The Human Division isn’t a spoof or a straight-up comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be funny. It is set in a future wherein hundreds of technologically similar alien races are fighting each other. Humanity is, in this universe, forever on the brink of extinction.
Read the full review in the Free Press.
The working out of the physics is one of the great joys of this novel. The combination of a microgravity environment that nevertheless contains a breathable atmosphere makes for some fascinating possibilities, and Schroeder takes us through them one by one. But it’s also a rip-roaring story.
I’ll be covering Karl Schroeder’s complete Virga series at AE over the next several months. Read along with me, starting with this one.
They’ve been an occasional sci-fi topic since the early days of the genre, and modern bio-technology is making these speculations more relevant, not less. Read my essay on treatments of neanderthals in science fiction at AE.
Recently, Sawyer’s quest for variety has brought him to other genres. Last year’s Triggers was a techno-thriller that mixed bits of Dan Brown and Robert Ludlum with his own trademark style. Now, with his Martian murder mystery Red Planet Blues, the science fiction veteran has gone hard-boiled.
With just a dash of spaghetti Western thrown in for flavour. Read my full review of Sawyer’s latest at AE.
In some ways, I can thank my high school English classes for sparking my long love of speculative fiction. Between reading and discussing such notable literary classics as 1984, Brave New World, and Watership Down, I quickly came to prefer a good “what if?” story to any other kind. Amongst all the excellent choices on my high school reading list, however, Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon stood out to me as the most poignant and affecting.
I never imagined there would be a worthy modern successor to this powerful and bittersweet tale. Indeed, I would not have expected anyone to try. Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark therefore took me completely by surprise. I’m sorry that I missed this 2003 Nebula winner when it first came out. But I’m pleased to have stumbled across it now. Jay Snyder’s expert narration only added to the experience.
Moon’s novel tells the story of Lou Arrendale, an autistic who’s spent his whole life adjusting to a society built for people who think differently. Through early intervention and a lot of hard work, he’s learned to interpret some of the facial cues and tonal nuances in the unwritten social language most of us attain fluency in as toddlers. But he’ll never be a native speaker. Living independently and using his talent for pattern analysis, he works in a tech firm in a section with other autistics. In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and, perhaps more importantly, in recognition of the section’s astounding productivity, supports are provided to create a good working environment for the autistic employees.
The simple addition of assigned parking provides structure and predictability they crave. When Lou becomes upset, he listens to Bach, turns on the fan and watches the pattern of colour as his spin spirals glitter and turn. On Tuesdays he does his grocery shopping. On Saturdays he meticulously cleans out his car. Though he doesn’t tell anyone at work, he spends Wednesday nights at fencing practice, with “normals”, reveling in the new patterns of a fresh opponent.
He is happy, he thinks. Content, at least. He long ago gave up on a childhood dream of travelling into space. He talks himself out of thinking that Marjorie, the woman at fencing practice, might have the same kind of funny feelings inside when she thinks about him, as he does for her. He is safe, leaving things as they are.
But things will not stay as they are. A new boss at work resents the “special privileges” provided for the autistic employees. A series of unexpected episodes, a mean-spirited officer at airport security, an act of vandalism on his car, leave Lou flustered and feeling the full extent of his handicap. Then he hears about a new experimental treatment, expected to reverse adult autism. To make him normal. And he is faced with a life-altering choice.
This is an important work, because, like Mark Haddon’s 2003 Whitbread winner, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, it provides a voice for people like Lou who many of us may never get a chance to know ourselves. The Speed of Dark dispels the myth that autistic people don’t have feelings; that they are static and do not experience growth and change; that they are somehow inhuman. But it’s not only important, it’s also incredibly readable. I can therefore recommend this book for everyone.
(More info on the book and on autism can be found at Elizabeth Moon’s excellent blog.)
Reprinted with permission from The Green Man Review
Copyright (2008) The Green Man Review
Canada Vs. USSR in Nintendo’s Ice Hockey: Damn it, Canada, I mean, what the hell!?
Interview Tips for When Someone Asks, “What Questions Do You Have For Us?”: Really some deceptively good questions.
Douglas Adams is still the king of comic science fiction: “[I]t makes you wonder why, 12 years after his death, no one has been able to supplant him from that throne.”
Who Will Be the Next Douglas Adams? Hopefully, Nobody: “Nor am I particularly concerned about taking science fiction’s humor crown from Adams; that’s like trying to take the melodic pop crown from Lennon/McCartney. You can try, but they’re just going to call you ‘Beatlesque.’”
The Ten Best Dogs in Science Fiction: Everyone loves a space beagle.
Any James Clavell or Harold Lamb fans out there? I have an essay up on AE, on the relationship between historical fiction and certain works and sub-genres with SF (alternate history is something I didn’t even get into). It’s entitled “Bleeding of Genres: Historical Fiction and SF“, and just possibly, if inspiration strikes, I’ll write more on the topic of cross-genre influences in the future.
Steven Gould has a new novel out in the Jumper series, and I’ve covered it in the Free Press Book Review. This is an author whose career I’ve been following since around ’97, and a couple of his novels can be counted amongst my all-time favourites. It’s easy to screw up a sequel, but he’s in fine form this time around.
But I didn’t grow up in the Golden Age of the ’30s and ’40s. When I was a child, as suffused as popular cultural depictions of SF still were (and continue to be) with spacefaring imagery, other themes, speculations, and what-ifs had begun crowding in at the edges. In fact, as a voracious and omnivorous upper-elementary reader, I read an enormous amount of juvenile science fiction without ever taking my adventures off-planet.
Instead there were contemporary riffs on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World, and many, many deep sea adventures.
For those keeping track, it’s just about one year since my first time writing for the fine folks at the Canadian Science Fiction Review, and though my debut was an essay on Heinlein, I hadn’t returned to the form again before today. (Though my book coverage may have sometimes landed somewhere between a full-blown essay and straightforward review.)
There’s more upcoming. I’ll keep you posted.