riding a Greyhound bus from Florida to DC really gives a man time to read. Over the next few days, I'll be adding my take on V for Vendetta, Naked Lunch, Running Out of Time, Day of the Triffids, Memiors of a Survivor, and Battle Royale, which I'm enjoying right now.

Anything happen while I was gone?

no cash no books

Oh, it's been tough times here in dystopia land. What with the near-dystopian reality we all seem to be living through these days, I'm down to a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of. That is to say, I haven't been able to stockpile more books. I've got two that I need to blog and one on deck (hey, did you notice? look down at the bottom of this page to see my dystopian shelf), but then I need to go trade some shit in at the local used paperback store or something.

on vacation

Hey: just wanted to say that I'm on vacation and away from computers until the end of the week. That being said, I have a half dozen entries to add as soon as I can sit down and sort my thoughts. It's been a good couple weeks of reading.

paranoia decor

In the course of looking for various book covers and so on, I ran across this graphic:


Thanks to the magic of rasterbation, it's now a very handsome 5'ish x 3'ish poster on my bedroom wall.


Now I can dream of the Cold War all through this coming hot summer.

going old school

I think I'm burning out slightly on the modern dystopias. I've done a few too many in a row. Instead of starting Shockwave Rider after I finish Neuromancer , I think this weekend I'll look for something on the List written in the early part of the 1900s.

Your papers and genetic code, please.

It creeps me out and feeds my paranoia that the US government intends to collect DNA from anyone who is arrested, regardless of conviction.

is it starting to affect me?

I'm watching a messageboard discussion about the Iraqi Perspectives Report, the huge Pentagon-sponsored study indicating no "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the US invasion of Iraq. As you might know, when the current administration found out what the results of the study turned out to be (no shock to anyone with half a brain at this point), they scrapped plans to have it available online right away.

In the course of this online conversation, an employee of the U.S. Joint Forces Command (the govt group in charge of distributing the report) popped up to say that anyone can easily aquire a free official copies. You simply go to the Joint Forces web site, click on "contact us", and send a request along with your name and mailing address, and they'll get that right out to you.

Maybe all these dystopian stories are starting to get to me, but it sure seems like the US government is very interested in knowing exactly WHO is interested enough to hunt down a legit copy and WHERE they live.

(By now, the report is available for free and as-anonymous-as-anything-else-online from NPR. But not from our own government.)

judging a book by its cover

I'm adding a new link to my short list there on the right. Caustic Cover Critic is a blog about, well, covers. Their layout, the pictures chosen, different versions - you know what I mean. Except in a few truly catching cases, this isn't something I'd spent a lot of time thinking about previously (aside from occational laughter at truly inappropriate sf and fantasy cover designs that have nothing to do with the story). With this project, however, I'm picking up a lot more classic sf and old school paperbacks than I usually would in so short a time.

Even books not on the list, such as this collection of short stories by Boulle, are starting to become just a little too tempting to pass up. These days, it seems like you slap a picture of a guy with a futuristic gun or a promo shot from the movie-based-loosely-on-the-book on there and call it a day. But some of the paperbacks I pick up that came out in the early and mid 20th century are emblazoned with strange figures, streaked colors, odd little geometric designs. They weren't out to tell you what you'd literally find, they were out to draw you into the grand What If.

Anyway, it's something I'm paying more attention to these days.