Books 27-30

[subplotkudzu]

27) The Wizard of Maldoone: published in 1975 , this is more of an illustrated short story than a book, the subtitle "a dream voyage to a world of golden spheres, fantasy machines and fearfully friendly dragons for would-be clowns and magicians of all ages" should make it clear this is not high art. My in-laws bought it at a box lot at a tag sale and threw it into my stocking just to see if I had any interest. It's fascinating in its abysmalness - it reads as if someone had distilled every self-rightous 70's' 'insight' and poured it into a fantasy landscape to both entertain children and convince everyone how they, well, should't have voted for Nixon and technology is bad. Or something like that. Fascinating that this was published the same year as 'Salem's Lot - quite the culture shift.

28) Tom Strong (re-read): Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse's action hero is always good for a re-read. When Moore started the ABC line he produced an essay about how spending decades talking watches apart to find out how they worked it was time to build some new watches - new, innvoative super-heroes that built clearly and cleverly on their ancestors. To my mind, Tom Strong was the best of the bunch - not to take anything away from the other ABC books, but I just loved the combination fo pulp and SF elements and the clear compassion and intelligence of a character who, while he certinaly can fight, keeps solving problems by being smart and finding best possible solutions to satisfy all parties.

29) The Scholars of Night: a hard to find John M. Ford book, this was quite good. I clearly need to read it again (as with all Ford, it requires re-reading) but it is a solid 1980's techno-espionage thriller. I'll probably have more to say after the re-read in a few months.

30) The End of Eternity: I had never heard of this Asimov novel, but it too came from my in-laws as part of a house clean out or tag sale or somesuch. It was chock full of 1955 attitudes, but I suspect that since it was written in 1955 that might have something to do with it. The story was fast paced and suprisingly gripping once I got into it, and while Asmiov was never a stylist (I don't think he ever wrote a sentence that would stop me cold and make me marvel at the beauty of it) he is a very solid craftsman who did a remarkable job of portraying a central character who in his youth and inexperience misreads every situation and personal interaction, while making you root for the guy anyway. By the end I was delaying doing other things around the house just to find out how everything was resolved.

Comments

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

[after] spending decades talking watches apart to find out how they worked it was time to build some new watches

THIS, by God.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I think The End of Eternity is one of Asimov's most interesting novels. Viewed in terms of standard literary criticism, where characterization and character interaction are the focus of literature, it's much more substantive than most of his writing. And in terms of the "literature of ideas" aspect of sf, it shows Asimov doings something really interesting with his own ideas. Normally he's very much an adherent of the classic technocratic vision of the sfnal future, where a board of enlightened scientists plan rationally and disinterestedly for the good of the entire community, rather along the lines of the old Chinese mandarinate; this shows up especially in the Second Foundation. Donald Kingsbury gave a brilliant critique and deconstruction of this in Psychohistorical Crisis. But in The End of Eternity Asimov gave a deconstruction of his own ideas, showing the failure modes of a rational bureaucracy, not in terms of corruption, but in terms of the bureaucracy producing perverse and undesirable effects by doing exactly what it was designed to do. I've seldom seen an sf writer do such a solid job of questioning his own ideas.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Very true. I think that is one reason why the novel was able to surprise me as it did.

My first thought upon finihsing it is that this was a an excellent indicator of how the Contiuum from the time travel game of the same name would be the bad guys - somethign that several A&Ers have been instincitvly feeling for some time (even thought the rulebook is tilted in their direction, and is apparently tilted against them in the eventual companion game "Narcisist").