Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Voinovich (Владимир Войнович)

Moscow 2042

I'm not a student of either Russian politics or literature,, so I'm sure plenty of the deeper meaning (and possibly the jokes) passed me by on this one. That being said, I'm enough a child of the Cold War - and Voinovich is enough of a writer - that I didn't feel lost or let down. My sister asked what I was reading. I showed it to her and said, "It's funny as hell. It's a lot funnier than it looks from the cover." She, of course, replied, "It would have to be."

Moscow 2042 came out in 1986, written just a few years before perestroika and glasnost and the reforms that swept through the USSR. If you were around back then, you know the images that the American public received of life under communism - bread lines, ridiculous bureaucracy, censorship, drab clothing, heavy vodka drinking, plenty of propaganda at work. Interestingly, that's nearly exactly how Voinovich portrays his dystopian version of communism at work. Now, I have no real idea how day to day life in Moscow went in the early 80s, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite as glum as we were led to believe. Reading this one boosted that feeling - if it was already that bad, the dystopian, possible future would have been a hell of a lot worse.

I wondered a few things while I read this one. Who is he satirizing with his working class writer hero, ready to ride into Moscow on a white horse and be declared Tsar? How much of what he was satirizing was already happening and how much was extrapolation? And what is up with so many writers giving their late-middle-age alter egos young, willing, sexually gifted women to fuck? I mean, sure, I get it. But really? Were there honestly that many Russian spy babes out to rub their naughty bits up on aging writers? I doubt it. Probably helps keep warm, though.

But there were still plenty of tasty little bits to enjoy. The horrors of vegetarian pork. The concept of food and shit and whether one is the other. Long bills on caps to prevent the people from looking at movies projected on the clouds. I do tend to love books that take government control to the absolute extreme. Reading them is like whistling past the graveyard: can't happen to me! Nope, not here!

final thought: For me to get this much enjoyment out of a translated novel satiring something I know so little about is fairly amazing. I have nothing but praise for

Naked Lunch, the movie

Remember how I said that I couldn't imagine how you would translate the book Naked Lunch onto the screen? I finally rented it (netflix is cool, y'all) and have been watching it in fits and starts over the last few nights. Not because it's all that hard to watch - although, I could do without the talking assholes - but because I tend to nod off by the time I sit down to a movie at night.

Anyway, I get it now. They didn't actually set out to make a movie from NL. They just sort of set one around it. Pulled prose from various other Burroughs works, scattered in some of his own life, dressed everyone in good clothes (seriously - this movie made me want to wear nothing but suits for a while) and ran with it. The funny thing is, my living room is full of portable, manual typewriters. I've got no less than four on display that I use regularly for various zine projects. And sometime around one a.m., after watching a typewriter turn into a giant, perverted, spying cockroach and kill another typewriter, the damn things start looking to a little... violent? gruesome? worrying?

If I ever disappear without warning, the Smith Corona ate me.

January Book Giveaway

And the January Dystopian Hank-Needs-To-Make-Space Novel Giveaway goes to: an anonymous poster! (Who was smart enough to leave his email address.) I'll be getting with you today.

Everyone else: I'll do it again next month. There's enough dystopia to go around, I promise.

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

The City of Ember

For some reason, I've been through a spate of YA novels lately, and I think this was the best of them. Some very interesting ideas here, centered on what you would have to do when faced with the prospect of not having any natural resources to fall back on. The library full of books written by the citizens. The stores of reused, found, and repaired items (yarn taken from sweaters too worn to wear, for example). The way everything would slowly become shades of grey, with no bright colors left after centuries of handling.

In several other ways, though, this is as typical a kids' adventure story as humanly possible. Parents dead or otherwise out of the way, leaving room for young protagonists to act? Of course. Authority poking its nose in, unable to see the forest for the trees? Of course. Help from a trusted adult at exactly the right time? Of course. But that's just storytelling, and it works out fairly well in this case.

final thought: I dug it, but I haven't thought about it much since I finished it. I'd happily give it to a middle schooler, though.

addition by suggestion

Ben's been telling me about this book 2666 by Roberto Bolaño for weeks now, and he finally remembered to send me a link. It sounds huge and epic and right up my alley, so I added it to the Big List.

