Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

It was the best of dystopias, it was the worst of dystopias. Snow Crash mixes some of my favorite common elements of this sort of cyberpunk romp - sprawling, corporate rule, youth fads, a magic internet, random violence, hero girls - with my least favorites - programmer babble, religious pseudotheory. And it's hard not to just see it as Stephenson's take on William Gibson. I mean, Y.T. might as well be a younger, less modified Molly Millions. The franchise properties, where someone could cross the country by going from parking lot to parking lot, stand in pretty handily for The Sprawl. And so on.

But Neal's got his own ideas, his own take on the whole thing. Granted, he was writing in the 90s and had Gibson to springboard from, but he's enough of an author that I'm not trying to take anything away from him.

So, taking Snow Crash out of that context and on its own, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Except for the hacker blah blah. It's just not my cup of tea. I've never been a gamer, never been a programmer, and could care less about hearing someone talk about fucking around with computers on that level. It just leaves me flat and bored. So, actually, the fact that I dug a novel with so much of that as the main thread does say something positive.

The characters were a good time, even the side guys. The whole thing with the mafia ("You've got a Friend in the Business" - love it) as a legitimate corporation tickled me. It makes sense, of course, that in a situation where money talks and the government has little to no influence, the mob would have the structure and cash flow to be a major power player. In fact, I would love to read more about Uncle Enzo and his crew. Does Stephenson revisit them? And, of course, the Raft. I'd love to read an entire novel set there. Or maybe I have - take out some of the tech elements and you've got The Scar by China Miéville. I wonder how much of an influence this book was on that one.

Now, the religious/cultural parts. Well, hmmm. Sure, it makes sense as written. I'll buy that. It's as good a paperback theory as any I've seen. It didn't exactly knock windows in my skull, but I bet it would have given me plenty to chew on if I'd read it as a younger man.

Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

Memoirs of a Survivor

This year I've read crappy books and I've read outstanding books, but this is the first one that bored me to sleep. Luckily, I read it on the Greyhound, so snoozing was pretty much the best thing I could have done. Thanks, Doris.

Maybe it's just different tastes. I feel like Lessing created a few flashes of a story I'd be interested in reading. Where were the gathering tribes going? What were all those people doing to scavenge the parts they sold in collected markets? What happened to folks picked up by the powers that be? What was the deal with the cat-dog? I wanted to know more about the amoral children living in the sewers and the sexual morals created in an end-times situation.

Instead I got a sort of dreamy, drifty, shoulder-shrugging, oblivious side view of the whole affair. A story about a girl's first experience with love and sex, but without any real passion applied to the tale telling. And something about an alternate reality that may or may not exist only in the narrator's mind.

final thought: Not my cup of tea, but there was enough happening around the borders that I wouldn't refuse to try another of her novels.

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.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Normally, I'm a stickler for reading series (serieses?) in order, but so far I keep reading Gibson's work all which-a-way. His novels are fairly convoluted, too, so I'll probably reread it in the future, once this whole dystopian list is over and done.

That being said, I do enjoy his work. I'm not enough of a geek to get all the techy little computer/matrix/nano stuff, but as long as I keep up a good clip and let the story roll, it's clear enough. His world isn't that far from our own (in fact, it's dead similar in certain places), and people are people regardless of what kind of hardware they wear/are jacked into/have implanted in their skulls.

You know, a lot of really tech-noodling speculative fiction is a total sausage fest. It's still a boy's club in a lot of ways. But Gibson does a really good job hopping gender to gender. Even his purely artificial personalities come across as more realistic than some of the "people" offered to us by some other authors I've picked up lately (Rand, I'm looking at you).

I think I need to read the first two Sprawl books before I can offer up much on the actual plot, frankly. I'm just starting to really delve into the cyberpunk genre, and I feel like I need to take a better look around before I can fully comment.

final thought: Even as shallowly as I have read Gibson's work, it's clear to see why he is considered a true genius of cyberpunk. He was writing in the 1980s about technology we're just starting to consider common now.

The Running Man by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)

The Running Man

Ol' Stevie ain't subtle. The points aren't left up to you to figure out, they're all but written in neon: the mass of people will accept anything as long as they are entertained and comfortable, and the most one man can hope to accomplish is near-meaningless gestures at the expense of everything he holds dear.

But, again, I don't read King for the message, I read him for the stories. This is a fun one, too, if your idea of fun is a possible future of deadly tv shows, rising crime, miserable poverty, souring pollution, and fascist governments. Which, yeah, I enjoy all those things as long as they stay on the page.

And yes, our pop culture is getting sicker and bloodier. And yes, our freedoms are being stripped away. And yes, we're getting poorer by the day. And yes, health problems get worse all the time due to our ongoing efforts to pollute the galaxy. And yes, corporations do seem to be pretty much in power. And so yes, sometimes it does feel like all I want to do is raise a middle finger to the whole damn mess and give it a hearty FUCK YOU.

final thought: I want to hear a punk concept album built around this book.

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.