Thanks, Ben!

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!

Futureland by Walter Mosley

Futureland

Parts of this I enjoyed and parts I just felt underwhelmed by. I've been spoiled with all the William Gibson and Jack Womack cyberpunk I've read this year. Those two manage to take this sort of near-future, corporate control tale and make it thick and realistic. I found Mosley's stories a little too easily wrapped up, a little thin. Which could be the difference between short stories and novels, but I don't really think so.

Maybe it's just that Gibson and (to an extent) Womack are concerned so centrally on the technology and how that impacts society, but Mosley uses his creative takes on where we're going to express views on race and (to a lesser extent) sex and class. But, again, even those comments seemed a little too, not glib, obvious? Shallow? I'm all for a simple story told well, but if you are going to introduce what feels like Major Social Commentary into your tale, at least have something interesting to say that I haven't heard before.

Some of his characters, however, were excellent, and I would really like to revisit them in longer form. Fera Jones, boxing champ, and her drug-ravaged father and underclass lover, for example. Bits Arnold, too, and the TransAnarchist Trade Union. I want his back story and life before prison.

I understand that Mosley is mostly a mystery or crime writer, and I can see that. Futureland is nothing if not pulpish. I might pick up one of his longer works sometime and see if it carries the same flaws.

final thought: The used copy I bought was missing the final 5 pages. That pissed me off, but not enough to go hunt down a complete version. So that's about how I felt about it, overall.

Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody

Obernewtyn

I only read this a couple weeks ago, and I'm already starting to forget it. A passable story for the young'uns, but not much to mull over afterward. Did you read my last entry, concerning Gathering Blue? It pretty well applies to this novel as well. Look, I'm all for fantasies about plucky young women who evidence unknown strengths and powers to bring their friends and society itself to safety, but do they all have to be such sad sack characters?

final thought: Even at 13, this would have been a throw-away read for me. Nothing great, nothing terrible. Just there.

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue

This one's another of the young adult novels on my list. I do love the idea of dystopian fiction for preteens. I just wish it was all as amazing and worthwhile as, for instance, A Wrinkle in Time. But it ain't. Not to say I wouldn't give this to a middle schooler, because I would. The time to let them know that society will use them up and shackle them to their work is when they're still young enough to wind up paranoid and protective, I say.

Aside from that, pretty standard fare. Agriculture-based society risen from the ashes of probably our age which probably faced a probably nuclear war? Check. Plucky, hard working hero who, through courage and luck and the kindness of otherwise downtrodden friends, figures out society's Big Evil and makes her escape to a wiser and better place? Check. Semimagical gifts that make up for an otherwise condemning defect? Check.

final thought: I should write one of these myself.

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Dispossessed

I've been reading but not writing. Blame the roast turkey. Blame my girlfriend being in town. Blame me being a lazy bastard. Or we could just blame Them. You know who They are. They want to keep me from telling you what I've found out. Yeah. Them.

I've decided I'm a LeGuin fan. (I know, I hear you, "Bout time. Welcome to the crowd.") That's one of the best things about this Dystopian kick for me - I'm picking up on a lot of authors that I'd meant to read for a long time but never did.

Okay, The Dispossessed. I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about and discussing anarchy and how it would ever work out in practical terms. LeGuin manages to overcome a few of the major hurdles by (a)stocking the original society with those who choose to be part of it, thereby taking out the problem of those forced into anarchy with no willingness to try the experiment and (b) settling her radicals on a planet in which willing participation in communal labor and society is pretty much the only thing keeping all their heads above water. (An odd cliche to use for a mostly desert planet, I'll admit, but you get me.)

Of course, after a couple generations of willing equality, I, too, would expect something like a socially enforced pressure to not rise above your mates to develop. A damning of the ego. A suggestion that genius or outsider thought may be dangerously divisive. The only thing that can prevent anarchy from becoming chaos is empathy, and when Shevek flies higher and higher toward the sun, those upon whom his shadows falls may feel a sort of chill. Is that acceptable? Is it justified? is it Shevek's problem, or should those people take it upon themselves to step back into the sunlight if it bothers them?

final thought: Which would you choose, Anarres or Urras?